I arranged my salt flats tour in La Paz joining with 3 others I'd met in my hostel, we were due to start at 10am on the 10th of Feb so booked a bus that would get us in to Uyuni at 6am - 4 hours to spare - no problems! The road between La Paz and Uyuni is notoriously bad, apparently the worst road journey in South America, and obviously as we were travelling in the rainy season it would be even worse but I was optimistic - I shouldn't have been - it was a fairly abysmal journey - what's most frustrating isn't that the bus was 7 hours late (yes that is 7 hours - on top of an 11 hour journey making it a fantastic 18 hours - although I guess I should have been well used to it!!) it's that the reason isn't the horrendous road (that did cause some minor delay), the bus just kept stopping - I think there was some engine trouble but the bus just stood still for a few hours a couple of times!!!

Anyway we arrived in to Uyuni around 1, the tour company were there to meet us - they said the trip could still run - we just had to wait for another 2 people to decide if they still wanted to go! We left around 2 o'clock for the Uyuni salt flats - the largest salt pan in the world and one of the most highly recommended attractions in South America. Again because it's rainy season it's not possible to access all of the flats and they don't have their amazing dry white infinite effect - they do however produce a mirror effect which makes them equally as stunning - this does however rely on sunlight and a blue sky - this is not what we had - we has a grey sky and it was raining - so the number one attraction of the tour was a massive let down - it was still awesome to see but I was disappointed.

We returned to Uyuni to spend the night as it was too late to carry on to the next destination. The following morning we got up and continued on the tour. We stopped first at some cool rock formation including one that looks like a condor - when I heard this I had flashbacks to Machu Pichu - fortunately this condor was less elusive! From here we carried on stopping to see some stunning lakes, some with flamingos, some with really stunning backdrops of snow-capped mountains. The scenery was really dramatic and spectacular - in between these stunning lakes and mountains the land was arid and desolate but then these impressive sites appear from nowhere! It's also amazing that all this scenery is in the same mountain range as my treks in Peru and Ecuador - the Andes certainly deliver a wealth of stunning scenery. We stopped again at some more really cool rock formations - one of them looked like Fred Flintstone's house which I really liked. The second day finished with a visit to Laguna Colorada. A stunning red lake, it turns red when it is stimulated by sunlight, It was really cool, it was also full of Flamingos, it was a really nice way to end a good day. From here we travelled to the refuge where we would spend the night it was pretty cold but we played cards, drank wine and passed the time pretty easily!

Day 3 of the tour was a very early start, first of all we visited some geysers which were pretty cool to see although it was pretty cold. We then went to a hot spring, getting changed to get in was cold but we powered through and were rewarded with lovely hot water and a stunning view of a lake full of flamingos surrounded by stunning mountains -so definitely worth it! From here we travelled to Laguna verde - this was probably my favourite of the stops - it was beautiful, the colour of the lake, the amazing backdrop of a snow capped volcano, it really was awesome.

I had decided to visit San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, it's only an hour over the border and I wouldn't be returning this far north again. So I was dropped at the Bolivian border where I got my passport stamped (they managed to extort 15 Bolivianos for the privilege) and went outside to wait the half an hour for my transfer bus to Chile to arrive. However the Chileans had closed their borders due to the threat of snow, this made me rather angry as surely there is some snow here all the time. I must say that the guides who were there and the border officials were particularly unhelpful in my hour of need - in the end though we were reassured that a bus would definitely come but it would take a while so nothing for it but to throw on the thermals and wait it out - luckily there were some others there to help pass the time so we played some more cards! The bus finally rocked up and we headed to Chile.