We arrived in Uyuni on Alan´s birthday in the evening. We had time to find a decent hostel, and sorted out a tour the next day to the salt flats. There are hundreds of companies and tours leaving everyday so it was easy to find one at a decent price.

We set off the next day quite early in our jeep. There were six of us in total, and our guide/driver. We were joined by another English couple, and a American and his wife who was Bolivian. It was pretty cosy in the jeep. Our first stop was the train graveyard. This is where there are loads of old steam trains that used to be used to transport goods accross South America ,have been abadoned and left to rust out in the desert. You can climb on them and take photos it was pretty cool. After that it was a couple of hours drive out to the salt flats. It was a hot and sunny day and we got sunburnt. We stopped a few times on the flats were you can see how they make furniture and build hotels out of salt and we also had the chance to purchase tacky souvenirs. We stopped for lunch on a cautus island in the middle of the desert. It is very impressive with hunderds of massive cautuses. We walked up to the top of the hill and had a great view accross the desert. Once we climbed down our guide had prepared our lunch, which was fried llama, actually very tasty. After that we spent some time taking silly photos and playing with the perspective out on the white salt flats, which everybody does.

More driving in the afternoon. There are no roads on the salt flats and deserts which is why they need jeeps to get anywhere. We made it to our hotel about 5pm it was pretty basic, bed made of big salt blocks etc. After we´d settled in we went over to this old graveyard a short walk accross the desert. We weren´t sure what to expect but it was actually really interesting. These were pre-Inca tombs about 800 years old. You could wander round and look in each one there was loads of skeltons and old pottery etc it should all really be in a museum or something. It was a bit creepy though, especially the one wearing a hat. We got a guided tour from a lcoal woman, had a look around and headed back in time for tea, and bottle of wine before bed.

On the second day of the tour we had to leave early and drive for about two hours before we came to a volanco, the only still active one in the area. We had a good view of it and took photos (of couse). After that back in the jeep and we passed several massive lagoons, all quite shallow and filled with thousands of flamingos. We stopped at a big rocky outcrops in the middle of the desert for lunch, climbed up the rocks and got a great view. There were loads of chinchillas there trying to steal our lunch. It was a really hot day again. We carried on until we reached a massive national park, and stopped for an hour to walk around the red lagoon. It was really red and had loads of flamingos again. It was a cool landscape, but really windy and dusty. We got to our hostel later on, we were all sharing the same room that night which was cosy.WE had to get to bed early because we planned to get up at 4.30am the next day.

Dat 3, ridicously early start, and we were off. We drove to a famous geyser, then to a massive thermal activity area, with loads of pools of bubbly mud. In New Zealand it would have been fenced off, but not in Bolivia, which added the element of danger. It was freezing outside though. We drove down to the hot springs and had a quick dip which was lovely, followed by a tasty pancake breakfast out of the back of the jeep. After breakfast we drove down to the Chilean border and dropped of the other English couple as they were carrying on their travels into Chile. After that the four of us had the massive drive back to Uyuni which took all day. The scenery was quite nice and we stopped for lunch in a small town. When we got back to Uyuni we manged to get tickets to the bus to La Paz that night, with the other couple, Joe and Roxana.(They live in La Paz) After a quick meal and a shower we left at 8pm on the 13hr journey with was actually fine because we were tired and we had a good bus.