Welcome to the desert!

After our first relaxing days in the capital of Bolivia, we continued on to Uyuni by bus. The journey lasted about 8 hours. While I prepared for a winding horror ride armed with cola and chips (my first bus ride in South America, and after the Asian routes, I feared the worst), we were greeted with a relaxed ride through a breathtakingly beautiful landscape. Here we also saw llamas for the first time =)

I knew that we were now heading towards the desert, but I hadn't really thought about what to expect. The landscape became browner and grayer, and the vegetation became more lush. After a good 8 hours, we arrived in Uyuni and I briefly wondered if we were really in Bolivia or had momentarily made a detour to a crisis area. There were no more paved roads, most of the houses were more than dilapidated, and everything was dusty, gray, brown, and ugly. Just a real desert town at the end of the world. However, I could hardly believe my eyes when we arrived at our hostel and stood in a really beautiful and very clean room. Lucky us!! The city of Uyuni doesn't have much to offer, but it is the starting point for all tours to the largest salt flat in the world (Salar de Uyuni) and the Bolivian highlands. We also booked a jeep tour with two nights for the next few days. What awaited us there is hard to put into words =) The city is located at an altitude of about 3,671 meters, and I already felt the effects of the lower oxygen content in the air on the first night. But that was just the beginning..