Bolivia Part 1
Atacama desert, and Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat in the world
2. bus Uyuni – La Paz
3. bus La Paz – Copacabana (Titicaca lake)
We entered Bolivia through the Atacama desert, the driest in the world. By bus we went from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile to Uyuni in Bolivia. No problems at the border at all, quite nice people at the custom, nothing comparable to our south-east Asia bribery border experience!
view from the bus 
Tourist pleasure, to find a cozy and tasty place after a long road trip
(called Lliphi)
In our hotel the first night we saw something that we would see a couple more times in South America: an electrified shower head??
Not going to lie, I really didn’t trust this. The crappy cabling combined with the mild electricity you could feel when touching the knob didn’t instill a lot of confidence in me. Anyway, it worked and gave us hot water and we were not electrocuted!
Bolivia’s west side is very high with altitudes generally over 3000 meter. Funnily enough the people are some of the shortest in the world with an average height of 151cm! They can often be seen chewing coca leaves, which are offered as a medicine against altitude sickness.
Alena perfectly fitted this environment ! lol 🙂
Coca leaves tea
Bolivia is home to the largest natural mirror in the world, the Salar de Uyuni dried salt lake. It is one of the most visited sites in South America. The surface of the lake is incredibly flat (satellites use it to calibrate their altimeters) and it is covered with salt 129 kilometres across!
From January to March, during the rainy season, the salar is entirely covered with water. Its entirely flat surface makes it a gigantic mirror. From April to December, during the dry season, the reflection of the sun’s rays on the surface causes a strong glare (so bring your sunglasses!). But only during the dry season you can drive through the lake and visit the cacti island in the middle of the flat, Isla Incahuasi. So each season has its own beauty. By the way, we visited this place in the end of May, and still could find some water surface that reflect the sky!
Its quite easy to get there, several tours are offered in the city Uyuni, the most popular being the one of 3 days. After visiting Chilean part of Atacama desert, we decided that one day of salt would be enough for us, and we went for one of the cheapest tours (Estrella del Sur 150 pesos) and we din’t have the impression that we missed something.
The first stop was an old steam train graveyard!
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
Most of the trains were imported from Great Britain in the early 20th century and were abandoned after the mining went bust in the region and conflict broke out.
Soon we started to see the first signs of saltiness…
Salt crystals in a salt museum. The entire museum, even the bricks, are salt! 
The first views over the salt plane were accompanied by some brown lakes. We were in a dry season, so there was not much water to be seen.
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
After driving for a long time over nothing but white we arrived at a salt restaurant with some Dakar signs outside:
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
Salt bricks again 
Everything is salt! 
Even the chairs and tables 
and this is the salt monument as well! 
salt bricks wall 
“synchronized JUMP” 
Belgium flag is found! 🙂 
drone was shocked by the amount of white around 🙂
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
The white reflective surface must have been messing with the drone’s sensors, because it suffered connectivity issues and I quickly had to land.
We drove on, and after a while we finally had nothing but pristine white in all directions.
This is what 10500 square kilometers looks like… 
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
Our guide took some time to take these perspective trick shots. It’s harder than it looks!
this bottle we drank during the sunset, nice bonus 🙂 
souvenirs)))) 
In the middle of the flat there is an Isla Incahuasi, the former island that hosts hundreds of gigantic cacti (Trichocereus pasacana) and it has a very beautiful view from the top to the Salar de Uyuni!
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
the door is made from the cactus wood 
These cacti are gigantic! They are hundreds of years old and grow at the speed of one centimetre per year! (at least that what they told us 🙂
Evening was falling and our jeep was speeding towards a place where there was still water on the salt. During sunset, the lake turns into a giant mirror and it gives a beautiful color spectacle. This sundown was one of the most beautiful experience we’ve had! We couldn’t stop making pictures, and then after we couldn’t choose the best one…. so here they are, all the same but different 🙂
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
difficult to believe, but there are no filters 
that’s how everyone looks like there 🙂 
and we were not the exception! 
small snacks and wine at the end, nice 🙂 
it took us some time to clean all the salt from our shoose and pants 
its getting very cold immediately after the sundown! 
It is also possible to do a night gazing tour at the desert, but be ready to get cold! We heard from other tourist that the night sky is incredible there! Unfortunately we already had our tickets reserved to another city, La Paz.
I heard that the buses in Bolivia is often not heated and it might be very cold at night, so we booked a bit more expensive bus. And that was the most luxurious bus ever! with leather seats and wooden floor, food service, and even a bus attendant (unnecessary luxurious to be honest, specially with their bumpy roads).
Read in Bolivia Part 2 ….La Paz, the highest mountains in the world and the Titicaca lake.