nimurg

for a 3 days salar de uyuni tour, which tour company is the best from comfort, safety, reliability point of view?

live42day

I would use trip advisor and read all the reviews. I don't know if any of them are that comfortable, safety I would not be concerned about. On most of them I think you are in dorms . It depends on what time of year you are going too, whether it will be really cold at night. We went in Feb and it was not that cold at night.

We opted to use Tupiza tours from Tupiza but did a private tour with just the two of us and a guide/driver, one night two day and it was fantastic.

mlgb

I would be skeptical of the TA recommendations, personally I think the rooms even in the cheap tours are just fine (although the bathrooms may be rough). Note that if you are going in the cold months (which is now), you should rent or bring a sleeping bag as the rooms are not heated.

All of the inexpensive tours are going to use the same type of vehicle (Toyota 4wd), go on unpaved rough roads, and drivers are not tour guides. You can hire an English speaking guide but personally I don't think it's justified. Just know what you are buying so you are not surprised. At a minimum be sure the vehicle has seat belts!

Bring some extra water and snacks as well.

The scenery will outshine any type of roughing it that you endure.

I used Blue Line Service for their standard tour, booked on the day of arrival.

If you don't want to share with 5 other people, you can buy their seats as well. Otherwise the standard tours try to get 6 passengers plus driver (that means one in front, 2 or 3 in the other two rows.) It really wasn't that bad.

mlgb

BTW, crellston, myself and live42day all have trip reports about different versions of the Uyuni tour.

I believe live42day did only a one day tour of the salt flats (and a second day traveling from Tupiza to Uyuni). I did the standard 3 day/2 night shared tour roundtrip from Uyuni. crellston did a full private tour (I think 4/3 from Tupiza).

live42day

that is right mlgb. One thing I do remember is when we stopped on the flats we saw a 4 x 4 and there were 8 people in it plus the driver. Our driver said that some of the tours really cram the people in the vehicles so I would make sure of how many are in your jeep.

Our guide did not speak much english but we wanted to practise our spanish and I don't think it was necessary anyhow.

crellston

I did do the 4/3 tour out of Tupiza with. Tupiza Tours and would rate them very highly in terms of service and would use them again. Good food, a helpful driver. I agree with mlgb that an English speaking guide is not justified, a guide book will tell you all you need to know. Like live42day we used the fact that the driver and guide spoke no English to improve our Spanish ( amazing the difference 4 days made to our listening skill!). My wife and I even tried to communicate between ourselves in Spanish which caused our driver and cook some great amusement at times!

If you are travelling via Tupiza ( usually en route to NW. Argentina then I would give them a go but probably would not make a special journey to get there. I had heard that they now operate yours directly from Uyuni.

Of course, having done only the one your I have no real basis for comparison except that we too saw a number of jeeps with a lot more people jammed into the jeeps than was neither comfortable nor safe.
As mentioned above, do make sure how many will be in your jeep and try to meet your fellow travellers beforehand.