Up at 4:30, taxi at 05:00. Not unfamiliar but not welcome after arriving in La Paz at 23:00 last night! We received a number of warnings about taxis - ours looked legitimate but at the same time dodgy, with no wing mirror or seat belts. However, it got us to the airport vaguely on time, and we checked into our flight without any issues. This was pretty good going, especially seeing as Amazonas had emailed me just 48 hours previous to let me know that the flight was now an hour and a half earlier. What if I hadn't managed to get online?
La Paz airport is very high up, and unfortunately I felt rather nausious on arrival and eating breakfast. I thwrefore spent most of the breathtaking 43 minute flight (they were very specific about this) trying to keep breakfast down. Thankfully the extremely fresh air at Uyuni helped, and by the time we had reclaimed baggage - ie picked our bags up off the floor - I felt much better.
Our earlier flight meant we now had a few hours to wait until the tour started, so we checked into our tour and then wondered into Uyuni in search of water. Although slated by the guidebooks as somewhere to spend "not more than an hour" and indeed the tributes to the railway were fairly ugly, we did find a charming and bustling little market to explore.
After a rather tedious wait we were packed into our jeep of six plus driver, and set off on a short drive to a train cemetery. With the desert-like backdrop, this was rather ominous, but I had fun climbing the rusting trains, and marvelling at the sheer number of rivets to be found. Thankfully we moved on fairly quickly, our next destination being Colchani, a town of maybe five hundred inhabitants, where salt is processed. Here, for 2 Bs, we witnessed a bag of salt being sealed, and an awful lot of trinkets being sold to tourists. I was most interested in a sign saying "Please pay here to see biggest llama" and will forever be wondering how big that llama was!
Finally, we moved onto the salt flats, and what an incredible phenomenon they are! Perhaps not quite as white as I imagined (although still definitely requiring sunglasses and suncream - my parting is still painful from Day 2!), but even more expansive. We drove for about twenty minutes before seeing a sign of life - in the form of lots of similar groups lunching at the non-functional Playa Blanca salt hotel. Apparently it was too expensive to bring water to run the hotel viably, but we were glad to sit and eat the food we had brought there.
Next, we drove to a fairly isolated spot on the flats for some photography opportunities (turns out lying on the hexagonal shaoed ridges is very painful and does funny things to your clothes) before heading over to Inca Huasi, otherwise known as Cacti Island. Rearing itself out of the flats, this was a truly spectacular and bizarre place. It's base originally coral in the Lake that dried to form the salt flats, the island was covered in large cacti. Standing proud in the afternoon sun, the cacti were intriguing to walk around (although not to close to) and the backdrop of salt flats and mountains was inspiring.
Indeed, once done on the island (30 Bs and two free bano trips - bargain) I once again admired the mountains from the spot that we stopped at for sunset. At this point it got very cold and breezy, so once the sun had set in an orange haze, we hopped into the jeeps and onto our hotel for the night, which just so happened to be made of, yes, salt. Salt bricks, tables and stools awaited us. Even the bedroom floors were salt crystals, which I found intriguing until someone rather accurately described then as being similar to a cat litter. After that I was less thrilled by the prospect of the floors.
Tea was served when we had settled in, followed by a dinner of vegetable soup, meat and chips. At least a spicy ketchup was provided for me to douse this fairly plain dinner in....
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