20th January Uyuni

I email the carrier in the UK who will be organising shipment of my shock and complain about the price and then receive an email back giving a host of reasons why it is so dear and also increasing the prive by 75 quid at the same time and also saying it will not be in La Paz until next Saturday. I then rang them and vented my spleen but that is what it is.
Whilst I was doing that Martin has had my adapter soldered so we are almost sorted.
We go to the tour office to to join our trip on the Salar.
Our vehicle is a Land Cruiser which comes as no surprise as the country is littered with them, whils on the trip our driver tells me they are 26000 dollars new and anything alse is one and a half to two times that. That is also About half the cost of one in the UK so Toyota must have seen an opportunity and priced them to sell.
On the trip with us are a French couple and 3 Japanese. First stop is the train cemetery, this is an area where all the trains that used to run the minerals from Potosi to Chile and the coast for onward shipment to Europe, have been left to die. It is an amasing sight as in the Uk we would recycle all the steel, and there is tons of it, but no it is just left to rust away.
On then to the Salar via a little village where we stop and see lots of ornamental products made from the salt, they are incredible but not cheap as you may expect and transporting them in one piece would be a major concern to us.
I ought to tell you a brief bit about the Salar de Uyuni. This obviously amassive lake at on time and the waters have subsided and left a crust of salt. During the rainy season it floods againto a maximum depth of about 12 -15 inches. This is a massive area totalling over 2500 square kilometres and it is one of the few places and possibly the only place on land where you can discern the earths curvature.
We have several stops to take photos during the day and here you can also do some trick shots pretending that you are holding someone in your hand etc due to the flat white environment, have a look at some of our attemps when I manage to get WiFi.
On to a salt hotel, this is a hotel build out of salt bricks, he we drop off our Japanese friends as they are staying there the night. It is very busy here so our driver suggests we go on to the volcano on the other side of the Salar.
So a 50 minute drive on a flat salt bed where the whole horizon is white, this was probably a good idea coming on a tour, the only way we could navigate here is with a compass and dead reconing. The volcano is now inactive but obviously had a hissy fit one day and blew most of its insides out. There are lots of llamas grazing and some flamingos on a small lake on the salt.
Whilst we take a few photos our driver sets out lunch, a frilly tablecloth laid on the salt and the mats from the car for us to sit on and we have Milanase, tomatos, cucumber, rice, followed by bananas for desert and coca cola for washing down, it was fab just sitting there on the salt.
Back in the car and off to an island, if you can imagine it. We have to buy a ticket as this is another national park area but it’s one pound thirty five each so very reasonable. We have a 45 minute stop here and it is incredible, some volcanic rock, lots of cactus and most of the rock is covered in coral, so this must have been at least 5 metres underwater. There is a circular walk which is great and at one point Martin and i climb down through the rocks and marvel at what a fabulous swim through this would have been when it was submerged.
We get back to the car 15 minutes late and i told our driver that that needs to be an hour stop really. It5 would seem we were quick because our French friends were yet another 15 minutes arriving. Off we go with a couple more photo stops and we are back at the salt hotel, this time to pick up 2 Japanese people who had obviously had their stay and wanted to get back to Uyuni.
On the way back we see and drive through a sand storm, Martin and I seel as thought we have inhaled about a cup of sand today.
It’s been a great day and our driver was fantastic.
Tomorrow we aim to head for Potosi if my bike can manage it, we’ll soon know.