Let me first say that these links to the pictures are soooo worth your time. We saw the most incredible scenery on this trip. (If you can't get them open to see the pictures, email me at the address to the right)
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These links include two camera's pictures (mine and a girl's named Baska), and Baska had a siiiccckkk camera, so her shots are amazing (but also cause she is a really good photographer). We could have had more great photos, but Matteo's camera got stolen in a later city and Eyal's camera was film. That was just a lot of names, so I guess I should do some introductions.
This is Eyal, my horseback riding friend from Israel. He had been traveling around South America for sometime as well, and was near the end of his trip here in Bolivia.
This is Matteo, a Frenchman. He studied in Buenos Aires and is planning on graduating from his school there. He was on vacation from school and doing a bit of traveling.
This is Baska (or Barbara to be easier on the non-polish speaking masses) from Poland. She and Matteo were an item, having met through a couch surfing meeting. For those who don't know the web site, basically you can surf a vast world wide network of members, looking for places to crash or people who can help out with certain things. Baska had about a year off of school to travel, and took some amazing photos on our trip.
This is me. I like my hat.
On the left is our driver and guide, Rolando. He came a couple years back to Tupiza from La Paz to do jeep tours with his friend and head of our tour company, Alexandro Adventure Tours (we highly recommend them by the way). Rolando was an awesome guide and driver, and made the trip even more enjoyable. Unfortunately we don't have a picture of our cook, Cristina, who made some grubbin' meals all throughout the trip.
When you plan to go travelling, as some of you know, you go pick up your guide book, get online, pick up magazines, whatever, and then just start reading. And for a trip encompassing most of South America and all of Central America, there is a lot of reading to do. You read and plan, read more, plan more, bookmark, create whole itineraries, make side notes, write in, scratch out, crumple up, throw away, start over, dig back out, lose sleep, drink lots of 
coffee, day in, day out, and then finally you are finished. The trip is all mapped out, the itinerary a work of art, perfect. Then, once you arrive and set out on your journey, you toss it all to the wind and change your plans all over again. Yet, there some places that remain as immovable landmarks, shining like beacons of light through the hazy gray that fogs most of your ever changing road map. You may wind on down the road from here to there, 
wandering with just the slightest amount of purpose to keep on moving forward, but no matter what, you will end up at that beacon. The Salar de Uyuni, a gargantuan field of salt, is one of them. It is basically THE trip to do in Bolivia; you don’t come without doing it. It as a four day tour exploring the vast, remote, and impressive land in southwest Bolivia, finishing up at the salt flat.
Eyal and I were hoping to find some people to go with us out of Tupiza, and the final group came down to him, myself, Matteo, Barbara, our guide Rolando, and our cook Cristina. We set off from Tupiza in our Toyota SUV, gear strapped to the roof, ready for four days of adventure. We drove about 8-12 hours per day, stopping at particularly striking vistas, ghost towns, flamingo filled lagoons, colorful lakes, volcanoes, hot springs, geysers, rock formations, or just whenever we asked, which was quite frequently because we basically had 4 people who loved photography traveling on the trip. We spent the time in the car staring out the window at the 
surreal setting, listening to music, getting to know each other, and playing lots and lots of those car games that pass the time. I know we made it up to at least 4855 m (14565 ft), as it was painted on this random rock, and altitude made the trip quite interesting. (FYI, anything above 2400m or 8,000 ft is considered the rough boundary of when it symptons can occur). I got altitude sickness on the trip, after jogging to catch up with Matteo and Barbara who were going to go walk up a hill. I spent the night with 
severe chills and a fever, and, coupled with my intestinal rejection of Bolivian food and just the simplest of toilette facilities, it made for quite a night. My pills for the altitude and chewing lots of coca leaf didn’t help the stupidity of running around at 12,600 feet. I don’t think I mentioned eating coca leaves before. The chemical in the leaf increases the oxygen absorption of your blood, and also makes things a whole lot more interesting with flying phantoms, friendly ghosts, and even talking horses when we chewed it in Tupiza…no, just kidding. While the artificial drug of cocaine is indeed obtained by using thousands of coca leaves, chewing a few dozen doesn’t do much of anything to your senses.
Observing the lives of the people who live in these certain areas was interesting as well. We passed by some leading out their flock of goats to feed on a hillside; others sat in their adobe homes, llamas grazing nearby. Most seemed quite indifferent to the spread out caravan of jeeps making their way across the land. In other places, the inevitable mark of a place trodden by travelers could clearly be seen. In the village where we first spent the night the children 
would continually come up to us and try to sell us poorly woven wool bracelets or crudely carved arrowheads. (I mean real poor workmanship. Not that I was there to judge, but if you are going to try to sell a craft, you would want it to be well made. It was more like they were trying to sell pity masked behind some item.) It was heartbreaking actually, as they were just trying to present us anything to earn some money as they gazed up at you with begging eyes. Continually I am reminded of the privileged luck I have inherited as a matter of 
birth. I was born American, which guarantees, in a simple way, that I will have opportunity for education, I will have money, I will have opportunity for a job, and I will live rich and comfortably, at least in comparison to so many people I have encountered on this continent, and I have not even wandered into its poorest regions, much less those of the rest of the world. 
(I am not trying to say there are not people in our country who have it hard, because there are and they do. But the amount of these people pales in comparison to South America, as does their situation. Most would have it better than a lot of the people here.) It is sometimes irritating to be thought of as a walking ATM machine that will throw its money at whims to the masses. On the other hand, how many of these people I interact will ever get a chance to enjoy a trip of leisure even outside their city, 
let alone their country or continent? None of the people in these small villages wanted their picture taken, even if you asked politely. Not that I blame them; we are one of maybe 50 to 100 people that pass by daily. On the last night we spent the night in a building made almost entirely of salt. It was quite nice actually, with salt tables, chairs, bricks, and night stands. The town, however, was unbelievably worn down however. Someone commented it looked almost like a war zone, so damaged were the buildings. Gleaming white salt flats for the travelers, crumbling adobe houses in shambles for the locals. The two worlds were clearly defined.
The salt flats were the definite highlight of the trip. During this time of year, rains bring enough water to cover most of the salt flats. The downside is that much of the salt flat is too dangerous to access, so you miss out on seeing parts of it otherwise included in the tour, but the part that can be seen is absolutely amazing. Covered with just a few 
inches of water on the section we saw, the flats reflect perfectly the images from the sky, and the result is an unbelievable. Perfect mirror image scenery, whether it be sunset, sunrise, or just the reflection of the clouds and blue sky. The salt flats also afford the opportunity to take some great pictures. With the water just a couple inches deep but 
perfectly reflection the sky, you can make it appear as if you are walking on water. With unchanging colors and near perfect flatness, you can also take pictures that defy reality, such as a giant foot smashing somebody, super gigantic wine bottles, super human jumping heights, among other things. Unfortunately the camera with the vast majority of the 
best of these shots was stolen in a later city, so we lost most of these kinds of pictures. But some came out okay on some other cameras, so that is what you are seeing. I’ll go into detail on a later post, but the worst part of being robbed of your camera is the loss of all your photos. You can 
replace the camera, the memory cards, but never the memories themselves contained in those photos. Luckily a lot of the scenery pictures overlapped, so we didn’t really miss those between two other cameras, but this guy’s camera had most of the group shots, so it was a major bummer to be robbed of those. I guess we will just have to hold on tighter to the memories we have in our heads. One I know will stay with me forever is when we were driving back to the hotel from the middle of the salt flats, covered entirely in water reflecting the sky and clouds. We were perched upon the rack on the top of the
jeep, laying back, legs over the side of the car, wind in our faces as we took in the scenery and the jeep cut through the water, spraying it to the side. It was very similar feeling I get when I am on a boat cutting through the water, a feeling of just inner peace, but in just a particularly different setting. Like I said, that feeling will be carried in my memory for many years to come. And no one can rob me of that.
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