Salt anyone?

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Hello

So how long does it take to travel 208km???....2hrs max, you may think!.......Not in Bolivia! It took us 8 long bumpy hours, crossing flooded roads, through almighty hail storms, up and down mountains and through some of the most spectacular scenery you could imagine!

Another pounding to our already aching behinds and we eventually made it to Uyuni....phew what a flying tour of the country we're in the middle of. On arrival our hearts sank, on first impressions it was exactly the type of place that we despise.....a town surviving purely for the tourist industry, full of pizzarias, tour agencies, hotels and not much more. It's a good job we're not here for anything else. After finding a place to stay we hastinly set out to find a tour to visit the largest salt plains in the world, which wasn't too much of a hard choice as every agency was offering exactly the same thing.....using my increasing spanish I even managed to get it at a reasonable rate - Well, the same as a Spanish speaking girl that we spoke to anyway!

The following day we jumped into a jeep and headed off. Our first stop was to the "Cementerio de Trenes" - the train cemetary, which was seemingly just a scrap of land where they had dumped all their old trains, most of them being over 80 years old...Interesting hey?!

We also visited Colchani, a town made from salt blocks, were 60 families live, all of whom work on the salt plains.......and then, at last it was time to finally visit the thing that we wanted to see. Salar de Uyuni, the worlds largest salt flats, cover 12,000sq km and was once part of a prehistoric salt lake that covered most of SW Bolivia. In parts, the salt is up to 7m deep which they farm and sell.

Dan - Just awell we took our ´sunnies´ (as the kiwis call them) because these salt plains are very blinding when the sun hits them. its was nice to take in the surrounding scenery but while all the others were looking around salt hotels and various salt museums we decided to goof around and take some funny pictures as the whiteness gives things a funny perspective.

Puff Puff, so glad we have a days grace before moving on as we both could do with a lie-in we haven´t stopped recently. The Sh*t thing is our chill day happens to be Domingo (Sunday folks) and also a national holiday due to the referendom, and so handily everything happens to be shut!!!! so for lunch we managed to cobble together some bread rolls, pringles, and a couple of banana´s!!

So off next to Lake Titicaca for a romp, then will cross into Peru for a stint!!

Back soon
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Comments

[Mum Walton]

Salt Lakes
Wow, they are gigantic salt plains, absolutely amazing. You two are really getting into the photography!! Dan, you are starting to look like a Spaniard, must be in your blood!!