Salar de Uyuni - Part Two

An earlish start but not as early as before. We actually had a good breakfast of coffee and pancakes instead of the usual drier than the Atacama desert pieces of bread. Our first stop was to be an area with bizarre rock formations. Lot´s of bizarre rocks were set against a background of beautiful, spice coloured mountains. Some people had been camping there and it was cold there when we got there so it must´ve been absolutely freezing to stay there the night. The same people camping had been cycling through the park - that would´ve been such a struggle, there´s almost no facilities whatsoever! Moving away from the barrenness we were on our way to a group of lakes - five of them. Each were as equally beautiful as the next. Perfect reflections, beautiful backgrounds and gorgeous scenery surrounding them. In a number of them were flamingos and we managed to get quite close to them before Colin chased after them trying to flap his hands and arms like bird´s wings. On one of our stops an Andean Fox was pointed out to us. It was quite beautiful but would only get within a certain distance. The journey continues......we drive into the heart of one of the deserts and some pretty bad roads. At one point we´re rocking so much I almost hit my head on the window!!! We were taken to an area of exceptional beautiful with strange rock formations and a smoking volcano in the background - it was stunning and Colin´s first sight of a smoking volcano. We had lunch in the same place and continued onwards to our final destination - The Salar de Uyni, the largest salt flats in the world and one of the highlights of our trip.

Passing through a number of areas, including a small salt flat area, we picked a local Bolivian lady that would´ve been walking for days if we´d not come along. She was tiny and very cute and very childlike. She giggled a lot and babbled a lot and we had a bit of a chat before dropping her off near to our final hospedaje. The small hosepedaje was made out of salt and surprisingly warm in comparison to our previous, freezing, dump. We had a great, elevated view of the entrance to the Salar de Uyuni and the sun setting created beautiful pink colours.

Again, up early as our driver want to speed his way to get there before everyone else. We heading into the middle of the Salar to catch the sunrise. We weren´t disappointed. It was very cold but eventually the sun rose with beautiful colours, catching the patterns in the Salar magnificently. Our driver sped towards an island called Isla de Pescadores which is covered in cacti. You really can see that the salt flats were originally a vast lake with islands to match. The island itself is beautiful with great views of the pure, white salt flats and cacti all over, some as big as twenty metres. Just after we got onto the island the crowds soon started to arrive and we were very grateful to our driver that we had a little bit of time to ourselves there. After a nice but rather cold breakfast we took a walk on to the salt flats away from all the crowds. Journeying further into the centre, we came across areas of holes in the salt and you could see all the way down to the water that´s below it. We had to be careful in areas as there were lots of cracks and at anytime one could fall in. I edged Colin ever closer to one of the holes in the hope that I could finally get rid of him, once and for all but my plan was thwarted. A while was spent in this area and we got some stupid photos, most notably, me driving a shoe. There is no reference for perspective here so lots of travellers take silly photos of them doing silly things.

This was to be the end of an amazing journey. Possibly the best adventure experience so far. Our guides were fantastic as was the scenery and already we´ve been talking about coming back some time soon. On our way to our final end, Uyuni, Colin and I start to get a little bit emotional and almost cry. Fucking Queens! We say an emotional goodbye to our guides and we´re on our own, again.