It's thirsty work fighting dinosaurs.

Took the bus back to Calama and booked my coach for the next morning. The trip back to Uyuni went smoothly clearing the borders in two hours. I dropped the bags in the hotel and went in search of the tour company I had read good things of on the advisor of trips. I walked past it first time but eventually found it. I had 3 days to fill so I could either do the one day salt flat tour on Saturday or on Monday leaving me two free days. I spoke to the agent who contrary to the advice only spoke a little English and he explained the itinerary. Does the driver speak English? Not really. Is the car well maintained? Oh yes sir. That will be twenty quid then. I paid and he wrote out a sheet with 7 numbers on it. So the tour is tomorrow and I am the only name on the list?! He explained that they deal with a lot of Koreans and Chinese. I looked around and the walls were festooned with hand written posters in mandarin or similar. Great. I bought some sunglasses and headed back to the hotel with yet another bad feeling.

Next day I turned up at the allotted hour of 1030 and to my astonishment the list on the wall had 7 names on it. By luck or salesmanship the agent had come up with the goods. Three Americans, a Spanish guy and an Asian couple that were on the same bus as me from Calama. We got in the Toyota land cruiser and set off, I got the front seat. Five minutes later and we arrived at our first destination, the train graveyard. Hmmm, OK. I let them wander and stayed in the shade drinking water.

Onto the next stop, a village en-route with a market aimed at tourists. I should say at this point that there was a procession of off road vehicles all following the same route. Brightly coloured garments, toy lamas and lots of stuff made out of salt, well there is plenty of it. A small museum housed some salt carvings.

We set off again and got onto the salt flats proper. They are white normally and covered in water in the rainy season but in between the dust blows onto them and they go an off white colour. I was thinking to myself 'just my luck to get the off white' when I realised that I had my sunglasses on and took them off and saw brilliant white for miles and miles. The salt dries into irregular hexagons which is really unusual. We drove to a building made of salt with salt carvings inside and out (your getting the picture) for lunch. Lunch was simple but good, chicken with rice and salad with a slice of watermelon after. Outside they had a load of flags and I was pleased to find the dragon so far from home.

Onwards to cactus island. A short walk to the top gave some lovely views.

Finally we headed back back past the piles of salt being harvested for sale to catch the sunset. W were drivens to a wet area and given wellies. We snapped away until the sun was down then drove back to the town and headed for the hotel.

Oh I almost forgot...

Footnote: next day on the bus I sat next to a Polish couple. They had done the three day trip and said that the roof on the accommodation was unfinished and they were given two blankets each with a temperature of minus five they were freezing. On top of that their driver was drunk and dropped them off at one pint then fell asleep. They had to walk a long way back to the car and wake him up. They tried to get the keys off him so that one of them could dive but he was having none of it. He went on to hit a rock and they were lucky to get back in one piece. Perhaps my choice wasn't so bad after all!