Packed, eaten, paid, ready to go. We went to the 'Red Planet' offices and got in our jeep. There are four jeeps in total, two guides, and one driver per vehicle, so the group was split in two for the purpose of the guides. We all travelled as four jeeps together though. The first stop was at abandoned railway tracks and trains. We had a great time exploring and taking photos. The weather was really windy and it was starting to rain. We drove to this place where we stopped for lunch, picked up a few props for the salt flats and were shown the process from taking the salt in its purest form to bagging it up and taking it to be sold. We then set off again and drove to the salt flats. They are 12,000 square kilometres. We drove for quite a way to this small land island in the middle with loads of cactuses on. It was pretty cool and the views of the salt flats were incredible. It was so white and just disappeared into the horizon. It was such a shame it was such bad weather though. We tried our best to take some cool photos, distorting the perspective, but our props kept blowing over. We drove and drove, the views being absolutely amazing. As the day went on the rain stopped and it cleared up a bit. The water on top of the salt created reflections of the mountains in the distance. It was pretty stunning. We stayed the night at a salt hostel (everything being made out of salt) in the middle of nowhere. We had a questionable dinner, which we barely touched, consisting of egg, hot dog, chips, onion... It was all very bizarre. We got chatting to various people in the group, everyone was very friendly!
DAY 2:
Up at 6am and leaving at 7am, we left the salt hostel and headed off on the road. We ended up driving for ages today. I feel like I've seen a lot of Bolivia's beautiful landscape from this tour and have really enjoyed it. Throughout the day we regularly stopped off at different points. One of the first ones was by loads of massive volcanic rock where you could see the active volcano in the distance with smoke coming from it. The desert terrain we were driving on was rocky and our guide, Gonzalez told us it was once at the bottom of the ocean, which was hard to comprehend! We then saw loads of llamas crossing the road, all belonging to one woman. A train passed us in the middle of nowhere too. We then went to see loads of flamingos on a lagoon. I've never seen wild flamingos- they were so pink and stood on one leg like flamingos are meant to do! That wasn't the end to the flamingos though; we kept seeing them again and again throughout the day at various lagoons. My favourite was the final one we saw: it was massive, had white, green, blue and red colourings in the water, caused by sulphur, the sun, different minerals. It was beautiful. As we drove I also found a great sense of remoteness and scale. It was amazing, like nothing I'd ever seen before. On our right as we drove, Chile was located just over the mountains, so we were very close. We also saw geysers and hot mud pools boiling away when we were stood inside the crater of a volcano. We got very close and the steam was so fierce. We also saw the big rocks where Salvador Dali was inspired. There was one rock which I distinctly recognise in one of his paintings. It was so surreal seeing it in person! After arriving at our hostel in the evening in the middle of absolutely nowhere, we ate, watched to sun go down and once it got dark ran down to the hot water springs and relaxed in there for probably two hours! We saw lightning in the distance and watched the stars. The moon lit up quite a lot of the landscape considering it was pitch black. It was chilly once you got out, but we dried off quickly and are all now tucked up in bed. It was a great day!
DAY 3:
Our first stop was the Salvador Dali desert. There were massive boulders of rock scattered sporadically around the area. It just reminded me of Dali's paintings, so for me it was really interesting. We then drove to the Laguna Verde- the 'Green Lagoon'. It literally appeared as it is called and we spent a few moments there taking group photos. Gonzalez pointed out that we we stood in Bolivia, to our right was Chile and to our left was Argentina. We then drove a short way to the Chilian border to drop half the group there as they were catching the bus. For the rest of the day we drove back to Uyuni. The drive wasn't that bad as the scenery was very beautiful, stopping for lunch around midday. We arrived in Uyuni at about 4pm and are back at the hostel. We spent ages sorting ourselves out. I've lost my black cardi, which is a slightly annoying as it is so useful- I don't know where I've left it at all. Possibly, mislaid it after picking up washing. At least that's all I've lost this whole trip- touch wood. There's no power here, so we're waiting for it to be turned on for a hot shower... It's on now!! Yes, can't wait to feel clean again! Overnight bus to La Paz to tonight.
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