Uyuni and the Salt flats

The Bolivian roads minister has either the best money-skimming operation or his bugdet is very small (or both), because the road from Potosi to Uyuni (who can pronounce that anyway) was long and slow and dusty and torturous. We got a flat tyre and Tash´s bladder thanked the lord. But it was from this small desert frontier town that we were to begin a highly anticipated trip.

The Uyuni salt flats are a truly beautiful part of the world. We began our three day 4x4 odyssey by heading to the train graveyard where many rusted and gutted hulks rot in the aridity. Then we headed out onto the flats. We visited the ´eyes´ that are pure oxygen bubbling through small pools in the expanse. We then headed to Fish Island in the middle of the white. The white expanse, clear blue sky and the cacti made for isla tres beautiful.








Because of the great expanse of white, its possible to take some interesting perspective photos.






Day two began early with more butt shattering 4x4´ing to lakes with flamingoes, flamingoes with lakes, and lake flamingoes. The famous tree of rock. Our accomodation took a steep decline - we ended up in a mud hut, half burried by the constant desert gale. With no heating, no water and no mattresses we were advised the temp would plummet to -15 overnight. Oh and a 3:30am start.........

The early morning stars lived up to our expectations, but the temperature (thankfully) didn´t.

We headed to geysers (hot springs) where greg was the only one brave enough to walk over the frozen lake to take a dip in the hot springs. Tash on the otherhand decided to accidently fall in... thankfully the warm desert sun eventually sorted us both out.

After a breaky of cake and caramel sauce, we then headed towards the Bolivian-Chilean border and our next stop at San Pedro de Atacama.