Incredible

The views were spectacular on this route, we went to Laguna Amarilla, Laguna Celeste, Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, Laguna Colorado, Laguna Cañapa, Valles de Rocas, Alota, Avaroa, San Juan, Colchani, Solar de Uyuni, and finally to the Uyuni ghost trains that have been abandoned.

All I have to say is, do it. Explaining the views isn´t enough. I´ll explain the salt hotel though. Apparently our hotel had been picked up piece by peice and moved to it´s spot. It really was made of saltm I lick a wall. I bet hundreds of people have licked that wall before me but I needed to know.

On this tour we came across small towns in the middle of nowhere that rely on tourism. They are expecting our cars, I guess, a certain amount of times a day. Each store or outdoor market sells the same things. After going to a few, you buy something just because you can imagine that they don´t sell much at all. This may truelly mean that they sell a fair bit. They never hassle you to buy something.

There was a ghost town of crumbled ruins. The people who lived there felt that it was haunted so they all moved away. The guy whose name I just remembered, Terrence, really needed a number two. He couldn´t wait for ten minutes to get to the next inhabitated town so he found a quiet spot, shat, and covered it with rocks. Then told everyone. Charming.

Everything morning we needed to get up in the early hours of the morning, usually between 5am and 6am. The reason to get up early was to catch the sunrise or because we had a long day of driving ahead of us. This suited me, I woke up before the alarm every day anyway. So did Ben from the other group so we´d always look at eachother with groggy eyes and nodd - yep, we´re the first up again. I don´t know about him, but I always ended up napping in the car, which infuriated Jay a bit, I should have been talking. He says, if it wasn´t for me talking all the time what would you all do? When my eyes were shut I could still hear him. Luckily I was tired enough to ignore him and listen to my spanish music for practice. A couple of times Terry and Jay blew up and argued. Terry would also change personality when Jay was around and pretend not to like me, then be nice when he disappeared again. I wondered how old they really were. My tolerence of Jay had abandoned me with lack of sleep, so I just kept myself to myself and enjoyed any time I had with the other group. At least Eddie was ace, he wasn´t malicious in the slightest. If I do a group tour again, I´m going to do it with people unlike Jay.

In the buildings that we stayed electricity only came on at certain hours and there was a need for torches at night. We shared our table with the other group quite a lot, which made me happy. They taught me how to play a card game called shithead and they played poker with tea bags because they didn´t have chips. Lovely and creative.

On the tour I met a retired french lady who was traveling alone. She spent 7 months volunteering in Cusco teaching people how to knit, sew and weave so that they can make their own products to sell. She was ever so pleasant, I had to mention her.