DAY 4
It wasn’t raining so Alfredo woke us up at 4am. Irma made us coffee and some breakfast and gave us cake she had baked the night before as a snack for the car – bless her. We drove the 30 mins out to he salt flats (Salar) and witnessed such a beautiful sunrise. There was some water on the salar which, once the sun came up, gave off a perfect reflection of the surrounding mountains, clouds and anything on the salar. We walked around for ages just trying to take it all in.
We took loads of photos of our reflections, the jeep reflection, the clouds, mountains etc. We then drove to the Salar Hotel. This hotel has caused much controversy as nothing should be built on the salar and people are worried about the pollution from the hotel. The hotel itself only has about 6 rooms and is made out of salt. It was quite amazing to see the big salt bricks they had used to build the hotel as well as all the tables and chairs made out of salt!
We went back onto the salar to a different point as the sun was now fully up and we had such a laugh taking funny photos. Alfredo showed us how to use trick photography to make it look like Pete was a giant about to crush all of us under his foot and another one of us standing in his palm and him trying to blow us away. They came out brilliantly. We then stopped at a little town called Colchani, the village where they run the processing of the salt. There were loads of market stalls around with people selling amazing jewellery boxes, ashtrays, ornaments etc all made out of salt. There were also loads of clothes made from llama hair. As my handbag broke and i had to ditch it a few weeks back I bought a nice handbag made from llama wool which is wonderfully soft. If I had more space in my backpack I would be bought a jumper, socks, hat, gloves, pj bottoms but unfortunately space is precious so no shopping for me!!! 😦
As we were up so early we got back to Uyuni at 11:30am. Irma served us lunch and we had our final meal as a group which was quite sad. We were really lucky to have such good people in our group and such a genuinely nice and fun driver and cook. We are really going to miss Irmas unique laugh that always made me laugh and the way she would always chatted away and laugh even though she knew we didn’t understand. I will also miss how well she looked after us and of course Alfredo’s music in the car 🙂 (I still have one song running on repeat through my head 2 days later!!!)
Anyway we said cheerio to the gang and irma planted a nice big toothless soppy kiss on Petes lips which was very funny, she came for mine but I managed to do the double cheek kiss instead. Shame Alfredo was so short that I think it is the first time I have had to bend down a bit to hug a guy. We then walked into the centre of town where we had booked into Hostel Piedro Blanco for the night. It was really nice and we had a big ensuite room with hot water!
We went for a walk around the markets, Shame everyone is quite short around here so Pete couldn’t fit under the gazebos. We went into a building that had a big food market inside and I really wish I hadn’t. There was a meat section that was really hard to stomach. Not just from the sight but the smell. This one guy was sawing lower jaw bones in half (I think llama jaw bones) and then hanging them up in front of his little stall. This lady was talking to him and tapping her pen against some of the teeth (like you would tap a melon) as she casually chatted to the butcher. We also saw insides, tongues, a whole llama head, a whole skinned sheep just lying on a table, eyes bulging out and some other unidentifiable things in buckets. There were no fridges in sight and the smell of rotten meat was quite pungent. Pete even walked out of there a vegetarian!
We escaped the market and decided to get a nice cold beer and enjoy the sunshine. We later found a place that had happy hour and decided to go for pizza and some cocktails. I was amazed to get one of the best mojito’s I have had in a while and the pizza was really good too so we had a great evening in Uyuni 🙂
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