bolivia - uyuni

after spending all morning and the majority of the afternoon on el salar, we headed to the town of uyuni where we stopped at this abandoned train that has pretty much been turned into a playground

and then we went to the actual downtown area - for very little time. we had to go to immigration to finally pay for our visas so that we'd get our passports back. this was a hectic process because my friend really wanted to get out of paying the full fee and was arguing with the immigration people for a good 10 minutes while we did the exact same calculation on the calculator at least 20 times. granted, people kept telling us different prices for how much the united states visa fee really was, combined with everyones different opinion on the true exchange rate made it pretty frustrating and misleading. the fee is $135 US dollars but we were paying in bolivianos so they were definitely trying to rip us off. we did successfully get the conversion to be a little more in our favor than what immigration initially told us we had to pay.

here is a few photos of uyuni...i'm just going to say that all the travelers that ended up here after the jeep tours found bus tickets out of town ASAP so they didn't have to spend a night

after the bolivian visa fiasco we loaded up into the jeep once again to head back to san pedro. we were the only group going back to chile (due to an only minor obligation - school), everyone else was continuing their travels in bolivia

after a good 4 hour journey it was already dark by the time we ended up at our last shelter

we stayed up for hours playing lots of card games! so much fun :)

i had to get a picture of how many layers i had been sleeping in every night :
2 pairs of thick socks
3 pairs of sweats
4 layers on top - long sleeve shirt and 3 sweatshirts
in my negative 20 degree celsius sleeping bag
under 4 thick bolivian blankets

this is the only way i can make anyone remotely understand how freezing it was.