We travelled far south 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 world's largest salt flat at 3653m altitude and 12000 meters square. The salt is the remains of Lago Minchin which covered most of Bolivia. We were really buzzing to get to Uyuni as not only are we planning a three day tour of salt flats, flamingos, cacti and train graveyards, we get to do all of it with our great friend Chris White. Chris has been bike touring for now 18 months coming all the way along the west coast from Calgary, Canada.

We arriving to Uyuni really early morning, the town looks extremely vast and empty, barely a soul around and nothing open. With the help of Chris' directions we make it to the hostel tired and stinky and not only are we in the same hostel as Chris he is lucky enough to be our next door neighbour.

After a few hours of rest we knock on for Chris and catch up over some coffee in the bright sunshine down a small local cafe, so good to see him finally! Uyuni in tiny, consisting of only a few short streets and a square, all white paved, sunny but still quite fresh and later quite cold. Missing Chris' birthday by a few days we plan a belated birthday brew or two that evening, yes! the evening before we start our tour, always a wise idea!

We sat outside sipping our way through six large bottles of local beer (I hate beer but it was surprisingly drinkable) and chat rubbish for a good five hours. With a little help from the booze, we hear most of Chris' stories three times over; good job they are good ones! and watch him be-friend every stray dog that walked by naming each one Dave. Locals here can be quite cruel to the strays so when they find a kind travelling friend the dogs can get quite attached and also protective. After Chris and 'Dave' bonded for a couple hours over a beer any local that would walk buy would get a severe howling at, and if approached to closely a bite on the leg! I kid you not. Besides being protective Dave's actions it was a good night out. Good to see he is getting on well and great to have a catch up with a familiar face.