Did somebody spill some salt?

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And so to Uyuni, the last stop in Bolivia. It's all gone a little fast for my liking, and especially now in Chile I'm missing the low low prices. Ah well.

We had a day to kill in Uyuni, so we hired out a couple of shotguns and went to look for it. God I'm funny. But seriously, we wandered around town, which isn't really that special, and found ourselves a tour operator for the next day. With that mission complete, there wasn't really much else to do there. We met up again with Bryce and Molly, who we'd met in Potosi, and wandered out to see the sunset over the train graveyard, but ended up missing it. The evening was spent watching some Argentinian band in a bar, before the others went out. I'm a boring sod, and was feeling shattered, so went to bed.

The following day, we were awoken by Rob and Sam, who had arrived from La Paz to join us for the tour. Having had an early night, I was fresh as a daisy, but the girls weren't overly impressed at the early wake up, as they had stinking hangovers. Ho ho ho. After a final Bolivian salteña, our tour was ready to start, albeit a little late. The five of us (myself, Beth, Rob, Sam and Mirte) were joined by a Japanese guy Iba and we were soon cruising back to the train graveyard. The first discovery of the trip was that the jeep had an ipod port, so we could listen to our own music. Excellent. It also turned out that my ipod was the only one that had full battery or wasn't broken, so the majority of the 3 days was my music. Double excellent!

The train graveyard was a lot more impressive in daylight, and we stopped there for a while to take a mixture of silly and arty/pretentious photos. I'm not very good at arty, so just stuck to the silly ones. I don't think photographer is ever going to be a career option for me. Soon, we reached the flat themselves, and stopped for lunch at a place called fish island, so called because from a distance, it kind of looks like a fish. If you squint... and are looking at a picture of a fish and not the island.

The island was quite cool to have a walk on though, as its covered in cacti, and moreover, the views of the miles upon miles of salt you get from the top are pretty incredible. But there was more important things at hand. Everyone who comes to the salt flats has to take silly false perspective photos. It's the law. Not being lawbreakers, we messed around for a while, a long while, until our driver got a little impatient and told us we had to get going. Spoilsport. Especially being as all we had to do was drive to our hotel for the night, which was completely made of salt. And that was Day 1

Day 2

We woke early with the intention of walking to the flats for sunrise. They were a bit further away than we thought though, so had to be content with finding a group of vicuña near them. After breakfast, it was back in the jeep, where we sped off through some otherworldly landscapes towards 2 lakes. I've been a bad tourist and forgotten the names, but they're of interest because of the flamingos that reside there. More driving followed to a third lake, Laguna Colorado (I don't forget everything) which was to be our hotel for the night. Not the lake of course, a place next to it.

After dumping our bags, we went for a bit of a stroll around. It's a very strange lake, as half of it is red due to algae and different minerals in the water. It also has icebergs floating in it, which is a bit wierd as the temperature was definitely not below zero. Oh yeah, and there were flamingos in this lake too, but by now I was over them. Once you've seen 5000 flamingos you've seen them all. (Cue someone telling me there's 3 different types).

Another quiet night was on the cards... well actually there were numbers on the cards, but after playing cards it was an early night, as the next day started at 4am. Crikey!

Day 3

Beth celebrated her birthday today by waking up at 4am. Ho ho ho. I also had to wake up at 4am which wasn't quite as funny. The reason we were all up so early was to go see some old geysers, which, being a bit like my granddad, get up early, then go back to bed. They were quite impressive though, and all that hot air certainly helped wake me up.

After hot air came hot water, as we headed to some thermal baths. Although a little reticent about getting swimming togs on in the freezing cold, once in the water it was lovely and warm. And by the time we got out again the sun had come up, so it was warm outside too. Score!

The trip was definitely winding down now, and after a brief stop at Laguna Verde, which wasn't as green as the name would suggest, our driver stopped at the Chilean border. It had been a great tour, and if anyone reading this needs a recommendation, I wouldn't hesitate to suggest Cordillera, and ask for Franz to be your driver.

A bus then whisked us to San Pedro de Atacama. We were a little dizzy after being whisked, so after immigration a little hammock time was needed. Not too much though, as we needed to sort our our car rental for the next day. With all business complete, it was time to celebrate Beth's birthday, which we did in one of the nicer restaurants of the trip so far, although we did get caught smuggling our own rum in. Bugger. The waiter was a decent sort though, and promised to take us to a local club for the evening.

And that he did. We walked quite a way out of town until we found a small hut which had a live band playing. Possibly (read definitely) due to the contrabrand rum, we then proceeded to do the reputation of gringo dancing absolutely no favours at all, by throwing down such exotic moves as the Egyptian, the frog, and of course the infamous chicken dance. Somehow I don't think it will catch on over here.

And thats all for this edition. Coming up next. Christmas. That's the good thing about writing these late, I know what happens next, and can give you sneak previews. Isn't that exciting?

Stewart

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