30th December

We headed to the bus station around 8pm the night before & were relieved to find our tickets were all in order & by 9pm were on a very nice bus heading to South Bolivia.
Over the next 36 hours we would cover over 1100km for the 7hours on the Salt Flats. Once aboard we were informed that the last 150km (100miles) of our journey was unpaved and incredibly bumpy, nice.

For a bus journey I slept pretty well & by the time I was fully awake at 6am we were quite a way through the desert road. The surrounding land was all rock with the occasional patches of grass that Lama's would graze on. The rivers were all dried up, which made me wonder when they'd ever see water, as we were currently in the rainy season. Hell, the amazon had plenty of water and that was only a few hundred miles away (or a thousand).
Our bus puilled to a stop in downtown Uyuni (uni), a small town in the middle of the desert surviving nicely on the coachloads of backpackers arriving every day to see the biggest Salt Flats known to mankind. The time was only 7:30am and our tour wasn't scheduled to start till 10:30. A tour rep picked us up and walked us across one side of town to the other, only a couple of blocks, and took us to the companies office. We´d left our mamoth bags in La Paz & seeing everyone struggle made me smile inside as I knew I'd made the right choice. We breakfasted in the town square at a outdoor cafe, dining on fried egg sandwhiches and tea. The weather was perfect, hot but not too bad and the sky was cloudless.
We set off in our 4x4 wondering if the two of us would be the only ones on our tour. It soon became evident our driver didn't speak any English at all & all of a sudden we realized we had neglected to find out if we'd have an English guide.
After 20 minutes our driver dropped us off by a few stalls, mumbled something in Spanish about 15 minutes back here and sped off in to the distance. It was safe to say both of us had no idea what was going on! 25 minutes later as we walked around a shanty town confused and ignoring the ladies trying to flog us crap, a jeep appeared. We assumed it wasn't ours as the driver stared at us blankly and 3 Japanese people sat in the van. After much confusion it emerged the Japanese guy spoke Spanish, his sister in law spoke English and between them they could translate what was going on. It also was our van. The driver just seemed to be a divvy.
We ventured forth to a salt refinery where they process the salt ready to sell. 15kg sells for about £1.50, so naturally they pushed you for tips.
From the small town we drove to the edge of the salt flats. Due to the rainy season the salt was covered in water to ankle height, stretching as far into the distance as you could see. Piles of salt poked above the water looking like the tips of icebergs in a frozen sea. The clear blue skies met the White salt far far in the distance uninterrupted by any signs of civilization. It's beautiful in a way that's hard to put into words, pictures describe it better and I took plenty. One of the natural wonders of the world ticked off. We drove through miles of salt under water and eventually reached the drier plains. Occasionally we would stop for more pictures from a different view point. By 1pm we reached 'Incahuasi island', a small island of earth, rock and giant cactuses in the middle of the vast expanse of salt. Me & Jen ambled along taking pictures of cactuses up to 12 metres high! After a lunch of lama an local veg it was a long drive back to Uyuni. I can't explain how awesome they are. Just wait for my pictures and go yourself.