Uyuni is a strange little town, there's not much there to speak of , just a little town in the desert. We got off the coach and were immediately approached by a guy selling trips to the salt lakes. Having been on another over nighter we were a bit bewildered and wandered about trying to find the local banos (loo) and the salt lake guy kept following us. Eventually we gave in and he led us into his little shop. All around the walls were testimonials and recommendations for his trip, 'Alfonso Tours'... strangely enough, all in the same hand writing, his, which we recognised once we signed the agreement forms! Anyway he offered us a price at the bus station which we then reminded him of at the desk..he said " OK, I will keep this price for you but its a secret!...OK?.... We waited for his 4 wheel drive to turn up , got in then whizzed around the corner to pick up the others on the tour. They were an English couple, Carla and Oliver and an American guy called Scott, a Chillean guy called Eduardo and another, very quite girl who did introduce herself but I didnt quite catch her name. As soon as they got in the car they introduced themselves then said " how much did you pay for the trip?, we told them (terrible at keeping secrets us!) and it turned out that they had paid three times as much. They had been told they would get an english speaking guide but when we asked the driver/guide any question about the trip, all we got was a Manuel, from Fawlty Towers type answer..'que'!....although I'm sure he came from Uyuni, not Barcelona!...anyway , this was clearly the reason why the great 'Alfonso' wanted us to keep his big secret!..what a big Bolivian rip off merchant!!

Anyway the first stop on the trip was in the middle of the desert..no salt but it was strewn with dead locomotives and train coaches left over from the last century, slowly rotting away in the dust and cacti in the middle of the desert....quite sad really, these trains were used when mining was big business in the area but now these once powerful monsters had been left to rust away..on the plus side though they made brilliant climbing frames! so after we had chimped about on the dead trains for a while we headed on towards the salt plains.

Now to be truthful I was nt expecting anything spectacular from this trip . I had seen the salt plains in Tunisia and yes, they were lovely but when all said and done I thought one big salt plain was much like the other just more salty...how wrong I was..the salt plains in Bolivia 'The Salar de Uyuni' are the world's biggest salt flats, made up of approximately 10bn tonnes of salt, with a cracked surface that forms natural hexagons which then glisten and sparkle in the sunlight. It serves as the major transport route across the Bolivian Altiplano and is a major breeding ground for several species of pink flamingos, (thankyou Wikipaedia!) although we didnt see any of them, that would have meant a three day trip which we just felt might be too much salt! If you go to Google earth you can see these salt plains from space, thats how big they are...amazing!! I could see, as far as the snow-capped Andes in the distance, the sun was shining the sky was beautifully deep blue and the contrast with the pure white salt was incredible and actually so striking, sunglasses had to be worn, otherwise a kind of snow blindness set in, I took my sunnies off at one point and it was quite painful. It played havoc with your senses too...I kept expecting it to be freezing cold beacuse your brain tells you that amount of white stuff laying on the floor must be snow or ice...a very weird sensation!

At lunch our non english speaking, english speaking driver pulled up at a table and chairs made of salt and pulled out some luke warm meat from a cool box. It turned out to be llama so I declined and just had the tomatoes, Ray of course went for it. After lunch the seven of us wandered off onto the plains to take some very silly photos. Scott had bought along a plastic dinosaur which we all proceeded to do battle with. Trying to get the perspective right with the dinosaur was tricky so we moved onto the classic holding a person in the palm of your hand shot, the balancingon one foot on a can of red bull shot and then of course the obligatory leaping into the air as one shot (the affect was that we looked like we were being abducted by aliens..hee hee)....much fun was had by all!

On the way back the llama fought back and Ray started to feel quite ill..as a result, many of the Ray photos were of him lying down in the salt holding his tummy!! Yay...his turn to be poorly this time...out with the Imodium again!!

We left the salt plains and headed back to Uyuni. We decided not to stay there and got the night train out this time and headed towards Tupiza, another desert town but with a far more interesting history. This was the place where the story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid took place...so we headed off to be cowboys for a bit..(please see photo section above)