26th November

Today will be a bit more cheery. Not so for Ed who was up all night being ill. I wasn't in great shape. We both blamed the pizza.

We are in Uyuni, a pretty unamazing town with the exception of the most famous and photographed salt flats in the world. First, we visited "the railway graveyard" - surreal on a word. Locomotives, scrap metal, track all left to rust. Took some great sepia photos though.

Our next stop in the 4x4 was a salf factory on the ouskirts of the flats. A bit of a Gringo trap. Some of the guys bought salt shakers made of salt, ashtrays etc etc. The rival tour company to Exodus, Budget Travel, were also there. They are all kids and from what I can tell it is more of a "swinging" mode of transport than ours!

30 mins later we were on the salt flats. We had lunch (chicken, salad, spuds) and then we did what all juvenile tourists do at Uyuni - took silly photos of people coming out of wine bottle, or being eaten by 6 inch high dinosaurs. Let me explain, because the salt flats are, well, white and flat it is really easy to take photos that make the images in the foreground defy perspective and make the image in the background look tiny in comparison. I have added a shot to demonstrate. Also bumped into Steve and Charlie from the Inca Trail and formerly New Zealand. His "travel beard" is looking very impressive. I might grow one! They are camping out on the flats tomorrow and then heading to Buenos Aires.

The sun was baking hot and just like in the snow when you took your sunglasses off it was dazzling. We then made our way to the "salt hotel", again very surreal. Everything made of salt including the beds. Wouldn't want to fall out of that one. We had beer and chocolate and then played one touch football for an hour or so until the sun went down. The sunset was actually disappointing, the previous night's was much better.

We drove back to the town, had more pizza, and cookies and ice cream and discussed places to go in New York.

The salt flats were amazing, something I always wanted to visit since we covered it in Geography in school.