April 16-20: Salar de Uuyuni, Bolivia

Finally!! We have our pictures! Although this trip was a few weeks ago, we thought it was worth posting the pics because this was one of the most unreal things we have seen yet. We left San Pedro de Atacama, Chile on Sunday, the day of Easter. By 10 AM, we had crossed the Bolivian border (i.e., had showed our passports to a lone man in a one room house at the first point in Bolivia). Katie and I already had to use the bathroom at this point--when we asked where it was, the imigration hombre pointed to a 50 year old American school bus that had been painted by hippies and had no wheels, which was lying on its side 100 meters away from the "office." Apparently, the shield it provided from the open desert was a bathroom!! It was the last one we saw that day! After walking over the border, we jumped in a 4x4 with two other couples, Katie and Jim, and Haley and Tom (We had met haley and tom a few different times along the gringo trail) and set off on the tracks you see behind us--we didn't see a road in the conventional sense for three days. Ten minutes in, we passed the other jeep in our group stopped, with theguide under it, doing repairs...ALREADY!!!! The scenery was similar to what you see in the picture for the entire day--and I thought Delaware was the middle of nowhere!

Our 4x4 trip lasted three days, at the end of which we arrived in Uuyuni, Bolivia. It was the most incredible drive EVER! The first day we saw red lakes, green lakes, lakes so clear they looked like glass, pink flamingos, with the most interesting and colorful mountains as a constant backdrop--they also made an excellent backdrop for Dahli's paintings. (Hint: pay no attention to the people in the photos--we've ruined perfectly good lanscapes)


Day two we began at a naturally occurring rock tree, which was surrounded by all sorts of other weird rock formations--we literally felt like we were on another planet.

Day three was by far the most spectacular. After spending the night in a hotel made entirely of salt bricks (note to contact wearers: do NOT kick salt from the floors into your eyes, this causes severe pain), we left before sunrise to get out onto the salt flats of Uuyuni. The salt flats were created a really, really long time ago when plates shifted and drained a lake(or such is the current hypothesis). Now, all that is left is a 3-4 meter layer of salt as far as the eye can see. The lake was a gigantic one. The salt is mined in one area, but mostly the flats are empty. It rained the night before we went out, and so there was a shallow layer of water, in which the sunrise reflected perfectly. As we drove, the sun came up and the colors of the sky were reflected underneath us....we felt like we were driving through the sky!! Our road.... After a few KMs, we were out of the water, and it was just salt as far as the eye could see...wow.

There are some fun tricks you can do with cameras on the flats. After breakfast, we decided to go out and play. Katie and I didn't like the food too uch on the trip...we had begun to waste away....
The trip and the scenery were both even more amazing than the pics capture--our guide, Alejandro, was also the best, and we had a great time with him and our crew. There are more pics to come of our other stops in Bolivia. We are getting the kinks worked out of our blog methods, but some mysteries remain...how to delete a duplicate pic?????