Eden and Josh

After La Paz, Josh and I headed straight for Uyuni with a brief stop in the small city of Oruro. Uyuni itself is a cold and dusty town but it is famous for the Salar near-by. The Salar is the largest salt flat in the world at almost 11000km2.

We checked out lots of agencies offering trips and most seemed pretty similar. We chose one almost at random and set out for our 3-day jeep trip the next morning with 2 men from Germany and a French couple.

The trip was beautiful and the scenery was stunning, however, we witnessed a horrific jeep accident on the Salar that prevents me from raving about the experience. Another jeep of tourists that we were following flipped. Three of the passengers died quite soon after the accident. The other 4 were bady injured and we (other tourists stopped to help) tried to take care of them until the ambulance came. After 3 hours the ambulance/police still hadn't shown up so the injured had to be transported back to town in jeeps. One woman died later. It was a terrible tragedy and one that could have been prevented if the jeeps had only had seat belts. The lack of an emergency respose was also shocking and makes us both sick with regret for the 4 lost lives.