Woke up at 4 am, the boys barely able to open their eyes, our Icelander sleep walking. The funny thing about him is that we saw a completely different side of him on our trip. He has bronchitis and has been injecting himself daily with antibiotics, so can't blame him for being moody but it got to a point that the driver and cook (and me) were actually scared of him because he was so grumpy and pretty much refused to smile for 4 days!
Anyhow, we left at 4:15 am and headed towards our final destination - Salar de Uyuni. It was freezing cold so I had my zillion layers on as usual. After about 45 minutes we got to the Salar and since it had rained, it had about 2-3 inches of water covering it. We drove onto this and the view was stunning. It's just salt flats for miles and miles ahead of you, the ground has the honeycomb effect and covered by water the reflection of the sky was pretty insane. We drove slowly through the water just taking it all in for about 30 minutes, watching the sun rise. Then we stopped in the middle of the nowhere on the Salar at the historic salt hotel for breakfast and pictures. Walking on the lake felt so weird since it looks like ice and snow, but is SALT!
We began our picture taking, we'd had some great ideas and even brought props along, but we hadn't practised actually taking the pictures so we have a number of flops! We also do have some great ones, I can't wait to get to a place where we can actually upload all the pictures as they're stuck on the camera still.
On the way back, the boys decided to sit on top of the jeep and they were having a blast. I sat inside (too cold) listening to Filippe's same Spanish cd that I've now learnt the words to 2 songs. At the edge of the Salar we stopped again for pictures and saw a memorial for 5 Japanese, 5 Israelis and 3 Bolivians so we asked Fillippe what that was about. Turns out, in 2008 two jeeps full of tourists were driving on the Salar at high speeds and both the drivers fell asleep and the cars crashed. Since they all carry a gas cylinder for cooking on the top of the car, the cars exploded killing everyone. This was so shocking to hear as the salar is huuuuge, it's like a giant desert and you can drive anywhere, and we wondered how it was even possible for them to crash, but it happened and it was very sobering to think about it. It is absolutely vital to pick a good agency to do the tour, and that's why we started from Tupiza as the agencies have a much better reputation than those from Uyuni. Thanks to La Torre Tours for delivering us safely.
It was a really amazing sight to see the salt flats. I am so so so glad that Bernie wanted to see this because on my own I didn't think it was worth it. The whole tour, not just the Salar is the best thing I've ever seen in my life. I'd 100% recommend this to anyone traveling through Bolivia.
