They Shimmer, Like Mirrors

Three days travelling across the blistering salt flats of Uyuni and past freezing lagoons in the Atacama desert brought us to the border betwen Bolivia and Chile.

We started off from Uyuni town with our Quechuan guide Obet, tucked in the back of a 4x4 with Mike and Abbie from England and Morten and Isobel from Berlin.

Obet and the Toyota Landcruiser

First up was the train cemetery, the end of the line for a peacefully rusting collection of 19th century steam locomotives, many made in Sheffield and shipped here for the Bolivian mining industry.

On to a local salt-making business for a tour of the packing plant, gift shop and lunch - chicken salad and possibly the best apple crumble I've ever tasted, even without custard!

Packin´salt

Mike overdoes the apple crumble

How many little beds?

It's all tentatively eaten due to the amount of stomach troubles we've had lately, but we're all on the road to recovery.

The salt flats themselves are vast and surreal. Difficult not to believe they are ice, but the heat of the day helps focus the mind.

The youngsters spend time taking clever perspective-bending photos, then it's on to Isla Pescado (fish island), another surreal phenomenon - fresh water underground and cacti and birdlife in a desert of salt.

A prickly pair

We spend the night in a chilly (but seriously not as cold as some made out) and very basic hostel, where alcohol was taken and friends were made.

Not so ´pretty´now...

Up bright and early, we pass red ore lagoons, blue lagoons, pink flamingos and green, arsenic-laced lagoons.

We see Dali-esque stone trees and rocks, steamy guysers and hot mud spouting from little volcanoes in the earth at our feet at 4,900 metres.

The moon rose spectacularly and most romantically over the mountains as we arrived at our second hostel.

A little colder, so more alcohol was taken. Kim tested the hot springs next door, while I tested the bed springs.

A cold start

At dawn, on and on over miles of sand and dust to the border, we decanted dusty and breathless into a minibus.

An hour later and several thousand metres lower, we arrived in San Pedro De Atacama, where I left two old friends behind. One was my trusty panama, now folded and beaten into submission. Can you guess what the other one was?

Loads and loads of Uyuni, Atacama, Cacti, Geysers and San Pedro here ....