Uyuni and Beyond

In the southwest corner of Bolivia, touching the border of Chile, there lies the world´s largest salt flat, Salar de Uyuni. It covers over 4,000 sq feet of land, and every inch is white crunchy salt. Here we started our three day tour. Well first we stopped at this cool train graveyard, which deserves mention and a picture I guess.

Not choo-chooin anywhere soon

Anyways, THEN we set off in our trusty Toyota Landcruiser 4x4, in a direction I could only assume the driver knew, and soon saw nothing but salt all around us. The nuttiest landscape I´ve ever laid eyes on. The sun shines bright both from above and reflecting off the salt below, so sunglasses are a neccesity. We stopped at a hotel a little ways in made entirely of salt bricks.

Dining room in the salt palace

We drove for another hour or so, and sometimes the driver would just turn around and answer questions with neither his eyes on the road or his hands on the wheel. Disconcerting but harmless. Later we stopped at a weird cactus island in the middle of nothing for lunch and some dopey pictures.

Nick crushing me like a bug

I hereby declare Korea will never run out of salt

All that salt and whiteness can make a man go LOCO

After we were through the flats, we continued onto some caves, which used to be underwater so they had all these cool petrified leaf formations, and then further on to crazier rock formations.

Next to a rock cactus

Riding a rock waveAnd of course the famous rock tree - unreal.

The next couple days were driving around, seeing pastel-brown mountains, glacial blue, green and red lakes with flamingos, feature-less deserts, and freezing our little piggies off at night 15,000 feet high.Me in front of the Mountain of Seven Colors

Pretty bird

The best sunset I´ve ever seen

On the morning of the last day we visited some geysers, but I couldn´t get any good pictures because it was before sunrise. If I could post the stench of sulfur, it´d give you a better idea of what they were like. Then as the sun rose behind the mountains, we stopped at some hot springs for a dip and breakfast. The water was heaven, but only barely worth it when you had to return to the below-freezing air outside. Still a worthy end to an amazing tour. Can you believe those pictures?

Yeaaahhh baby

The crew before goodbyes - clockwise from top left - Sarah from Norway, Nick from Australia, Me, Eoin from Ireland, then Ludda and Johan, brothers from Sweden.