Salar De Uyuni Trip - Day One

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Last Thursday we took a bus from Potosi to Uyuni. Bolivia is such a barren country. There was some spectacular rock formations and colours, but no people for almost the entire 6 hour journey. There were lots of animals though - llamas, donkeys, etc. It was quite a bumpy journey as there wasn't any tarmac on the roads, but we got to Uyuni on time and in one piece.
There are a huge number of companies in Uyuni who offer the same salt flats tour so we went to a place run by a gringo, who ranks them all from customer feedback forms. Having got a list of six or so good companies (in theory), we booked up a three day, two night trip to take us across the salt flats, into the national park and then into Chile.
Friday morning, filled up with a nice breakfast of American pancakes, we arrived at the company to find a man arguing a lot with the owner. A while later a jeep finally arrived to take us on our trip. We found out that the arguing man was a photographer on government business and had been put onto our trip because of a cock up organising him a private trip. So instead of an almost comfortable six people in the jeep, we were to have seven. It was quite a tight squeeze on the back row.
We had some nice people to share the jeep with. Tom and Vicky from England, Stu and Mark from Oz, but living in Edinburgh, and Peter the photographer from Bolivia and Chile and Germany and Canada!
Our first day was amazing. The first site was the train graveyard, just outside of the town. Lots of rusting old trains to look at. After that we came to a small village. The people who live there are the only people allowed to mine the salt from the flats. They dig it up into little piles and then put their initials on the top so that they know which family it belongs to. The village wasn't very interesting, but a llama did spit at Chris, which was very mean.
Next stop was the salt hotel. It's no longer allowed for people to stay on the salt flats in this hotel, but you can look at the tables etc made from salt. On the way to the Isla Incahuasi, we had to stop so that the driver could change our tyre. We were actually quite pleased because the salt flats are so beautiful, and in that particular area there were lots of hexagonal formations covering the surface. We had to keep reminding ourselves throughout the trip that it was salt, and not snow or ice.
The Incahuasi island was extremely cool, with giant cacti growing all over it. Apparently the tallest one is 12metres. We had some llama steaks and quinoa for lunch and then played around with the camera trying to get good pictures due to the lack of perspective. It almost worked!
That was the end of our sightseeing for the day and we drove along the lovely smooth salt to our hotel. We were very lucky (probably beacuse of our govenment photographer) and were the only people staying in the salt hotel just beyond the salt flats. It was fun. Everything was made from blocks of salt, beds, tables, seats, walls etc.
Whilst we were having a cup of tea and biscuits or a beer the young girl that lived in the hotel hinted heavily that she wanted up to play basketball, so a few of us went outside and played with them. It was good fun. I was on the Chica team, who won! We had a small advantage of not having beers in our hands and the little girls did employ some tickling and grabbing tactics. Basketball is quite hard work at 3800m. After dinner we played some cards and then went outside to look at the amazing sky. With very little light pollution we could see heaps of stars and an Incan Giant Llama in the milky way.