Uyuni

After a short minibus ride to the Bolivian border we settled onto our 4 * 4 along with Kat, a southern girl travelling alone and our driver. After breakfast just inside Bolivia (hard bread and tea) we set off for a hot pool. This natural occurance in the middle of nowhere was very enjoyable and the name was correct. It was a RED hot 35 degrees and tolerable for short periods. It was here we got talking to the four other people who were on another truck but on the same tour. Monkey, Bob, Ali and Marcelo are the other people you will see in the photographs of this trip, along with the aforementioned Kat.

We stopped frequently on this day to admire the views and natural life including llama´s and flamingo´s. That evening we enjoyed a hot meal and a game of cards with our new friends and got our heads down ready for the next day of the trip.

We got up at 7.30 ready for an 8am departure. As we stood for an hour waiting for our drivers we were literally cursing their names. Later we realised we hadn´t been told of the one hour time difference. We cursed their names again! Our day involved a stop at some rocks, where the main attraction is the stone tree. Here we also enjoyed scaling the rocks, climbing the highest rock with what can only be described as ease. We stopped later on in the day at several lagoons and later still at a railway town, which is the only rail link between Chile and Bolivia. That night we had a chicken supper (first bit of meat we´d seen in days!) and retired.

We thought the salt planes in Argentina were impressive. Although we were right, they are nothing in comparison to the one in Bolivia, which we are told is the size of Northern Ireland. In the middle of the salt is an island covered in cacti and because of how flat the area is and the space surrounding it we were able to take what i think you will agree are hilarious optical illusion style photographs! We progressed further to a salt hotel (its a hotel made entirely of salt) and then finally arrived in Uyuni.

This signalled our second seperation of the group. Daniel has headed to the North of Bolivia with the rest of our tour group while Jake and Craig prepared to head back into Chile. This occured as Jake and Craig are returning to Londrina for the New Year while Daniel is spending it with Rachel in Chile. We will continue the blogs seperately until we meet again in time for our flight to New Zealand in early January.

As a side note, we have now had over 1500 viewings of our blogs (200 of Rio) but only have 15 people suscribed. Who are all these other people! Subscribing means you get notified anytime we update or blog and lets us see who is reading it. We also enjoy reading any comments and messages regardless of their content or if only aimed at one of the group.

Love JDC

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