We booked our Salar de Uyuni (salt flats) tour with Corderilla Travel to leave San Pedro on Friday 13th November. The minibus picked everyone up from their hostels at 7am and took us to Chilean immigration to get stamped out then drove us 45minutes to the Bolivian border to get stamped into Bolivia and to have breakfast. The altitude rose from 2700 in SP to 4500m at the Bolivian border - this sudden rise in altitude keeps giving me nosebleeds! At the border we were told that we'd be split into groups of 6 and continue the trip in Toyota Landcruisers. On the minibus that morning Ben and I had made friends with a Spanish guy called Alex, I'd chatted to a couple of Australian girls called Grace and Irene and Ben had befriended a Swedish guy called Max so we quickly formed into a group of 6 to avoid being stuck with anyone else! They were all really cool and our group got on so well, you spend a lot of time together so getting a good group was essential! Our driver was called Ifran; he had the most random car soundtrack ever and spoke absolutely no English so Alex had to act as translator for the whole trip. Ifran would pipe up every half hour or so with a speech about our surroundings in Spanish which always started with "Ok Chicos!" There are no roads across the dessert that leads to the salt flats and Ifran would often go what seemed like the bumpiest and most "off road" route available - the Landcruiser could drive over anything, some of the rocks it went over looked like they could flip the jeep! The desert isn't actually sand, it's grey dust and dirt mixed with shingle and rocks.
During the first day we visited Laguna Blanca (only 60cm deep), Laguna Verde (which is transparent until the wind blows and disturbs the sediment making it green), the Red Lagoon (named because of the algae that turns the water red, it is inhabited by thousands of flamingos and lots of lamas) and saw the rocks which inspired Salvador Dali on his trip across the Salar de Uyuni 50 years ago.
Our first nights accommodation was in a hostel in the middle of the desert with no showers or signal - as basic as it gets! We stayed in a dorm with our gang and spent most of the time sat around in the dining room drinking wine and chatting with the other group on our tour which was made up of 3 Germans and 2 French guys who were hilarious. The French guy was completely underwhelmed by the flamingos and told us he just wanted to "see a f***ing rabbit" I.e the marsupial rabbit that lives in the desert!
On the second day we got up at 7am for breakfast and left at 7:30. We visited the stone tree (rocks formed into a tree shape), saw the 7 coloured rocks and an active volcano, saw LOADS of flamingos and stopped at a shop to buy quinoa and coca beer (the quinoa one was ok but they are really gassy!) The second nights accommodation was a double room in a hostel made of salt. The food was really good throughout the trip and this evening we had soup followed by chicken and chips. Met a couple of vets called Jennie and Janine who were really fun and gave us lots of tips on where to go out in La Paz.
On the final day we got up at 3:30am and left at 4am to get to the salt flats for sunrise. When we arrived onto the salt flats it was getting light and we headed for an island right in the middle covered by cacti. We climbed to the top and got there just in time for the sunrise at 5:30. It was amazing to be there so early and watch the sunrise over the weirdest landscape I've ever seen! We had breakfast back down in the car park and then had some time to go walking on the salt flats. The ground is perfectly formed into hexagons of salt and when you walk on it it's really crunchy. We took lots of silly pictures with the gang and wandered around for ages marvelling at how spectacular the view is - the flats are [1200km squared]! It was a clear sky and really sunny, perfect weather. After leaving the salt flats we drove to a train cemetery (which was slightly cooler than it sounds) and then finished our trip in Uyuni. This trip was the highlight of our travels for me so far, it was high on my list of things to see and didn't disappoint. Another thing ticked off the bucket list!!