Salar de Uyuni - 19th to 23rd April

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The tiny town of Uyuni is just a blip on the map in Bolivia - a town of former glory as a major railway junction, it has been all but deserted now. The only reason to go there is as a gateway to the largest salt plain in the world - the Salar de Uyuni. Hence why we were there.

Getting in on a Saturday evening, we checked straight into a hotel and put off organising a tour until the morning. Bit of a mistake, since we didn´t manage to get a tour sorted out until the Monday, which meant that we had to spend another night in the dump that is Uyuni. Still, there´s an amazing pizza place there run by an American ex-pat so all´s well that ends well.

Climbing into our six seater jeep with only three other people (thank god - we had space to put our bags!), we set off on our 3 day 2 night tour of the Salar. First stop was the "train cemetery", which was an odd collection of rusting trains (god knows why they were on the tour....) which was quickly followed by a drive over the salt plains themselves. And boy are they impressive - the Pacific Ocean used to come inland all the way to central Bolivia, but as the Andes went up, the bay became land-locked and evaporated off. Leaving salt as far as the eye can see! The next few days were kinda salt themed - we stayed in a salt hotel that night before waking up at 4.30am to watch the sun rise over the salt plains. The other two days were spent driving around and seeing some stunning lagoons and desserts in the Bolivian wilderness. Very interesting - but freezing cold! We had to dart out of the car to take photos and jump back in! The final morning included a trip to some natural hotsprings - which was extremly welcome!

Immature...

Nightime on the Salar.

Lago Roja - pretty but bloody freezing!

Those hot springs were amazing on a cold morning!
We got off from the tour just before the return to Uyuni (why would we want to go back there?) and headed overland to northern Chile. Upon seeing the price of things in the highly touristic San Pedro De Aticama (and the fact that we couldn´t get on a bus to Salta in Argentina), we decided to flee to Santiago on a 24 hour bus. With no shower since the start of the Uyuni trip we weren´t particularly sociable by the time we pulled up in Santiago. But that´s travelling for you...

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