Salar de Uyuni

November 8th

We got to Uyuni bright and early after a very rough bus ride. The road to Bella Coola has nothing on what we drove through! We were supposed to be met by our tour guide at the bus stop but that didn't happen so we wandered around and found the shop on our own. We had a couple hours to kill so we had a quick breakfast then napped on some couches at our tour place. Finally, we climbed into a jeep with a Danish couple and another man and a Spanish speaking guide and we were off into the desert. Our first stop was a train graveyard for a quick look before continuing on. Soon all you could see was white salt flatness with mountains in the distance. It was very cool, like nothing we've seen before! Soon we stopped at a nice salt hotel to take some pictures and to our surprise we picked up two more passengers who had been kinda stranded there by another tour company! It made for a tight fit in the jeep, but Lisa and I were very excited to have some younger company and they were from Brazil so they were able to translate for our guide which was wonderful! We drove around the salt flats making plenty of stops for awesome photos along the way. We went to Incahuasi Island, this sort of random rock formation covered in cactuses, the only not flat thing for miles and miles. We had our picnic lunch there and walked around before continueing the scenic drive. We arrived at our completely made of salt lodge hostel thing and just hung out with all the different people, had dinner, and went to bed early when the electricity got turned off.

November 9th
This morning we woke up at 5:30 and were able to see the sunrise over the desert which was really pretty. By 6:30 when we left the sun was fully shining. We were lucky with crystal clear weather again all day. Our first stop was at a small town to pick up some snacks then a couple hours drive (with picture stops along the way) until we reached the base of an active volcano. Lots of cool rocks around the base and we could see some puffs of smoke coming from the top. From the volcano it was off to the first two of four lagoons of the day. Each lagoon is beautifully colored and more surprisingly filled with hundreds of pink and white flamingos!! Apparently there are three different species of flamingos but we couldn't tell them apart. At the second lagoon we had another delicious lunch as we admired the view. Next stop was some neat rock formations where we saw two rabbits! Throughout the day we also saw lots of vecunyas (a relative of the llama and alpaca). We walked around the Árbol de Piedra which are large volcanic rock formations shaped by the wind. Our last stop of the day was Lagoon Colorada which is so named due to the many colors found in the lagoon. This is where our 'hotel' is at as well. Another "rustic" stay, this time in an 11 bed dorm room. The building was totally cement, so very cold, had no running water and only electricity for the lights while we ate dinner. We were very thankful that we've been at altitude for a long time now because most of our group was veryyy altitude sick, we got up almost 5000m on the trip. Not fun for them in those accomodations, nor crammed into the back of a jeep on a bumpy ride all day!
Before dinner we walked up to the viewpoint of the lagoon and were rewarded with a stunning view. A lot of the lagoon is red which come from algae and there is also blue, turquoise and white patches all dotted with pink flamingos. We have been saying we need to get a thesaurus out and get some new words to describe the scenery we see, because it seems like all the landscapes in South America are breathtaking beautiful, and always so different from the last!

November 10th

Up in the cold at 4:30, but the sunrise over the mountains was worth it. We first drove to some geisers. They were very cool, and the hot steam blowing out of them was quite nice, some of them you could look down and see (and hear) the boiling mud/water, had to be careful on those edges! After the geisers we drove to a thermal bath, it was just what we needed! We had to do a sketchy change into our bathing suits behind the jeep with a towel, but the warm steamy natural hot tub was lovely, especially after how cold we had been the night before, and without showers for three days :P After that it was one more stop at Laguna Verde, and then we got taken to our bus stop since we were getting a transfer to Chile. We were definately glad we weren't doing the 8 hour drive back to Uyuni like the rest of our poor group!
We bussed down, dropping in altitude very quickly, crossed the border very easily, and arrived in hot, sunny, little San Pedro de Atacama. More on that later!

- Court and Lisa