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We woke up this morning to go see the amazing Salar de Uyuni, this time without any problems. It was an early rise at 5am so we could see the sun rise on the Salt Flats. Slowly the lights came on in the other rooms and soon everyone was ready to go. We loaded up our jeeps and left San Martin without even seeing it. As we had being delayed the day before we arrived when it was dark and left the next morning when it was dark. It wasn’t long before we reached the start of the salt flats. The sun was beginning to make light but was still not visible. We got to a point in the salt flats and stopped to watch the sunrise and take some funny photo’s that the completely white background lets you take. Michelle was having a field day taking photo’s of me in the palm of her hand and standing on my head (see photo’s). The salt flats were formed when a ocean dried up and all the salt was left behind. The salt is 124m deep in parts.

After an hour or so messing around we got back in the jeep so we could go to Fisherman’s Island. This is an island in the middle of the salt flats made up of coral and with lots of cactus trees that have now made it their home. Here we had breakfast first before climbing the ‘island’ to get a great view of the Salar. After that we got back in the jeep and headed for an ex-salt hotel. It's now a museum but not so long ago it was a hotel. It was closed down as it was bad for the environment. Now though you can see all the rooms and where people would have had breakfast and dinner. There was no entrance fee but we were asked to buy a small gift inside the hotel. We were nearing the end of our journey and we stopped off to see workers gathering up salt mounds for sale. Each mound sells at only €2.50 and you can see the pictures as to the size of each one.

We reached the town of Uyuni where or journey was to end. We had one last stop and at ‘train cemetery’ to see all the old abandoned trains. We got some pictures inside the trains before coming to terms that our tour was over. Abraham, our tour guide, wasn’t finished with us though. He returned to the town with us and waited while we went to an ATM. He then went to the best hotels to find us a room. The first one was booked out so he took us to the next best one. Here we got three double rooms for about €40 dollars each. It was our first time in a hotel and not a hostel since we flew out of Ireland nearly two months ago. It was a treat as the price of the room was nearly the same as our daily budget for Bolivia! We unloaded our bags from the jeep and got some pictures with Abraham and thanked him with a small tip. I say small because when we checked the exchange rates we had realised we had given him less than we thought. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts!

That evening we all went for dinner and I had llama for dinner. It was nice but I would definitely like to try the best cut before I leave. Afterwards we returned to the hostel and all booked into the same hostel in Sucre for the next day. We wondered what type of bus we would get as the buses in Bolivia aren’t quite the same a Argentina or Chile. We had heard horror stories about chicken buses etc etc, but thought the one we had booked would be a bit better. That’s what we thought anyway!!

In a bit. DH

Song of the Blog: My Generation - Oasis version

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