Salar de Uyuni 31 March

Salar de Uyuni and Uyuni town 31 March (day 3 of 3)

Friday 31 March    up at silly o'clock and leave at 4.30 am, driving by road through the dark. After about an hour we start driving over the Salar de Uyuni, a massive salt flat.  Around 11 billion tons of salt is estimated to be within Salar and c. 70% of the world’s lithium reserves are found there with an entire industry devoted to its extraction.

It's dark, however, so all we can tell is that we're driving 
a)  in a straight-ish line and        
b) through water…. 
We finally stop about 5.45 am to watch the sunrise - very chilly so my gloves, buff, hood etc all get put to use. There is some water near where we're parked but it's less than an inch deep - and makes for some great 'reflection' pictures.


We watch the sunrise for about an hour and then head to our next excitement, Isla Incahuasi, an island covered in cacti. Go for a walk up the island, which is more like mountaineering (well, it is when done at over 3,600 metres). 

We meet a baby llama (or alpaca?) and another co traveller sees a cat. Apparently only one person lives on the island which would be very peaceful when the crowds leave.
 There are 16 or 17 4 X 4s parked here!  Not exactly the path less trodden.

We have brunch along with the other three 4 X 4s from Tambo Lomo (the company Edgar works for). It is two people's birthday today and, bless them, two birthday cakes are produced and we sing 'happy birthday'. Surreal!

Then it's fun and games with perspective - pictures of John standing on Lyndon's hand, of the group being chased by a dinosaur or crushed underfoot by Lyndon. Edgar gets well into his photography director mode with this!
Next stop are the international flags at the (now disused apart from a souvenir shop) Salt Hotel. 
It takes me a bit of time to find the tiny Union Flag. Kiwis get a proper sized one. There's also a monument to the Dakar Rally which for some reason has been held  in Bolivia for several years since 2014.
We leave the salt flats and get onto an actual tarmacked dual carriageway for the first time in days…. but after a few miles Edgar takes a random left turn and drives us cross country again. Is the poor chap missing rough terrain already ? No, he's been warned about a blockade (bloqueo) on a bridge on our tarmacked road - we think it's about lithium mining - so we just take a parallel off road route . Mostly fine apart from meeting a bus coming the other way which almost grounds itself.

The last stop is a bit sad and a bit of a time filler when we visit the train cemetery on the outskirts of Uyuni town. 'Cemetery' is putting a good spin on things as it's more a dumping ground, and no information about the changes in the economy that introduced railways and then saw their demise.

About 4.00 pm we reach the Tambo Lomo office in Uyuni and are handed our rucksacks down from the 4 X 4 roof for the final time. Edgar offers to give us a lift to our hotel (oh, the magic of a $50 tip) and we are safely delivered to our next salt hotel, the Casa del Sal.
We are in a huge room with a balcony and big bathroom. The hotel itself is a building job half finished but the shower works, the staff are nice and hotel dinner (we don't go out as there's some kind of protest march going on - not clear if it's teachers, lithium related or some other reason) is fine. 

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