Salar De Uyuni Trip - Days Two & Three

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We had a surprisingly good night's sleep in our salt bed. It was quite comfy and we were snug in our sleeping bags with blankets on top. We got up at 5am for breakfast before driving back out to the salt flats to see the sunrise. It was really quite cold, but worth it for the array of colours. The sky around the sun was oranges and yellows, and opposite, the mountains were pinks, reds and purples. We also had a lot of fun with our unbelievably long shadows!
Unfortunately from that point the trip went significantly downhill. We'd read some bad things about the trip, but they mostly involved the cold and bad, irresponsible drivers. They didn't mention the very long drives on very bumpy ground. Luckily we'd done our stint on the back seat on the day of the smooth salt flats so were a bit more comfortable than those on the back seat, but even so, it was dusty and quite boring. We had a look at a volcano and then drove to various lakes where flamingos like to hang out. It's quite cool, because they're not that pink because there's not so much of the algae in those waters that makes them go pink.
Sometime after lunch we had our second flat tyre. Fortunately, the jeep carries two spares, so we were quickly on our way to the weird rocks. They have been shaped by the wind and sand into some odd shapes.The most famous of which is supposed to look like a tree. Our last sight of the day was the Laguna Colorada. The Laguna was a quite impressive reddish brown colour, but by that time of the day it was freezing cold so we didn't want to look at it for long.
Our hotel for that night wasn't great. We were in a dorm room together and you had to leave the relative warmth of the building to got to the bathroom. We played more cards until we thought the electricity was going to be turned off (9pm) and then were warm in our sleeping bags with balnkets again.

It was another early start so that we could get to the geysers for sunrise. It was horrible though because there was no electricity, so we had to do everything by torch light.
Our driver had done his best to fix the tyre that had gone the day before so we had a spare to put on when a tyre fell off as we were driving along. Luckily we weren't going very fast because our clutch wasn't working and we couldn't get above 2nd gear!!
The geysers were nice and steamy but it was stupidly cold at almost 5000 metres. The plan was to go on to the natural hot baths but our car just wasn't road worthy. We lost another tyre about 500 metres after the geysers, and with no spares left we were stuck in the freezing cold desert until someone else drove past. We were just about to drive on the rim when another jeep came along and kindly lent us their spare. It was hilarious because their tyre had tread, so it almost didn't fit our crappy jeep.
Not much further along, another tyre went and we were starting to worry that we wouldn't reach the border in time, as the buses only go between 10am and 11am. After that there's no way across. Luckily another jeep lent us a tyre and rather than visiting the hot baths we drove straight to the border with a quick stop off at the Laguna Verde, which wasn't very green but did have nice mountain reflections in it.

We made it to the border without losing any more tyres and caught a bus to Chile. Tom, Vicky and Peter were headed back to Uyuni so went in some different jeeps, but we couldn't believe it when our driver managed to 'fix' the tyres and put a new load of people in the jeep for a tour back in the other direction! We hope they made it, but doubt they did.
On that note, there were some crosses in the salt flats where a group of Argentinians had got lost during the rainy season and then when they broke down had tried to walk out but never made it. The crosses were really close to the edge.

So all in all we wouldn't recommend the salar trip to anyone past the first day, which was great. The companies in Uyuni have lowered their prices so much that they can't keep their vehicles maintained properly, and their drivers get two pounds a day. We tipped him big because we felt so bad for him having to drive such a rubbish vehicle and get on his hands and knees constantly to keep it running.