Salar de Uyuni

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We spent four days and three nights freezing our asses off at high altitude but the scenery & experience was worth it: like nothing on earth. If they did fake the moon landings they probably did it in south west Bolivia, the landscape was a mixture of the moon and mars!
We can hardly believe the things we got to see on the trip: blood red lagoons full of sleeping flamingoes, electric green lagoons, desert hot springs, volcanoes steaming, boiling geysers at 5000m. And that was just the first day! We also squeezed in some llamas, flamingoes and even an emu (ran too fast to get a photo though). There were vast stones that looked like trees and a desert that looked like a Dali painting. I presumed the desert would be hot but even during the day we needed two or more jumpers, and nights got down to at least minus 15 inside the 'hotel'. Even the water for brushing our teeth was frozen solid the next morning (and my beard!).
We stayed one night in a salt hotel on the edge of the big salt flats and everything, i mean everything was made of salt: the walls, floor, beds, tables and chairs. Were very lucky to have a great bunch of young folk from holland, france & england in our jeeps, so a few beers overlooking the flats at sundown was magical. Setting off at 4am next morning, the salar was spectacular - miles of blinding whiteness as far as we could see, very surreal and just otherworldly.
After four days of being ferried around in a jeep and having all our meals cooked for us it'll be a shock to get back to backpacking again. Next stop Potosi......

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