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Published: April 25th 2007
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After the most awful bus journey so far we hit Uyuni!! Imagine a 12 hour bus journey with no toilet, two stops and bad guts - yep painful!!
Luckily we met some nice people on the bus journey to join to go and do a tour with as you need at least six in a jeep so we were all sorted in that respect and then also luckily I was introduced to some magic pills that finally made my stomach better...some magic pink antibiotic pills that you can just buy over the counter for 1 boliviano (12p!!!).
DAY 1
When our Toyota Land Cruiser rocked up I nearly fell over....it looked like the oldest truck in the whole town and even had a very well suited eagle on the side....straight out of Harley Davidson I reckon...and then when we were going to set off it wouldnt start....gulp!!! They got it started, we all piled in and away we rocked...in for an interesting trip....
We were soon on the Salt Flats and wow - they were so amazing, just a masive expanse of white, great in contrast with the blue sky and mountains!! It was weird, I had
our golden eagle toyota bomber
yep...we had to change the wheel after only an hour uh oh!! never really thought about where salt comes from until I saw the little salt mining fileds!! Our first main stop was to change a flat tyre.....great....so no spare anymore ha ha!! We drove a bit more on what felt like snow, it was mad!!
Then we stopped at a Hotel made out of salt - pretty cool place! Then onto Isla de Pescado (Isl of fish?!?!? - supposedly is shaped like one) which was full of millions of cacti - brilliant place, but you could so see how this place used to be a massive lake, since the island was made out of coral - so mad - and one of teh cacti was 1203 years old and about 50m tall!
It was here that we took the cool illusion piccys - not the easiest to do but some of them look pretty cool!! Lunch here was my first tasing of llama - quite nice but a little chewy!
Then we rocked on to where we were staying - in a cute little hotel, some of it was made out of salt, even our beds were made from salt and it had salt chandeliers!!! we managed to
find a bar nearby too so we had a beer whilst watching the sunset.
DAY 2
Bob Marley was rocking out of the truck again, in between a Bolivian band, aptly named The Bolivianos...or so our guide Alejandro told us.... This was after rather an eventful morning where he trie dto skank us out of breakfast, all he gave us was 1 breadbun each and soem jam - yum I hear you say!! Anyway Charley decided to confront him since he was the only good spanish speaker but it all went wrong and I thought the eggs were going to be on the floor and taht me n Sal would never get back to Uyuni to be left stranded but we managed to patch up teh bad situation, Alejandro no longer liked Charley but the rest of us were still his Amigo´s hee!! phew!!
We stopped by Volcan Ollague which was sooo beautiful, with so many colours, I was dumb struck!! I have always had a fascination with volcanoe sso to be this close was amazing, apart from teh fact that it hadnt erupted for 25000 years....The terrain around the volcano was pretty amazing - only small clumps
of dry grass and weird small rocks, then in random places teher would be massive rocks which had obviously been spat out by the volcano in previous eruptions!!!
Then we rattled up to the desert at an altitude of 4200m, it is amazing that all of this is at such high altitude - even the Salt Flats at about 3200m - mad a lake so high! Then we visited Laguna Canapa - quite a small lake which was covered in Flamingoes - so cool - literally, we all jumped out so enthusiastically to take pics but only lasted about 7 mins out in the cold!! they are funny birds though - quite goofy and when they try to fly it i sthe funniest sight - legs everywhere!!
Then on to Laguna Chiapa at 4720m, which was bigger, had more salt and more flamingoes and a great stench of sulphur...mmm what a perfect place to stop and have lucnh at...welll we did - cheers Alejandro we all thought!! But it was actually a great lunch - we were very shocked and he was even smiling by this point...!We stopped quickly by Laguna Honda too - pretty and green and
cold!
Then through more pretty desert - Desierto Del Silal (4900m) - pretty but bloody cold and sooo much to see - the mountains were so pretty here!!
Next stop was Arbol de Piedra(stone tree) which obvioulsy looked like a tree in the middle of the desert, eroded by wind, really pretty, a bit like Arches Nat Park in Utah!
Then on to Laguna Colorado which was blazing red and white salt flats - pretty stunning! The red is from the algae in the water, by far the prettiest lake so far and with about 25000 flamingoes on it!! then into the National Park that I had been so looking forward to - ´Reserva de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avoroa´. saw a baby Vicuna - a protected species of the camel family - so cute!
Our next hostel was not quite as nice as teh previous night and was freezing - had three blankets but even tucking them under me didnt help with the cold brrrr!!! Luckily we got up at 5:30am, I have never been so happy to get up at that time before, but was soo cold that I wanted to! when we set off
supposedly it was -15 degrees c!! It felt a bit wrong putting a bikini on in this temperature but its supposedly needed to get in to the hot springs a couple of hours later............
It was worth the cold to see the guysers in full force (the colder the better they are) and even more so to get in to the hot springs at 35 degrees!! I was arther dubious about whether it would be worth going in to freeze when got out but it sooo was, it was gorge!! I put my bikini on teh wing mirror to dry whilst we had brekky - it dint dry, it just froze!!!!
after that we wnet to Laguna Blanca an dthen the long awaited Laguna Verde....except it wasnt so green as the wind was not strong enough, still pretty though!! Then we dropped our buddys off to go across the Chilean border and our tour company had skanked them out of a bus ticket!!!!! not surprised!!
On way back we picked up a couple who had experienced much worse than our tour company, paid double and had basically been left in the middle of the salt flats to
find their own way home - how rude!!!!? So many scandals on these tours!!
On teh way back, it was another beautiful ride through desert and mud fields and mountains etc, teh whole ting was such an amzing experience, I dont think I have ever seen so much within a period of just three days before!!
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