It was a surprisingly warm night in our room, given that it was made of salt. Most of the other guests had left at 4:30am so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. While we waited for Martha to bring out breakfast, Maria took a walk round the village, the square and the church. Apart from a few rusty cars and a couple of dogs, the streets were deserted. Breakfast was delivered to our salt table at 8am - bread rolls with dulce de leche and coffee. Nothing flash but very tasty. As soon as breakfast was finished, we were loading everything back onto the jeep and left the salt hotel and headed back out onto the salt flat.

Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers (4,086 sq mi). It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes and is at an elevation of 3,656 meters (11,995 ft) above mean sea level.

The Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness with the average altitude variations within one meter over the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of salt and covers a pool of brine, which is exceptionally rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, which is in the process of being extracted. The large area, clear skies, and the exceptional flatness of the surface make the Salar an ideal object for calibrating the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.

The sun was shining as we drove out onto the Salar and there was a shimmer on surface causing mirages in the distance. It's easy to see how someone could get disoriented here.

We stopped at one of the less visited 'islands'. It seems weird to call it an island because it's not technically sitting in water but it just looks like one on the flatness of the salt 'lake'. The island was pretty big and made from coral rocks, it actually used to be seabed once upon the time. There was no marine life now though, there were some viscachas and huge towering cactuses. We walked up to the highest point of the island for a great view across the salt flats. Instead of going back down the same way, we took a path down the other side towards a huge cave that would once have been an underwater cavern.

As we walked back to the car, round the island on the flat, Juan Carlos took the first funny photo with slab of salt. Andy stood with the slab of salt under his chin while Carlee stood 10 metres behind. It turned out to be a huge bubble head with a tiny person shouting in the ear.

The next stop was at the more popular Isla Incahuasi which had an entrance fee of Bs.30 per person. It was totally geared up for tourists though with toilets, and salt picnic tables. Martha used one of the tables to lay out our picnic lunch - chicken milanese, potatoes and vegetables. Once again it was delicious.

After lunch we walked up to the view point and around the island. There were a lot of the huge towering cactuses, some of them were up to 10m tall. It was never explained why but some were simply single, straight cacti whereas others had many 'arms' and flowered.

On the path back down there was a coral arch, made during the time when this island was underwater too. It was very clear coral formations and fascinating to see them knowing they had risen more than 3,500m vertically.

We went back out on the Salar for our crazy photo session. Juan Carlos was very good on the camera and knew all the angles and tricks for our props. The whole idea is to have one object large and the other small, so a beer can might be as big as person or a picture with a giant and a midget (you need to see the pictures to understand). It was very warm when the sun was out and there was no wind either but we persevered to get all the pictures taken that we had planned for.

We were meant to stay overnight in San Juan but Juan Carlos asked if we wanted to go back to the salt hotel, which we of course didn't mind as it is supposed to be the best along the route. We were the first group to arrive and bought our Bs.10 tickets for a hot shower. The boys stayed in the hotel to enjoy their showers while Maria and Carlee walked up to the mirador behind the hotel. It was quite a hike up to 3900m but it did offer a good view over the salar and village of Chuvica. There were few viscachas out in the rocks amongst the giant cactuses and some llamas on the lower slopes.

When they got back, more jeeps had turned up and it was a mad dash to the showers to make sure there was still some hot water left. All refreshed, we sat around the table ready for Martha to serve another of her delicious meals. As usual we started with soup and then a tray of lasagna was brought for our mains. We had the bottle of red wine from the photo shoot which went perfectly with it. As a small surprise, we even got a wee pudding to finish off the meal. At our post dinner briefing, Juan Carlos told us that we needed to wake up at 5.30am because it would there was a one hour drive to San Juan, where meant to stay overnight, to catch up on.

It was early to bed then but there were some people making noise late into the evening. It wouldn't normally have mattered but today we were staying in a four bed dorm by the dining area. Win some, lose some...