Salt flats & 3 day 4wd tour

Yesterday we completed our 3 day trip in toyota land cruisers 0 we had an amazing time. I wish I could upload some photos to show you but the Internet connection is v v slow here in Bolivia!

Our first day was on the massive salt flats themselves. As there´s been so much rain here recently the flats are under a few inches of water so we ´paddled´on the salt flats. It´s difficult to describe what it feels like to be on the salt flats - telling you that they are large and flat and white doesn´t really sound that inspiring. If you are interested I suggest you google ´uyuni salt flat´and look at some images. What had a beautiful warm sunny day out there, took some funny photos and ate a traditional bolivian lunch (i think it was llama steaks) in a hotel made entirely of salt - including all the tables and chairs. On the way back i rode on the top of our land cruiser - it was great being able to see the panoramic view.

On the next couple of days we travelled around this part of Bolivia on very, very rough tracks - actually, sometimes we were hardly following tracks at all. We went through water, up steep inclines and over rocks - it reminded me being with brother Rob when he was off roading!

The whole area was desloate, apart from the occasionally village of a few mud houses in the middle of nowhere and a few llamas. The scenery was quite spectacular though. We were taken to a wide variety of lakes - red, aquamarine, black, white and others, some with flamingos and Indian geese. We saw plenty of llamas and all the time we were in view of snow capped mountains. We were also taken to some really weird rock formations and bubblig geysers.

My favourite part of this tour was when we were bathing in a lovely hot mineral pool, overlooking a beautiful lake, with snow capped mountains behind and llamas grazing alongside. It was idyllic - until we had to get out, because the outdoor temperature was v cold!

The highest point we reached was 5400m -  that is v v high, but fortunately I haven´t really suffered too much with altitude sickness. Just the occasional mild headache and feeling the lack of oxygen when walking uphill (i was never good at going uphill even at sea level!)

On the trip we stayed in very simple hostels, with shared rooms and no showers. So we were all glad to get back to Uyuni and a warm bed and hot showers.

This was a spectacular and very memorable part of the trip.