Sucre, Uyuni and the Salt flats

So Sucre ended up just being a place to relax and not do too much. We found a cafe called Joyride that was recommended in the lonely planet and ended up eating there for breakfast, lunch, dinner, lunch, and then dinner. It may seem strange to continuously eat at the same place and not try something new but we´ve learnt that when you find a good thing stick with it. Especially in Bolivia where its very easy to get very bad food. On our second day in Sucre we went on the Dino truck to Cretaceous park. Its the thing to do in Sucre. We had fairly low expectations of this place because we had overheard some ther travellers saying it was pretty average but we loved it. Just cos its was a bit silly and gave us an opportunity to take funny photos with giant dinosaur replicas. But the main attraction of this park is a limestone wall with over 500 preserved dinosaur foot prints. And from those footprints they can determine what family the dinosaurs came from, their size and weight as well as some behaviour. The wall has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site and they are donating the money to protect the wall. As its made of limestone it can crumble very easily and only 2 months ago they lost a large section of the wall due to a landslide. So they are hoping to get the entire wall covered in Latex. Archaeologists have studied the wall structure and predict that if they don´t do this a large part of the wall will collapse in 6months. It was very cool to see but we definately had more fun playing amonst the giant dinosaurs. All of which were life size. I will see if i can upload some of Katrinas photos.
We left Sucre at 7am the next day and spent the next 11 hours on a bus to Uyuni. We stopped in Potosi which is the world´s highest city at 4060 metres. And then 1 hour out of Potosi we stopped in the middle of a desert, for what seemed to be a food and toilet stop. However there was only what once looked like it might have been a toilet. By far the most disgusting toilet i have ever seen. I wont go so far as to describe it. So for those needing to go it meant finding something to hide behind, but we were in the middle of the desert so there was nothing. Nat found a small hut and lying on its roof was what we think was a dead bat. In the end i decided i didn´t need to go too badly and got back on the bus.
We arrived in Uyuni around 6pm and were instantly hounded by people wanting us to stay in their hostel or use their company for the Salt flat tour. We ended up agreeing to one womans offer and then she ouldn´t stop talking about her tour. She was definately persistant, and a massive liar. For starters she told us she was taking us to a hostel in the Lonely Planet and then took us somewhere completely different. She told us no one has english speaking guides for the tour, and other lies to make us choose her tour. it was very hard to get her to understand we wanted to look at other companies. We compared about 3 diff companies and found one we liked with an english speaking guide. then we went back to our hotel where the same woman pestered us again and still insisted that there are no good english speaking guides in Uyuni even after we told her we found one. Everytime we said no she just lowered her price, eventually we got the message across. That evening we had pizza at Minuteman and it was fantastic!!
The next day we got to the tour company at 9am, due to people wandering off and the tour guide being unorganised it was close to midday before we actually left. We had 3 people in the back row, 4 in the middle and the driver and guide up front, and around us were our day packs, water bottles and Chris´ guitar. It was a tight fit. We started to wonder if we had chosen the right company. However we got started and first stop was the train cemetery where we were allowed to climb all over the rusting trains to take photos. Good thing we had all had our tetanus shots. Then we headed back into Uyuni cos the driver needed to make another stop.
Finally we were actually heading into the salt flats and they were beautiful. When you look into the distance the mountains are reflected onto the salt flat which makes it unclear where the horizon is. Plus the ground is incredibly white and quite blinding and there are hexagon patterns all over it which looks very cool. Driving over it was very smooth because its soo flat.
Our first stop was at a salt hotel, the whole thing is made of bricks of salt and inside were lots of salt statues.
We stopped at Fish island and climbed to the top to get a panoramic view of the salt flats. The island is covered in cacti. Apparently it takes a cactus 100 years to grow 1 metre and some of the cactus on this island were over a 10 metres high. we climbed down and had lunch on a salt table. After lunch we attempted to take clever photos on the flats. Because the area is so flat and white it destroys perspective so if you are clever enough you can take photos where a person looks as tall as a Pringles tube by standing quite far behind it. We weren´t clever enough. We did ok but because the sun was getting low the shadows on the ground gave away the trick. We spent about an hour taking photos and then we got back in the truck and headed to our hostel. Whenever we were in the truck we were singing. We attached our ipods to the stereo so we sang along to every song. Even our guide and driver would join in occasionally.
As a bonus we stayed in a salt hotel which wasn´t part of the itinerary but we had requested to go back to the salt flats in the morning to see the sun rise so our guide managed to get us into this hotel as it was closer to the Salt flats. Just like the one we had seen earlier in the day the whole thing was made of salt. That night we played cards and drank some red wine and then had dinner. I was surprised at how mild the evening was as we had been told that the current overnight temperature was -18C but i would assume it didn´t get below zero that night. When i went out to clean my teeth i was amazed by the stars, there were millions of them, its was soo clear.
The next morning we had to be up and out of there by 5.30 to see the sunrise so we were very frustrated when at 6am we still hadn´t left. Our guide was fairly unorganised but fortunately we were out on the flats before the sun rose. It was really beautiful. I was running around in a circle trying to keep warm while we waited. Which is hard work at an altiude of 3500m. The mountain behind us lit up before we actually saw the sun rise. It was amazing and just for fun i did the sun salutation in front of the sun (yoga postion).

We then got in truck and the roads got considerably bumpier. We were no longer on the salt flats just in a desert so the roads were very rocky. After about 30mins of drving the truck broke down. Which is apparently inevitable on any salt flat tour. gortunately our driver got it working again after a few minutes. Although once we were almost in the town of San Juan it started bunny hopping again and we only just managed to get there. We had a 20min break while they treid fixing the car and we realised we had to many Bolivianos and we were going to cross the border to Chile the next day. this was the last shop we were going to see so we bought far too much chocolate and Anthe and Chris bought fireworks. We went into a courtyard of someones house where there was a toilet we were allowed to use. And in the courtyard was a little boy who wanted to play football with us. So Claire Katrina and I were playing and we started to notice a pattern, if i kicked the ball past him he would yell out Goal!!! but if Claire or katrina did it he would say No goal!! So we kept testing the theory, and when i purposely kicked the ball in the complete wrong direction and he still yelled out Goal!! we decided he might favour me. He didn´t speak much english but he would point to me and say something about how only i was allowed to score the goals. Patty and Nat joined in too but they also weren´t allowed to score goals. I was finding the whole thing hilarious but we decided that we´d get someone else to kick a goal and then we´d all yell out Goal!! at the same time to see if we could overrule his call. He did not like appreciate being underminded and refused to play after that.

Right i´m going out for some drinks so i´ll finish this later.