Roomie from hell on the Salt Flats

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We left Uyuni at about 11.00 am for our three day Salt Flat tour. Our group consisted of us, a Mexican family (Mum, Dad and Daughter), a South Korean man called Ahn and of course our driver and cook.

After about twenty minutes in the jeep we noticed that Ahn, who was sitting next to us, was looking rather sweaty and uncomfortable. He then revealed that he suffered from claustrophobia so we had to pull over and let him get some air. Not a great start, especially since we had three days ahead of us in this cramped jeep. This was only a taster of things to come.

Our first stop was in a tiny village just outside Uyuni where we all stocked up on woolly hats and gloves, handmade by the locals. We were warned it was going to be well below zero at night due to the altitude, which was going to be between 3650 and 5000 meters above sea level, and our accommodation during the tour being "sin calefaccion", no heating. We also visited one of the miners who gave us some brief information about how they mine the salt and where it all goes. We then drove on until we reached the first and most impressive stop of the tour, the Salar de Uyuni. It is the worlds largest salt flat at 10,582 km squared and was formed 40,000 years ago when a giant prehistoric lake dried up and left behind this massive salt desert. It contains 10 billion tons of salt of which around 25000 tons a year is mined. It was truly breathtaking and everything it is hyped up to be, it looked just like all the photos we´d seen. It seems to go on forever, infinitely disappearing into the horizon and the suns reflection on the bright white salt is blinding. It felt very hallucinogenic and surreal. We spent a while just taking it all in and taking photos before getting back in the jeep and heading to our next stop which was a hotel made entirely of salt. It had loads of salt statues inside, we only stopped briefly before going to the Isla del Pescado, Fish Island.

This island is out in the middle of the salt flats and is covered in cacti and coral. We spent quite a while here and walked around the whole island. Some of the cacti were over 900 years old and were massive. The views from the island were more spectacular than the previous stops. From the highest point you get an amazing 360 degree view of the plains and can really appreciate the sheer size of this natural wonder. We also decided to try our hand at some perspective shots on the area around the island, after some terrible attempts we managed a couple of decent looking pictures.

After having lunch on the island we piled back in the jeep and drove for a while until we reached our accommodation for the evening which was a salt hostel located about an hour of the salt flats near a little village. Upon arrival we were told we could either have three double rooms or two triple rooms. We thought three doubles sounded good until we learned that sleeping arrangements would have to involve Lil sleeping with the young Mexican girl and me having to snuggle up with sweaty Ahn in a double bed...two triples please.

That night we had dinner and drank tequila with the Mexican family who had befriended us and we were entertained by a truly appalling group of Bolivian children playing indigenous music and singing along tunelessly. They had clearly been forced to come and entertain us and one of them even appeared to be crying during the performance. It was hilarious. After dinner we decided to join some people from one of the other tour groups in a quest to find the Inca graveyard near the hostel. It was pitch black and with only a couple of torches and no idea which direction it was in we failed to find it. We did however stumble across an open grave which was spooky, but it was worth the effort and the cold for the views of the night sky and the billions of stars.

When we returned to the hostel we found our roomie, Ahn, sitting in the dining area with his head in his hands looking rather ill. He informed us that he had been ill for some time and was suffering from insomnia. We left him to it and went to bed. Some hours later we were awoken by him sniffling and groaning in his bed, we were kept awake for some time by his revolting snorts.

Day two started early and we made our way to a lake surrounded by mountains which was home to a large flock of pretty pink Flamingos. This was also our lunch stop and by now Ahn had gone from bad to worse. He rarely left the jeep all day and when it came to lunch he lay flat on one of the benches groaning and sweating and putting us all of our food. After getting plenty of photos of the area we drove some more until we reached an amazing rock formation in the middle of the desert. It looked like a Dali painting, the rock was pivoting on its thinnest point and seemed to defy gravity. Ahn unfortunately missed this as he seemed to have slipped into a coma in the jeep. Everyone seemed really concerned, we just hoped that we wouldn´t have to share a room with him again that night.

Our accommodation that night was a refuge next to Lago Colorado which is also known as the Red Lake due to the minerals in the surrounding mountains giving it its bright red colour. It was another very surreal view and it looked like blood. All six of us were sharing a room that night, we made sure we were as far away from Ahn as possible as by now he had deteriorated rapidly and was laying in bed fully clothed making vomitous sounds. After dinner our driver told us that if he didn't improve within a couple of hours he was going to have to drive us all to a lower altitude in a attempt to relive his "altitude sickness". We all tried to get an hours sleep and hoped that Ahn would have picked up a little. This was not to be the case and after a couple of hours we were packing our bags and putting every layer of clothing on in preparation for the miserable temperature outside. Thanks Ahn!

We drove and drove through the desert in the pitch black trusting only our guides knowledge as there are no roads out there. Me and Lil were cramped in the back of the jeep and Ahn was sprawled out in the front snoring after announcing that he felt a bit better. Livid. After a couple of hours we reached the first village and tried every hostel all of which were full. This happened an hour later in the second village and we were now very cold, very angry and images of sleeping in the jeep seemed very real. Luckily our third stop, it was now about 2 am, was a success. The hostel had no electricity, we had to use the light from our camera to go to the toilet and we were shown to our rooms by a match. To our absolute dismay the decision was made that we would be sharing a room with our friend Ahn. We buried ourselves under the mountain of blankets and tried to block out the cold and the snorts.

The next morning Ahn was feeling much better and even joined us for breakfast. There was no apology to us for ruining the last day of the tour or thanks to the driver for his efforts the night before. We had chance to look around the village we had ended up in before heading back to Uyuni. We discovered a group of baby Llamas so spent some time talking to them. On the way back our driver tried to compensate us for missing out on the Green Lake, which is supposed to be the stop on the last day, by taking us to a gorge. It was really cool. Upon arrival in Uyuni we all said our goodbyes and despite Ahns ailments we had all had an amazing time.......except possibly Ahn.

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