Day 5 to 8 - San Pedro to Uyuni - Part 1

The Salar trip is a journey through the Atacama desert, the Bolivian Altiplano and the Salar de Uyuni. It would take us to 4,900 mts above sea level, through baron deserts, volcanic moon scapes, 12,000 sq km salt flats and hostels made of salt. We´d been warned of drunken bolivian drivers and feared death from alltitude sickness. Suffice to say we were pretty excited about it!

We left San Pedro with our tour companions and headed the 30 or so km´s to the Bolivian border where we would meet our driver and begin our tour.

Love this pic of the Bolivian border crossing. I mean, it´s an international border, and there was basically this one big teddy bear of a Bolivian soldier in a shack in the middle of the desert stamping our passport and not really giving a damn who the hell we were. We met our driver Edgar, a Quetchua man from Uyuni, and after a quick breaky, headed off.






Our first stop at the was one of the highlights for the whole trip for me - the hot springs. Cos its totally freezing in the desert in the morning - totally f@cking freezing. I still had all my clothes on from the night before. We arrived at this steaming pool of hot spring water and it was just fantastic. Neil and I were the first in so got to star in the pic. The water is like 37 degrees and its about 5 degrees out side - was really cool. We didn´t want to leave...




Next up was another highlight of the trip, the geysers. These pools of boiling hot mud were bubbling up all around us - Neil nearly fell in and died. That would have sucked. There were heaps of them over about a 600mtr sq area, and there was steam too. They really stank - like sulpher, but they were still awesome.







We also saw a white lake, a green lake, and then a red lake. The red lake had Flamingos in it! That was pretty cool - e was loving it.











After hitting our highest altitude of 4,900mtrs we ended up at our accommodation for the night. We made friends with some of the other people in our tour group and were pleasently surprised by the quality of the food, but nobody slept well due to the altitude and the frezing-ness.

The next day would be e´s birthday!

End part one