Bolivia: Uyuni - 12th to 14th December (Days 31 to 33)

Around 6.30 a minibus picked us up from the hostel and took us to Hito de Cajon in the border with Bolivia in just around 30 minutes. While waiting for the queue to exit Chile the driver prepared a table with breakfast for all the people in the minibus. Getting the stamp to exit Chile was easy but for the entrance to Bolivia we had to wait around half an hour as the immigration office was closed. When we finally got our Bolivian entrance, we were changed to a 4x4 vehicle from a different agency than the one we were told in San Pedro. In the vehicle we were the driver called Ebrahim, a Chilean couple called Gonzalo and Daniela and two Brazilian guys called Gustavo and Getulio. There was no tour guide, so everything we needed to know about the tour itinerary or the places we were about to visit for the next 3 days we had to ask the driver, who was very quiet and only gave limited information when asked.

A short drive after the Bolivian border we arrived at Eduardo Avaroa Natural Park, where we had to pay 150 Bolivian pesos each for the entrance ticket. The park is huge and there are many interesting places to visit and impressive landscapes to enjoy, so we stayed inside it for the following 2 days. The first to places we visited were to colourful lagoons: Laguna Blanca and Laguna Verde (which was not so green as it was too early in the morning and it needs sunshine for the algae to turn it that colour). 

After the lagoons we continued to Salvador Dali desert, where there are some scattered rock formations that were created after a volcano explosion. We continued our journey in Termas de Polques, a hot springs next to a nice lagoon where you can have a bath and relax (until a huge group of Chinese people arrive...). There we met the two Spanish guys that we met at our hostel in San Pedro and had lunch after the bath. It was a light meal as they said that eating a lot there can cause altitude sickness. After lunch we stopped for 30 minutes at Geysers del Sol de la Mañana, where we could see different colours mud geysers. The last stop before the village where we were going to stay overnight was Laguna Colorada, by far the most colourful and beautiful lagoon we saw that day, where we could see flamingos, llamas and alpacas grazing around it.

When arriving at our hotel in Mallku Villamar they told us we just had a 6 beds shared room for the group. The other people in the group complained as they were told they could have double or quadruple rooms, so finally we got 3 double rooms. There was no water nor Wi-Fi. We had a walk around the village to look for the Spanish guys that we met the previous day but didn't find them. After that we had dinner at the hotel and we were only our group of 6 people in the whole hostel. We ate vegetable soup and spaghetti with tomato and onion sauce, a light meal with no meat again... After dinner we played our favourite cards game called "culo" with all the group.

We woke up around 7am and had breakfast at the hotel with the group. We put all our bags on top of the jeep and left the village around 8am. The first stop of the day was just 10 minutes drive away, it was a rock cliff with some preincaican paintings. After that we went back to Villamar for some shopping (snacks and toilet paper, which you can't find in almost any hotel in Bolivia). Then we continued and stopped briefly in the World Cup Rock, Camel Rock and Valle de las Rocas, different rock formations with funny shapes. 

Next stop was at Laguna Negra, a beautiful lagoon surrounded by rock cliffs and wetlands full of alpacas. We stayed there around one hour enjoying the scenery and then walked back to the restaurant where we had lunch. 

After lunch we continued our tour through the desert landscapes and stopping briefly in more strange rock formations. We also saw various small tornadoes in the distance. 

We finally arrived at Julaca, a small semi abandoned village where you can buy different weird flavours of beers (quinoa, coca, cactus). Julaca used to be a very lively village some years ago, with many people working in the quinoa plantations. There was a train station that was used to transport that cereal all around the country, but the company moved to another place and abandoned the village. There we met Joan and Claudia again, the Catalan couple that we met in Humahuaca, that were also doing the Uyuni tour. 

The last stop for the day was the salt hostel, where we slept that night and was close to the Uyuni salt flats. To have a hot water shower there we had to pay extra and they said that it would take at least  one hour to heat the water, so I had a shower with tempered water and Ari had it later on with hot water. After a light dinner again with the group, we had some wine with them while playing cards. We didn't went to sleep late though, as we had to wake up very early next morning to start our visit to the salt flats.

Next morning we woke up very early, we put all the bags in the car and left to Uyuni Salt Flats around 4am. It was still night, so the view of the sky was amazing, full of stars and we could clearly see the milky way. After around 2 hours drive in the dark we arrived at our first stop, Inca Huasi, an island in the middle of the Salt Flats. There we climbed to the top of the island where we watched the sunrise with amazing views. With full daylight we walked down to the "beach" of the island, where our driver already prepared a table with the breakfast for the group. 

Then we drove some minutes to the middle of the flats, where we did a photo session playing with the optical effects. We also stopped in some water holes in the ground to get salt diamonds. In the way out of the flats we visited the salt museum, a former hostel that ceased to operate due to constant flooding. Just in front of it there is the Bolivian Dakar salt monument. Just before leaving the flats we stopped at Ojos del Salar, big holes in the flats where oxygen and sulphur is flowing to the surface. 

We continued our trip to Colchani village, just in the coast of the salt flat, where we did some souvenir shopping. Our last stop of the trip was the trains cemetery, just in the outskirts of Uyuni village, where we found plenty of old rusty trains from the 19th century which were used in the war against Chile. After that we had the last lunch together with the group in Uyuni village and said goodbye to the group. We stayed at the agency where we hired the trip to Uyuni to solve payment issues (they didn't received the payment yet as we did an international bank transfer) and we stayed for long as they had Wi-Fi! (we didn't had Wi-Fi for the last three days). After that we walked around Uyuni village and met Gustavo and Getulio again. We had some drinks with them while waiting for the bus to La Paz, as that was also their next destination. We spent the hole night travelling by bus to La Paz, the bus was fairly comfortable.