A new group of friends do the salt flats: Day 1 or This is Amazing!

Ask and ye shall receive, right? No sooner had I gotten off the bus from La Paz than I met some great new people to travel with.

I had briefly joined forces with an American brother and sister I had met before getting on the bus, but after witnessing them interact for about 5 seconds, I knew they weren’t the friends for me. Especially not for a 3 day, cramped in the back on a SUV tour.

After realizing that I would be beyond miserable with those two, a group of 4 people walked into the travel agency where I was reluctantly signing up. These 4 people, 2 Brits and 2 Canadians, were looking to do either a 2 or 3 day tour. I told them I was looking to do a 2 day tour too so I could shave some time off my schedule, and asked if I could join them. In reality, sure, I wanted to do a 2 day tour, but I really really just wanted to get out of brother/sister hell.

They were really cool and said that it would be no problem for me to join. WHEW! Though I didn’t know them any better than I knew annoying brother/sister combo, I had a good vibe about them.

As it turned out, we all got a 3 day and not a 2 day tour together. I felt a little badly that I had told brother/sister that I was leaving them to do a 2 day tour and then ended up doing a 3 day, but oh well, I wanted to have fun. :)

The 5 of us signed up for the tour and were told we would leave at 1am. Brendan, the Canadian guy, told me the plan: we would get some money out of the ATM, would grab some breakfast, and before leaving, would buy lots of snacks and many bottles of wine for the 3 day trip. Sounded like my kind of people!

After signing the paperwork for the tour, we had a little bit of time so Brendan, his girlfriend, Caitlin, and I went to find some lunch. We settled on a pizza place and ordered. A few minutes later, Moya and Jack, the couple from England, showed up and ordered their pizzas too. 30 minutes later... we were still waiting for the pizza and the travel agency woman came by to say that they were loading our backpacks onto the roof of the car and that we needed to hurry up. So we asked for the pizza to go, Caitlin and I went to get snacks, and the boys went to get wine.

10 minutes later, we were all cramped into the SUV with our 4 pizzas (conveniently put in black plastic bags), 7 bottles of wine, and various snacks. As we passed the “bin bag pizza” back and forth, we joked around and I knew I had found a great group to travel with.

We first made a brief stop at the Train Cemetery and then moved on to the main event: the salt flats!! Jimmy, our driver, let us out and let the games begin! I think I took 100 photos of us all messing around. Moya and Jack had bought various small toys to take photos with, so we used them, we used our sunglasses as props, and of course, took the obligatory salt flat jump photos. Caitlin managed to snap the above photo of me clicking my heels like a leprachaun as I was demonstrating the kind of things we should do while we were there.

After about 30 minutes of that, Maria, our cook made us a lunch of llama steaks (I wish I could say I loved it but I felt sad eating a llama) and we ate at a table made of salt.

The more time that passed, the happier I was that I had joined this group. Sometimes you can be a single person amongst couples and you can feel like the odd man out, or can feel uncomfortable, but these 4 were really awesome. Maybe it’s because both couples have been dating for over 4 years or maybe it’s just because they’re really awesome. Either way, they were so easy to be around and I was having a great time.

So after lunch, we went to Fish Island where tons of enormous cacti grow. We had to option to climb up to the top for a fee, but we were more interested in taking more photos with trucks and alligators.

After Fish Island, Jimmy told us we would be heading towards the hotel for the night. Eventually we got to the end of the salt flats and started traversing the rocky areas beyond. We began to see an occasional building perched up on a hill and Moya and Caitlin joked about one particular shack saying that it would be hilarious if we were staying there....

20 minutes later, we’re unpacking our stuff and bringing it into said shack. Turns out this “hotel” was made of salt, from the walls, to the bed platforms, to the kitchen tables and stools. It was actually pretty cool! Sadly, none of us took a photo of it, I think because we were so cold. Turns out salt isn’t particularly warm...

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To read more about the Salar de Uyuni, click here for the wikipedia entry!