Salar de Uyuni and Southern Bolivia ...

On Tuesday morning we took a bus to Uyuni. We arrived in this desert town and almost immediately a lady approached us offering us a tour of the Salar de Uyuni (salt flats). We ummed and arghed about taking the first tour we saw but went back to the office with her. To our surprise, we saw Sean and Michael´s names on the same tour paper as us and got extremely excited!! The lady described them to us as dark skinned boys not speaking much spanish (tick!), wanting to do a day tour but decided to do the 3 day tour instead and left a deposit! We searched for them all afternoon, checked the check-in list at the hostel included in the tour, with no luck! The next morning, we went to the tour office, ready for our 3 day tour and our reunion with the boys only to be told by the same woman they had gone to Sucre the previously day and wouldn´t be back in time!! We were so upset!
So we started our 3 day tour (Wednesday), with a bolivian couple and a swiss couple. The first day was spent visiting a train cemetery (full of rusty old trains which were used to travel through South America) and then the salt flats which are blindingly white! We had lunch in the boot of the jeep, stopped in a small village, San Sebastian for snacks and arrived in Alota where we would spend our first night. We stayed in a mud house! For the whole trip I have said I will never stay in a mud house and where did we end up!! It wasn´t all that bad! At least it wasn´t cold inside the room, like it was outside!
The next morning (Thursday), we had breakfast and left to go to Valle de Rocas (a bunch of rock formations), we saw to Volcan Ollague which is partly in Chile partly in Bolivia and is smoking! We then drove past a few lagunas and stopped for lunch at the Laguna Cañapa. The views along the way are absolutely amazing! Yes I will upload pictures as soon as I can! We continued our journey through the Montañas de Siete Colores (Mountains of Seven Colours.. To be honest I could only see a few!), Arbol de Piedra which you see in Salvador Dali´s paintings. We then arrived at the Laguna Colorada which is red and full of flamingoes! Quite impressive! We stayed at the small houses by the laguna (yes mud houses!) and it was freaking freezing! Even eating all the cookies we got for the gouté didn´t help, nor did the corked bottle of wine we were given for dinner. I slept with 3 jumpers, leggins and trousers and 2 pairs of socks!!
The next morning (Friday), we woke up at 5 am and it was Liv´s birthday! I woke her up with a happy birthday song and a stolen guirland that I found in the corridor. We got into the freezing jeep and visited the geysers which were pretty amazing and smelly! Then we went to the best thermal baths I have been to. They were not swimming pools like the previous ones I´ve seen but actually part of a laguna. It was amazing especially because the sun was just coming up! We continued on towards the Chilean border passing through El Desierto de Dali which he represents in his paintings (it is pretty surreal even seeing it in person!) and the Laguna Verde which was dissapointingly not green (apparently it depends on where the sun is in the sky!). We were dropped off at the boarder with no money to pay for our transfer into Chile! And out of nowhere Michael jumps from behind us!! We were so happy to see him!
Apparently the woman in Uyuni had gotten it completely wrong! They had done a one day tour of the Salar on Monday and left for Sucre on the Tuesday, when we arrived in Uyuni. They had never left a deposit or said they would do a 3 day tour! Very confusing!
So we gathered up the bolivianos the 3 of us had left in order to pay for our bus transfer, only for an official to ask Michael to pay 150 bolivianos for the national park entry (on the way down from Uyuni). After arguing and making up excuses we gave him our 120 bolivianos because he started getting angry. We took a bus and told the driver we would pay as soon as we arrived if he took us to a cash point...