After the first eggless breakfast in nearly living memory (oh, alright - 3 weeks) we trooped off to receive our tour briefing from Red Planet Expeditions.

We hire what turn out to be furry sleeping bags, meet our co-expeditionaries, Joel and Naiana, drop the bags we don't need at the back of the store and mount our 4X4 for the journey with Santiago at the wheel and head into the salt flats.

The salt flats are brilliant, reflected white under a cloudless blue sky.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves ...

After lunch and some amateur video production by Carlos, our guide, to distract from the delay caused by the other 4X4 in the party suffering 2 punctures one immediately after the other, we speed on to a cactus covered volcanic cone that was underwater when active, before the evaporation if the lake occurred to start the salt flat formation process.

This is a location where on Independence Day Bolivians from around the Uyuni region gather to perform rituals for good fortune for the coming year. The good fortune doesn't expend to the pair of llamas that are sacrificed, whose hearts are read by the shaman, and whose blood is sprinkled on the salt flat in tribute to Pachamama!

The Bolivian government in 2006 banned salt hotels from operating in the middle of the flats, mandating they be built at the edge of the flats to minimise ecological impact.

We arrive at our 'hotel' to be shown a damp room with 5 beds, each with enough blankets to trap a mammoth, an en suite toilet, a tabled central atrium and 2 communal showers for rental at a cost of 10 bolivianos a time.

As Sarah remarked 'and tomorrow night is the basic accommodation.'

How prescient she turned out to be!