Day 3 - Salar de Uyuni Tour

Our alarms went off at 5am so that we could be on the salt flat for sunrise. At 5:30am we were in the 4x4 and headed out across the salt flat in the pitch dark. You hear lots of horror stories about the drivers when researching which company to go with, including drunk drivers. We couldn't fault Ruben at all though. We felt so safe with his driving and fair play to the guy, he navigated us across a vast open salt flat in the pitch black and didn't get lost!

After just over an hour we pulled up to what looked like an island of cactuses which we clambered up to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately it was a very cloudy morning so the sunrise wasn't quite as epic as we had hoped.

After taking some pics and exploring the island we met Ruben back at the 4x4 for breakfast which consisted of cake, pineapple yoghurt and some cereal stuff that resembles sugar puffs. After breakfast we were free to take our perspective shots. Before the tour we had purchased a tiny llama so set about trying to make it look like we were riding it. The boys also had a bottle of wine so we played around with that too. We must have been getting into the photos a little too much as Ruben drove over to hurry us up so that we could head off to our next stop.

For the next stop we joined the other half of our group in a quiet area of the salt flat for some more pics. Turns out the other groups driver was really into taking photos and was choreographing all kinds of shots! After a few group pics we headed off to the the Museo de Sal (Salt Museum). We had a quick mooch around the museum which I would say was less of a museum and more of a hotel before we headed on again.

The next stop was some muddy looking puddles. We weren't entirely sure what we were meant to be looking at here and kind of got the feeling that they were just trying to drag the tour out by this point! Needless to say that stop lasted all of one minute before we all jumped back in the 4x4.

Our next stop was the Pueblo Calchani, a market, where we mooched around whilst they prepared our lunch. We sat down to what looked like steak, potatoes and quinoa but instead of beef it was llama! Turns out llama is a much saltier version of beef but it wasn't too bad at all really.

After lunch we headed to Uyuni and our final stop of the tour, Cementerio de Trenes (the train graveyard). This was exactly as it says on the tin, a place where old trains go to get rusty. We took a few pictures and I somehow managed to rip a hole in the crotch of my one and only pair of jeans clambering in and out of the trains for a picture! I think I am going to struggle to buy a new pair in Bolivia too as everyone is very short here!

So that concludes our Salt flat adventure! We said our goodbyes to Robert and Ruben who kindly dropped the rest of us off at our hostel in Uyuni.

We originally planned to stay in Uyuni for two nights however the moment we arrived today we realised that there is a reason no one stays in Uyuni for more than one night so we immediately went out to buy ourselves a bus ticket for the next day.

In the evening we headed out to a pizza restaurant for some dinner with Nic and Jordan as well as another couple that we met at the hostel, Jill and Chris, who we found out live 5 minutes down the road from us in Bristol, small world! We all got a bit excited and drank quite a bit of wine. The wine, mixed with the altitude definitely resulted in a few fuzzy heads the next morning.Read more