Wednesday, January 20, 2010

uyuni salt flat tour

from la paz we took an overnight bus to uyuni where we started a 3-day tour of the 1st or 2nd (we heard differing info) largest salt lake in the world.

in our land cruiser was a driver, donatello, and 4 brazilian guys (2 groups of 2). only one spoke english and they mainly spoke portuguese, so we understood very little.

being off-season we were shocked at the number of tours going out. at one point we counted 60 land cruisers at one of the sights! and these tours go out every day. crazy.

first two days saw the salt lake, isla pescadero (island with lots of old cacti in middle of salt lake), colorful lagunas with many flamingos, laguna colorada which is red.

third day we were ready to leave at 5 am except this family in their own range rover who were following our driver couldn't start their car. combination of cold and altitude (14,000 ft). they kept flooding the engine and finally got it started after 45 minutes. there ended up being a big disagreement an hour later and we parted ways with the family.

after that entertainment we went and saw some geysers, stopped at a hot spring where the others went in, and saw laguna verde. the driver then dropped me and erick off at the chilean border.

so ended our time in bolivia and our chilean journey began in san pedro de atacama. we really liked bolivia and wish we could've stayed there longer to hike and climb but rainy season got in the way.

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