The rest of the Solar de Uyuni!

So Day 3 (maybe day 2, they all kinda blend together) we hit the thermal pools!! All 12 of us changed into our bathing suits (quite magically) and had a good soak! I think this was day 2. After this, we changed and hopped back in the jeep for a bit of a drive. Before we knew it we were in SNOW! We got to the geysers and jumped out onto the snow. The snowball fights were on. I made a snow angel, and lindser made a tiny snowman (she took a really cool photo of it, check out her blog). It was a lot of fun to kid around up there, and we even managed a few photos! That night I tried to learn a card game called Uker from the Americans in our jeep. I love that game! I hope I can remember it enough to teach Linds. We called it a night when all the power shut off (without warning).
Up early the next day and off to check out Laguna Colorado. We saw thousands of pink flamingos! We were dropped off down by the lagoon, and the jeeps drove off to meet up with us later up the hill. I got out and immediately realized tht I had no batteries in my camera. Bugga.
I had to do the hike up the hill twice! Got batteries and took mas photos! It was beautiful. The lagoon, the mountains in the background and pink flamingos everywhere! We drove over the hill and to another lagoon after that. There we saw Flamingos, mountains, the lagoon, AND Llamas!! Very cool photo op yet again.
Onwards through the park to many other intersting sights. Stopped often for photos. Saw my first ¨sun dog¨ which was VERY beautiful. It´s kind of a sideways rainbow. So pretty.
That night we stayed in San Cristobol (we changed our itinerary a bit due to the mass quantities of rain). We visited and about 1/2 of us hit the local bar called Mad Max. It was an interesting place. It was a room made out of a massive metal drum of some kind. Very cool.
Next and final day we drove to Uyuni. Our jeep drove really slowly, waiting for the others to catch up (they went for gas), but they never ended up catching us. The town of Uyuni had MASSIVE puddles in the streets everywhere. They looked like small lakes! We were running out of gas and at one point we were all quite worried that we might have to push our jeep through these huge puddles. No worries, the 2nd gas station we went to actually had gas! Whew!
We drove to the Salt Flats (Solar de Uyuni) for the grand finale of our 4 day trip. It was something amazing! Linds and I got crazy and took tons of funny photos. The Salt Flats cover an area of about 12,000 ? meters ? When we were there the water was almost a foot deep covering all of the salt flats. It was pretty cool. Not what we expected. (We were hoping for a tiny bit of water so it would have a glass like mirror effect, but alas, it was still phenominal!)

We drove to the Salt hotel (yup, a hotel made of salt blocks in the middle of the salt flats) and had lunch there. Our cooks prepared our final meal. I was able to pay 5 Bolivianos to use the washroom. (no running water in the sinks). Lucky me. (Thanks for the loan Zoe) That is nearly a canadian dollar to use the loo! We took tons more photos and said ciao to the other jeep and that was that. We went back to Uyuni and Linds and I got a hostel (Hostel Avenida- looks a bit like a prison, but is central). Then we ran into the South African boys and made plans to meet for dinner. A bit of e-mail and hit the Italian pizza place for dinner. The 4 Americans and 3 South Africans were there, so we ate drank and said farewell! An early night otherwise for Lindsay and I.

That was the end of our amazing 4 day trek across the Salt Flats of Southern Bolivia. A great time had by all! It was so cheap too. Only 105 us for 4 days of food, accomodation and transportation with a local, experienced guide. We´d pay at least 10 times that for something similar in Canada. I love Bolivia! More stories to come, but that´s all for now!