We made it to Uyuni 3 am and thought we had to wait the next morning to book our 3-4 day tour of the salt flats but people were hounding us the minute we got off the bus. I love it. We bargained till we got the best deal and got a free nights stay and breakfast the next morning. Sweet action! They tour guys said that we would be leaving by 10:00 am but it ended that we left at 11:30 am…stupid Bolivian time. We first headed to the Salt Flats, the largest and highest in the world. There we took some sweet N-man pics and other creative ones as well…so fun!
We had two English guys in our group to help us out – Simon and Hugo who participated in the fiasco. The whole ride we were listening to Cachaka music, Bryan Adams(Please forgive me) like 20 times, and some good oldies. Our tour guide Epi (I called him Epi-center) was cool. He has been a tour guide for 8 yrs but hardly spoke a word of English. We taught him “How are you” and “good” but by the end he got them pretty mumbled. Throughout the whole trip he didn’t remember anybody’s name but mine. “Kevin, Kevin, Kevin”. He probably thought all the white people look the same and was interested in a little Japanese guy from Canada. They all call me “Japon” over here. Everyone. They all look at me weird here.
The Salt Flats and the surrounding areas were just breath-taking. The only thing bad is that it gets super cold at night. The 3 of us were in the “cheap” room(while all the other Gringos paid $5 US to stay in a Hotel made of salt) and we had to take all the other blankets from the other beds just to keep warm. We had like 7-8 blankets on us. The bums score again. The Salt Flat tour was good, lots of hours riding in a jeep through the bumpy desert, lots of Bryan Adams – but we managed to get good eats and excellent pics.
-kevin
