Salt Flats

The next day we drove again and saw some more amazing landscapes. We also had about 3 flat tyres and our drivers were busy jacking the vans up while we all loitered in the middle of nowhere warming ourselves in the sun. The second night wasnt as cold as the first and it was this night that we saw on this scratty little tv that micheal jackson had been found dead. Very surreal in such a place. I went outside like i did on most nights and tried to see the stars. Millions of them. I then went to bed in our room with five other people on a floor made of salt next to salt walls but fortunatly on a proper mattress...well only just. I also managed to actually take off my coat that night.

Next day we were up at 5am and were going to see what we all came for...the world famous Uyuni salt flats.....The lagest salt flats in the world...also the highest i beleive. Unfortunatly our jeep broke down again so we were a bit delayed in getting to the salt flats proper but wow, once we did...it was like being on a massive lake! infact it used to be a massive sea that dried up a few hundred million years ago or soemthing!!

We then went to Inca Hausa, an island with loads and loads of cacti on it. It provided such a contrast to the bright white of the salt flats....wow....

Fast forward to Australia

Wow, its been a while since we updated this thing but now i have my very own PC so should be able to get some supa dupa pics up here and update alot more...although strangley not much is happening at the moment. I think i left you in Chile??? Hang on i'd best check.....Ah yes Uyuni salt flats. Well what an experience that was. Because we set off from San Pedro our first night in the altiplano was at a height of 4300m at a place called Lagoa Colorado. It was fantastically beautiful scenary, very barren but some increadible colours in the rocks and the surrounding mountains. There are so many rich minerals here but the Bolivian government is too poor to extract them. So tourism is about as good as it gets for these people. Actually saying that theres not many people living here. 4300m is wayyy too high! But we arrived in our 4x4s and had to spend the night in an unheated adobe building with no running water. Infornt of us was the Lagoa Colorado which was a large lake that was coloured red by the minerals in the earth. The only real wildlife we saw were pink flamingos on the lake. (apparently it gets so cold here that these birds just stand there, freeze where they are standing and in the morning when the sun appears they can move again...)
Anyway we were to understand the true meaning of cold that night. Apparently it got down to minus 25 degrees. The only thing that keeps this place warm is the sun and that went down at 6pm. SSo we sat around playing cards. I was wearing the following...
1 thermal under tshirt thing
1 tshirt
1 wool jumper
another wool jumper
my fleece and my new coat that i had to buy in chile.
On top of this i had my alpaca scarf, my alpaca hat, gloves and two pairs of sock on.

It was cold....and i wore these clothes day and night for the next four days....yum....he he.

At 8pm we tried to go to bed. With 5 blankets but no heating we resoted to passing around my water bottle filled with boiling water to act as a hot water bottle....It worked...for a while...added to this the alititude sickness with headaches, shortness of breath and nausea and it began to turn into a real adventure..