Uyuni is one of those adventures that, while it is always an adventure, does not always end up being a positive experience depending on the company you go with. Luckily for us, we had a great guide who (shockingly, I know) remained sober for the full duration of our drive through the national park and salt flats. This was our first venture into Bolivia and it kicked off the country with us having high hopes. We were also lucky enough to share our experience with two nice young German girls whose parents were Chilean, so they were able to translate everything for us.

You may or may not remember us mentioning way back in Chile how we spent a full day including a few hours on multiple buses and a boat right to this tiny little rural area in search of the elusive Chilean flamingo. If only someone had told us at that point about the Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve. Our first stop, after only about an hour in a 4x4 SUV through the park did we come to our first lagoon, packed full of flamingos; there were flamingos by the hundreds! After that, and going to an incredible geyser field full of colours and bubbling, muddy geysers out of The Land Before Time, we travelled to a number of lagoons with different vibrant colours, all with the backdrop of red, sandy mountains in the distance. Our final stop for the day was at Laguna Colorada. It was this incredible lake with swirls of different shades of blue, white, red and yellow, all in the same lagoon. At this lake we saw another couple hundred flamingos, llamas we could practically touch, a really cool looking lizard, and on our way out we saw a herd of endangered vicunas (cousins of the llama and alpaca).

Day two of three on our Uyuni adventure was a day of mostly really rocky driving over makeshift 4x4 tracks. We were able to stop to see a couple interesting things: a fox came right up to our car looking for food. We also drove past a family of what looked like rabbits with really long tails. We spotted some really cool flora as well, like this giant green fungus that took over the rocks. Finally we stopped at the Arbol de Piedra (Stone Tree), a large boulder in the shape of a tree, barely hanging onto the ground anymore because it is so top heavy. While there we were able to climb some natural stone structures to get an amazing view of the multi-coloured mountains surrounding us. That night we stayed in a salt hotel – a hotel whose walls, floors, tables, and even bed frames are all made from salt bricks and mortar. Surrounding it were fields on quinoa, so we could see what the real plant looks like. After another delicious dinner, we headed off for an early bed time to be up and at the salt flats in time for sunrise.

Our final day of the Uyuni tour was the day everyone looks forward to. We made it to Isla Incahuasi in time for sunrise over the world’s flattest expanse. It was pretty incredible – and cold – to watch the sun come up and shine over the cracked salt earth, knowing that just below the salt we’re standing on is a lake, expanding hundreds of metres underground. Protruding out from this lake is Isla Incahuasi, one of Uyuni’s “Salt Islands” that sticks up out of the flats. It is the only thing we could see on the horizon. We were able to climb to the top of the island to get a better view, and to explore the cacti covering it. After exploring the island and having breakfast we took a trip to the middle of the flats, where our awesome driver suddenly turned into a pro photographer. He spent over an hour with us, wanting to take more and more funny pictures for us. After we got tired of our photoshoot we were able to go see how salt is mined in the flats. Leaving the desert for civilization we made a quick stop at the “train graveyard” of Uyuni where the government left the remains of their old, out of date trains. We finally made it to the town of Uyuni in time for some lunch before hopping on an overnight bus to La Paz.

Overall, great experience. We saw a ton of wildlife and out of this world landscapes that we’ll never forget.