After experiencing by far the worst night bus so far (12 hours of bumpy roads and a freezing breeze due to bus windows that wouldn't shut at an altitude of 4000m) we arrived in Uyuni. The town itself was tiny with very little to do so we booked into a hostel to sleep before sorting out a three day tour of the famous salt flats and surrounding area.

The next morning we set off at 11am heading first to a 'train cemetery' which has the train stolen by Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid where we got to climb all over the rusting wrecks like kids at a playground! After seeing the trains we drove onto the salt flats which were massive - by far the biggest in the world. We visited an illegal salt hotel on the flats where we looked around inside and then a coral island that had been raised up from the sea bed when the lakes dried up thousands of years ago. The island was covered in large cactii (one of which was over 13m high and 1000 years old) and seemed so surreal in such a barren environment. After taking lots of silly pictures we drove off the flats to a salt hotel (a legal one!) that we spent the night in.

The second day of the tour was spent largely in the jeep driving past impressive scenery which included an active volcano which had smoke coming from some vents and to a series of lakes. The first five lakes were relatively small and were partly dried up with tiny salt flats beside them. To Ashleys delight we saw lots of Flamingoes feeding from really close up and we got some fantastic photos of them. After lunch we drove to Laguna Colorada, a lake that appears red in the evening because of the low angle of the sun. Despite being freezing cold it was an impressive sight and had even more Flamingoes! The night was spent in a freezing cold village before a 5am wake up the next morning.

At 6am we left the hotel to see the sun rise over some big geysers before heading onto some thermal baths which were lovely and hot - a relief from the cold morning air. We finally dragged ourselves out of the warm baths to travel to Laguna Verde, a green lake because of its high sulphur content. After Laguna Verde we changed bus to go into Chile!