27/6/09 Potosi to Uyuni

We travelled to Uyuni via the desolate Bolivian landscape and pretty rough roads. Uyuni is a town on the edge of Salar de Uyuni which is the worlds largest salt flat at 3653m altitude and 12000 meters square. The salt is the remains of Lago Minchin which covered most of Bolivia. We dropped off our laundry and went to the internet cafes to try and do our blog as we were a bit behind. The first three cafes had really slow connections and it took over 10 minutes for Phil to open his emails...lots of expletives later we finally found a nice fast band cafe!! For the next two hours we were entering the text and photos. Liz pressed save and all her typed text disappeared in an instant....lots of more expletives later and having had to repeat all the typing again in the freezing temperatures of Uyuni, we finally finished (hope you are all appreciating our efforts..its not been easy and we would rather have a beer!!). We were too late to join the others for tea so we went to what turned out to be the coldest resturant on earth. The owners were huddled round a heater but insisted on opening all the doors while we sat shivering!! Not a great day !!

28/6/09 Uyuni HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAMO xx HAPPY ANNIVERSARY A JUDE AND U MAC X

We set out early for a visit to the Salar de Uyuni and on the way out to the salt flats we stopped to visit the Cemeterio de Trenes (cemetry for locomotives) . The locomotives are all disused retired engines from mining hey days of the 1800's. They were used to transport silver ore to the Pacific coast where it was shipped to Spain. One of the trains is reputedly the one robbed by Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid who robbed a payroll train and hid out in Tupiza where they were eventually shot dead in a shoot out !! We stopped in a small settlement called Colchan where the salt is processed for use in Bolivia. Tha salt is hand processed and we were shown a demonstration of how the bags were hand sealed using a lit gas bottle. There were various little stalls selling some salt goods and we picked up a few before rejoining the vehicles to drive further into the salt flats. The landscape looked just like a snow or sand desert with crazy paving patterns and endless white as far as you could see. We drove for an hour to Isla dos Pescadores (fish island) where we had lunch. The island is a rock hill in the salt flats which is covered in hundreds of huge ancient cacti, the oldest of which is 1000yrs old. They grow 1 metre over each 100yrs and they make a really impressive sight against the blue sky and dazzling white backdrop of the salt flats. The salt flats are a popular tourist destination because you are able to take some funny pictures playing with perspective. We all headed out to the salt flat to take some pictures of us standing on top of giant beer bottles, inside shoes, sitting on each others handsetc, really good fun and you can see the results in the album. We ended the visit with a look at the sunset in the salt hotel. The hotel is now run as a museum as legally this stops them having to take the temporary structure down as salt buildings aren't permanent in law !! The entire building and all the furniture is made of salt and you can stay in hotels made of salt if you could stand the freezing temperatures out there. We took some more photos of us as our shadows made us look really gangly. We went to the highest Pizza shop in the world for dinner and after a fill of delicious pizza went off to bed after a great day.

Hope you all had a great day celebrating Da's Birthday and then Wedding Anniversary, we had a drink for you xxx