Taking it with a grain of salt

My blogging marathon yesterday brought me up to date for the first three days of the tour, but I left off the highlight final day, the main reason most people go on the tour, the salt flats near Uyuni.

The Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat (around 4000 square miles) and is almost 4000m above sea-level. The whole area is unbelievably flat, with a total height difference of only one meter on an area that looks like it's covered in snow.

The night before the salt flats we stayed in one of the salt hotels. This is a hotel made entirely out of salt. This was the nicest place we stayed on the whole trip, and given that it was around 800m lower than anywhere else we stayed, we were grateful for the slight increase in temperature (although it was still a long way off being warm!)

The dining room area in the salt hotel.

The next day we got up, rather reluctantly, at 5.30 to drive onto the salt flats and see the sun rise. This was nice to see, but i'm not entirely convinced this expedition was worth its salt (ho ho ho) given that we were standing on a freezing cold salt flat for 20 minutes for. Anyway, made for another photo op...

sunrise and shadows

Salt flats later in the morning. Lots of hexagons!

Sunrise from the island in the middle of the salt flat. We had breakfast here - some nice cake our chef had been up early baking for us!

Trying to work our how to take photos playing with perspective on the salt flats

A little bit of a success.

After an hour or so trying to work out how to take cool pictures on the salt flats (to be honest, we weren't very successful or creative - we seemed to be lacking anyone in the group who had any spacial awareness), we headed to Uyuni, where the tour ended. After one more vegetarian and gluten-free lunch prepared by the chef, we were free for the afternoon. I headed straight over to the bus "terminal" to buy my ticket for the trip to La Paz that evening whilst the others decided to stay in Uyuni for the evening to have a shower and relax.

The bus to La Paz left at 8pm and only cost about 10 dollars for an 11 hour trip. We left on time, and the journey was much as I had been warned about. Most roads in Bolivia aren't paved, so the bus is very bumpy and loud. In addition, even though our bus was heated (which is unusual, and a sign that it was a "superior" bus company), the bus was freezing cold. They gave us blankets, but it wasn't a very comfortable journey, partly because at the intermediate stops the driver comes onto the bus shouting the name of the town, presumably to wake anyone up who needs to get off at that stop. Fortunately it was only an 11 hour trip and we arrived promptly in La Paz and took a taxi to our hostel. We're all a bit tired at the moment, but have been for a cooked breakfast (4 dollars!) and I'll go for a walk around town soon, hoping that the sun will warm the air up a bit.