¡Hola!

Well last week was Spring Break: my one holiday from school this semester.So myself and three friends from Sustainable Bolivia - Bríd, Agur and Adrienne - headed down to Tupiza, near the Argentine border, for a four-day jeep trip up to the Salar de Uyuni.

Tupiza is a blinkin' long way away, so we had to first head by bus to Oruro (where we had watched the Carnaval back in February) and catch an overnight train to Tupiza.There are very few railways in Bolivia, so it was a real novelty (and a relative luxury) to travel by train.We'd intended to get the 'executive class' sleepers, but they'd sold out by the time we'd arrived at the station, so we were obliged to travel second class with Wara Wara del Sur; but, there was still heating, comfortable seats and movies, and we'd saved ourselves a bunch on the tickets, so all was well.I was, however, blissfully unaware that Bríd had, in contrast, spent most of the night in the freezing toilet and arguing with conductors about where was an appropriate location to be sick!

Anyhoo, the next morning we arrived in Tupiza, picked up our jeep, and were on route to Uyuni by breakfast.Whilst the first day's driving was a bit lacklustre compared to the next three days, the scenery was pretty mind-blowing, and we had lunch in a big open grassy plain full of llamas and sheep, with lots of moody-looking clouds above throwing fork-lightening down all around us.What was that rule about not being in open fields during a thunderstorm? The first night was a cold one, and our room was very rustic, but we met lots of other travellers who were on the same trip, and who we saw again at each stop.

The next morning the trip started proper and the landscape turned proper extra-terrestrial.It may sound a bit cliched, but occasionally I would forget where we were, and that this was actually a real place on planet Earth - it looked more like the surface of the moon.The sky was alien, because of the altitude, and the reflections on the windows of the jeep made me feel like I was peering out of a space helmet into the bizarre canyons lined with white rocks, jagged pinnacles and strange circular bits of foliage.

We must have seen ten lakes during the trip, in a variety of colours, but the first seemed the most impressive.It was teeming with flamingos, which I'd never seen up so close before, and the salt-filled waters reflected the clouds above it like a giant mirror.In the end we realised that all of the other lakes had flamingos too, and each had a different backdrop of a vast expanse of emptiness, multicoloured mountains or volcanoes.

The trip was a real off-road adventure.Our driver and cook were awesome and were sipping whiskies in the back of the car with us, serving up tasty meals, and generally whisking us to each sight faster than everyone else - our jeep was a bit more powerful than the others'.There were loads of different sites to stop at, including a geothermal pool, geezers, and weird rock graveyards.On the third night we stayed in a hotel near Uyuni that was made completely of salt, and which also has a well-deserved hot shower!We spent most evenings playing drinking games and cards, and generally embarrassing ourselves in front of the other guests.

The highlight, of course, was the Salar de Uyuni: the 10,582 square km wide remnants of an ancient inland sea that has all but evaporated over millions of years, having been slowly heated up by volcanic activity. There is actually still a massive lake about ten metres down, totally saturated with salt, slowly evaporating away under the surface.The size of the Salar is mind-boggling - all you can see is salt all the way to the horizon in many directions, and the flatness of it plays tricks with your eyes so that you hallucinate massive mirror-like lakes in the distance.There are a few 'islands' still left in the middle of the Salar, all covered with giant cacti, and there are a few ostriches around too - including Ted, who I had a little race with across the salt (see pics).We went out to the middle of the Salar, where the salt is perfect and goes all the way to the horizon, to take the obligatory silly photos of us balanced on each other's hands or pringle packets etc.We thought we'd done pretty well, but when we stopped in a bar in Uyuni on the way back we found a massive collection of amazing photos made by people way more original than us!It's a shame we hadn't seen those before really.

Just before we left Uyuni, we visited the Crematoria de Trenes, a couple of lonely railway lines on the edge of the Salar with probably 100 or so rusting locomotives and carriages lying about - left behind by old defunct mining companies - all slipping of the tracks and slowly sinking into the sand.It was a novel place to go, but only entertaining for about ten minutes; apparently there is talk of turning it into a museum though.

We headed back to Cochabamba by bus to save some time; it still took about 16 hours though, and the trip to Oruro was laughably Bolivian - ridiculously bumpy road, families sitting in the aisle, toilet stop in Tudor England etc.The whole trip was awesome though, and one of the best things I've done in Bolivia so far.Check out the pics!

R

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