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Published: November 27th 2008
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Got a 7hr train from Oruro to Uyuni (salt flats). Oruro was a weird place as it’s rather big but doesn’t really serve anyone as there was no restaurant you would eat in unless you fancied a trip to hospital. We arrived there hoping to have a great lunch before the long train ride . We walked for 45 mins and went past loads of places that looked like they hadn’t cleared tables for weeks, so lunch was oreo cookies, pringles and coke. When I was buying all this a tramp asked me for money but I said no and the next thing I knew he kicked me in the bum!! You don’t even get that in London. We were about to get on the train when we saw a dead child in the street with just a cloth over it. It must have been about 3 years old. It was horrible but sadly not surprising though considering the driving here.
Uyuni is a ghost town. We walked to our hotel and we were the only ones in the street. It was like a film set. Not sure where the locals were.. getting warm probably as it was below zero.
We were all starving and like an oasis in the desert, someone found a pizza place that served wine too.. it was heaven especially since it was my first meal in ages. We were all still really feeling the altitude too as it was 3800m.. I’ve got used to feeling out of breath all the time.
The 3 day salt flat trip was one of the highlights (another one!) of the tour... it was amazing. We all piled into our 4x4´s and the first stop was a disused train ‘cemetery’ which was rather odd but fun at the same time and of course the perfect place to take silly photos. The drive across the salt flats was like being on the moon.. just like nothing I have ever seen before. Our driver was brilliant and was like Schumacher who loved to just put his foot down and overtake all the other 4x4’s. It was so bright you needed sunglasses and we all took great photos as there is no perspective with all the white. There we were in the middle of the flats and then we arrived at a cactus island which is just that... an island with loads
of loads of catai.. some 12 metres high and incredible. We walked to the top of the island and looked across the flats and it was one of the most stunning views i have ever seen. Words can’t explain so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. All you can see is salt for miles and miles with brilliant blue sky and some mountains in the distance and catai. Gorgeous. We drove a few more hours in the desert to our little wooden hut where we stayed the night. It was so cold due to no heating, but we did the usual thing of wearing all our clothes, drinking wine and playing cards.. always does the trick. We got there just before sunset and got to see it setting over the flats...fantastic.
The next day we drove for hours seeing an active volcano, hot geyzers in the middle of the desert, gorgeous lakes, more mountains, seeing bright pink flamingos on a red lake, and driving like nutters across the desert sand. You had to have the windows up the entire time otherwise the 4x4 had dust everywhere. You could definitely feel it on your lungs. I can’t really describe
this without making it sound boring so will just put the photos up which probably won’t do it justice, but you’ll see what I mean. The red lake with bright pink flamingoes was just incredible though. We all said how lucky we were to be there. You don’t get these sort of views everyday.
On the way home we saw tree rock which is literally that..a rock shaped like a tree. As we were taking photos this truck load of soldiers just got out of knowhere. We weren’t sure what they were really doing there and then couldn’t believe it when about 6 of them decided to pee against the rock!! Where’s the respect!
(for my friends who are on facebook... I have way more photos uploaded and they are better quality. Not sure why the photos get blurred when I upload them on this site. If anyone else wants the facebook photo link.. just email me.)
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