Patsy et Brel en Amérique du Sud ...

When we left you last we were about to embark on a 3 day jeep journey through the Salar de Uyuni, THE WORLD'S LARGEST SALT FLAT at 3653 m above sea level and 12000 sq km. We're back with some pretty wild photos...

HERE'S DAY 1-

First stop- CEMENTERIO DE TRENES, the graveyard of rusting LOCOmotives...

And COLCHANI where we stopped to see how the salt is processed. So much work (they must go get it, dry it, grind it, pack it...) and finally a bag of 1kg sells for 50 centavos bolivianos (6 canadian cents!!!) or 50 kg for 8 bolivianos ($1 canadian).

Check out these bricks made of SALT (oui, du sel!).

They make constructions out of salt. Not sure if it's just for the tourists though because their houses were not made out of salt. What happens if it rains on salt?

And quick...I ran to the BAÑO (toilet). Check it out (self explanatory)-

Brel riding a llama made of salt-

And we tried to have a discussion with this real llama but he was not very cooperative-

SuperBrel balancing over a litle salt mountain-

Et notre groupe. Nous etions 6 en plus du chauffeur- 1 francaise, 1 francais, 1 belge, Brel et moi (on ne sait toujours pas ce qu'on est) et 1 british qui n'a pas pete 1 mot en 3 jours-

Vive le Salar! A maze of tracks crisscrossing this white land...

Que dire... absolument magnifique!!!

Le petit point noir au fond est un cycliste. ON en a croise plusieurs...il faut etre fou quand meme! Hein Sebastien?

Honeycombs shapes everywhere and blinding whiteness.
And for those of us who love incredible sky, it's paradise here. It is as if everything was removed and only the sky was left. It feels so big, so present, it glows...

Brel dit qu'il est encore trop petit pour boire du whisky-

Oups j'ai melange anglais et francais. Sorry!!!

Et puis en route jusqu'a ISLA DE LOS PESCADORES ou CACTUS ISLAND...tellement il y en a et ils mesurent jusqu'a 12 m de haut

Il y en a des poilus-

Some really prickly-

And they even flower-

Au menu, picnic et cool photo session. Comme il n'y a pas de perspective, pas d'horizon, les photos peuvent etre tres chouette...

It looks like I'm climbing up this very big apple (no photoshop here I swear!!!)-

And Brel is so happy to hold his mom in the palm of his hand and blow her away-

Et puis on a tous fini par sauter au dessus de notre boite de pringles-

Et les cheveux de Brel qui ne cessent de pousser. Il a desesperement besoin d'un petit coup de peigne.

And we visited this incredible cave. After a 2 year drout and thus no more quinoa, the people here started searching for momies in caves (so that they could earn some money by showing these to tourists) but instead they found this gem-

It looks like lace but it's petrified seaweed. It looks fragile and thin like eggshell. (The entire salar used to be a lake by the way).

Close by, we also visited a PRE-INCA CEMETERY (in a cave)-

et on s'est retrouve nez a nez avec des milliers de CACTUS PETRIFIES-

They look like big ginger root!

On a termine la soiree en musique avec tous les enfants des alentours-

Ouch, our ears!!!!

Et puis ils sont presque tombes dans les pommes quand Brel a sorti son charango... Il a pourtant attendu qu'ils partent mais ils sont revenus en courant et l'ont ecoute de l'autre cote de la fenetre...