Salt plains, 4WD and brrrrr.........

Some of the frustrating things about travelling in South America, is the Bus or train timetables!! Particularly in Bolivia. For us, we wanted to get the train from La Paz to Uyuni to start a 4WD Salt plains tour. Unfortunately, the train only runs twice a week (the other option, is to do an overnight bus which we´ve heard is a nightmare), so we had to rush La Paz a bit. We only had a day and a half, so unfortunately didn´t get to see a whole lot. If we hadn´t of left when we did, we would have had to stay for another 5 days.

Salt ´factory´ - tummy bugs start here!

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world at 3680m and is built within a canyon, approx 5km from rim to rim. A lot of the houses are unfinished without exterior paint. This gives the place a bit of a run down and shabby appearance. We later discovered that if the house is not ´finished´then the owner doesn´t have to pay tax on it!!

We wandered around and experienced many of the colourful markets.

Jumping for joy

Our next main attraction was our Salt plains tour from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. This tour was causing us anxiety, as we´d heard many stories of drunk drivers, poor food if any and cars breaking down......

We researched as much as possible and found a company with the least amount of complaints, paid our money and crossed our fingers.....

Blow me a kiss xxxx

Toñito tours proved to be quite good. We ended up with a group of 4 Aussie girls in their early twenties sharing our jeep, so there was plenty of talking going on!! They were a good bunch of girls who´d between them had seen large part of the world!!! Impressive for there age.

Trickery, good girl.....

Rock formations

The trip was well worth all the effort. The scenery was some of the most dramatic and interesting we´ve seen.

The Salar de Uyuni is a massive salt desert, with white salt as far as the eye can see. We had lots of fun taking the usual trick photography shots.

Cactus Fish Island

In the middle of the salt desert, there is an island ´Isla de Pescado´ or Fish island to you and me. It is a volcanic island, with remains of coral and most importantly and famously has giant Cactus growing on it. It was amazing to say the least.

From there we saw other rock formations and picturesque lakes with perfect reflections in them, in particular, Laguna Verde was the most impressive for that reason.

Laguna Colorado

We stayed at Laguna Colorado on our final night, which was pretty cold (-10, we were happy that we´d brought our lovely sleeping bags!!). Laguna Colorado is a red lake, fed by a natural hot spring. It has Flamingos as well as a massive amount of brilliantly white Borax. We hope our photos have been able to capture how amazing this part of the world is.

Reflection of mountain

We had our transfer into San Pedro with a Chilean driver, who quite happily announced ´welcome back to civilisation´. Cheeky bugger. However, we did sit back and enjoy the paved roads! Incredible what you take for granted.

Vicuñas

Jumping Laguna Colorado

Salt plains, 4WD and brrrrr.........

Uyuni, Bolivia