Triping ´round Salar de Uyuni

These four days between Tupiza and Uynui have been some of the best we have had. We (Jake, Lou, Erin and Che) took off in a Toyota landcruiser with our drivers/guides into the hills around Tupiza. Our drivers/guides were top blokes. They were really knowledgeable, friendly and treated us to some pretty mint food, which was an excellent break from the constant supply of pizza and pasta in Tupiza. And they also taught us a couple of words of Quechua, one of Bolivia´s native peoples and languages….dues Paris honkey (thanks) Santos and Alberto!

We managed to see a whole of stuff that blew us away – huge frozen lakes, coloured lakes (red and green), deserts, volcanoes, technicolour hillsides, llamas with ribbons in their ears, pink flamingoes and one big expanse of salt (with a dollop of land in the middle - a former coral reef, now equipped with hundreds of cacti). A little bit different to NZ national parks too, as people subsistence living are still a big part of the parks. One of the side effects of the altitude was that we all had noses that ran constantly, and you got pretty puffed just doing the most basic of tasks….. like going to the toilet. A pretty crazy feeling. In the downtime at night the boys managed to give the girls a couple of lessons in the game of travel battleships that Woody and Gabby gave us when we left London.

It was all so unique that it is pretty hard to choose a highlight...but the salt plains are definitely up there. Jake and I managed to run into a couple of ´little people´ there too. After the salt plains we finished our trip in Uyuni (after we borrowed some gas from another tour guide), and then headed to La Paz.