It's flat, and it's salty!

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Leaving La Paz by early (again) morning bus, we changed at Oruro on to a Train. Despite facing backwards, there was amazing views of the barren landscape as we headed south to the town of Uyuni. The train stopped breifly and the lights went out for an unexplained rason, but after 7hours of trundling along, we arrived in Uyuni late at night and were relieved to see our bags had been checked on correctly and arrived there with us.
Met off the train by our lady host, we checked into the hostel for our last decent nights sleep before the tour, as we'd been warned the accommodation would be 'basic' at best.

In the morning, we met our fellow travellers, Alex, Dimitri & his wife, and Leo. Our driver/basic guide was called Primo and we also had a cook. We all crammed into the Toyota Landcruiser 4x4 and set off to the Salt flats. After stopping at a salt processing plant, we arrived at the edge of the Salt flats. They stretched as far as the eye could see, and it was really incredible just seeing white all around. We drove across the flats for half an hour to a Salt Hotel. This was entirely made of salt, even the tables and chairs.
From here we carried on across the flats to 'Fish Island' in the middle of the salt flats. It was covered in giant Cacti, and we walked around the island and had lunch prepared out of the back of the 4x4 then carried on to our first night stop in a little village in the middle of nowhere.

The second day of the trip, we stopped at three lakes, which were different colours due to the Algae, and saw hundreds of Flamingos. There were also some huge rock formations in the middle of this barren landscape, and we had various photo ops on the way to our second night stop next to Laguna Colorada , the 'red lake'. This place looked to be purpose built for travellers, but there was no heating, so we all went to bed in warm gear in preparation for minus 8 temperatures, and our early morning start of 4am.

We were up early to see the Geysers spouting steam which are seen best early in the day. They smelt so strongly of sulphur I was practically gagging!. From here we went to another lake, next to which where natural hot pools of varying depths and temperatures. Alex and I stripped off for a dip before breakfast, both wearing silly hats on top!
Next stop was Laguna Verde "Green Lake' which was beautiful and backed up by more mountains for a good picture, but this was also our last visit before we left the National park and crossed the border into Chile.

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Photos

Salt Flats i
Where'd everybody go?

Fish Island
What a whopper..

Rock pics
Who's the prat on the rock?

Geysers
Awight Geezer!

Hot Springs
Bathtime at 5000 metres..

Laguna verde
So they do have gnomes in Bolivia!