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Published: August 15th 2006
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Before I start, some people have mentioned that they have only seen one of the last three blogs. That was because I posted them all on the same day so you may not have scrolled through them all. Just click on the previous/next journal to view them all!
So, onto the biggest and highest salt flats in the world, the Salar de Uyuni. The flats sit at a lofty 3653m and blankets an amazing 12,000sq km. It was part of a prehistoric salt lake which covered up most of southwest Bolivia. When it dried up it left one massive pot of SAXO! Its probably the most surreal place on earth we´ve ever been (and if you´ve been to Bridgend, thats saying something!) and the opportunity to take all sorts of weird photos are endless.
With the rest of the group, we undertook a two day tour of the Salar in some clapped out Toyota Landcruisers. Now, its difficult to get an idea of how big this place is, but to give you some appreciation, we drove for two hours at 80mph in dead straight line ´just to get to an island a third of the way in for Lunch.
Gullivers Travels
As per usual, Nadine has me in the palm of her hand Whats even more amazing is that our driver had been driving asleep for approximately 15 minutes without us even realising!!!!! When I confronted him in my best pidgeon spanish he strenuosly denied this, although Nadine caught him admitting to one of the other drivers he was knackered. It was quite funny as it wasn´t as if there were any trees to run into!
There isn´t much to do on the Salar apart from take pretty wicked photos, and what you see is only some of the results. But what did, keep us in a constant source of comedy was our driver. When all 5 trucks drove off, he would drive in a completely different direction to enable him to drive twice as fast and arrive at the same destination at the same time! After 5 rollockings from his boss for leaving the pack, we decided to christen him "Lone Wolf" as he gave the impression of being a renegade who took orders from no man. It didn´t really help that we continouslly egged him on like a like a couple of eight year olds full to the eyeballs on candy! His shenanigans played to our favour though. After spending
Salar de Uyuni
Just before Sunrise the night at a hostel Stig of the Dump would have turned his nose up at, we left at 530am to catch the sunrise from as close to the middle of the Salar as possible. After not sparing the horses, we arrived before the sun came up and caught a scene that will be hard to beat in anybodys lifetime, but we became slightly concerned that no one else appeared in eyeshot after 30 minutes. Thats quite a long time when you are the solitary living organism in a 25 mile radius, but we took great confidence in the fact that "Lone Wolf" felt relaxed enough to get out of the truck with his blanket and have a nap on the salt (let me point out that the temperature at 6 in the morning was between -15 to -10 degrees!!!!) But curiosity got the better of him and we eventually went back to search for the other trucks. After a full 30 minutes of driving, we found the other trucks, one of which was sunk in mud up to its axle. To say the others tore a strip off "Lone Wolf" was an understatement. I swear that if we hadn´t
of been there, they´d have buried his head in the salt. But he fully redeemed himself by single handedly pulling out the truck. Up to that point it had been like watching an episode of the Bolivian Chuckle Brothers ("From you to me, you to me"). Even the 50 year old female cooks had to suggest that a shovel might help.
The tour in itself was crap and really poorly organised, but you couldn´t take away the natural beauty of the Salar. Our english speaking, university educated guide was rightly tipped only 30 Bolivianos (2 quid) by six of us, while we gave the hot-head driver 100 bolivianos. It wasn´t till we got back that it dawned on us that we would of been rightly screwed if we had been stranded without the other vehicles, oh well!
So we are back in La Paz now, awaiting our flight to Santiago in Chile tomorrow. Its been quite eventful really. We were going to mountain bike down the most dangerous road in the world while we were here, but when three of the other guys did it last week, a bus flew over the cliff killing 22 people on board.
They had to wait while they searched and dragged the bodies back to the road!! Needless to say we have given that a miss. Plus I also got robbed on my birthday! Thankfully they didnt get anything. I would like to say I used all my shadow-master fighting skills to fight off the band of thieves, but in reality, the three 50 year olds who bundled me just slashed my wallet cord and it dropped on the floor. I managed to grab it before they noticed and ran-off!
Gringo 1. Skanky blokes who I hope catch Gonoria real soon 0.
Speak to you all from Chile
Lots of Love
Stu and Nads
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Annemarie Dahl
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sooo jealous (and happy birthday)
happy birthday Stu! Yay to you for beating the would be thieves! I'm so very jealous about your trip to the salt flats. It's one of the places I wish I had been able to go while I was in the area. There aren't many places I would go back to in Sth America, but the salt plains look so amazing, Bolivia is on my list to go back to. Stay safe, Ana