Uyuni and Salt Flats - April 2012

Despite being our very first venture without Intrepid, I'm not going to lie. We cheated.
You see, our trip was 36 days, but there was a connecting trip which Natalie, Callum, Priya, Paul, Sharon and a new chick named Kirsten were on. This trip conveniently went to Uyuni and did a salt flats tour, and we conveniently followed them.
We had to catch a bus to Oruro then a train to Uyuni, which got in at 2am. The train ride was nothing short of horrendous! The seats we had faced backwards, did not recline and were right next to the door to the dining carriage. The tracks were super rickety and every so often a gush of freezing cold air would hit us as people went to and from the dining cart, not to mention everyone elses seats did recline, so Natalie was in my lap the whole way. Not that I blame her for one minute, I would have done the same. From what we've heard from other travellers, the bus ride is worse, so.... what ya gon' do?
Aaaaanyway, luckily our hostel was close and amazing, and comfortable, and clean, and welcoming. We were glad to rest our heads for a few hours.

The next day we walked to the hotel the others were staying in and headed off to the largest salt flats in the world, which doubles as the worlds largest lithium deposit. Facts. We rode on the roof of the 4wd and messed around taking touristy photos with the salt flats, such as the one below. (although, many more!).

Oh, and speaking of taking tourist photos, I forgot to mention that before the salt flats, we stopped off at a train graveyard and mucked about there for a while too, here's a pic I took of Rory & Natalie. Totes my favourite. These guys, I'm telling ya.



The tour was 3 days, and we ended in San Pedro in Chile. It was awesome! Despite the fact I was "violently" ill, it was really cool. We stopped off at heaps of wicked places, with some amazing scenery like I've never seen before. We saw a valley of rocks, flamingoes-a-plenty, climbable rocks, tree-shaped rocks, lagoons in blue, green and pink (!), and drove completely off-road past some flat topped mountains whilst belting out hits of the 80's such as Eye of the Tiger, and Borderline. Yep, I subjected the whole car load to my iPod.

We stayed at some pretty basic places. Zero elecricity, hot water and the like. If I hadn't been so ill it wouldn't have been so bad. But seriously, I contracted all of the illnesses all of the time.

On the last day we woke up at 4am to go to see the early morning guisers going off, and sit in natural hot pools while the sun rose - flamingoes adjacent.

Then we said our final farewell to our Intrepid crew and transferred to Chile.

If you're ever in these necks of the woods, do not miss out on this! It was one of the highlights without a doubt.