We were up early the next morning and headed out to the jeep after breakfast. We were joined on the tour by two Belgian girls, Isabelle and Caroline. They were lovely and we all got on really well over the trip.
The first day we travelled through rough terrain but it was rough for the majority of the trip anyway. There were some spectacular views of multi-coloured mountains and jagged rock formations. We also saw plenty of llamas, something which was to be a very familiar sight over the next few days.
We stopped off at a little village where Porfi, the cook who came with us, made us lunch. The food was great, she can really cook up a feast.
We had a lot of driving the first day, and our next stop after lunch was ruins of an old silver mining village, which has been abandoned. We passed by more spectacular mountains and plenty of wildlife, including birds called Huallata, more rheas and a vizcacha, which is a rabbit like animal.
Then we got back on the road to make it to our camp before dark. After several hours, we arrived at Quetena Chico, which was to be our home for the night. We got ourselves sorted in our room, our beds had many, many blankets as it gets very cold at night. We had a nice meal and a chat before heading to bed.
The following morning we headed off early. We were going to skip going to see laguna verde, a normal stop on the tour, as it is not green as the name suggests but brown, and far away, which freed up more time for walking about to take photos. So Niamh was sold.
We made our way to the snowy topped mountains and onto Lago Hedionda, which was a beautiful but smelly sulphur lake.
We then stopped at Kollpa Lago for a snowball fight with the other jeeps!
We stopped at hot springs where we went for a dip with great views. There was also a friendly baby llama which Emmet hugged.
We then visited some Geysers, no not the English type, the ones that bubble and spray steam out of the ground. It was at a really high altitude, well over 4000 metres.
That night we stayed in Hauyllajo. Sometimes they have as many as 120 jeeps pull up and everyone stays there. It was a nice spot and later Froy, our driver, brought us out to Laguna Colorada, a beautiful red lake to see flamingos. After, we went back and sat around playing cards before heading to bed.
The following morning we went to see Desierto de Siloli which is a place where there is a bunch of unusually shaped rocks. So we pulled up there for a while and took a few photos and then kept going. There were more flamingos to be seen, you see.
Our next stop was the beautiful reflective lake called Laguna Honda.
We pulled up to this lake which had a "hotel" beside it which was 90 US Dollars a night. It didn't look much and I'm certainly glad we were not paying those prices. On the plus side there were lots and lots of flamingos and these ones were relatively tame compared to the last lot that started to fly away as soon as they saw us pretty much, which didn't make for fantastic photos. What did make for fantastic photos were these tamer flamingos and Emmet's stealthy movements and fleetness of foot around where the flamingos were feeding, as he almost danced from mud flat to mud flat. At times it was even hard to tell him apart from them as he camouflaged himself amongst these elegant creatures of flight, particularly when he stood on only one of his incredibly skinny legs. Thankfully none of the flamingos had a camera, so detection of Emmet was still possible, if only just. Flintmingo one might say. He was able to capture some great shots. Too many as Niamh was to tell him, which was quite rich as she has probably taken five thousand pictures of some plant or chair in the time it took to write this.
So after some select photo editing, we moved on. Before we got to Uyuni, we stopped off at a beautiful lake called Laguna Negra with some more rock formations, had lunch and saw a mouse.
When we got back on the road we soon stopped again to see more rocks. Thank god, because we were all a bit concerned at that point that we just hadn't seen enough rocks. And this place was rocktastic. In fact, it is a place called The Valley of the Rocks. Sorted, right. When we got out, we climbed up the first bunch of rocks only to see a field of rocks. Like a huge field, massive, it went on for miles, except this huge field had rocks. To be honest, it was really cool. It looked amazing, so many different shapes and sizes. Emmet wanted to go climb lots of them but Niamh was having none of it. She had seen all the rocks she could handle for one day. So it was off to Uyuni.
When we arrived at the outskirts, we were quite shocked at how run down the place was. We had heard it was a bit of a kip and we have seen many dodgy looking places on our travels to date. And plenty in South America but this place stole the show. There was rubbish absolutely everywhere. When we got into the town itself, it wasn't much better. You would see people just open their front door and throw their rubbish onto the street, which just piled up with the rest of it. The road were completely in disrepair, you often had to drive on the opposite side of the road as some parts were that bad. Zero sense of pride for your home was clearly the attitude here. We understand that it is a poor country, but this is a town that has many tourists come through it every year, so there would be a certain amount of money floating about. I just can't understand how people would want to live like that but there you go. We did get to see a carnival parade though.
Later that evening we went out to a part of the salt flats to see the sunset. We started to take some photos and then stood there watching the sun go down. It was really nice. Well except for these two Asian tourists, a father and son, who decided to walk out into the water right in front of a line of people, including us of course, ready to take photos as the sun hit the horizon. So we began to shout at them to move so we could all enjoy it and have great shots, without two silhouettes in the middle. Muppets!
The following morning we got up at 4 something, I don't even remember as we just rose at the alarm and time did not compute at this point. We got ourselves fed and into the jeep and headed out to one of the salt hotels for the sun rise. It is a small hotel made out of salt on the salt flats. When the sun stared to rise and we started to warm up a little we started taking the stereotypical photos. They were pretty cool though and sure when in Rome and all that. After a bite to eat and a few cups of hot coffee, we walked out a bit further into the salt flats to take more photos. We got some great shots and we were all pretty happy with ourselves.
We headed back to the hostel in Uyuni and had lunch, said our goodbyes to the girls and made our way to the bus station to get the bus to Potosi, the highest city in the world.
The first day we travelled through rough terrain but it was rough for the majority of the trip anyway. There were some spectacular views of multi-coloured mountains and jagged rock formations. We also saw plenty of llamas, something which was to be a very familiar sight over the next few days.
We stopped off at a little village where Porfi, the cook who came with us, made us lunch. The food was great, she can really cook up a feast.
We had a lot of driving the first day, and our next stop after lunch was ruins of an old silver mining village, which has been abandoned. We passed by more spectacular mountains and plenty of wildlife, including birds called Huallata, more rheas and a vizcacha, which is a rabbit like animal.
Then we got back on the road to make it to our camp before dark. After several hours, we arrived at Quetena Chico, which was to be our home for the night. We got ourselves sorted in our room, our beds had many, many blankets as it gets very cold at night. We had a nice meal and a chat before heading to bed.
The following morning we headed off early. We were going to skip going to see laguna verde, a normal stop on the tour, as it is not green as the name suggests but brown, and far away, which freed up more time for walking about to take photos. So Niamh was sold.
 |
| Froy and Porfi |
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| Our jeep also had to do this |
We made our way to the snowy topped mountains and onto Lago Hedionda, which was a beautiful but smelly sulphur lake.
We then stopped at Kollpa Lago for a snowball fight with the other jeeps!
We stopped at hot springs where we went for a dip with great views. There was also a friendly baby llama which Emmet hugged.
We then visited some Geysers, no not the English type, the ones that bubble and spray steam out of the ground. It was at a really high altitude, well over 4000 metres.
That night we stayed in Hauyllajo. Sometimes they have as many as 120 jeeps pull up and everyone stays there. It was a nice spot and later Froy, our driver, brought us out to Laguna Colorada, a beautiful red lake to see flamingos. After, we went back and sat around playing cards before heading to bed.
The following morning we went to see Desierto de Siloli which is a place where there is a bunch of unusually shaped rocks. So we pulled up there for a while and took a few photos and then kept going. There were more flamingos to be seen, you see.
Our next stop was the beautiful reflective lake called Laguna Honda.
 |
| A Vicuna |
We pulled up to this lake which had a "hotel" beside it which was 90 US Dollars a night. It didn't look much and I'm certainly glad we were not paying those prices. On the plus side there were lots and lots of flamingos and these ones were relatively tame compared to the last lot that started to fly away as soon as they saw us pretty much, which didn't make for fantastic photos. What did make for fantastic photos were these tamer flamingos and Emmet's stealthy movements and fleetness of foot around where the flamingos were feeding, as he almost danced from mud flat to mud flat. At times it was even hard to tell him apart from them as he camouflaged himself amongst these elegant creatures of flight, particularly when he stood on only one of his incredibly skinny legs. Thankfully none of the flamingos had a camera, so detection of Emmet was still possible, if only just. Flintmingo one might say. He was able to capture some great shots. Too many as Niamh was to tell him, which was quite rich as she has probably taken five thousand pictures of some plant or chair in the time it took to write this.
 |
| A very graphic sign |
So after some select photo editing, we moved on. Before we got to Uyuni, we stopped off at a beautiful lake called Laguna Negra with some more rock formations, had lunch and saw a mouse.
When we got back on the road we soon stopped again to see more rocks. Thank god, because we were all a bit concerned at that point that we just hadn't seen enough rocks. And this place was rocktastic. In fact, it is a place called The Valley of the Rocks. Sorted, right. When we got out, we climbed up the first bunch of rocks only to see a field of rocks. Like a huge field, massive, it went on for miles, except this huge field had rocks. To be honest, it was really cool. It looked amazing, so many different shapes and sizes. Emmet wanted to go climb lots of them but Niamh was having none of it. She had seen all the rocks she could handle for one day. So it was off to Uyuni.
 |
| Finally got a picture of a llama with pink ears staring at the camera! |
 |
| Llama Crossing! |
When we arrived at the outskirts, we were quite shocked at how run down the place was. We had heard it was a bit of a kip and we have seen many dodgy looking places on our travels to date. And plenty in South America but this place stole the show. There was rubbish absolutely everywhere. When we got into the town itself, it wasn't much better. You would see people just open their front door and throw their rubbish onto the street, which just piled up with the rest of it. The road were completely in disrepair, you often had to drive on the opposite side of the road as some parts were that bad. Zero sense of pride for your home was clearly the attitude here. We understand that it is a poor country, but this is a town that has many tourists come through it every year, so there would be a certain amount of money floating about. I just can't understand how people would want to live like that but there you go. We did get to see a carnival parade though.
Later that evening we went out to a part of the salt flats to see the sunset. We started to take some photos and then stood there watching the sun go down. It was really nice. Well except for these two Asian tourists, a father and son, who decided to walk out into the water right in front of a line of people, including us of course, ready to take photos as the sun hit the horizon. So we began to shout at them to move so we could all enjoy it and have great shots, without two silhouettes in the middle. Muppets!
The following morning we got up at 4 something, I don't even remember as we just rose at the alarm and time did not compute at this point. We got ourselves fed and into the jeep and headed out to one of the salt hotels for the sun rise. It is a small hotel made out of salt on the salt flats. When the sun stared to rise and we started to warm up a little we started taking the stereotypical photos. They were pretty cool though and sure when in Rome and all that. After a bite to eat and a few cups of hot coffee, we walked out a bit further into the salt flats to take more photos. We got some great shots and we were all pretty happy with ourselves.
We headed back to the hostel in Uyuni and had lunch, said our goodbyes to the girls and made our way to the bus station to get the bus to Potosi, the highest city in the world.
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