The largest salt flat in the world....

We had booked onto a tour into Bolivia for 3 days/2 nights, to see the biggest salt flats in the world, something I had really been looking forward to.  The company we booked with were Estrella del Sur, recommended to us by various people we'd met.  We met our group at 8am the next morning - 2 dutch girls, an Aussie girl, an American girl, 2 mental guys - one english, one irish, a couple - one english, one irish and us!  10 in total!!!

We all piled onto a bus where we got acquainted with our group.  We got taken to the Chilian immigration, to get our exit stamp and then an hour later we were at the Bolivian border, which was a shed in the middle of no-where!  We 'crossed over' to the other side, where we met the 2 drivers of our 2 jeeps - 5 people in each.  We packed up our jeeps and set off.  The next 3 days was going to be proper 4x4 driving.  There are no roads in the Bolivian desert - just gravel!

the bolivian border was a shed in the middle of nowhere!

Our first 2 stops was the Laguna Blanco and the Laguna Verde - both as you can imagine from the names were white and green, but really beautiful.  They got their colours from the minerals.  Our next stop was the hot thermal spring pools.  Now up until this stage it had been freezing due to the altitude so the thought of getting into a bikini was not appealing!!  However, when we got to the thermal springs it was a little warmer so we all donned our bathers and jumped into the 35 degree pool!  It was so nice and hot, we had about 40 mins to heat our bodies up for what we knew was going to be a cold night!  Luxiourous!

Our next stop was some geysers, which were at our highest point on the trip, 5000m!  Altitude sickness was something we were aware of.  I felt a little light-headed at the geysers.  Some of the girls felt nauseous.  We had to walk really slowly as if you ran or exerted energy, you'd be out of breathe in no time.  It was wierd!

We all piled back into our jeeps and travelled cross-country to our hostel, our home for the night at 4300m.  We had lunch served to us by the ladies who ran the hostel, which consisted of sausages, tomatoes, cucumbers and the creamiest mashed potato i've ever tasted!  Not bad!

At around 5.30pm we headed out to the laguna we were staying near, Laguna Colorado, which was so beautiful.  It was primarily red but the colours in the lake were awesome.  There was also a large number of flamingos on the lake.

As you can imagine there are no toilets out in the desert so you really get used to going anywhere!!!  Once again I got caught out on the wide flat laguna, where there were no large rocks to hide behind!

Whilst we waited for dinner we had a mammouth game of shithead which was funny, when played between 10 people!   Dinner was a mixture of sausages, chips, eggs all mixed together!  Rob and I had decided to go vege as we were wary of the meat so we got chips, eggs and tomatos!  We did get wine though which I didn't drink!  Can you believe it!  I wasn't taking any chances with the altitude sickness!

That night was freezing!  I slept in all my clothes - 3 jumpers in a sleeping bag under 5 blankets and I was only just warm!  Most of the gang didn't get a great nights sleep as you can imagine!

We were up at the godly hour of 6am the next day to a breakfast of cake!  The dutch girls weren't feeling great with the altitude sickness and I was a touch nauseous.

We set off across the desert on the bumping gravel roads, which didn't help my nausea.  In the end, I had to take one of our altitude sickness tablets which nipped it in the bud after about half an hour.

Our first stop was the 'stone tree'.  As youc an imagine, it was a stone in the shape of a tree.  I wasn't overly impressed to be honest!  We stopped at another couple of lagoons after the disappointing piece of rock.  None were as impressive as the previous days lagoons but beautiful nevertheless.  We stopped to have lunch at the last lagoon which consisted of a tuna bake and salad wasn't bad either!  We then made tracks to see an active, steaming volcano which was pretty smokin'!  Literally!

Just before arriving in the village for the night we stopped on some train tracks.  Ok that sounds wierd.  There's a train that runs through part of the desert and goes from one town to another, which runs thrice weekly.  We just got some cheesy shots lying in the train tracks!  Onwards and upwards!  We pulled into a tiny village which was where our hostal was.  We managed to get a hot shower and a few more games of shithead, before our dinner.  To start with we had soup, in which we found a little present - chicken feet!  That freaked a lot of people out!  Then it more chips, eggs and chicken!

We wandered into the village after dinner where we noticed how different the people are in Bolivia.  All of the women look very similar.  They are really small, wear their really long hair in 2 plaits with a bowler hat perched on top of their heads!  It was quite funny to see all the women looking the same.  The people are native Indians so darker-looking.  They were very friendly to us though as we walked on down to a concert that was taking place in what seemed like the local sports hall!  We all waited ages for the concert to start and when it did the music was, let's say a little hard on the ears!  Hence, we stayed for 2 songs and legged it back to the hostel in the freezing cold!

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn again but this time we were heading to the piece de resistance - the salt flats.  We had a nice breakfast of pancakes and set off to the biggest salt flats in the world.

As we were approaching them, we could see the huge expansions of white in the distance.  We eventually made it onto the salt flats and drove for what seemed like ages across them.  The flats cover about 100km distance.  Our first stop was a cactus island in the middle of the flats which appeared out of place best was cool nevertheless.  We had 40 mins to walk around and take photos hugging the cacti.  A cactus grows 1cm every year and some of the cacti there were over 100 years old.

We left the island and drove out to the middle of the flats where we spent a while taking photographs.  Our penultimate stop was the salt museum, which used to be a salt hotel, where everything was made out of salt.  Now it's a shrine to animals and things carved in salt.

We drove on and left the salt flats and entered the town of Uyuni, which was where our tour ended.  We had one last stop at the train cemetary which was basically a scrapyard dedicated to trains and parts of trains and then we were dropped off in the town, where we found a hotel for the night.  Most of our group were staying for the night.

Rob, Georgie and I were taking a stroll through the market when my bowel movements came over me and I had to run back to the hotel.  I was in agony!  I ran into the toilet, only to see there was no toilet paper but i couldn't hang on!  I went down to the reception and she told me they didn't have any!  A hotel which doesn't have toilet paper!  She told me i could get it in shop down the road so as i headed out, i saw Rob who had our bag which had toilet paper in it!  Saviour!

After that i didn't feel too good.  We had arranged to meet the rest of the group for dinner but i was feeling worse and worse to the point where i had to leave the restaurant and go to bed.  I had a restless night and awoke the next morning still visiting the toilet!