Whilst in San Pedro and close to the Bolivian boarder, it was quite logical to take a break from my bus tour around the north of Chile, and take the popular Salar de Uyuni tour.

Day 1 - We were on the bus ready to go to the Bolivian border, and some 18 year old from Eaton was telling us how we may be alittle longer at the boarder than we usually would be, as only 3 days ago he bribed the officer to get out of Bolivia without a passport, but now he had to bribe the officer again as he wanted to get back in without a passport.....what a fool. The Bolivian border in itself was rather comical. The group of 16 of us from the bus all split up and went in different 4 by 4s. The other two groups left, and we just waited around for our 4 by 4 to arrive. We were hoping for a Ferrari after our wait, but what we got was a clapped out old banger. It was fun though, and it seemed to do the job, so we wouldn't have a bad thing said about our 'vintage old motor'.
After a few hours of being in the 4 by 4 trundling through the desert, I began to understand why they were abit lax at the border. If you are on foot, you are not exactly going far very quickly as there is there absolutely nothing in sight for miles. We had to stop an hour later to pay for the national park, and that without question was alot tougher to get through than the Bolivian Border. We went in the hot pools, which suprinsingly warmed us up alittle, but we were warned by numerous people beforehand that in a couple of hours when we attempt to get to sleep, it may be the coldest we have felt. People wrapped up warm for bed, but I have never worn jeans, shirts and shoes to bed in my life, so I wasn't going to start now. My stubborn resistance proved to be my downfall. Even as a warm blooded northerner, I really did under estimate how cold it would actually be. The following two nights I went soft and slept in clothes.

Day 2 - We woke up and after 5 minutes of analysing the amount of sleep we all got last night, we came to the conclusion that no one really slept, and we then tucked into our hearty breakfast. Some people were fairly badly affected by the altitude, for example, some were sick, some had stomach problems and one lad had one big continuous nose bleed. I had no problems, which was good as I now don't think I will have any problems when I arrive in La paz in a months time. We saw some good views of lakes, with a variety of colours, but people who know me know what I think..."once you've seen one lake, you've seen them all". No I'm joking, I thought they were very pretty really. We stayed in a little village, and 4 shops all practically next to each other certainly did not look like the good old British corner shop that I am used to. It did make me laugh though as all of them except one had a Coca cola sign outside, that's capitalism for you. We saw our first sight of Llamas, and then a tiny little dog fancied his chances against one of them. It was one almighty stand off, and it was up there as a spectacle with the rumble in the jungle, and the thriller in Manila.

Day 3 - This is the day our driver seemed to be on suicide watch. He was driving in the middle of the road on blind corners, and at one point he drove left to swerve a car, and then the oncoming car drove right. I thought that was the end and I had visions of me flying through the windscreen, one girl in the car was absolutely petrified. It kept me wide awake anyway for the next hour and one of the lads who could speak fluent(ish) Spanish realised that if he spoke to the driver, he seemed to calm down and drove quite calmly. Least there is never a boring moment. We stopped at a train cemetery, but I didn't´t think it was as a good as the one I saw going upto San pedro de Atacama.
We arrived at the town of Uyuni, dropped our bags in the tour depot, and then we made our way onto the salt flat. The largest Salt flat in the World to be quite exact. I wont get technical with the facts, so I'll just say that it stretches for miles and miles around. We had to cross water on the 4 wheel drive before getting directly onto the salt. It looked quite surreal as it just looked like snow. There was plenty of flags from every country on the salt flat, however there wasn't one from england, so if anyone is planning on doing this trip in the near future, can someone please bring an english flag, thanks. We had a good hour and half on the salt with everyone taking daft pictures (see my picture to the left).The sun was beating down, as was evidence when most people had red faces even after putting factor 50 suncream on. The cold was most certainly deceptive though. We had a another good portion of food, which was consistent throughout, and I must say how surprised I was at the generous portions and general good quality of the food provided.
We were on way back to the town of Uyuni again before we knew it, and it did look quite poor. After saying my goodbyes, it appeared most people were staying together for alittle while longer to go onto Sucre and then La Paz. Me however, along with the Canadian girl, and the Japanese woman were heading back to San pedro. The Japanese woman had visited the 75 different countries, and she says the reason is quite simple, she wants to get away from her husband ha.
We were in a much better vehicle this time, but just as I wanted a nice early night, the 4 by 4 broke down and we were stuck in the middle of no where trying to change a flat tyre for around one hour in the complete darkness. After finally getting there around 10pm, our driver told us how we had to be up for 4am the following morning to complete the journey back to San Pedro....oh the joy. One of the big positives from that night was that I saw something in Bolivia that after 3 full days, I never thought I would ever see, toilet paper.

Day 4 - We were back on the border again where we started only a couple of days before. A fair few people were asking us how the trip was, and my answer throughout was "it was very good and the largest slat flat in the world is quite surreal, but you must wrap up warm".