Uyuni - Flamingos and Salt

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We arrived in Uyuni at around 3am in the morning and as usual there was a few guys hanging around spruiking their hostels, we don't normally go with these guys as they usually rip you off but at 3am in the morning and freezing cold we took the first offer that came up.  What we didn't realise was that we had also agreed to book our salt flats tour with the same guy for the very same morning, so was a bit surprised when the guy came knocking on our door 5 hours later at 8am.  Actually a very good sales technique as we were both half asleep and pretty much would have agreed to anything to make him go away and let us get some more sleep.

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So at 10am the same morning we were off for the salt flats and due to my brilliant bargaining powers it turned out we paid around US$20 less for the three days than the other guys on the tour.

The guy also mentioned we would be going with four other French people which no offence to the French did not have us that excited....actually offence to the French they're mostly snobby bastards with a few exceptions.  Turned out the guy could not have been more wrong anyway as we ended up with an Aussie girl, an American guy and an English couple all who were really good value.

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First day we all piled into our Landrover and took off for the nearby Train Cemetery, it was on the way we realised we were all completely useless at Spanish and you guessed it...the guide spoke only Spanish, every time he said something we would have an unsuccessful group conference in the back trying to decipher what the hell was going on.  Fortunately for us most of the sites were natural formations and just good to look at, so not a lot of background info required....and it's quite exciting not knowing where you are going and where you are going to sleep each night.

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Anyway back to the Train Cemetery, not that spectacular really just a heap of old rusty trains lying on old rusty decommissioned tracks took a few arty photos and the customary photo of me pretending to drive one of these old rusty heaps of junk...hilarious stuff.

Drove for a couple more hours after that and arrived at the Salt Plains which were impressive.  Completely white and completely flat as you would expect but the sheer size of them combined with bright blue skies and hazy mountains on the horizon really was spectacular.

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Due to the Salt Flats being perfectly white and perfectly flat (surprise, surprise) there is nothing to gain perspective on distances etc so a good opportunity to take crazy photos of myself and Jo standing on top of a coke bottle, drinking from a gigantic water bottle, standing in someone's palm....well you get the idea or you will if you take a look at the photos we'll eventually load.

Also stopped at the salt hotel which is a white building made entirely of salt blocks which was interesting, but raised the question what happens when it rains?...tired unsuccessfully to ask the driver this very question.

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That night stayed in a little deserted village where we were served beers by a women with the biggest gums we've ever seen accompanied by two big chompers..so naturally her name was gummy bear from then on...we were actually a bit surprised when she didn't crack the beers with her teeth.

Second day wasn't that exciting left the salt plains and headed into drab desert like terrain.  Highlight was our first glimpse of the flamingos on the first lake we passed, took about 1000 photos.  Felt like we spent most of the day driving and most were a little bit tired from the late night and beers the night before, we got endless amusement from watching the American guy Quincy doing the nod sleep where just as you get to sleep your head drops down snapping you instantly awake and then the cycle repeats...at one stage on a particularly vicious nod he smacked his head on the window nearly knocking himself out which had everyone in stitches for about 10 minutes.

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Passed a few more lakes whose names escape me, and saw heaps more Flamingos to the point we got a bit bored of them.  Stopped to take a look at a rock formation that looked like a tree but the wind was ridiculous so took a quick snap each and headed for our next camp at Lago Colorado.  Once we arrived we took a walk out to the lake shore....the lake in itself is quite impressive with multiple colours in the water from minerals and algae I'm guessing.  Walking back managed to step in a huge pile of Flamingo poo (up to my ankle) which i'm still trying to get off my shoes two months later.  Slept that night at the camp which is at an altitude of over 5000m....well should say tried to sleep as it aint easy at that altitude although Jo slept like a baby as always.

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Final day we got up at 4am so we could arrive at the nearby Geysers for sunrise...sunrise actually happened on the way to the geysers but was really nice nonetheless.  Also drove past many surreal rock formations which were supposed to have been the inspiration for some of Salvador Dali's work.

Geysers were great, heaps of different sizes the biggest of them sounding like a jet engine taking off.  Then went to the hot springs which took a bit of mental preparation before stripping off to the bathers as it can't have been much above zero degrees....was definitely worth it though, as they were clean and a perfect temperature we both ended up spending about half an hour in there.

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Final stop was Lake Verde (Lake Green)...Crapper would've loved it.  Unfortunately it wasn't as green as we would have liked...something to do with cloud cover and recent rains etc.  Then began the long eight hour drive back to Uyuni via the Chilean border to drop off a couple of the group who were heading on to Chile.

Spent one more day in Uyuni organising out train trip onwards and even ran into Justin and Kay our South African friends from Ecuador who we actually thought were still in Venezuela so was a nice surprise.