Uyuni salt flats, Bolivia

Our tour started with us running around one of the highest deserts on earth, looking for an immigration stamp. See, Australians need a visa for Chile (where this tour ends) which costs $200 and takes around 20 days to process. We had only planned this trip a few days earlier. That’s okay though, because I have a New Zealand Passport and Alex can enter on his Japanese passport (or so we thought). Our guide was concerned as the entry stamp for Bolivia was on his Australian passport. So he called his ‘friend from immigration’ who said we needed to come and see him for a chat. So we jumped in a taxi with our guide and drove to a random neighbourhood to find this random friend. We ran around banging on random people garages but couldn’t find the right house. We were about to give up when we heard someone yell out from a balcony. Hellelujiah! We had found said friend. He came downstairs dressed in his Panama’s with an ‘immigration’ hat on. He told Alex that he needed to pay around 100 dollars to get an entry and exit stamp on his Japanese passport. We gave him the money and he said he would change the dates on the system (yeah right!).

Finally we were ready to start our tour. Our first stop was a train graveyard, where we looked at old rusty trains. Not that exciting. After lunch and a lot of driving we arrived at the salt flats. They were beautiful and spanned as far as the eye could see. We spent some time there exploring the salt hotel and taking photos. We then visited an old island, which was located in the middle of the salt flats. In the evening we stayed at a hotel made entirely of salt. It was interesting but painfully cold - I think it got down to negative 10 degrees!!!!

The next day we visited different sites including a frozen lake full of flamingoes. We skimmed rocks across the ice and smashed holes in the lake with rocks. For some reason, this was very entertaining. Then we stopped to see wild llamas and alpacas in a beautiful field with frozen creeks weaving through the grass. Then we stopped at the red lake. Which was a lake of dark blue, white and red. The red was created from the same algae that flamingoes feed on. So there were lots of flamingoes here as well. Our last stop for the evening was at an altitude of 5000 metres to see the giesers. These were a whole heap of holes in the ground with boiling mud and steam. It was super interesting to see this alongside the ice puddles.

After checking into our hotel and having dinner we headed down to the hot springs close by the hotel. They were super hot and it was lovely to sit in the pools and look at the stars which were soo clear in the sky.

The next day, we visited a few lakes before heading across the border to Chile. Alex had to go into a room and pay even more money. But when we finally reached the border we headed through without any issues!Read more