Gringos chasing ´mingoes

The most exciting way to leave Chile and continue our journey onwards was to take a 3 day jeep trek over the famous Salar de Uyuni or bloody great salt flats in Bolivia! Having teamed up with the aforementioned Ben and Vicky, we met Annie and George and we all battled to clambour into the same 6 person jeep for the trip with our driver Pablo!

Left to right: Matt, Jenny, Annie, George (Jorge), Ben and Vicky

The tour took us past lots of amazing lagoons, volcanoes and flamingoes. First up was Laguna Verde:

All over the desert people had made loads of rock piles, so Annie and Jen decided to join in the party. Wild!

Salvador Dali rocks

Stephen!

At around midday we soothed our aching bones from the traumas of off roading with a quick dip in the hot springs.

Next up was the thermal field. More Geysers!

We arrived at our hostel for the night near Laguna Colorado for a spot of lunch, before heading over for some flamingo and llama spotting!

´Mingoes

As the sun went down we feasted and settled down slumber party stylee for the night, complete with giggling and a pants dance from Jorge.

The next day took us to more lagoons and some interesting rock formations...

Rock that looks a bit like a tree (?)

Being letters - clearly a W and possibly an N are visible, but I think most people were being I´s

Active volcano

We spent the next night in an hotel made out of salt. Even the beds, tables and chairs were made of salt. For dinner Pablo provided a bottle of wine and something he swore was flamingo, but which we strongly suspected may have been chicken.

View from the salt hotel

The next morning we got up bright and early to drive to the salt flats for the sunrise. Excellent photo opportunities!

Time for breakfast at Fish Island, which we shared with an interesting visitor.

Pancha the ñandu (rhea) and Jorge

Then we took a brisk stroll around Fish Island to take in the Cacti and views.

The first salt hotel which was established on this trip had to be closed down, because of improper disposal of waste materials, but it is now a museum which you can visit. So we did.

Salt sculptures

Gringos chasing ´mingoes

The final stop was a visit to the eerie train graveyard in Uyuni.

This area was where the locals of Uyuni dumped all of their rubbish, including old trains, just outside the main part of town.

We had finally reached Uyuni. We said goodbye to Pablo and started to explore Bolivia without his watchful guidance.