Salar de Uyuni and crossing into Chile..

December 11, 2009

Okay, so as so nicely pointed out to me by my dedicated reader and friend, Corey, I am behind in writing!! But here are some updates :)

Salar de Uyuni was a really fun journey. We left the town of Uyuni, Bolivia, and spent three days and two nights exploring the salt flats and desert areas between Bolivia and Chile. It is a 4x4 jeep trek, this time I was traveling with 3 guys from Israel, a girl from Brazil, and a guy from Columbia. The first day we explored the salt flats, which were really cool! One of the favorite parts of this for travelers are to take pictures which look really distorted due to the reflection of the salt flats. There are examples scattered throughout this entry!

Anyways, the salt flats were really cool looking and fun to do the pictures. We ate our lunch along the way, then spent the night at a salt hotel. It was pretty cool because the walls were made out of salt, salt floors....fun little adventure!

The next day we spent driving through the desert and visiting Isla de Pescados which was really an area with cactuses on it...then we visited some different colored lakes with flamingoes and beautiful scenery. It was just really nice spending the day driving with awesome scenery like mountains, colorful lakes...very beautiful! That night we stayed at a "simple accommodation" and me and the girl from Brazil tested out some of the rum of the region... :)

The final day we had to get up at 430am and leave by 5am to see the sunrise (very lovely) and visit la Laguna Verde (green lake). It was supposed to change color as the wind blew but there was no wind that day...it was beautiful to see anyways!

We finished around 11am and got dropped off at the border of Chile! After waiting for about an hour with lots of tourists, our transfer came and we crossed the border to Chile. They were much more strict than any other countries! They made all the tourists line up and searched all our bags...Everything went fine! I was now in the very cute and very touristy and very expensive town of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile!

This little town was really just a quick stopping point for entering into Argentina. I stayed in San Pedro de Atacama for one night in a very cute little hostel and had a really nice girl as a roommate, which was nice..basically just had a quiet evening of showering, organizing my belongings, and having some quiet and a good night sleep before my bus ride to Salta, Argentina the next morning!