Alice Newitt

Day 16: Salt Flats, in which I am once again astounded by some natural beauty, before gaining a whole new appreciated for central heating

After breakfast, we loaded ourselves into the three 4×4 vehicles parked outside the hotel and, after a couple of stops at a ‘train cemetery’ and place where they made table salt (which were both just about worth the trouble of contorting ourselves in and out of the vehicles which were also loaded with all of our swag), we finally headed out onto the flats.

The salt flats had been a big reason for me choosing this trips, and they were more wondrous than I could even have imagined. Stretching out as far as the eyes could see, this sea of salt looked like snow but didn’t crunch under foot.

Our drives quickly proved themselves to be magicians, firstly rustling up a hot lunch out of nowhere at a place where the furniture appeared to all be made of salt, and then turning into ace photographers when it came to taking our pictures, lying on the ground on top of their car mats and giving out instructions like it was a shoot for Vogue.

In the afternoon, our guide surprised us by, in one of the flattest places on Earth, finding a hill for us to climb. From the top, we saw somebody passing by the ‘island’ on a bicycle in one of the most bizarre acts of madness I’d seen in a long time.

hen we got to the hotel, I declined the opportunity to climb another hill in order to watch the sun set, the nice thing about the sun being that there is no need to climb anything high in order to see it. We were now on more solid ground, the salt flats having slowly turned more to slush before giving way to rocky land.

I then spent one of my less comfortable nights on Earth by eating dinner in the communal dining hall and then sleeping in a hut with crepe-paper like curtains and a door that only approximately fitted the doorway. There was no hot water, although this point was redundant once the temperatures dropped and the pipes froze, leaving us with no water whatsoever. The lodges did have a charm to them and the people working there certainly seemed to be having a grand time judging by the laughter emanating from the kitchen, but it would be safe to say that I have never been so cold in my life.

Before we went to slept, the guide took us stargazing round the back of the lodges, where I buttoned my lips and listened to him explain the night sky in western terms with a moderate level of accuracy, and then, more interestingly, told us some of the constellations from his own culture, with an accuracy which I was in no position to judge.