One of the things we'd been looking forward to doing in Bolivia was a tour of the world's largest salt flats (12,000km2) - Salar de Uyuni. After reading a lot of blogs and reviews and talking to other travellers, we decided to start the tour in the south in a place called Tupiza and spend 4 days heading north to end in the salt flats just out of Uyuni. The other alternative is to begin and end in Uyuni, but you don't get to see the variety of landscapes as we did starting from the south. Another reason we opted for the Tupiza-Uyuni tour is because it finished with the salt flats rather than started them which makes more sense - you don't want the best thing over and done with first up. That would just be silly.
Tupiza is quite a small town with a backdrop of red rock and barren hills surrounding it. The most notable thing about this town is that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end at the hands of the Bolivian army not far from Tupiza. We only stayed for a couple of days before we headed off on the tour. As is always the issue with booking a tour, we had to decide which company to book with. We'd read good reviews about a couple of companies, but in the end we went through the hostel we were staying at. And it turned out pretty good because that was how we met Derek and Kelly, an American couple we became really good friends with. Thank god, because 4 days in a jeep together would have been torture if they were dickheads! We also lucked out with our driver, Emilio, who was an absolute legend. He couldn't speak English but we all managed to communicate with our limited Spanish, and he was always willing to point things out and explain stuff. He was the sweetest guy and we all got along like a house on fire.
Over the next four days we saw some amazing landscapes, and it blew us away how different it was not only from day to day, but sometimes from hour to hour. On the first day alone we went from rocky mountain landscapes to rolling green hills with llamas frolicking about to snow-capped mountains. It was impossible to get bored with the scenery.
We spent the first night in a tiny village where we had time to walk around and see the local kids playing, or as two little girls preferred, just hanging out eating dirt. We had a group of the kids entertain us over dinner with some local music and singing before we retired to our freezing cold room. It was so cold we had to go to bed fully clothed in layers of thermals, jumpers, socks, beanie and gloves. Plus a sleeping bag on top of the blankets. And it definitely wasn't any warmer when we got up at 4am then next morning to set out before sunrise. Our driver Emilio proved his awesomeness even more that morning by still being ready to go and with a smile on his face despite being knocked out the previous night when the boot lid fell and smashed him on the head. What a trooper.
More spectacular scenery was to follow during the rest of the tour - some beautiful different coloured lagoons including a pink lagoon with pink flamingos, random rock formations, a geothermal pool in a snow blizzard, a train cemetery and finally, the piece de resistance , the salt flats themselves.
It was on the final morning that we were up at 4am again to get out on the flats to watch the sunrise. It was one of the most surreal and bizarre landscapes we've ever seen - miles and miles of salt stretching as far as the eye can see. It was a pretty amazing setting for sunrise and a picnic breakfast afterwards. And surprisingly there were only a couple of other groups around in the distance. Then it was time to experiment with the perspective photos everyone does - it's one of those cliched things you just have to do. However, we soon found out it was a lot harder than we expected getting things lined up. But after playing around for a good hour or so, we all had some pretty good shots.
Thankfully this tour wasn't a disappointment and we saw so much more than we bargained for. An amazing 4 days. And we made two good friends as a bonus...even if they are American ;)
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