In Uyuni I hooked up with a bunch of other people who were looking for the same tour I was - the 3 day trìp across the salt flats and the Atacama desert.

Eventually we settled on a tour guide, had celebratory pizzas and drinks and then set off the following morning in two 4WD jeeps.

Our first stop was at the locomotive graveyard. The trains were brought over from the UK in the 1800's for use at the many gold and silver mines which existed nearby. When the mines closed down, the trains were left to rust.

We then went on to the salt processing town of Colchani and saw table salt being packaged up by hand. Every back yard had a huge pile of salt in it as all the local families are involved in the salt industry. The salt comes from the nearby Salar de Uyuni. An enormous salt plane some 12,000 sq kms in size and 40m thick at the centre.
The whole of south east Bolivia is extremely rich in minerals such as iron, copper, zinc, tin, etc, due to the amount of volcanic activity in the area. 50,000 years ago the volcanoes were all under glacial ice. Volcanic erruptions melted the ice and the minerals were washed down the slopes of the volcanoes which then collect in lakes in the valleys. Streams continue to bring more minerals down from the mountains. In this particular area there is a lot of sodium chloride and as the region is very arid, the water evaporates and leaves the salt behind which naturally forms into hexagonal or pentagonal shapes. The salt effectively floats on top of the lake although as it is 40 meters thick in some parts you can't tell you are floating as it feels totally solid. The salt plane is blindingly white as the sun is so strong there and the altitude is around 3000mts above sea level. This is the point at which I discovered the design flaw in my digital camera, there is no separate viewfinder other than the screen on the back and I couldn't see a thing in that due to the blinding glare of the sun and salt plane. I kept feeling like I should be cold as it was like being in an icy landscape that went on forever. It was quite strange to look at. I think that if I hadn't known where I was I would have thought I must be on the surface of another planet as I've never seen a landscape like this before.
We sat out on the plane and ate llama steak with quinoa for lunch then went on to the Island of Fish, which is an island covered in petrified coral and 5,000 giant cacti. It's an island in that it is in the middle of the salt plane which has the lake underneath it, but obviously as the salt plane is solid you can just drive up to it.

We stayed overnight in a salt hotel - which is what it sounds like, a hotel made of salt. The building, tables, chairs, beds, etc were all made of salt bricks and the floor was powdered salt. Outside the stars were amazing, someone pointed out that usually the only time you see the stars going all the way down to the horizon is in a planetarium. I managed to spot a couple of shooting stars as well.

The next morning we were off in the jeeps again to the semi active Ollague Volcano to see the fumerole billowing steam out of the side and clamber round some lava and magma which had been blasted out of the volcano millions of years ago.

We then visited a number of lagoons, all stained different colours by the minerals from the mountains and all with hundreds of flamingos wading about in them.

We went on across the Siloli desert to the 'Stone Tree', a rock which has been blasted out of a nearby volcano and looks a bit like a tree before spending the night in a refuge.

We were up at 4:15 the next morning in sub-zero temperatures to go and see some geysers at an altitude of 5,000mts as they are more active in the early morning. It was like wandering through a set from Star Trek, with white clouds of sulphur billowing from the earth (very smelly) and bubbling mud pools as hot as 250 degrees filled with iron and oil deposits. We were all like blocks of ice by this point so the next stop was some natural hot springs heated by the volcano and breakfast.

We drove on through the 'Salvador Dali' desert to the green lagoon (so called due to the amount of copper and arsenic in it which makes the water green) and on to the Chilean border where we got on a bus to take us across to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.