We jumped off the bus, dazed and deafened. A number of tour touts had gathered around the bus to 'greet' us and we were soon surrounded by a group of them, offering us various tours to the salt flats. We politely declined but there was one very persistent tout, a man from Brazil, who kept asking us if we wanted a tour. Each time we politely said no and each time he kept hanging around us. He then turned to us and asked us which tour company we were with, “that's not important to you” said Alex, to which the tout took extreme offense and told Al that he was obnoxious and had a problem. At that point another guide came up to us “Veronica and Alex?” Presuming this was us we turned to the guide with eagerness... “you're with us, follow this man to the office”... he was pointing to the Brazilian... damn. We reluctantly followed him and set our bags down in the office where we had the chance to refresh after our journey. Uyuni is a bit of a one-horse town, filled with tour agencies and we didn't find anything to do around the streets. Our office filled up with tourists waiting to depart and eventually the time came. We were asked to stand next to the jeep and sign our names on a form along with our food requirements. As our experiences of Bolivian food had been pretty dismal Al decided to tick the vegetarian box to avoid any dodgy meat. The tour guide took one look at this and said "Vegetarian! Oh! You are not in this car, you must go to that car...” and he pointed to a white 4x4 that looked... well let's say it had maybe just passed its latest MOT... Our driver introduced himself as Marin and we quickly found out that he did not speak English, no problem though as I have Al as a translator.
We sped round the block to another office and in piled five other people, two Swiss girls, two German guys and an English guy so we were a very Deutsch speaking car on this tour. We hadn´t booked with the same tour company as them and were confused as to how we had ended up in the same car as them. Eventually it turned our that our tour company shifted us off to fill in the spaces in another tour company's car, something which regularly happens. We were sure it was because we had ticked the vegetarian box. But we liked our group and so off we went.We sped across the stretch of desert before the salt flats to our first stop which was the 'train graveyard'.
For some reason a load of old steam trains have been dumped outside Uyuni and it has now become a tourist attraction. On first site it was indeed impressive and we were keen to find out more from our guide. In Spanish he told us “it is five hundred years old.” We all stopped to think about this... it seemed unlikely.
“Are you sure? How old?” Al asked, in case he had made a mistake, although the guide was speaking in Spanish.
“Since 1500” he replied.
“So the Bolivians were more ahead of their time than we thought... they invented the steam train and then kept it quiet from the rest of the world for three hundred years” we all laughed. “Or maybe Pizarro conquered South America by train!” We decided that our guide was probably not the most intelligent of men.
Eventually we arrived at the salt flats and it was indeed amazing.
The white expanse stretches as far as the eye can see, blending into the horizon. The desert is also surrounded by mountains and volcanoes which look impressive in the distance. The salt looks like snow, but is in fact a giant lake, created from a volcanic eruption which caused a salt lake which then evaporated. We were also interested to find out that the lake is over 100 metres deep, however the hard salt surface is only 15 metres deep. It seemed very solid though so we didn´t worry.
We visited a small 'island' covered in cactuses which rises out of the salt desert, it was very beautiful and on climbing to the top of the island we could see just how vast the salt flats actually are.
We stopped with around 20 other jeeps to have lunch. The meat eaters had llama steak which looked like it had been hanging around someone's cupboard for quite some time, and Al and I had... rice. Note to any vegetarians out there - Bolivia is not the place for you.
After lunch we did the touristy thing and ran around and posed on the salt flats making optical illusions, it was really good fun and everyone was really enjoying themselves. Being on the salt feels like you are in another world.
We heard a loud ´beeeep!´ our guide was hurrying us on so we jumped into the car and raced across the salt desert. We were unsure of what our next stop would be but it seemed like the guide was in a great hurry to get us there. It turned out that he was in a hurry to get to the hostel where we arrived at 4pm, we were to say the least pretty p-d off with him. The hostel was a small shack made of blocks of salt and we slept in dorms and shared a bathroom between about 20 of us. It was incredibly basic and very cold! As we had no desire to hang around there we all decided to go on a walk. We headed up the mountain behind the hostel to get a better view of the salt desert and the tiny village below. It was a fun walk and we spotted some local wildlife along the way. After dark we arrived back to dinner and huddled round a small salt table. We had been told that the food would be basic and they weren´t kidding. We had soup for the first course, and chips and... a fried egg to share for me and Alex... the difficult vegetarians. The meat-eaters had chicken and we were a bit jealous. Our guide doubled up as cook and waiter and he must have been sneaking some vodka in the kitchen between courses because we was really wasted by the time we had finished... or maybe he had been smoking something slightly stronger because he was actually smiling at us by the end of the meal. It was pretty entertaining and by the end of the meal we had to ask another group´s guide what the plan for the next day was because our guide had gone to bed.
The next two days entailed driving through barren mountainous terrain, filled with desert, volcanoes, geysers, wildlife, red and green lakes filled with flamingoes - it was truely spellbinding to behold. Our car frequently needed attention from the driver, and every now and then he would stop it in the middle of the desert and lift up the bonnet to examine it - rather worrying in a place where the temperature can get below 20 degrees at night! It became very cold indeed, both day and night, and our second night was spent sleeping in our clothes and hats and gloves. By the end of the tour everyone was sniffing and coughing. 
On our second morning one of the group asked the driver what the temperature was... quite a strange question, however it received an even stranger answer: "eighteen below one" he said in Spanish... We tried talking to him and asked him if he liked his job - "it's a job" he mumbled... not really what you want to hear from your tour guide of 3 days.
On the third and last morning our guide was being suspiciously nice and guide-like to us, short of asking us our names he actually asked Alex what country he was from and which football team he supports. We felt that he was trying to 'earn' his tip a little too late in the tour and we no one was inclined to part with their hard-earned cash, he did provide us with a great topic of conversation though and maybe we should have tipped him for that.
The journey was truly spellbinding, following the ever-changing scenery from a white salt desert to rocky wasteland to sandy desert dunes. Our travel buddies were great fun and we really had a fantastic time. Nothing could have ruined the magic of the salt flats for us, not even a moody guide.
When we were dropped off at the border of Chile in the middle of the desert, it was with a slight sadness that we said goodbye to the spectacular and wild scenery of Bolivia, but with eagerness in our hearts that we jumped onto our next bus and sped on to our next country and next adventure.
Oh and let´s not forget Pepe who we forgot to photograph in Manu, he enjoyed the salt flats too!
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