Sun, Sea, and Sand-wiches: Uyuni, salt flats, and crazy high altitude desert

Almost immediately after the jungle we booked ourselves on a tour of the salt lakes from Uyuni. Talk about one extreme to another… one minute we were sweating and trying desperately to keep cool, the next minute we were freezing our arses off and trying desperately to keep warm!
On the first day, after a quick stop at the train grave yard, we headed to The Salar de Uyuni, which was once a giant salt water lake, but the water has vanished into the thin dry air of Andean altitude. All that remains is the salt, and lots of it, tens of meters thick. It was brilliant white and looked like sand, all very odd. After stopping to climb cactus ridden Fisher Island (not sure why it’s called this as didn’t see any fish) and a lunch of lama meat, we shot some perspective-skewed photographs…have a look below!

We ended our first day at a Salt Hotel which was our accommodation for the night. It wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be, there were 3 other groups sharing with us so it was quite cosy! With a few hours to kill we played Rummie with the guys from New Zeland (really need to learn a new card game!). It was crazy sitting and later eating off tables made of salt! We crashed early tired from all the traveling and knowing we were going to be up early...

We were woken up at 6am to see the sun rise. After a tasty breakfast of stale bread and jam we got back in the jeep. We wondered what could merit such an early morning now that what we thought was the highlight of the trip, the Salar, was over. We soon found out as we crested a rocky hill and descended towards brilliant blue water cradled beneath red mountains. Around the lake was a fringe of white, like ice, ( found out it wasnt ice but potassium and other minerals) in the midst of the lake stood hundreds of pink flamingos feasting off the íce´.

Throughout the trip the landscape was ever-changing and always unexpected: the water and the rocks first were red, and then turquoise and green with minerals and microbes. We visited the surreal lake Laguna Colorada which was red, Laguna Blanca, and Laguna Verde; we discovered viscachas -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscacha - little bunny-squirrel critters, mysteriously living on rocky crags surrounded by nothing but wind and rock. We visited geysers puffing at sunrise and breakfasted after a dip in the thermal springs (it was the most amazing experience getting into a giant bath of water at 30 degrees when we were still trying to feel our fingers and toes after the freezing night).

It was all amazing and beautiful. The only thing that wasnt so good was the cold. It was bloody freezing on the second night when it got to minus 7. We all slept pretty much fully clothed in sleeping bags with blankets, to survive the night but it was pretty handy for a quick exit in the morning - we were up at 5am.

I was also plagued on the 2nd night by the worst stomach i have had in years, it was not nice for me or any of the other 20 people who had to share the very, very basic toliet! My worst toliet fear had come true!

The long car journeys passed quickly as we were engrossed in conversation with Ana and Arch (New Zelanders). Tim and I now cannot wait for our trip to NZ after all we´ve heard about it from them and hopefully we´ll be hooking up with them at some point too.