Salar de Uyuni

Because of the never ending whitness, it's fun and easy to do optical illusions with the camera.
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Druing this part of the trip Crystal was feeling ill, so Vinson is writing this section

We arrived in Uyuni at 2.30am and its was a lovely -10 c. outside. We walked around the town and shortly found a hostel that was barely warmer inside then out. The next morning we set out to find a tour company for the salt flats and within 2 minutes people were all over us trying to sell us one. By 10.30am we were off on a 3 day trip in a 4wd Toyota landcruiser with 4 others.

Our first stop just 5 min from town was a train cemetery, where many old and destroyed trains from the early 1900´s could be found. It was interesting to see them so close up and to be able to climb them, but this was just a minor part of our tour. About 1 hour later we were surrounded by salt. everywhere you looked all u saw was white and nothing more. It was here where we were able to take photographs without having a point of perspective, it was really cool. Our next stop was an island in the center of all this salt, where many cati grew (one that was apparently 1250 years old) and chinchillas (a rabbit like squirrel).  We then stoped at a salt hotel, made entirely out of salt, and watched nearby workers refine large bricks of salt into fine table like salt. The next 4 hours or so were spent driving to the location where we were going to spend the night, the small town of San Juan. Here we had an amazing supper and hot showers.

Vince standing on top of a mound of salt.
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The next day was spent mostly driving and we got to see plenty of salt lakes of many different colours. In many of the lakes there were pink and white flamingoes, It was freezing cold outside and it was suprising to see them walking round in the icy water. We spent the second night in a even smaller town where the local store only sold Chocolate and alcohol and not much of it. Our beds were 50 year old mattress that were U shapped and sat atop concrete blocks, ummm nice and comfortable, hot water showers? what is hot water?. That night it snowed and went down to -20, snow in a different hemisphere.

Me hugging a cactus!!!
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We woke up at 4.30am the next morning and set off. the ground was frozen and there was ice and snow, good thing we had a 4wd. Today was the most eventful, we got to see volcanoes (dormant), pink, green, and red lakes, hot springs, and this amazing field of geysers (50+ of them) and boiling mud. By about mid day we hit the Chilean boarder and dropped off 2 of our travelers. We then set off for Uyuni and spend the next 7 hours driving back. It was amazing trip with unique landscapes but was it ever cold.