We were like excited school kids. If we didn’t have Any misadventures we’d been spending the night on the worlds largest Salt Pan The Solar de Uyuni at 3653metres.

With advice taken we’d found Juan, who, we were told had Gasoline. Well for the life of us we couldn’t see any. Rumbling around furiously in his pockets, Juan finally produced a small brass key, with which he opened up the door which we’d presumed was to his living room, well it may have been his front room once but now it was San Juan’s version of the Shell station. 8 large metallic drums were clearly marked with various grades of Gasoline. 84 octane would do us fine. A few minutes later and we’d agreed a price and large plastic containers of gas were carefully being dribbled into our tanks. With the last few days’ tough terrain we’d gone through almost all of our previous fuel. Fuelled to the brim at last we get going.

The easily found soft tracked snaked its way out of San Juan and climbed slowly into the mountains. The bikes felt heavy. They were no heavier than normal, we were just more tired than we’d realised. Riding past tiny hillside pueblos we’d taken a few wrong turns but eventually got ourselves sorted. The small military check point at Colcha K confirmed we were on the right track.

160km from San Juan and without any real warning the track stopped, blocked off by a pile of hefty rocks. The large painted rock simply read ‘Solar de Uyuni’ with a large blue arrow pointing to the left. It wasn’t hard to miss. A seemingly endless pan of white stretching out as far as we could see which, sat around a metre lower than the track we’d arrived on.

We wove the bikes through the rocks, dropped the bikes down onto the pan. This was it. We were actually on the Salt Pan. As beautiful as it was we spent the first 10 minutes feeling pretty intimidated. Riding out into seemingly nowhere, no marking, no tracks…nothing. Even with the dark visors the light was fierce. The Solar was actually a vast lake about 12,000 years ago and reached depths of up to 90m!! Right now the salt can be up to 120m thick in places but there are still real dangers; ‘ojos de sal’ -salt eyes –where newly formed salt crystals are formed (really beautiful) can be lethal. Ranging in size from a few cm’s to several metres water bubbles up from deep underneath. Causing the salt to thinn. Only last year two German motorcyclist died going to fast and simply rode into one, they and there bikes were sollowed hole. We were going to keep our eyes open. If that wasn’t warning enough our cheerful guide book recounted another little gem; in 2001 a truck carrying a local family home from Uyuni to their village on the other side of the salar broke down and they tried to walk out…they all got caught after dark and froze to death!! A stark reminder that just because the Solar de Uyuni has become a tourist attrication doesn’t make it easy or safe.

With our initial intimidation championed, we opened the throttles and were now cruising at speed across this incredible surface of solid salt. Like last night we were putting our faith in the GPS which was directing us to the Isla de Pescado. An Island Oasis in the middle of the Pan.

Parked up on the shore of this strangely isolated land mass we were keen to explore. We’d locked the bikes and set off. Two hours later andwe walked the Island and photographed what we could. Thousands of Huge Cacti litter this Island some reaching 10 metres tall and most over 100-years old. Boulders are strewn across the island most covered in a bizarre fosillised algae from pre-historic times.

Our plan was simple; arrive early, grab some photos and pick out a place to camp on the Pan. Dusk was now falling, unfortuneatly the wind was picking up. An hour later and having battled with the tent, the wind and our huge steel nail tent pegs we had to concede. It wasn’t going to happen. The wind aside there was no way we could drive our nail pegs into the concete like salt. We wouldn’t have believed it. It was now pitch black.

Back on the Island we’d searched out the Isla managress, Vicky and sheepishly asked permission to camp on the Island. To our surprise she suggested that we simply sleep in the new erected museum buiding which, right now was empty. We couldn’t believe our luck. With the bikes secured and our kit thrown in we set up our materess and excitedly talked about our incredible day.

We’ve set the alarm early 5:00am. We’re hoping to get some great am Sunrise photos.

The Nokia’s alarm buzzed annoyingly at ‘stupid-Oclock’, “God it can’t be morning already”, I thought. A dull morning light could already be seen through the dusty window.

Bless ‘em, the bikes started first time. Truth be told we were both pretty glad to have had the room, last nights temp dropped to -25c.

On the Solar and with the bikes parked up the incredible light show was already happening. Soft morning orange light bounced of the hexagonal shapes of the encrusted salt surface. All the time the light changed. Check out the photos.

The Toyota charge was already underway, 8 Land-Cruisers with eager tourist had already pitched up by 6:00am. By mid-day we were swamped we’d have little chance of any more photos, Tourist here to see the Island seemed more interested in us. Friendly enthusiastic questions but it was time to leave.

The journey across to the exit at Colchani just kept on and on….it was difficult to take in the size of this area. We seemd to go on for hours. Passing many many more ‘holes’ and having to keep our eyes open for them all the time….wouldn’t want to hit one of those! Its such a dazzling white surface, and its sheer size and ‘other wordliness feelling’ is breathtaking.

Lisa writes:
We’d found the Hotel Avenida easily…they also had a courtyard area where we were allowed to place our bikes, right by our room…great! The room was very cold but luckily at night it did seem to warm up and there were loads of heavy blankets on the bed….felt like we were being squashed!
Found a resonalbe palce to eat and sat and got warm by their fire. Its definitely cold here!

We managed toget some basic jobs done and at the least our cloths are a little fresher if not actually clean. We’d paid 10 Solis to a local lady at the hotel to wash a few bits and pieces, we really shouldn’t have bothered. It would have been a better idea to have done them ourslevs.

With the bikes washed down at a local yard at least we managed to get the worst of the corrosive salt of the bikes.

On a different tack we did marvell at the night time entertainment. Bolivian line dancing en-mass? With huge speakers set up in the main street, hundreds of kids ranging form toddlers to late teens all line up and then dance to rehearsed moves for hours and wow they’re good. It was a bizzare but great to watch.

Tomorrow we’ll make a move North.

By 8:30am we were already climbing the road high out of Uyuni and into the mountains. Switch back after switch back saw us climbing higher and higher, this was going to be another long day.

We were dropping into long farmed valleys complete with age- old terraces chiselled into the rough mountain rock. Small stone buildings scatter the hillside providing shelter to the hardy people that work this land. Dishevelled, dirty faced boys no older than 5-6 sheparding their families flock look up and wave as we pass, a stark difference to the kids at home with their ‘Game Boys and Play Stations’.

The passes were getting taller and skinner and to make matters interesting ‘Tinkerbelle’ was now really playing up. Any kind of acceleration was seeing her cough and splutter, robbing me of needed power and control, as if that wasn’t enough the corrugated track was driving me nuts. Vibrations of any kind were forcing me to back off the gas massively as the 1100 stumbled, missed and slowed so much that I was having to drop 2-3 gears…AAAHHHHHhhhhhhhh!!!! Slow corrugations are enough to drive anyone mad. We’ve got to get to Arequipa and hope we can get this sorted, it’s exhausting me worrying about this each day. There’s no way I can ride this to North America!

Nursing my bike was ruining what should have been an incredible ride. By late afternoon we re-found the tar and were carefully picking our way through the mess of aimless pedestrians, donkeys and dawdling jalopies all heading into Potosi. God I’m glad to be here.

With the frustrations of getting here it is still a big buzz to realize we’ve just ridden to the highest town in the world at 4,100 metres (13,269 feet). We were riding the steep rabbit warren of cobble stoned allies, the whole town was buzzing. Hundreds of locals had gathered in one of the squares as a band struck up, we’d obviously arrived during some kind of festival; we just had no idea which one?

Even the cobble stone was making Tinkerbelle upset. We had to stop and find somewhere to spend the night. Hotel Libertad on Calle. Millares (at GPS: S19 35.447 W65 45.103) looked a good bet, expensive but the offer of secure parking for the bikes was the clincher.

Potosi looks like an amazing place, it’s got a good vibe and the Spanish colonial architecture adds a degree of elegance to this high seated town. We’ll explore more tomorrow, right now the priority is food.