Uyuni & the Salt Flats

We arrived at our hotel in Uyuni which was in the same building as the famous 'Minuteman Pizza' which we had been told numerous times is the best pizza in South America. I ate there that night and the pizza was pretty good, but the llama pieces were a bit tough. Afterwards we went for a drink at a bar called 'The Extreme Fun Pub', which had a drinking challenge where the best times were displayed on the wall. The challenge was to drink 10 drinks in the quickest time possible. 3 of the drinks contained a shot of 96% alcohol, one drink was in a special cup that mixed a bottle of beer with shots of gin, vodka, whiskey, rum and tequila as it was poured into the mouth. One of the aussies, Tim, agreed to do it before he had seen what it involved, and he had a big crowd around him cheering before he had a chance to back out. He did really well and managed a time of 2 minutes 20 seconds and his name on the wall. (The record is 32 seconds.)

Somehow, the next day he felt fine and we got in some jeeps to head off to the salt flats. I'd seen a lot of photos from the salt flats and the best ones involve some cool perspective trickery because of the stark, white, unchanging landscape. We borrowed a toy dinosaur from the hotel to include in some pictures. First of all we visited a salt factory to see a woman and her young daughter packing salt into bags for less than £3 a day. Then went onto the salt flats to see the salt mines, which were basically men shoveling salt into the back of trucks. The sun was very bright and it reflects off the salt so we had to make sure we put sun cream on the inside of our noses to stop them getting burned.

We had a quick lunch at a hotel made out of blocks of salt and then drove for ages until we couldn't see anything except sky and salt. Here everyone got out and started coming up with imaginative perspective photos. It was great fun collaborating with people to try and get the angles right and some of the photos looked amazing. The whole landscape was so surreal it was hard for our eyes to adjust to the lack of objects to judge distance. It was like being in a dream or on an alien planet.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a local train graveyard for sunset and more pictures. I'd been looking forward to the salt flats for a long time and this was definitely one of my favourite days so far on the trip.