Blogs from Salar de Uyuni, Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 60

So everything was going to plan perfectly for our last few days in Bolivia. In order not to spend any more time drifting, we booked our train ticket from Oururo to Uyuni before we left for Rurrenabaque, because we heard they sell out pretty quickly. We just had to catch a bus to Oururo from La Paz the day after we got back from the rainforest. Super. Except our flight back from Rurrenabaque was cancelled. No explanation. We were told we had a seat on a flight the following day, but that was the day we were meant to be catching the bus and the train too. No explanations or apologies. It seems there was a bit of a backlog of bumped passengers. Rurrenabaque was full of disgruntled tourists wondering how they were ever going to ... read more

O.K. Yeah ok, it seemed like a good idea at the time yup this will be a breeze, it wont take any time at all and I wont have to worry bout a thing. Ya right! two weeks before we head back to shitty Ireland I make my fifth entry, I´m soo crap ya ya I know, I know. Right wotever. Here we go. So when we finally go to Uyuni, which as an effort in itself I nearly collapsed at the prospect of having to stay there let alone travel across this country (Bolivia). Not that it was a bad place it was just a combination of being tired, sore, hungry and seeing a completely different aspect of South America staring us in the face. It was like entering the twilight zone and I mean ... read more

Before I start, some people have mentioned that they have only seen one of the last three blogs. That was because I posted them all on the same day so you may not have scrolled through them all. Just click on the previous/next journal to view them all! So, onto the biggest and highest salt flats in the world, the Salar de Uyuni. The flats sit at a lofty 3653m and blankets an amazing 12,000sq km. It was part of a prehistoric salt lake which covered up most of southwest Bolivia. When it dried up it left one massive pot of SAXO! Its probably the most surreal place on earth we´ve ever been (and if you´ve been to Bridgend, thats saying something!) and the opportunity to take all sorts of weird photos are endless. With the ... read more

The world´s largest salt flats lie on top of an enormous lake 12 meters at its deepest. The salt here it toxic, and needs to be refined (iodine added) before you eat it. The flats are just outside the town of Uyuni, and for 120 bolivianos you can join a one day tour. I recommend Cristal tours, who were very professional and who supplied an awesome lunch of fried llama meat, salads, pasta and amazing oranges. The first stop on the tour is the Salt Hotel, a no longer operating hotel built entirely of Salt. The roof is made of grass, but the beds, walls, toilet, etc are all salt. It shut down for hygenic reasons, I wonder why… The second stop is the oddly named ísland of the fisherman, where for 10 bolivianos you can ... read more

We bade fairwell to sunny san pedro on a bad note. the hostel we were staying in overcharged us and there was nout really that we could do. sure it wasn´t too much anyway. i´ve had them removed from the web sites that promote hostels, which should hit them a bit. Oh how sweet revenge is. Anyway, we went on a 3 day trip from san pedro into bolivia over the salt plains, final destination Uyuni. What a trip. We did it in a jeep with 4 other tourists. At first we were a bit dismayed to have landed in what seemed like the "Pink" group. These two guys came over and introduced themselves and seemed really camp. Just so there was no mix ups, I deepened my voice and beat my chest repeatedly proclaiming, me ... read more

So we're back in Salta where we had been nearly two weeks previously. Our reason for coming north was 7 metres of snow on the central road to Chile. At the bus station in Salta (1400km north) they inform us that the bus to Chile is full until Sunday, this being Tuesday the 25th of July. Having spent a week in the city and surroundings we decided that waiting was not an option. Instead Chile had had it and caught the midnight bus from Salta to the Bolivian boarder. 6 hours later (This increasingly seems a small amount of time to be stuck on a bus) we were thrown off the bus into a street - the procedure being to walk over the border and catch another bus. With no sign of the border in sight ... read more