Salar de Uyuni

When we arrived in Uyuni with the two french girls, Montaine and Garance, our first goal was to find a hostel and a tour for the trip to Salar de Uyuni, the biggest salt desert in the world. A cheap hostel was quite difficult to find, but tour companies were all over the place. We went with the company that seemed the most organized. Since the tour only started at 10:30 am we got some coffee first before going into the desert. In our tour group there were two more people, two guys from Switzerland. After stopping at some tourist street right outside the desert, we got our first view of the salt flats. At first the floor was very brown because over the last months there had been a lot of wind that brought in a lot of earth from outside the desert, but later the floor was all white. We had our first break at a salt hotel, where we got some food at then went on to the „island“ in the middle of the desert, which used to be a corral reef. There were a lot of old cactuses and from the top we had an amazing view of the white desert.

When we were finished with the hike around the island our driver took us to the hotel, two hours from the salt desert. The walls of the hotel were made out of salt, and there was salt on the floors.

On the next day we got to see some really interesting rock formations and went to five lakes with flamingos. Even though the sun was shining it was very cold because of the strong wind. The evening we spend in a hostel near the lago Colorado, where the water was only sometimes working. But we got a bottle of wine for our group.
The next day we left very early when it was still night outside to go to a geysir area. It was very different than the ones in Yellowstone, since they don’t break out here, but just cook slowly. The next stop was near a outside pool, powered by volcanic activity, where we first had breakfast (pancakes!) and then went to relax in the pool. After that we went to a lake, that should have been green but was not because there was not enough wind.

Then we were on our way back, and in Uyuni took a night bus to Tupiza.
Thanks to Max‘ mum, who gave us the tour as a late Christmas present.