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Day 37 - Wednesday 7th April
Start of the Salt Flats tour!! An early cold start (REALLY got to experience the whole boiling hot in the daytime, freezing at night), hours at the Chilean border and then a bus up to the tiny Bolivian border in the mountains. Got a token shot by a Fairbanks-esque old rusty bus and split the group between the two jeeps. Given the 3 older couples we shoved them in one jeep (the crap one) and the younger guys (Jeremie again! Meo and Selena from Switzerland and Mirja from Germany) in the fantastic Tigre the Turbo Toyota complete with Guide Natalio.
Basically the tour is 3 days and includes lots of lagoons and lots of flamingos. It's all above 4500m ish so we chewed on a lot of cocoa leaves to help with the altitude. Natalio also loved his 80s music. Around midday we reached some thermal springs, incredibly warm and beautifully set at 4800m. More importantly met Rob from Mendoza again in the pool! Some great food and even better star shots rounded off the day...
Day 38 - Thursday 8th April
Early start, good breakfast of pancakes, sunrise over the mountains, and more lagoons, flamingos and star wars scenery. Had an awesome train crossing midway through the day, perfectly straight and empty through a plain in either direction. Stopped briefly in a small town and played football with some young kids and finished up in a salt hotel. The walls, chairs, floor, tables everything made out of salt. The owner was old but hilarious, could barely walk but would tap his left leg, call it the lightning and explain how he used to play in the Bolivian premier league for Potosi in his youth...also got to know the other jeep and a polish guy in particular was so so funny. Spoke perfect English but almost too perfect, saying strange things and he provided most of the evenings entertainment...
Day 39 - Friday 9th April
Another 6am start, we climbed the mountain behind the salt hotel (hard work at altitude) to catch the sunrise. The hotel was at the edge of the salt flat so we set off for the whole point of the trip and had such an awesome experience. Flat in every direction, 7m thick, riding through at 80mph, feeling like 20. Next we took the obligatory photos, much assisted by the zoo of toy animals Meo and Selena had brought with them!
We headed to a an old coral island in the middle of the flats, now covered in millenia old cactai, complete with resident ostrich...
The rest of the trip was more salt, more photos and a visit to the train cemetry and climbed around all the old rusty trains. By this point i was feeling a bit ropey but by the time we pulled into Uyuni I was absolutely awful. Luckily there's not much to miss out on but I was rooted to the bed until the following day, it was only a matter of time!! Everyone else came back late and quite drunk though, which was pretty funny...
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