Review: Andes tours salt flats tour, Bolivia to Chile

The highlight of Bolivia was without a doubt visiting the 4086 square mile salt flats in the south of the country.  These are the world's largest salt flats and they are just incredible and every bit as rewarding and spectacular as you might think from looking at pictures.  We took a 2 nights, 3 day tour which begun in Uyuni and finished in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

We took the train down to Uyuni which is a great way to travel from La Paz as you see the beginnings of the salt flats and the train is a nice way to travel after buses etc!  We bought the first class train tickets which gave us some decent seats in air con and a free small sandwich which was actually really tasty (it didn't look too great!).  We made the mistake of buying a meal on the train too in the dining cart as we were so hungry – our meals were not good though.

 

From Uyuni we began our 3-day 4WD adventure.  Again, the tour price includes all food and accommodation, but not water.  The first day’s food was quite tasty, we tried laama meat whilst sitting on the salt flats next to Isla pescado (fish island - as from afar it looks like a giant fish!).

It was a great setting and amazing to have a meal like that cooked for us.  In the evening we had a really good soup, followed by pasta which was nice.  In the morning though breakfast was not so exciting, with the sweet bread you get in so many places!  Our evening meal that day was also not quite as exciting, we had salchipapas which I’m not too keen on!

It depends on your driver what food you get as they carry your food and usually there is a lady accompanying your male driver who does the cooking.  Other groups around us looked like that had a better meal that night!  They also gave us a bottle of Bolivian wine that night…but after sampling we didn’t really drink much! (I guess that’s why Bolivia isn’t really known for its wine!)  Our final breakfast was more exciting as we had a large fresh fruit salad, pancakes and cereal on offer!  

Overall the tour is incredibly good value and the food was definitely better than we had been expecting with that beautiful laama making the trip food wise!