Blogs from Salar de Uyuni, Potosí Department, Bolivia, South America - page 61

We had to walk to the place we had pizza the night before to start our trip. we were leaving our large rucksacks there and just taking our day bags but still had to look silly walking along the streets carrying all our bags and wearing pretty much all our clothes as it was cold! there was an advantage to this though as it meant we could have breakfast in the restaurant so both me and heath enjoyed american style pancakes with maple syrup! got to be one of the best ways to start the day! we were meet there by the two guys who would be our drivers, Bryan had assigned us into cars and so me and heath were together in a car with Nic, Caz and Katie. we also had the cook in ... read more

We were lucky enough to have time to go back to Uyuni, our first visit being more than we bargained for 6 years ago but that story is for another time. After another long journey from Potosi it was a good feeling to be back somewhere we knew. On first appearences it had not changed a bit. By complete chance we ended up in the hostel that rescued us last time and it was exactly the same - just as cold as well. We had hooked up with an English guy who was going to book a different trip to ours - he was so indecisive I couldn't work out how he had got so far away from home by himself! We just wanted to do a day trip back out to the Salt Pans and ... read more

The Bolivian Salt Flats have to be one of the most breathtaking places in the world. The scenery is absolutely amazing, to the extent that you almost feel you have landed on another planet. As Sass said while we were there, "It´s like God just decided to go mad with his paint box". I would never have thought it possible to have such bright, vivid colours in nature. The altitude, reaching 5,000m above sea level at one point, also adds an outer-worldly feel to the place. We started our tour in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, piling into our black jeep, the ´Gato Negro´ (Black Cat), at the Bolivian border. We had a brief breakfast (the ever-faithful white bread), got our Bolivian entry stamps and set off. First stop was Laguna Verde, a lake with a ... read more

Standing with feet firm on Chilean soil, I looked back over the border and took a minute to collect my thoughts. The last four days spent in Bolivia had been the most scenic thus far in my travels, and that is saying a lot. Each minute and every turn of my head brought beautiful landscapes that I tried so hard to capture with my camera. I know they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but there is nothing that can explain the feeling of being there in person.The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.Those words are so very true. I stood there time and time again looking out over amazing panoramics, and wished so much that I could share the moment with my friends back home. Now before ... read more

After a long overnight bus ride to Uyuni I got on a three day tour with five other people in a jeep around the Salar De Uyuni (salt flats) and the Reserva Eduardo Avaroa. This is an area of spectacular and sometimes bizarre scenery that sometimes makes you feel as if you are on another planet. The salt flats are the largest in the world and cover an area of 9000 square kilometres. There was once a lake here that dried out leaving an amazing completely flat white landscape of salt. In the Salar and the nearby national reserve we stopped of at lots of different places, including a 'train cemetery' where old rusting steam trains lie on the tracks of a disused railway, a salt processing plant, salt hotels made out of raw blocks of ... read more