Salar De Uyuni: Day Three

Man I slept horrible at the Hotel de Sal. The day before, there was just sooo much dust in the Land Cruiser that I really had a bad reaction to it… and had sinus blockage all night. Today was rough too…. and I’ve felt pretty horrible riding again, but it was worth it because today we are out driving on the salt flat and its absolutly unreal! Javier told us that the salt goes from 1 centimeter at the edge, to 20 meters thick in the center… the salt flat is huge and there is a lake underneath it. We drove out to an island called Isla de la Incawasi which is covered with ancient coral and huge cactii. After some phallac snapshots with the cactus, we sat around for another 3 hours waiting on Javier to get some more gasoline (because we never got any yesterday) to finish our trip off of the salt flat to the nearby (90 km away) town of Uyuni. We ate lunch out on the salt near the Island and I got a sunburn on my legs. We played some card games, and finally left, arriving in Uyuni just in time for each of us to part ways, as Paul and I got into another Land Cruiser and headed back south towards the Chilean border, Eran purchased a bus ticket to Potosí and Dave and Kel boarded up in a hotel there for the night. All in all, it was a cool trip with a cool group of folks… and despite my bad allergies and Kellie’s bout with Montezuma’s Revenge the trip was a delight. Oh, and you’ll be happy to know the brakes never failed us… Javier’s advice was definitely the theme of the trip: “tranquilo, tranquilo”.