I thought we were on Mars

Uyuni itself wasn't the most inspiring little town, but as the access point to Sajama National Park and Salar de Uyuni, it was everything we needed. We arrived in the morning and ran around finding a hostel, booking our tour, booking our bus back out and finally relaxing and recovering from an uncomfortable overnight bus trip.

We went with Los Tres Gigantes (cheapest tour company we could find) to do the 3 day tour, and it was the best $100 I've ever spent. Our first day we went out to the train cemetery (where old trains were left to rust in the salt) and then onto the salt flat itself. It's so incredibly white, it's hard to describe and incredibly hard on the eyes without sunglasses. Just an amazing sight! Then it was onto our first night's resting spot, which was a very cute mudbrick town about four hours from Uyuni on rather bumpy dirt roads.

The second day was the real highlight, we went from lake to lake, each more spectacular than the next with some magnificent scenery in between and rather bizarre rock formations. Sometimes it was like being on another planet with white lakes and red lakes and barren landscape. We saw flamingos llamas, vicunas (a wild and slightly smaller version of the Llama) and a bird that looks a little like a small emu. Just incredible.

The next day, two of our company got some serious altitude sickness and were throwing up all night, so they couldn't continue. There was serious debate the night before about whether we would get to continue, as the sick travlllers didn't want to pay any extra to stay behind, and all the other cars were already full. Our driver eventually saved the day, by stumping up the money himself. So we were up at 3:30am the next morning to see the geysers which we pretty cool if a little smelly and then off to the hot springs, which after two days without showers and a very cold morning were a real treat! We then circled back to pick up the sick two, and unfortunately missed the last lake (Laguna Verde) and Dali's desert, but the tour was amazing all the same.