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We had a long sleep in after arriving at our hostel at around 3am. Then after a breakfast of pancakes and dulce de leche, eggs and english breakfast tea (the first cup i´ve had in almost 2 months), we got picked up to explore the only thing Uyuni is famous for - the worlds biggest salt flat.
The jeep arrived with a friendly driver and a stern mother hen type cook, who would be feeding us for the next 2 days. It only took about 10 minutes to drive to the salt flats, and from the instant I clapped eyes on them, I was in awe. They are 12000km squared and I´d believe it. Salt as far as the eye could see in every direction. We drove for about an hour and seemingly got no closer to the tiny volcano on the other side of the salt flats. Then we hoppped out to take some photos. Due to the size and uniformity of the salt flats, you lose depth and perception, so you can really get some funny shots where some people look tiny and others look like giants. One girl had a dinosaur and a gorilla toy that we used as props for our photos.
We then took off again, to visit an extremely interesting island in the middle of the salt flats - Fish Island. It was interesting, in the fact that it looked exactly like an island (the salt flats were a lake thousands of years ago), and the salt formations actually looked like small waves that had been frozen into salt. The entire island was covered in hundreds of huge cacti which made for some incredible photos and they made the sky look amazingly blue. We walked around the island and then got in trouble from our mother hen cook who was waiting for us to eat her specially prepared lunch. We all ate in silence as she scolded us in spanish.
Another hour or so of driving saw us reach the bottom of the Tunupa volcano, where we would spend the night in a hostel made almost entirely of salt - even the beds were salt! Yes, I did lick the walls like on charlie and the chocolate factory. As the sun was setting we walked outside to where a few dozen pink flamingos were wading around in a small lake grazing on the algae. It really did feel like we were on another planet - this wide expanse of white salt, that looks seemingly uninhabitable, and then these bloody flamingos just show up out of no where and can survive in this salty climate! We watched the sun set extremely quickly behind the volcano and then hurried in so we wouldn´t be late again for the nazi´s dinner. She made us a delicious quinoa soup, with spaghetti bolognese, which none of us could finish because she made so much. So again we were told off, and even one guy with severe altitude sickness copped it. We played cards for an hour and then went to bed, snuggling in about 10 blankets as it gets to -16 overnight.
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