31/05/09 Potosi to Uyuni. The journey took six hours, but I was glued to the window almost the entire time; the scenery was so endlessly diverting that there wasn't a chance of getting bored. A journey of only six hours is a piece of cake for us now in any case, at this stage of our travels! The Bolivian altiplano really is extremely beautiful. We passed by mountain peaks with snow on, narrow sparkling streams, grassy hills, dusty plains, red rocky outcrops, tiny villages made of mud bricks with thatched or corrugated iron roofs (with half the buildings falling down and another quarter being rebuilt)... at one point we passed through a massive plain which had a lake in part of it; it had a flock of flamingoes drinking at the edge, but unfortunately my camera batteries chose that exact moment to fail, and the spare ones were packed away in my big bag, out of reach! I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but Bolivia has an very high level of indigenous people who wear their native dress as part of everyday life, and we passed several of these locals, as well as locals of a different type -llamas! We stopped once for people to stretch their legs, and I got several pictures of the llamas.
We arrived at Uyuni earlier than expected, between 4 and 5 pm. It was very cold. Although nowhere near the actual Antarctic, Uyuni reminded me of how I've pictured a town near Antarctica to be like; very wide, cobbled streets, a crisp air, quiet, no high rises, and the streets leading out into the wide empty space surrounding the town. Our group tried to go to a restaurant which apparently has the best pizza in Bolivia, but it was closed., so we went to another pizza place instead.
We were told that there was going to be a strike starting the next day, but we should be OK leaving for the salt flats because at that point the strikers will just be sorting out all the details.

1/6/09 Today was spent exploring the salt flats; they were brilliant, just as much as I had always imagined. It was very sunny throughout, though a bit cold, and because of the glare of the white salt, my glasses changed to sunglasses mode almost the moment I stepped out of the truck each time. It's a surreal and beautiful sight, to see whiteness as far as the eye can see (apart from isolated mountains in some places) and realise that it's all salt, not snow or ice. In some places the salt came with crusts in hexagon shapes, tessalating all the way to the horizon. We visited an island in the middle covered in cacti, which gave us an even better view. We had lunch here, and then had another couple of hours to take photos and look round the base. Earlier, we couldn't visit the salt refinery because it was closed due to the strike, but we saw all the salt pyramids nearby, which they set up as part of the process of refining. We also visited the salt hotel which is right in the middle of the flats; nobody is allowed to stay there anymore because of the danger of pollution, so we just looked round.
We stayed the night at another salt hotel, one of several round the edge of the flats. It wasn't quite what I had expected, because although the walls, pillars, beds and tables were made of bricks made of salt, they weren't pure white like I had thought. It was still a great novelty though! In the evening we all played cards, did our diaries or read, and had some drinks; Charlotte, taught me a new two-person card game called 'Speed' - it's really fun. For the past 8 months Dave and I had been tied to whist, blackjack and 7- and 10- card rummy, cardwise, so I was glad of something new! In larger groups we also played Uno and a game called S***head.

2/6/09 Today we visited several places - a smoking volcano with snow on the top (we only got a long-distance view of this because it's actually in Chile), two normal but half frozen lakes with flamingoes in (too far away to take good photos of, unfortunately), two red lakes with more flamingoes - in one of them they were right by the edge, so I got some good pictures; I was really pleased - some red mountainous desert-like landscapes with no vegetation at all, and some strange rock formations.
The night was spent at another salt hotel. Like in the last one, there was no heating at all, not even in the bedrooms, apart from a Victorian-looking iron pipe stove in the dining area of each. It was so extremely cold after dark that what heat the stoves did give out, could only be felt within about a foot radius of it. The first night it was about -7 degrees, and the second, it was between -10 and -15 degrees! The salt flats are only about 200m lower than Potosi, the geysers were 600m above, and the rest were inbetween. Neraly everybody slept with their clothes on, for the warmth.

3/6/09 A very early start today, at 5.30. We were going to visit some geysers first, and they are best seen at night. They were all in a completely natural setting; in Rotorua they've built walkways next to them and fenced them off, but here there was none of that. We'd got up before sunrise to view them better, and it was so, so cold that the moment I took my gloves off to take some photos, my fingers turned into iceblocks. I managed to thaw them out by holding them in the steam from one small geyser, though. Then we moved on to the hot springs; it was very surreal to see the steaming hot springs snaking through grass covered in frost, and with frozen pools next to it. Only Chris swam, because of the cold, but Dave and I put our feet in. It was daylight by now. We had breakfast here before going on to a green lake, which wasn't very green, and some more rock formations.
I've forgotten now where we had lunch, but by mid-afternoon we had arrived at the town of San Cristobal. We had to wait a long time here because we had heard that the strikers had set up roadblocks and were preventing anyone from entering Uyuni. Eventually we got the word that we would continue and see if we could make it back that evening.
Our journey back into to Uyuni was a tense adventure, because our drivers had to basically smuggle us back in to avoid the strikers seeing us and them. They must know the surrounding countryside like the back of their hands, because in order to avoid the roadblocks they drove with all their lights off, and turned off the main dirt road and drove around the flat treeless countryside in the dark. Every now and then our trucks stopped and the drivers all got out and had a quick word together before driving on. It was very brave of the drivers because if we had been stopped by a roadblock, apparently our trucks' tyres would have been slashed and the drivers would have been in trouble. I think the rest of us would have been OK; we would just have been forced to walk the rest of the way into the town. At one point we saw a couple of lights ahead on the road, and it turned out to be a couple of guys with a torch and a bicycle; they stopped the truck ahead of us, but after a while they let it and our other trucks carry on. Once we had got back to the hotel, we found out the full story - apparently one of the two men made that truck's driver get out, got in himself, and drove on; they must have been sympathisers, because before he got in he had told the other drivers that they had to find another way into town because on the track we were on, we would have come across a roadblock. Unfortunately he didn't explain any of what was going on to the others in the truck, so they were a bit alarmed at having their driver disappearing and a stranger jumping in! I don't think anybody but the drivers in any of the trucks knew exactly what was going on the whole time, apart form that we were avoiding roadblocks and thus driving along in high secrecy. Due to this, once we turned off the main road and we realised the seriousness of the situation, everybody was tense and barely said a word. I was sitting in the front seat, and I think I'll always remember sitting there silently, watching the lights of Uyuni shining in the midst of the surrounding darkness ahead, seeing The Plough in the sky directly above the town, and hoping we wouldn't come across a roadblock or other groups of strikers. We were all very relieved firstly when we drove into Uyuni via a back road and then when we arrived at our hotel - when our truck came to a halt with the others, I could almost feel the tension dissolving!
We had to pay for the night, because there was no way the bus to La Paz was going to leave that evening.