Driving through heaven in a four wheel drive

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From Potosi I went to Sucre and stayed there two nights. It is three hours from Potosi by bus and a very nice town with crisp white buildings. It is funny because I noticed the confidence of the people. They are proud of their town. Usually when I search for a place to stay I look in my guidebook and pick one where I want to go. This time there was no place that responded to my interest. So when I was at the busterminal I asked the taxidriver to drop me off in the center of the city. The first place I visited was not so nice so I decided to continue my search. After a while I met the two Germans again who I have met before in Potosi and they said their place was very nice. So I went there and they were right. In Sucre I walked around and enjoyed the much warmer climate because it is less elevated. The next day I went back to Potosi and stayed there another night before heading to Uyuni.

Where the white of the salt meets the blue of the sky

It took around seven hours to get to Uyuni. In the bus I met other tourists and the time flew by. With a Brazilian guy I went for a search around town to get a good deal for a tour around Salar de Uyuni for the next days. We went inside one of the touroffices and ten minutes later some other people who I have met before walked in as well. We decided to book the tour and the next day we were sitting in the jeep. There were seven of us (including the driver) in one jeep. A Polish couple, a guy from New Zealand, a girl from the Check republic, the Brazilian I mentioned before, the driver who was Bolivian and me. So the United Nations were represented. After a couple of hours driving we reached the Salar de Uyuni. It is a huge salt plain, around 1000 square kilometers wide. Till the horizon you could see the white of the salt covering the ground. Unbelievable. A really must see if you are lucky to travel in this region. We made funny pictures while the driver of the jeep prepared our lunch. The food was really good. We made a lot of hours driving in the jeep over the salt plain. I was sitting in front doing my best to be the DJ. We had an Ipod connected to the stereo inside the car. In the late afternoon we arrived at the place where we would stay for the night. The place was completely made of salt. The bricks of the walls, the tables and the beds (luckily with soft matrresses on top) were all salt.

Wish I was a Flamingo

The next day we got an early start at seven o’clock and we visited amazing lagoons where I saw dozens of Flamingo’s. The colors of the flamingo’s, the mountains and the small lakes were breathtaking. When I think about it again I hope I will never lose the picture in my mind that I made of it. Just like heaven. We stopped a lot of times to take pictures and enjoy the scenery. The driver was very carefully driving in this rocky and rough terrain. Which I felt lucky with. When we arrived at the next place to stay it was freezing because of the high elevation. I walked around for watching the sunset and felt my ears were almost freezing off. But that light corresponding on the mountains. So unbelievable. While enjoying the beauty I completely forgot about the cold. The place where we were staying was very basic. We slept all in the same room and there was no shower. When they served Lasagna in the evening I was surprised. Probably there was a oven somewhere in the back.

The following day, or well the same night, we got up at four o’clock. After packing my bag and putting everything on top of the jeep again we drove off within half a hour. It was still dark and we had to rely on the drivers knowledge of the area where we were driving through. We stopped at some natural geysers. It was surreal the hot steam that was going up in the air and the light of the rising sun. What a good timing! It was definitely worth it to get up so early. Around seven o’clock we arrived at a hot natural pool. It was freezing to take my clothes off. The outdoor temperature only a couple of degrees above freezing temperature. But eventually when I got in the natural pool the water was very warm. I sat in there for around twenty minutes. When I got out of the water I couldn’t feel the outside temperature because my body was so warm. I quickly put on my clothes and went for breakfast. When we finished breakfast we jumped into the jeep again and headed towards the border with Chili where they dropped me. The others continued the journey in the jeep back to Uyuni but I wanted to visit the next country of my trip. I felt so lucky to have been with these nice people in a group and experiencing this adventure together.

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Photos

Train graveyard
There was this train graveyard in the middle of nowhere. Such a cool area. Who is going to shoot a movie here?

Covered in mist
This was early in the morning at the geysers