Salar de Uyuni Tour - Day 4

Trip Start Nov 29, 2007
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Trip End Jun 24, 2008


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Sunday, February 10, 2008

So this is it, we finally get to see and go onto the Salar de Uyuni. We all slept much better last night and you call feel the energy has lifted and everyone is a little excited to finally see the salt flats. But there is a slight air of disappointment as we realise that we may not get to see a dry part of the salt flats. At this time of year there is always water on the flats, but there was really heavy rain last week and they are still pretty flooded. We head out in the jeeps to the museum and despite our disappointment everyone soon gets down to taking lots of photos. I only had sandals on and the water was bloody freezing! As well as that this salt is like big chunks of sea salt and it gets under your sandals and it really quite painful to walk on, but before long my feet were numb with the cold so the pain subsided!
Again we took lots of photos, but with the reflection of the water and the bright sunlight is is really hard to tell if you have your camera focused and as mine is automatic focus it was really struggling with the light and the reflection First glimpse of the Salar de Uyuni, flooded!
First glimpse of the Salar de Uyuni, flooded!
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After a couple of hours we were all cold and asked if we could get group shots and head back. We also got to sit on top of the jeep on the way back which was pretty cool and gave us the opportunity to take some more great shots.
I loved the salt flats, I would have loved to have seen the classic salt flats I had seen in all the photos, but I had fun anyway and the memory will stick in my mind forever. Everyone was just so happy and having such fun playing around with shots of people standing on your hands and such - take a look at the photos you will see what I mean. It was like we were a bunch of kids again, great fun!!!!!
Then it was back for a last lunch together, which was really nice and then a quick walk around and back to Uyuni to drop off the 4 people from the other jeep. Normally the tour ends here, but all of us 4 had opted to go back to Tupiza. There was a bit of confusion amongst the drivers in Uyuni and we ended up hanging around for an hour, but then we were off on the beautiful,but sometimes scary journey back to Tupiza. Geraldo told us that as the roads were better it should take about 5-6 hours, if these roads are better I would have hated to see them when they were worse!!!! And I am so glad I am not doing this in a bus!!!! We got some great shots and had lots more pee stops (parada de piss, as Geraldo calls it!) The flooding makes for good reflections though
The flooding makes for good reflections though
 . We were about 30 mins outside Tupiza at San Migel, another quite stunning piece of scenery when the jeep in front broke down again! It looked pretty serious this time as they tool off the wheel and then dismantled the brakes!!!! It took them about an hour, but they fixed it and we finally got on our way, tired, dirty and by now, hungry too. The hotel and double en-suite we had booked was a welcome site. The hot shower was the best I have ever had!!!! We all went out for dinner looking clean and feeling so much better! We even dared to have our first beer in Bolivia, which went down very well, but made us really tired!
Gary and Mícheál are leaving tomorrow on the 10am but, will be sorry to see them go.
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