Salar De Uyuni, Bolivia/Chile border

---

Leaving Potosi we travelled South West to the border with Chile and after meeting up with a Dutch lawyer and an English couple, we continued the gringo trail with them across the Salar de Uyuni and into Chile by 20 year old Toyota Land Cruiser. (That´s a 4x4 for the ignorant amongst you...and for the girls, a blue car!!).

The Salar De Uyuni is the highest slat flats in the world (there is a pattern developing in this Blog in terms of altitude!). It is a bizarre landscape which looks like you are driving on snow, however the "snow" is dotted with desert islands covered in Cacti. Pretty impressive. You can also eat it, which is always a bonus, but I think the eskimo rule regarding yellow snow similarly applies here!

On the Chile side of the slat flats (near to the Atacama Desert - which guess what, is the highest desert in the world..I´m not actually sure about that but let´s not let facts get in the way of a good ramble), we entered Reserva National Eduardo Avaroa, which is a volcano strewn landcape, many active and grumbling, dotted with mineral rich lagunas, some pink some green and some with ice berg/glacier like salt deposits, geysers and thermal springs. Perfect blue skies and multi coloured mountains of orange, green, blue and yellow make for a specular drive. Although most of the time I was being thrown around in the back of jeep as we hurtled across the desert at about 60mph. I say about 60mph because, like most things on the vehicle, the speedo didn¨t work. One of the rear shock absorbers also fell off, but was prompty strapped back on with an old piece of rubber inner tube. Not sure how that would be viewed in an English MOT centre, but it didn¨t seem to bother, or slow down, the driver on the subsequent 100 miles! The driver actuallty looked a bit annoyed that I had pointed out the unusual noise coming from the back of the vehicle and the increased bouncing as my head bashed against the roof of the car.

Thermal springs made a welcome start to day 3, after a night of sub zero temperatures helped slightly by cheap Bolivian rum, and flocks of flamingoes were an unexpected sight in this very high and very hostile landscape. Vicuna and llama graze the lake shores and gerbils and large chinchila type rodents scurry amongst the rocks (however I was unable to stroke them Moorsie!), otherwise the landscape is barren, but very beautiful (almost Martian).

We had a brief stop in Chile, mostly spent at the frontier while a Eurpoean tourist in front of us explained why she was carrying a large bag of white powder into the country (salt!). The following day we spent a similar amount of time at the same frontier waiting to get exit stamps, then later, more time still waiting to get entry stamps into Argentina, but civilisation - steak and red wine was just around the corner!!!!!

---