It's hard to imagine places where it is so isolated that there is nothing man-made in sight, and we were lucky enough to experience this for 4 days driving in a 4x4. The salt flats themselves are really just the icing on the cake - Bolivia is a beautiful country and every day of the tour was packed with incredible sights. We began the tour in Tupiza, where we had excellent luck in joining a group that was leaving the following morning with an English speaking guide. From what we read, it is better to start the tour in Tupiza rather than Uyuni because you have the opportunity to see more of the beautiful scenery along the way, rather than beginning the tour in Uyuni and looping back around to Uyuni to finish. Especially because you probably want to spend as little time as possible in Uyuni. It's a dirty town with nothing going for it except being the start or end point for the salt flats tour.

The first thing we considered was the altitude. Rianna gets a little obsessive about researching what is to come, so we came prepared with anti-nausea tablets and ibuprofen as our defence against altitude sickness. The general advice is to ascend slowly so you can adjust to the altitude, however this is impossible with the tour from Tupiza which takes you from 3200m to 5000m in one day. Either we were both really lucky or our concoction of medicine worked, because the worst we experienced of the altitude was a bit of a headache and slight nausea.

Highlights of the tour -

- - Lots of alpacas and llamas :) These are not wild animals but they are let free during the day. They are all tagged by their owners though.

- - Cool rock formations

- - Red sandy desert

- - Mountains! Sandy and snow-capped

- - Volcanoes

- - Old ruins

- - Coloured lakes - one red and one green. Our guide told us that the lakes are coloured because of the algae in the water, and this is also what gives flamingoes their colour (they eat the algae).

- - Natural hot springs. Soo nice and relaxing amongst the mountains.

- - Boiling geysers. Despite the smell of sulphur, it was really cool. It looks like thick grey paint boiling from the ground. And at such high altitude!

- - The night sky! We had some really clear nights with sooo many stars. Lovely.

On the last day we left the hostel at 5am to see the sunrise over the salt flats. It was really cold before the sun rose and it felt like we were on the snow rather than salt. The salt flats are an incredible 12 000 square kilometres of pure white salt. It used to be an ocean but the land has now risen to about 4000m above sea level due to the movement of tectonic plates. The salt flats are also fun because you can take cool trick photographs, and our guide and driver were really enthusiastic about this! See photos!