Adios Bolivia, hola Argentina

We arrived back in Uyuni unwashed after our stay in the desert, and after a hearty meal (much needed) we boarded a train to the border with Alexis, Tatiana (both from Oz) and Giles (London - all pictured below) who we met while on the Salt Flats.

After an overnight journey we arrived on the border and had the longest border crossing any of us had ever experienced - the queues for immigration each side were so long they virtually crossed over into the opposite country.

Once safely in Argentina we had two more buses before we arrived feeling pretty revolting in Salta. We were in desperate need of a shower, only to discover that EVERY hostel in Salta was fully booked due to a festival that weekend for Jewish new year (Salta has a large Jewish community).

After the lovely kind man in our friends´ hostel had exhausted every option, we decided that if ever we deserved a night in a fancy hotel, it was now. Armed with the credit card, we booked ourselves into the only room left at the beautiful Papyrus Hotel - the delux suite. Hurrah! It was perched on a hill overlooking the whole city (see view below). Our suite had a bed the size of a small house and a very very nice bathroom. We were extremely happy with our rash but necessary decision, and got the best night´s sleep of our lives.

Party at minus 20c

We had been dreading our second night on the Salt Flats. It would reach minus 20c and we were staying in very basic accomodation with six or seven beds to a very simple room in a very remote shack. Amy and I didn´t even have sleeping bags (nobody told us!). So, to keep our spirits up, we did what we do best. We had a party.

Armed with my new miniature guitar, we sang songs whilst drinking yet more cheap wine. It turned out that everyone else was up for a party too. Even our tour guide and cook - we all ended up singing and dancing as the night came in and the temperature dropped. The whole celebration reached a crescendo with a very close limbo competition. Our new friend Jo (Yorkshire) was narrowly beaten by Alexis (Sydney) who despite having cracked a rib on the World`s Most Dangerous Road, managed to sneak under a very low piece of string.

When it was late enough, we ventured out into the cold night to watch the sky. I saw two shooting stars.

The following morning, we drove out to see geysers (pictured top), and into the Salvador Dali desert (above) which was the inspiration for many of Dali´s famous desert scenes in his paintings. Then we saw the Green Lagoon (mineral deposits again) before resting our cold and weary bones in a lovely natural hot spring which hit 40 degrees!

In the jeep

With Jo and Dan

The Red Lake

It really was very red (as a result of mineral deposits).

Flamingoes

The Salt Hotel

When one is completely surrounded by salt, why not use it as a building material? On our first night on the salt flats we stayed in a hotel made entirely out of salt. It´s not the easiest thing, to sleep on a salty bed, but we managed to catch some sleep thanks to some bad, cheap Bolivian wine.

Here are some photos....

4x4s on the salt

We left La Paz to head south to the Salar de Uyuni, or, to call it by its Gringo name, the Salt Flats. It´s basically 4000 square miles of flat salt plains, formed when a huge prehistoric lake dried up leaving the largest salt plain in the world.

It´s a terribly desolate and remote place. With no roads, and white salt stretching far into the horizon in every direction, it´s dazzling in the bright sunshine and closely resembles snow.

We signed up to a three day tour of the Flats where we would travel by 4x4, sleep in a salt hotel and freezing cold dorms (where the temperature dropped to minus 20c), see the clearest night sky in the world, be whipped by dust storms, witness green and red lagoons and have a bizarre limbo competition in the middle of nowhere with some newfound friends.

But first... here are the token touristy Salt Flat photos of us taken by our friends Dan and Jo, playing with scale and perspective of this odd place...