Day 181: Salar de Uyuni

Got dressed in my sleeping bag and shuffled my way to breakfast, cold pancakes with butter and hot coffee or tea. I probably had more tea than pancakes.

While the sky was clear today, I really wanted to just ride in the car and see some of the area; we spent more than ten hours in the car and barely saw anything. 

(This was a very lucky shot. Taken from the back seat of the land cruiser, notice the out of focus crack up top, and the car somehow found an un-bumpy spot for the second that I took this photo. Amazing with the volcano in the background.)

Our first stop landed us at this large arrangement of rocks. It doesn't look like time withered these down, I want to know how they were formed!

We climbed up to the top of one of them and got an amazing view of our surroundings.

It's almost like a river carved this out, or maybe runoff from the snow capped mountains?

(Another lagoon we drove past.)

(Notice how we are so high up, the clouds don't just fade off in the distance, the are cut off by the ground. I would see this all the time, it was weird.)

(A herd of llamas running across the desert.)

We then made our way to the Black Lake. It was kinda cool, got to see some more animals and walk around. 

The high altitude really takes it out of me, just making easy climbs over rocks takes my breath away; I feel pathetic, but I'm glad to know its not because I'm outa shape. Luckily, I am feeling better, for now, so it's not a combination of problems.

After driving for a while, we came across a huge patch of llamas. We had our driver pull over so we could walk around with them.

Llamas are pretty weird animals. To me, they seem like a combination between a cow and a horse. Pretty dumb animals that eat all the time, but run around as well. When a llama runs, it's not like a normal animal running. When they run, the front part of em raises up then down while their back side move inversely of the front. So, like a seesaw. It's pretty funny looking!

Unfortunately, after that, we were pretty much done with the day. We arrived at our hostel in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats at 3:30pm. The hostel is pretty cool, it made out of salt; the floor was even made out of salt. I just rested that afternoon, since we were up around 12,000ft, I wasn't feeling too good. 

At dinner, the gave us a free bottle of wine. Perfecto! Wine, llama chops, and mash potatoes, not a bad final meal. Because of the cold, we took the bottle back to the room and and finished some more off before going back to bed.