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Departures hour was 7am, direction salt lake. But the bus does not show up. Because some want to have breakfast (before the 7 hour lasting excursion to Salar de Uyuni), the departure postponed for one hour. And the bus cannot park in the narrow street in front of the hotel, so we must walk 3 blocks to reach our bus. Luggage and patients go by taxi...
The spectacular ride to Uyuni goes through a slowly changing landscape, along the edge of the alti-plano. During photo-stops we can have a little walk to exchange the dull hours with pleasant 15 minutes. Surely if there is a herd of lama's.
At noon we have a lunch break in a very small village (only a couple of houses). It is astonishing how the Bolivians here survive, just by irrigating the water from one little flow. It is so remote that the only house that looks (a bit) like a restaurant only serves soup and coffee. Strange however that the drivers get some food...
Eventually we approach the immense plain of the salt lake. At this distance it does not look very spectacilar... just a but lake with a pink color. In Uyuni luggage is split up. We leave one part (which we do not need during three days) in a depot (read chamber). The other part is loaded on top of 3 jeeps, together with the food. Before our new Bolivian guides bring our to the lake we have one hour to explore the neighborhood and purchase some fruit and drinks. Outside the market however there isn't much to do. The empty streets look like a very good location for the recordings of 'Billy the kid' or other Westerns.
The three gigantic jeeps drive towards the 'salt hotel'. This hotel lies only 15km from the edge of the salt lake, but the excursion is very astonishing: driving 70km/h over an immense large white plain feels surrealistic. Halfway we come to a halt to make photos of the large white nothing... or did we stop because one of the jeeps a flat tire, or because the battery of the other jeep no longer works?
Although we walk on salt and it is not cold at all, our brain keeps on saying that we walk in a snow landscape. Arriving at the hotel, we learn that we are not the only dutch-speaking group. The group of Djoser is also here. To enjoy an optimal sunset the guide tells us to walk 500m of the hotel and stay half hour after the sunset to look at the coloring sky. And of course is he right (must be, he lives here). Fortunately there are cloud trails to intensify the red and gray colors.
In the meantime our female cook has prepared a superb meal on small gas flames: orange -glühwein, soup, spaghetti and coffee. And as expected having dinner in a slat hotel is out of the ordinary: salts table, salts chairs, salts walls. But about the toilets we remain silent.
At 10pm we have look at Southern hemisphere, and then it's past (salt) bed time. Some people stay awake a little longer with the aid of Whiskey.
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