Salar de Uyuni

After 3 days in the salt flats and surrounding desert landscapes I'm positively bursting with stories and amazing photos. I've never had a harder time deciding what to Instagram. Which may sound ridiculous but is 120% true. It felt like every five minutes there was a new photo op so this is going to be a very photo-ful post. (Perfect for anyone who prefers to skim the words and just take in the photos, don't worry, I don't mind ). Since I've had so much trouble eliminating photos, we're just gonna split the tour into two posts, this one being the salt flats day.
After a quiet night in Uyuni and a morning spent buying any necessities for the tour, it was time to get the party started! I totally lucked out with a great group to spend the next three days with. John and Amelia from Australia and Sammy and Mai from Israel. After piling into our beautiful Lexus jeep, we headed to the first stop, the train cemetery. There are abandoned trains along the tracks outside Uyuni that are eerily beautiful.

We spent some time climbing in and around the trains..

The tracks leading back to Uyuni...

After this, things really started with a bang, driving right to the edge of the salt flats and stopping for a bike ride to our lunch spot.

Eating lunch next to piles of salt was some kind of amazing.

We drove to one of the original salt hotels in the flats, also along the route of the Dakar Rally in Bolivia.

And then the big stop of the day.. In the middle of the salt flats for some amazing and fun pictures.

I really enjoyed the perspective pictures.
Holding up my Canada flag..

And our trusty jeep..

Kissing my new llama mascot..

Balancing on a beautiful bottle of Bolivian wine..

It was so much more fun that I expected!

And the beauty of the day wasn't even finished! We headed to Isla Incahuasi next, which is a cactus island in the middle of the salt flats. Such a neat place.

The view from the top out over the flats is pretty amazing. I've never seen anything quite like it!

The next island, Pia Pia, also featured a few cacti, but was unique in the big cave in the side.

Finally, we enjoyed our last beautiful view of the day, sunset in the salt flats. Up there as one of the best I've seen. Pinks and blues on the one side..

And yellows, blues, reds on the other...

We spent the night at a pretty nice hotel in a village called Manica. Actually had showers (though they were freezing cold so yeah, I skipped that...) and electricity! After such a full day I had no trouble falling asleep immediately, especially when thinking back on how seriously, seriously amazing the first day had been!