Uyuni ... lakes of salt, mountains in lakes, flamingos and cold, cold days and colder nights

Uyuni is a town not very close to anywhere else.
In fact its a long and windy dirt road from most places, which in a bus with a driver who may or may not have had any previous driving experience can be a terrifying or an exhilerating experience.
depending on how you look at things.
Uyuni was our next destination due to the intrigue of the amazing salt plains and the vast countryside that we would experience out there in the surrounding Salar de Uyuni.
We dusted ourselves off after our bus experience out of Potosi and we were warmly welcomed by some locals who were waiting for some other gringos. they knew our hotel and its owner - an amigo of theirs and then kindly offered to drive us there. the 2 block walk was too great.
one the great things about travelling is the random acts of kindness.
so settled in our hotel with fleece sheets and 2 doonas (duvets for those of you reading this not from the wonderful land of Oz) we wandered into town to check things out before heading straight back out on the road again.
In town we purchased an alpacca hat, which would become invaluable to me and bumped into friends we had made in Brazil.
The next morning we were up bright eyed and bushy tailed, if not a touch chilly and ready for our adventure.
Our 4wd picked us up and took us to the office (all very civilised) and then jam packed the car until there was hardly any room for us.
6 gringos on the tour + the driver/guide and our cook.
the 4wd was pretty much like any other i had seen and not that i know much about 4wd's but i am pretty certain the extra passenger capacity came from the addition of a row of seats where the boot normally is.
this meant that with a crew of 5 chicos (boys) and myself ... we got to know each other very quickly.
First stop was the miraculous salt lake. this truly is an experience that words can not come close to expressing its immensity and beauty.
Of course we were able to check out the process in which salt is made and take photos with wandering llama's, even purchase local goods made from salt including candle stick holders, ash trays, but strangely enough, no salt shakers ... but the beauty of the salt flats is that you can hurl along at over 80 clicks on the flat, flat, flatter than flat surface and all you see is white.
white in front, white behind and white to either side.
occassionally, when your eyes get bored with all the white, they decide to play tricks with you and you start seeing strange illusions forming and then disappearing on the horizons.
Isla de Pescado is an island somewhere in the salt plain that is so named because of these illusions and the fact that some people say the island looks like a fish when approaching.
regardless, the island is covered with gigantic cacti and when you wander up to the top, provides stunning views of the white vastness you appear to be in the middle of.
our handy cook whipped up a tasty lunch of salad and llama steaks for those keen and afterwards we headed onto the salt plain to enjoy what every tourist seems to enjoy ... the illusion photos.
due to the uncharacteristic flatness of the environment, it is possible to use the terrain to make things look different to what they really are.
check out the photos.
squashed back into the 4wd and racing across the salt plains with all the other tourist 4wd's on the salt plain (and there were many) our destination was San Pedro. We arrrived just as the sun was setting and the all the cold fibres of the earth were raising their little bodies to ensure that no matter how much clothing we were wearing, we would still be cold.
arriving at our "hostal" for the night we were somewhat puzzled when our guide enquired if there was any availability ...
luckily for us, it wasn't a cold night in the 4wd but a cold night in a crudly constructed stone building. hot showers were an additional 5B's (less than an buck) however the idea of removing existing clothing and then having to layer up again was hardly appealing.
the idea of consuming some hearty red was appealing, just to warm ourselves from the inside, however the realisation that we were at altitude squashed this thought before it brought any heat.
a wander around town provided an opportunity to view the llamas having an evening drink at a little water hole and the sun setting strikingly behind the clouds.
did i mention it was cold ?
really cold ?
the next morning our crew decided we would hop up earlier than the others to make sure we got the jump on all the other 4wd's on the same tourist track.
this was a great idea in theory until the other trucks, filled with travellers of the young english variety, decided to play drinking games loudly for most of the evening - resulting in very little sleep for us. the second problem was that our 4wd didn't seem to respond to the accelerator ... but that's a story in itself and one that Rene is ready to tell.
flamingo's were on the agenda that day and boy oh boy were we excited. if i had had enough room to wriggle with excitement in my seat then wriggling i would have been doing.
we 'zoomed' across dirt tracks saw mountains rising from all sides and lagoons of all different personalities.
flamingo's graced us with their presence and we were able to see both the pink flamingo variety and grey flamingo variety.
i like the way they walk... they talk ... their smile ... their style ...
after the flamingo's we were to rise just a little further in altitude ( i didn't think it possible) and were welcomed into the national park by the usual officals and a baby vicuna. of course, the baby vicuna had the prettiest big eyes and loved having a pat and was generally a whole lot more interesting than the necessary paperwork.
the journey continued across tracks into nowhere and this is how we ended up at somewhere around 4,125m and asking again if the only accomodation establishment had enough room for us ...
if i thought that the previous night was cold, then i just clearly hadn't thought things through enough. at this sort of altitude the air is so thin that the simple things like breathing become far more difficult.
any thoughts of a hot shower are simply ridiculous as there is no hot water and i think you would come close to freezing afterwards if you were silly enough to take your clothes off.
so, after the spagetti dinner and a couple of red wines i was curled up in my sleeping bag and trying to inhale enough oxygen to make sleep a reality.
at this point i thank Canadian Jen for the use of her sleeping bag.
without it i think i would be a frozen ice structure resident at the hostal.
dad always said that "the early bird catches the worm", but there was very little in the way of vegetation out this way and the morning was spent in frustration. after rising at 4.30am we got to spend a few moments with geysers, and after a honking horn requested we all re-group, we missed a sunrise somewhere out the left window of the car behind geyser gasses and mountains. our destination for marvelling at sunrise was supposed to be the hot springs, a spectuclar setting by the time we arrived. and a revitalising experience once we had driven to the Chilean border and back. we did pass by laguna verde ... know for its beautiful green colour that occurs as a strange phenominan in the afternoons. we however passed by in a rush in the morning and didn´t quiet get that viewing.
the next 7 odd hours were spent mildly frustrated at the speed of the car and marvelling at the amzing scenery out the window.
it truly is beautiful countryside out there.

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