Saturday 7th May:
Just a week to go now, but hopefully finishing on a high as we head off to Uyuni. We leave from the highest international airport in the world, with the longest runway. The length is necessary to enable planes a higher take off speed in order to get the required lift in the thin air at 4,100 metres. Ivar gets us checked in at the airport and we're away early for the 50 minute flight. The great white expanse of the Salar de Uyuni dominates one side of the plane as we descend for landing.
We are collected by Eusebio our guide for the two days here, in fact he will accompany us to the Chilean border day after tomorrow. We leave straight away for our tour across the flats. I have trouble deciding which glasses to wear and settle on the polaroids in the car and my normal glasses outside. The whiteness is blinding, just like that experienced by skiers I'm sure.
We visit the house of one of many families who make a living from extracting and refining salt, each an individual concern, would have seemed more probable to have a cooperative. I buy a small bag of salt for B$1, not sure if it will make it home.
Then a tacky salt museum where there are a number of sculptures hewn from salt, which is much harder than I expected, rock hard in fact, not so difficult now to imagine a hotel built entirely from salt. Forty five minutes later we're at Incahausi Island, an island in the middle of the salt lake. It's covered with giant cactus and is like nothing I've ever seen before. I have the llama fillet, Lorna the llama burger, a much better choice, which I finish for her.
Eusebio is great fun and well used to taking the wacky photographs that everyone does our here on the salt flats. We complete a series and some are pretty good, especially after a little tweaking when we get back home.
We make for our hotel for the next two nights, the Luna Salada, the salt hotel, a large place made entirely from salt. It's fantastic with not only rooms and suites, which we somehow acquire, but with many beautifully decorated seating areas. It seems that our reservation did not make it to the hotel and Eusebio has to make a call to his office to confirm things. Anyway we end up with a double bed room suite, sadly the furthest room from the reception, and quite a trek to the dining room.
The hotel has definitely not been landscaped from the outside, but most definitely has on the inside, beautiful areas with very decorative soft furnishings, and loose salt on all the floors.
Eusebio and the driver have waited all afternoon for us for our sunset drive which is short, just back out on the salt, good job we left at 5.45pm and not 6pm or we would have missed it. The clouds makes for a memorable sunset with colours going from light yellow to crimson and so we take some more wacky pictures. I show Eusebio the 4K function on the camera and then get them to capture me leaping, and get some fun images, we must try this again in sunlight tomorrow.
After Lorna's prompt about sundowners, Eusebio has brought a bottle of Bolivian Merlot, and very tasty it is too. Complimenting this is a blanket and bag for us to keep, how thoughtful.
We join the rest of the guests, although the hotel is far from full, for a buffet dinner, one of the better ones I thought. We also invite Orgi to join us, we had passed him walking up the drive as we arrived earlier. Originally from Macedonia, and now working as an architect in Lubljana, Slovenia, he is between jobs and taking four weeks solo travel in South America, and by the sound of it having a great time.
We finish the evening in front of a large log fire, really cosy!
Just a week to go now, but hopefully finishing on a high as we head off to Uyuni. We leave from the highest international airport in the world, with the longest runway. The length is necessary to enable planes a higher take off speed in order to get the required lift in the thin air at 4,100 metres. Ivar gets us checked in at the airport and we're away early for the 50 minute flight. The great white expanse of the Salar de Uyuni dominates one side of the plane as we descend for landing.
We are collected by Eusebio our guide for the two days here, in fact he will accompany us to the Chilean border day after tomorrow. We leave straight away for our tour across the flats. I have trouble deciding which glasses to wear and settle on the polaroids in the car and my normal glasses outside. The whiteness is blinding, just like that experienced by skiers I'm sure.
We visit the house of one of many families who make a living from extracting and refining salt, each an individual concern, would have seemed more probable to have a cooperative. I buy a small bag of salt for B$1, not sure if it will make it home.
Then a tacky salt museum where there are a number of sculptures hewn from salt, which is much harder than I expected, rock hard in fact, not so difficult now to imagine a hotel built entirely from salt. Forty five minutes later we're at Incahausi Island, an island in the middle of the salt lake. It's covered with giant cactus and is like nothing I've ever seen before. I have the llama fillet, Lorna the llama burger, a much better choice, which I finish for her.
Eusebio is great fun and well used to taking the wacky photographs that everyone does our here on the salt flats. We complete a series and some are pretty good, especially after a little tweaking when we get back home.
We make for our hotel for the next two nights, the Luna Salada, the salt hotel, a large place made entirely from salt. It's fantastic with not only rooms and suites, which we somehow acquire, but with many beautifully decorated seating areas. It seems that our reservation did not make it to the hotel and Eusebio has to make a call to his office to confirm things. Anyway we end up with a double bed room suite, sadly the furthest room from the reception, and quite a trek to the dining room.
The hotel has definitely not been landscaped from the outside, but most definitely has on the inside, beautiful areas with very decorative soft furnishings, and loose salt on all the floors.
Eusebio and the driver have waited all afternoon for us for our sunset drive which is short, just back out on the salt, good job we left at 5.45pm and not 6pm or we would have missed it. The clouds makes for a memorable sunset with colours going from light yellow to crimson and so we take some more wacky pictures. I show Eusebio the 4K function on the camera and then get them to capture me leaping, and get some fun images, we must try this again in sunlight tomorrow.
After Lorna's prompt about sundowners, Eusebio has brought a bottle of Bolivian Merlot, and very tasty it is too. Complimenting this is a blanket and bag for us to keep, how thoughtful.
We join the rest of the guests, although the hotel is far from full, for a buffet dinner, one of the better ones I thought. We also invite Orgi to join us, we had passed him walking up the drive as we arrived earlier. Originally from Macedonia, and now working as an architect in Lubljana, Slovenia, he is between jobs and taking four weeks solo travel in South America, and by the sound of it having a great time.
We finish the evening in front of a large log fire, really cosy!
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