Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Uyuni
After a few long days of driving through rocky, dirty tracks which in no way cuold be classified as roads, with many people adjusting to the altitude by being sick into plastic bags we arrived in out first bolivian town. Our first hotel too which was very exciting, especially with the thought that we wouldnt have to do our truck, cooking,cleaning duties anymore!! I won a quiz on the bus on the way there, so i got a free pizza at the new hotel. Visited the salt flats which were exactly what they are called. Originally a lake, the lake dried up leaving miles and miles of snow-white salt. It was a glorious day, with perfect blue skies which contrasted spectacularly against the brilliantly white salt. The salt crystals were much larger than i expected and when i took off my flip flops it was really hard and painfull against my feet. We arrived in big 4 x 4 jeeps and got to sit on the top of them as we splashed through the vast salt flats. With the wind in our hair, sunglasses on to shade our eyes from the glare of the white salt it was honestly as if we were in the north pole. We went to the salt hotel which was a tiny hotel in the heart of the flats made entirely of salt. The building, the beds, statues, even the little wall surrounding it...was made of salt! It was strange but really cool! Due to the salt being so flat we were able to take loads of funny photos with strange perspectives as seen in my photo album e.g. a gaint fan, fanning us over (also with a hairdrier). We then tried to spell SWAMPY with great difficulty in the salt so we could get in framed and put it on our facebook page. Our drivers then took us to some mummies in a random rock a few hours drive from the salt flats. This was strangely exciting and i honestly could not stop staring at them. We were told that the main woman in the middle was the queen of the area and her 4 children (including a baby which was on her lap) were killed when she died so they could accompany her into the next life. It was definately the closest i have gone to a real-life skeleton and it was pretty scary. In a tiny cove they lay, and over the entrance there was a mummified, dead puma. We then drove to the sunset spot and waited and waited for the sunset to come! by the time the sun actually set we were freezing. it felt like my fingers were going to drop off! we waited and waited for about 2 hours and had a game of football in the salt to pass the time but none the less it was still freezing. however it was well worth it. The sunlight shon off the small amount of water and reflected incredible colours. However as soon as it was gone we ran as fast as we could to the 4 x 4s and shot off! Apparently it can reach -20 degrees some nights at this time of the yr!
- comments