On my dads birthday this year, I sent him a birthday wish from one of the most magical places I ever been to; Salar de Uyuni - the worlds largest salt flat.
It is basically a desert covered with salt and it felt unreal to be here. Because I've seen snow white photos from the salt flats before I just stupidly thought that it was gonna be really cold (especially since it was freezing in the morning when we left our hostel!) so I brought plenty of warm clothes. I didn't think about that this is a desert, and works like a desert usually does - super hot in the day and super cold in the night. Did I mention we didn't even think about putting on sun cream? Yeah I know. Stupid. My face is still sore from the sun burn from this day out..
Apart from the amazing views, the most fun part about this trip is trying to take funny photos. It is really a place to use your imagination!
Another small thing we didn't really realise before, was that some parts of this desert is covered with water, which makes it look much much cooler, and also gives you salt covered feet. (Not to mention salt covered jeans when you lay down to try to take cool photos..)
We went only went on a one day tour to the salt flats from Uyuni, which we booked with Tito Tours when we got to the little town of Uyuni the night before. There are loads of travel agencies to choose between in Uyuni. As soon as you get off the bus there are plenty of people ready to try to get you to join their tour. So you definitely don't have to worry about booking in advance, whether you do like us a one day or overnight (you can book trips to go through the salt flats to Chile! A pretty cool way to enter a new country!)
So the night before our trip, we simply went to the Tito tour office where two helpful women helped us to book, for a really good price, only 130 Bolivianos per person, which included lunch (and believe it or not, they were very understanding about my food requirements.. And when the lunch consisted of heaps of avocado, rice, veggies and potatoes - I am happy anyway) and a Spanish speaking guide who drove us around the salt flats along with the rest of our group. And apparently I'm the only one from the group that cannot jump..
We were picked up from the travel agency at 10:30 (although let's face it, this is South America, by the time we actually took of it was like 11:30), then we went to a couple of stops; a market and a old deserted train before we spent the rest of the time out in the white daze. After a few hours we were pretty tied though and it was a bit like, okay, I'm spoilt and have seen it now. And with that heating sun we were absolutely exhausted when we got back to Uyubi, where we had to go back to our hostel from the night before to pick up our bags and wait for the night bus to take us to La Paz.
Oh and foodwise in Uyuni - super easy. It's a small place, where they only seem to have Italian/Mexican restaurants (honestly, all of their menus looks almost the same..but) = GUACAMOLE VEGGIE BURRITOS and PASTA. Can't complain at all.
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