Salar de Uyuni

Salar de Uyuni, this promised to be one of the highlights of the trip to South America. While in San Pedro the Atacama, a small city in Chile I met several people who planned to make the same trip. On the first day of arrival I went to the office of Estrelle del Sur, the company that had the best references on the web, with Daniel, a britisch guy and Femke from Amersfoort. We booked for leaving Saturday the 12th, a 3-day trip.

At the hostel we already met Andy and Olivia, an Irish couple, well, Irish, they´d been living in Australia for a while. Early in the morning we left for the bus that would drop us of at the Bolivian border. We had some discussion about the temperature, but oh, was I glad to wear my longjohns once arriving at the Bolivian border post. Mucho frijo, very very cold.

After all the formalities we grabbed our stuff and gor in the 4-wd, our driver and guide, Simon, who just spoke a little bit of English. This day we passed awesome sights, like the laguna verde (green lake, right up), some rock formations, an awesome view at the hot spring (pic 3) and we ended up at the laguna roja, red lake. Here we dropped our bags for the night, had some lunch before we went to the lake. Really amazing, the lake, coloured red and white, the flamingo´s, an amazing view.. This all at a hight of approx 4800 meters.

After returning to the hostel (cold, 2 (dirty) toilets, used by us and a group of french tourists) we had a good dinner and I went to bed early. I got really mumivized (don´t know if this is correct english), halfway during the night I woke up because it was to warm. I was about the only one, since the rest was really freezing, even with all their clothes on.

The second day it would be a long trip, first passing some great rocks, followed by four different lakes. At one of these we enjoyed our lunch. A good lunch! From here we moved on, went over a salt flat for over an hour and via San Juan we ended up at the salt hotel, really an amazing place to stay and.... With an hot shower, YES (sorry Femke and Daniel.. Who had an icy shower, mine was hot...). After the shower we had dinner and a few wines, went to bed around 11, while we had to get up before 5 am for the sunrise at the salt flat.

5.15 am, ready to go, to the ´Salar de Uyuni´... The largest salt flat in the world, amazing views and losing the idea of depth. Watching the sunset, taking some trick photo´s, going to the cactus field and more trick photo´s... It was really great Andy and Olivia, I was glad you were there (since the others could only think of some football and wanted to take pictures when we were leaving)... I was kind of hoping on something strange for a photo... And there it was, a crazy Japanese guy, who was already cycling for four months, showed up at the horizon, yes, magnificent!!

Later on we watched some salt stacks, salt that is exported, the old salt hotel and then we went to Uyuni, the train cemetery, a lunch and it was time to find a hostel and book a bus to Pootosi... Really, this 90 dollar trip (ok, 10 US extra costs, so 100$) was worth it, several times, the views, the experience, one of the most amazing places on the globe!!!