Salar de Uyuni

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So. After the miserable ATM afternoon, i headed off for the much anticipated tour of the salt flats and Atacama desert that would eventually take me into Bolivia. As seems to kind of a recurring theme because of sub-par Spanish from me and misinformation from most tour providers here, i didn't really know what to expect. The first few hours involved shuffling through buses in the wee hours of the morning and joining queues and getting stamps to get out of Chile and into Bolivia. Eventually, we got sorted into groups of five or six at the Bolivian border and allocated our drivers and the landrovers that would be driving us through to Uyuni in southeast Bolivia.

I ended up getting a GREAT group of people; Jim, a kiwi, and his partner Elke who were living in Amsterdam, Marina and Eros, a friendly Italian couple who could speak spanish far better than anyone else and therefore got stuck with translating duties for the next three days, and a perky Canadian lass named Shannon (who had been flown South America to film an episode of Wipeout). Led by our driver/chef/tour guide/DJ Wilson France.

The first day involved visiting a bunch of lagoons of various different impressive colours, dictated by the various minerals present and visits to a couple of hot springs for a dip. Many flamingos were witnessed. Stopping at a tiny desert town for the night, wine and merriment were shared until the altitude started to get to most members of the group and an early night was had. I went for a bit of a wander around sunset and encountered a llama herd that was starting to get active because the temperature was dropping and sat and watched them play for awhile before realising that when the sun goes down the temperature drops from 30 degrees to minus 20 in a really short space of time. Ran the rest of the way back being glad that i wouldn't ever have to deal with menopause.

Second day involved visiting a couple more lagoons and more flamingos. Then we saw some crazy rock formations in the middle of the barest and sandiest part of the desert. Most spectacular of which being the one that had been eroded only at the base and ended up looking like a particularly precarious tree. Up to this point i'd been pretty much unaffected by the altitude, so i went clambering all over the rocks and scored myself a massive headache. Genius. That night, we slept in a hotel built entirely of salt and drank wine out of the tiniest terracotta cups possible while the friendly old hotel owner served us chicken and joked about it being 'flamingo blanco' (i.e. baby flamingos which have not turned pink yet).

We arose groggy at about 5am on the final day, breakfasted, and set out into the Salar de Uyuni. Although what we'd seen up to that point had been pretty inmpressive, the sunrise over the salt flats was head-explodingly amazing. Pure white hexagons kind of just spreading off into the horizon. We visited a few other things that day, including a bizzare island covered in cacti that popped up from the salt for no apparent reason, and a pile of rusting trains just outside Uyuni, but driving through the Salar on it's own was crazy enough.

Arriving in Uyuni was a pretty big slap in the face after the desert. Pretty ugly little town and not much there at all except rubbish that kind of spreads out into the surrounding desert from being blown out of town and then getting caught in the little shrubs that live in the sand. Not too pleasent. I found Minutemen pizza after a fairly long hunt (thanks for the recommendation David D) and then failed at getting money out of the only ATM in town. Given i was starting to run out of funding, i decided to head straight to La Paz via overnight bus, rather than going to nearby Potosi as was the plan (it's another fairly small town with no guarantee of working ATMs).

Things about Bolivia:
-The roads are not paved, and so trying to sleep on the overnight bus is almost impossible. You kind of start to nod off, and then a massive bump tries to propel you into the lap of the lady sitting adjacent with the bowler hat and mouthful of coca leaves.
-EVERYONE in Bolivia loves to make the joke 'vamos a la playa!' whenever you go anywhere. It means 'lets go to the beach!'. I think it is funny because Boliva is landlocked. Wilson France was particularly fond of this one. As was Mario, our guide up Huayna Potosi a few days later.
-There are only about three songs that people play here. This got particularly amusing during the Salar tour over three consecutive days in a car. One song involves just yelling the names of places in south america. One repeats 'Cantina un mas cerveza' alot, and another one says 'No se' alot with techno backing.

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Photos

Me and some llamas
Been taking some rubbish photos over the last couple of weeks... sorry

Laguna Colorada
I'm told there are three different types of flamingos, but they all look REALLY similar...

The obligatory touristy perspective photograph
Photo credit goes to Wilson France, Bolivia