What a trip - Uyuni -

Sorry in advance for the lengt of this Blog, we covered a lot of ground since Friday.

The trip to Uynui started with a 3.5 hour bus ride to a town called Oruro, where we caught a 7 hour train ride to Uyuni. We were so priveldged on the train to watch/listen to reat 80s hits, with the likes of Rod Stewart, The Village People, and much much more. We arrived in Uyuni around 10:00pm. We booked our tour that night and got a room at a local hotel. The tour started the next day at 11:00am. Our tour consisted of us three UD students and two girls from England. We first went to a train graveyard, and then headed on our way to the Salt Flatts. We are talking miles and miles and miles of just salt. Pretty sweet, and don´t worry, one of the girls on our tour licked the ground just to make sure. We drove to fish Island in the middle of the Salt Flatts, where we took a little hike, wich included lots of Cactus and rock that resembled coral. The whole area including the Salt Flatts was like being on a different planet. Again I promise as soon as I can upload photos I will. We ate lunch at Fish Island and then took a bunch the Salt Flatt type pictures. If you don´t know what I am talking about, google "Uyuni Salt Flatt pictures."

Next we continued our journey in our Range Rover across the rest of the Salt Flatts. Mind you, once we left the city of Uyuni, that was the last time we were on paved road. We drove until around dusk at which we reached the hostel we were to be staying at,in te middle of no where. The hostel floors were salt, just salt. We ate dinner and slept there. The next morning we were out the door by around 7am. We traveled across more dirt road and rock until we reached the Rock Tree, here is a good link to a photo of the rock http://image55.webshots.com/55/0/76/31/410607631XCVNII_fs.jpg. On that day of the trip we visitd many different lakes in the area with different colors, yellow, red, and blue. We ate lunc at one of the lakes or lagunas in spanish. On this particular lake there were flamingos, which are much more pink in the wild. That night again we stayed in a hostel.

The next morning we were up at 5am and out the door by 5:30am. Our first stop was the natural geysers. We had a long ride to our next stop, which was the laguna verde (green lake). This lake borders Chili and is next to a large Volcano. Our next stop was to the hot springs. We spent a good amount of time at the hot springs; one because it was very warm and it was freezing, and two because it was the first "bath" we had since we left for the trip. The hot spring wasthe last stop on our trip. Now we had to travel all the way back to the city Uyuni. The trip was long, but went well, except for having to change a tire.

When we got back to Uyuni we had to wait to buy our trai tickets until midnigt and then the train left at 2am. We caught the train and then te bus back to La Paz. When I finally arried back to my house I was awake for a little bit, but passed out around 5 and didn´t wake up until this mornin for work at 7:30am.

At work today I helped Mirco install some fans in the wood dryer and then paint and seal the wood holding the fans. This Friday I am to have a one page progress report on how my project is coming along. So that is what I will be working on for the rest of this week.

If you have any questions about this post or any other just let me know.

Until Next time.

Go USA, for any soccer fans out there.