DAY 3
We were allowed a “sleep-in” until 6am as Alfredo wanted to be on the road by 7am. Irma fed and watered us and we set off at 7am on the dot. We drove brought some great landscapes – rolling hills, yellow and green circular grass patches and different colour sandy hills. The weather wasn’t great so we didn’t get great views of the huge volcanos that surrounded us in some parts. The first highlight of the day was when we stopped at Desierto de Siloli where we saw the famous “stone tree”. This place was crazy and once again made us feel like we were on another planet. The stone tree was brilliant and looked to me like an ostrich head. It is crazy how such a big piece of rock (head) can be held up by such a thin and small piece of rock (neck). We ran around like kids as there were so many amazing rock features to see. All the shapes have occurred naturally and just by wind erosion. We were told that here in this desert the wind blows close to the surface of the sand and that is why a lot of the rocks are thin at the bottom and big on top.
Alfredo had to literally drag us away from there. We passed a few more lagoons and another volcano but it was raining so we didn’t have good visibility. Then we got to the “Valley of the Rocks” what an amazing place. Just miles and miles of strange rock formations. There is one they called the Condor and it really does look like a bird in flight. Rose was in her heaven!!
We went to a really cute town called Alota where once again irma whipped up a great lunch. We walked around the town for a bit trying to take in how other people live. This town was in the middle of nowhere in-between beautiful mountains but it must be freezing in winter. It was really eye opening to see how people can still survive off the land with no modern gadgets and gizmos.
We left there and drove for ages before driving past a big silver mining town called San Cristobal. We made a very quick pit stop there and then headed onto our final stop – Uyuni. Just before we drove into Uyuni town we stopped at an old train cemetery on the outskirts of town. They had made swings and a seesaw out of the old metal. Pete and Theo got onto the seesaw which was hilarious because pete weighs double what Theo does so pete just got stuck at the bottom and Theo at the top. You could also climb on the old trains that looked like they were straight out of an old western movie. I never thought i would ever say this about a train cemetery – it was great fun!
We carried onto Uyuni which is a strange Mid-size, very dusty, busy, bustling desert town. There are no shops as such, only market stalls. We stayed on the outskirts of town and the 4 groups on the salar tour all stayed in one hostel which was fun. We had to pay if we wanted a hot shower which pete and i did but the water was not hot, not even warm! Pete also got shocked in the shower as it was an electric shower and Petes head was too close to be top so he kept getting a light shock every now and again. (no health and safety standards over here!).
Anyway after we had our cold showers we walked into town to book our tickets to Potosi (the highest city in the world sitting at 4070m) for next morning. The ticket office looked so dodgy and no one spoke English so we just hoped we hadn’t booked onto one of the really rickety old busses! We got back and had our final dinner with the tour groups which was lovely. We then had a briefing from Alfredo who said he would check the weather in the morning and if it was not raining we would leave at 5am, if it was raining we would leave at 8am. After dinner we were all shattered so Pete and I retired to our room that had no light and no curtains and the fattest pillows I have ever seen – if you used them you would basically sleep sitting up…
dawnaroundtheworld 
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