Uyuni

The seven-hour-busdrive from Potosí to Uyuni takes you through a magnificent landscape full of llamas, so it is worthwile to stay awake. In Uyuni, there is nothing much to see, but it is a starting point for a trip around the amazing Salar de Uyuni.
We took the four-day-trip around the Salar.
On Thursday in the morning, we took of in a big Toyota 4WD. We, that is Benjamín, the driver, Himez, the cook, Eunise, their niece, Silvia, Alejandre and Rodrigo, three Brasileros and than Françoise from the south of France, Julie from Quebec and me. First, we visited a train cemetery, which was quite picturesque. Then, we entered the real Salar which is just amazing, words nore pictures can describe it, you just have to see it with your own eyes.

It is an enormous stretch of salt and everywhere you can see is just white from the salt, blue from the sky and some mountains in the background. It is like nothing I had ever seen before and definetely one of the heights of the trip so far. Then, appearing from nowhere, there is this big island, Isla Pescado, with huge cactuses on it, over ten metres high I would estimate, amazing. We had a beautiful alpaca and rice lunch there. Then, we drove out of the actual Salar, visited some caves and an archeological museum and went to sleep in a little village.

The second day took us to some gorgeous lagunas with thousands of flamingos in them and to the arbol de piedra. The landscape was still amazing. At night, when we arrived at our sleeping place, we took a very nice walk through the strong wind up to a lagoon with unbelievable colours and hundreds of flamingos, beautiful!

The little pink dots you can see in the left of the picture are all flamingos!

The third day, we got up very very early to see the geishers, amazing, bubbling and steam-producing hot holes in the ground. By the way, in Spanish a word exists for getting up very early: madrugar. After the geishers, we took a wonderful dip in the hot springs just next to a laguna and then we had breakfast. Next was a visit to the beautiful Laguna Verde and most of the rest of the day, we were driving. The landscape was so gorgeous that our eyes were actually very tired at night from watching all day long. We spent the night in a lovely little village, very far away from all the other tourists and played some hackey-sack with the very talented local children at night.

The fourth day, we drove almost all day, apart from a lunch break in a very small village with some drunk men and beautiful little children, and a lot of picture- and pee-brakes. As far as the landscape is concerned, this was probably the most rewarding day. In the afternoon, we were very high up on a mountain, it felt like being in an airplane, the view was so cool! The shapes and colours of those rock formations! The nearer we got to Tupiza, the more beautiful it all got. Unfortunately, to every fairy-tale comes an end and so we got to Tupiza and had to say goodbye to Benjamín, Himez and Eunise. Muchas gracias otra vez, amigos.

Moido