Salt

Our three-day tour of the Salar de Uyuni began with lots of salt this morning, and it continued at lunchtime with lots of cacti (that's plural for cactus!). We visited "Isla Incahuasi" (lit: "Inca House Island", with "huasi" being "house" in Quechua), an island in the middle of the salt flats, which is completely covered in cacti. The Incas planted them there during their heyday, to mark the island as a place to take shelter and to set up camp, when making the journey across the salt. And in the wet season (Nov-Apr), when the entire salt flat gets flooded with about 50cm of water, this place really is an island.

This morning began our tour of the Salar de Uyuni, the world's highest and biggest salt flat. After a brief visit to the Uyuni train cemetery, we took off to the flats themselves. Our group has six people (plus our guide, Raul, and his son, Willy): myself, Chris, Leila, Christina, another Swiss (an older woman, can't remember her name), and a French dude (can't remember his name either). We drove across the salt flats in our Land Cruiser 4WD this morning, and it made for a very salty morning indeed.

Bought one of these beautiful little packages of cup-and-five-dice, just on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, as part of my three-day tour of the area. Made entirely out of salt, which is then fired in an oven, and glazed and painted. The dice were used for many a game of Yahtzee over the course of the salt flats tour.