I'm now in Chile!!! Bolivia was really awesome. Yes, I was telling you about those incredibles mines in Potosi, well while we were ramping in mines, bombing dinamytes outside the mines, and visiting how to separate the silver from the rock, the girls, hanged around in town and bought our bus tickets for the same evening just one hour after our tour ended. This is how Alex and I, went to Uyuni with the dust of the mines from Potosi hehe =)!
We had heared that Uyuni was an ugly city just for tourist to buy their tours to go in the desert, but we actually liked it. A long "peatonal" street with a few restaurant, shops was bringing a nice chilling ambiance, the rest of the city was mainly wide dirt streets and low buildings reminding some kind of old american far west little town. We rested all day in this city, but also bought our three tour in the desert of Uyuni which would end at the boarder with Chile. This desert includes the biggest salt lake in the world and some of the most impressive landscape found on earth called "moonlike" landscape, it is the most important tourist attraction in Bolivia. 65 agencies in Uyuni propose exactly the same tour passing by the same place, for everyday of the week. We went into a few of them and execpt the first price they give you, nothing changes at all not even one word of their tour explanation speach. This uncontrolled competion leads to incredible low prices (of course causing damage tothe environement but also to the local people). However since it's how it work and since we are cheap students and not rich americans, we choosed one of the cheapest one paying 70$ for three days, two nights, with a driver and a cook.
The next day, the four of us plus two english guys where ready to go. All agencies offer the tour on board of a Toyota Land Cruiser none of it being from 2001 or later. Yes cause according to agencies the newest one always break down and don't resist the desert,humhum. Well in order to show us the extreme exemple we were given a Land Cruiser, from...1985! 
So when the 6 of us were in the car, our six huge backpack on the roof, with the two 50liter fuel tanks, the kitchinette, the gaz bottle, and at the back our 6 small bags, and the food for 3 days, the girl from the agency beg us to accept an extra 7th person that had lost her car!!! Well it was a poor Israelish that was lost and was almost crying so we had to accept her so she could catch up with her car in a few kilometers. That's how the 7 of us plus the driver and the cook started our three days trip in the desert of Uyuni! After 25 min of 4x4 in the desert just outside the town, we reached a train cimetry. Old trains, mainly locomotives, from the 1800 were let to decompose in the middle of nowhere. It was quite impressive and after having seen it on postcards in La paz we were looking forward to discover this wired place. We continued on still being nine in the vehicule since the Israelish girl had not found her car. She really started to anoy us as she was putting pressure on the driver to accelerate in order for her to catch up her group. Soon we arrived in a small salt factory. Actually a village of indigenous treating the salt and putting it into small plastic bags. We were shown how they use to proceed and it looked like it had not changed for centuries! The salt was dried in wood oven, added some iode in a very old and small machine, and put in small bags closed by burning the plastic on the edge. All this made in a small house made of mod bricks. It's where the main production of salt for Bolivia comes from! After playing in small salt dunes with went ahead and soon the ground changed completly. We were arriving in the salt desert, the ground was totally white and with the blue sky and the brown mountains at the back the landscape was amazing! We stopped to take some crazy picts and continued to reach the lake island. We arrived there after driving on this 14meters thick salt layer, which on its surface forms hexagonals shapes making it even more extraordinary. The reasons of this hexagons comes from the fact that the lake underneath humidify the salt which "breaths", evaporates during the day and shrinks making those forms, but why hexagons...this we could not figure it out. Our driver was of course not the one recommanded on good comments in our agency and did not really seemed to care about giving exact information. Once we arrived at the island, our israelish girl finally found her group which had not waited for her...yes her story was long and confused and none of us could understand her very badly english told story. Anyway, she had left and we were finally only our group. While we climbed this cactus island which brown color (as you can see on the picture)
was contrasting the white salt ground, our old lady cooked us some dry llama meat. We never understood why the agency was paying a lady to cook us what will be, burned llama, pastas, dry chicken and pancakes...maybe because the driver had never touched a pan but, well ok at least someone else benefits from low tourism incomes. On our way to the salt hotel, where we were suppose to sleep, we once again proved our kindness and gave our unique emergency wheel to another car (full of suisse from lausanne). Their agency had let the driver go for a three day drive in the desert without even one emergency tire, the four other ones being already more than used! The tour is soo cheap but still...bref no problem we all reached the hotel. There Sao Mai and I tried to play football, but we had forgotten that we were at 3500 meters! After a few ball touched we had to quite,feeling really unpowerfull compared to the local kids who continued running for another hour! Instead I taught some smaller kids how to play rugby with my small french worlcup rugby ball (well... hum I'm actually really pissed since le XV de France just lost against this pink rose english team for the second time in a row in a world cup semi-final holalala quelle merde!) Bref. The second day we started really early and headed to some impressive coloured lakes which colors comes from different minerals found in the volcanoes surrounding the high plateaux on which we were going. Our 4x4 was doing really well and supported the violent shocks of the moutainous way. The salt lake was far behind us and some unbeleiveable desert landscape surrounded by active volcanoes was putting us on another planet! We continued for few more hours of 4x4 sometimes going out of the car for it to be able to climb some particularly steep and rocky part. In a desert of sand and rocks we stopped to observe a nice naturally made stone three and continued uphill toward our refuge for the night. We arrived at 5:00pm at 4350 where our room for the night was waiting for us. This trip, and all its landscape has been one of the most suprising I had ever seen, and to come back to reallity, Alex and I went to kick some drops on this high plateaux. At five in the morning, our car engine was already turning, yes by -15C our 22 years old car had started without a problem unlike most of others, all more recent! Like the day before our driver put pressure on us to hurry up, we really felt like we were on an express tour, but always manage to take sufficient time to enjoy the moment. The good thing is that we had always arrived first in all the places avoiding the mass of other 4x4. We saw early in the morning some huge geyser, and boiling mud. Unlike in Costa Rica, where we had seen about the same, nothing was made for tourist to respect distance with the volcanic activities making dangerous but even more enjoyable. It was freezing and we werwe hungry, our breakfast was to be prepared next stop. While having a warm bath in hotsprings on the shore of a magnificent lake and by sunrise, our lady cook was preparing our breakfast. Once again pressured by our driver we left our mouth still full this awesome place to visit another one. We passed through the Salvador Dali desert to reach our final place the green lake. 
We then headed up to the chiliean boarder where the end of the trip was planned. I'm writing from the other side of this huge volcanoe separating Bolivia and its green lake from the chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama. The change in term of culture, people, and infrastrucutre is more than radical, it's two different world. One that has kept all its indigenous tradition, with people still very attached to their precolombian culture leaving in incredible conditions on the higher country in the world, and the other being really close to the level of development of european countries.
So when the 6 of us were in the car, our six huge backpack on the roof, with the two 50liter fuel tanks, the kitchinette, the gaz bottle, and at the back our 6 small bags, and the food for 3 days, the girl from the agency beg us to accept an extra 7th person that had lost her car!!! Well it was a poor Israelish that was lost and was almost crying so we had to accept her so she could catch up with her car in a few kilometers. That's how the 7 of us plus the driver and the cook started our three days trip in the desert of Uyuni! After 25 min of 4x4 in the desert just outside the town, we reached a train cimetry. Old trains, mainly locomotives, from the 1800 were let to decompose in the middle of nowhere. It was quite impressive and after having seen it on postcards in La paz we were looking forward to discover this wired place. We continued on still being nine in the vehicule since the Israelish girl had not found her car. She really started to anoy us as she was putting pressure on the driver to accelerate in order for her to catch up her group. Soon we arrived in a small salt factory. Actually a village of indigenous treating the salt and putting it into small plastic bags. We were shown how they use to proceed and it looked like it had not changed for centuries! The salt was dried in wood oven, added some iode in a very old and small machine, and put in small bags closed by burning the plastic on the edge. All this made in a small house made of mod bricks. It's where the main production of salt for Bolivia comes from! After playing in small salt dunes with went ahead and soon the ground changed completly. We were arriving in the salt desert, the ground was totally white and with the blue sky and the brown mountains at the back the landscape was amazing! We stopped to take some crazy picts and continued to reach the lake island. We arrived there after driving on this 14meters thick salt layer, which on its surface forms hexagonals shapes making it even more extraordinary. The reasons of this hexagons comes from the fact that the lake underneath humidify the salt which "breaths", evaporates during the day and shrinks making those forms, but why hexagons...this we could not figure it out. Our driver was of course not the one recommanded on good comments in our agency and did not really seemed to care about giving exact information. Once we arrived at the island, our israelish girl finally found her group which had not waited for her...yes her story was long and confused and none of us could understand her very badly english told story. Anyway, she had left and we were finally only our group. While we climbed this cactus island which brown color (as you can see on the picture) was contrasting the white salt ground, our old lady cooked us some dry llama meat. We never understood why the agency was paying a lady to cook us what will be, burned llama, pastas, dry chicken and pancakes...maybe because the driver had never touched a pan but, well ok at least someone else benefits from low tourism incomes. On our way to the salt hotel, where we were suppose to sleep, we once again proved our kindness and gave our unique emergency wheel to another car (full of suisse from lausanne). Their agency had let the driver go for a three day drive in the desert without even one emergency tire, the four other ones being already more than used! The tour is soo cheap but still...bref no problem we all reached the hotel. There Sao Mai and I tried to play football, but we had forgotten that we were at 3500 meters! After a few ball touched we had to quite,feeling really unpowerfull compared to the local kids who continued running for another hour! Instead I taught some smaller kids how to play rugby with my small french worlcup rugby ball (well... hum I'm actually really pissed since le XV de France just lost against this pink rose english team for the second time in a row in a world cup semi-final holalala quelle merde!) Bref. The second day we started really early and headed to some impressive coloured lakes which colors comes from different minerals found in the volcanoes surrounding the high plateaux on which we were going. Our 4x4 was doing really well and supported the violent shocks of the moutainous way. The salt lake was far behind us and some unbeleiveable desert landscape surrounded by active volcanoes was putting us on another planet! We continued for few more hours of 4x4 sometimes going out of the car for it to be able to climb some particularly steep and rocky part. In a desert of sand and rocks we stopped to observe a nice naturally made stone three and continued uphill toward our refuge for the night. We arrived at 5:00pm at 4350 where our room for the night was waiting for us. This trip, and all its landscape has been one of the most suprising I had ever seen, and to come back to reallity, Alex and I went to kick some drops on this high plateaux. At five in the morning, our car engine was already turning, yes by -15C our 22 years old car had started without a problem unlike most of others, all more recent! Like the day before our driver put pressure on us to hurry up, we really felt like we were on an express tour, but always manage to take sufficient time to enjoy the moment. The good thing is that we had always arrived first in all the places avoiding the mass of other 4x4. We saw early in the morning some huge geyser, and boiling mud. Unlike in Costa Rica, where we had seen about the same, nothing was made for tourist to respect distance with the volcanic activities making dangerous but even more enjoyable. It was freezing and we werwe hungry, our breakfast was to be prepared next stop. While having a warm bath in hotsprings on the shore of a magnificent lake and by sunrise, our lady cook was preparing our breakfast. Once again pressured by our driver we left our mouth still full this awesome place to visit another one. We passed through the Salvador Dali desert to reach our final place the green lake. We then headed up to the chiliean boarder where the end of the trip was planned. I'm writing from the other side of this huge volcanoe separating Bolivia and its green lake from the chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama. The change in term of culture, people, and infrastrucutre is more than radical, it's two different world. One that has kept all its indigenous tradition, with people still very attached to their precolombian culture leaving in incredible conditions on the higher country in the world, and the other being really close to the level of development of european countries.Today we went to bike in the surrounding of San pedro, which consist of the dryiest desert in the world where almost no rain has ever been detected! We too advantage of this moutain desert sandboarding on its dunes. The afternoon has been less enjoyed, at least by me since the rugby score was not the one I had dreamt of, but this is how is sport. Tomorrow we'll go for a 24 hour bus trip directly to Santiago where another part of the trip we'll start being 5 to travel!
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