Salt Flats Tour Day One

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So we'd stocked up on rum, whisky, coke and some cheap green alcoholic type stuff and even managed to wake up early to be ready for the jeep. Which was an hour late. This is Bolivia! There was more than one jeep full of people going from the hostel, and one of the others had an American girl we'd met in Iguazu and a German guy we'd met in Salta (small world!) as well as two hilarious crazy Norwegian girls. Our jeep had Lettie, Rosie and Matt as well as me and Paul. The group of 9 of us had a lot of fun.

After our bags were loaded onto the jeep, we were introduced to our driver and our cook/tour guide for the next 4 days. Neither of them spoke English. None of us spoke Spanish. '**** it, we'll make it up as we go along!' We decided. As our jeep was pulling out of Tupiza a small Bolivian kid ran over and gave the driver a cable so we could play our iPods through the car stereo, result! Alright, so we had to listen to Matt's ridiculously cheesy music for hours on end but it was better than listening to Bolivian talk radio. And I don't think I'll ever forget driving through remote Bolivia in a 4x4 with a car-full of people singing Its Raining Men. Some things just stick with you!

So as we pulled out of the town the back doors on the jeep flew open. Warning sign one. The driver had to get out and tie it shut. Bit dodgy we thought, but This Is Bolivia! What do you expect?!

We saw some fantastic scenery and got some hilarious cactus related photos (see below) and generally spirits were high. In part thanks to Matt's music to be honest; who can resist joining in singing Abba?! The altitude was a bit of a problem, we all started to get headachey and feel a bit sick, we were at over 4,500ft it memory serves. The Bolivian solution for this is cocoa leaves. Don't worry Mum its not drugs! You chew them a bit and then put them at the side of your mouth and kind of just leave it there for about half an hour. If you suck you get a taste similar to tea. Its very strange and I don't think it really helped to be honest but it made me feel a bit more Bolivian!

We began to notice that our jeep seemed to be arriving at the stop-off points about 10minutes after the others. For whatever reason it was taking us much longer to cover the same distances. Warning sign number two? Later in the day, it started to rain. It seemed the windscreen wipers on our car didn't work. At first I thought the driver was just being lazy and didn't think it needed washing. But as the rain got heavier, he first tried to move the wipers manually with his hand while driving, and then gave up completely and stuck his head out the window. Warning sign number three; this car wasn't in the state it should have been.

We had to abandon the place we were supposed to stop off at because it continued to rain and our driver couldn't continue into the night with the car the way it was. So we stopped in a small village in the middle of the hills and the Bolivians turned the school into a dorm room for about 14 of us. It was brilliant, they were all really kind, helpful and interested in us as foreigners. It was really cool.

Unfortunately that night I got hit really badly with the altitude sickness and had a seriously bad night. It was the closest I've ever come to wanting a helicopter to just appear out of nowhere and take me away. I later learnt we'd been at 5,000ft. Ben Nevis is 4408 according to Google!

Anyway, apart from the sickness it had been a really cool first day. It was Day Two when things started to go wrong....



What happened next?! Find out next week!

(or when I update next....)

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