We all met at the booking office around 8am ready for the trip to the Chilean border, we all put our kit on the mini bus and of we went the border check point was a little outside of San Pedro and the process was extremely painless we all had our passports processed and of we went we had about an hours drive ahead of us to get us to the Bolivian border where we would then split up into groups and get into 4 x 4 which would take us all the way to Uyuni.

Once we went through the Bolivian Border control we sorted out who would be in each vehicle in ours we had Jay and Helen and a Spanish dude called Camari our driver was called Dani.

We headed of on our tour we would visit various places through out the day our driver was initially quiet but he soon chirped up Jay and Helen could speak fairly good Spanish as they had lesson´s before coming out so it helped us a little as well.
The distance of our journey would be just over 500km but is broken up by stops at scenic sights and 2 over night stays.

The sights on first day included various different lagoons, blue, green and white lagoon. The Laguna Verde (green lagoon) was most interesting of all. It was joined to the white lagoon by a stream...but for only one hour each day, between 10am-11am the water in the Laguna Verde changes to green...all other times it is white in color just like the other lagoon it is joined to. The phenomenon is due to the angle of the sunlight, the wind and the minerals in the water. But its only between 10-11am it turns green.

In the background of the Laguna Verde you can see a volcano which was the most respected of all the volcanoes by the Inca people. It was tradition from the Inca´s to build stacks of stones (largest stone at bottom, smallest at top) in respect of this volcano.... We also stopped off to see Flamingo's which were fabulous.

Our 1st night stay was in a very basic building it was around 4,800 Mt's above sea level.
It had no electricity or no heat. our cooks prepared the food considering the conditions the food they cooked up was very good it consisted of soup and spaghetti bolengese for 16 people. We ate dinner, and then we played cards we had a couple of bottle of wines so we polished those of and then the generator was turn of leaving us in the dark i guess it was there way of telling us to politely go to bed.

The shed that was our accommodation for the night was seriously basic. The base of bed was made from concrete slabs, the mattress lay on top with no plastic between concrete and mattress...But i managed to get some sleep i think i kept the guys up with my snoring though.

We got up fairly early and and breakie & headed off in jeep again. First stop was bubbling mud geysers, totally different to ones in New Zealand ...they were water and steam.These were Grey bubbling mud and smelled bad, You had to be careful of the bubbling mud...it was 85 degrees Celsius and if burned you were 500km away from any medical help. It has been known that some tourists who have been over curious have been known to get splashed or slip in trying to get the perfect photo!

Then it was on to the flamingo's again. This time we got much closer to them. There was another phenomenon with the sun attached to their lake. Before sunrise the water looks clear like any lake, but when the sun hits the water it reacts with the algae on the bottom and the whole lake looks pink. One of the myths attached to the color of the Flamingo is that the ´pink´ algae it eats, turns its feathers pink, but a myth of course.

After we had seen these we headed for lunch and stopped at various other sites before heading to our accommodation the Salt Hotel in which we were staying that night.
The whole place made from blocks of salt we managed to have a nice hot shower as the place the night before had no showers at all.
We had dinner there played some cards then off to bed... up at 04.30m to catch sunrise on the salt plains. The sunrise was fantastic we all managed to get some fantastic photos
The rest of our final day was spent driving on the salt plains /Salar DE Unyui and taking photos.

We stopped off at ´Fishermans Island´...a small island of cacti in middle of salt plains, just sprouted out of no where. The oldest cactus on the island was 1,203 years old! They only grow 3cm a year. All cacti on the island are under preservation.

The salt plains gave a great opportunity to take some wonderful photo´s.
Last stop was a graveyard cemetery in town of Unyui itself....which basically was a dump where old trains were thrown. It was no museum as it was made out to be!