Salt Flats, Bolivia

---

Hello everyone!

I´m very sad to say, that we have become infected.. we have contracted a virus! Fortunately, it is of the computer kind, rather than the sexual variety! The camera memory card is infected and we can´t download any photo´s until we get back to the UK and take the memory card to the software hospital. We will endeavour to use our phones to update facebook until we can get a new memory card. Boo.

Right, so the Salt flats....... We arrived in Uyuni which can only be described as a ´hick cowboy town in the middle of no where. We tried to get on a salt flat tour but nearly couldn´t due to country wide transport strikes, but luck was on our side and we got booked in for the next day with Red Planet, who were quite expensive - B1200 each.

We met the rest of our tour group, who consisted of lots of Americans, two Northern Irish boys and a couple of teenage English girls. The group were split in to two cars, the one stand out anoying American was in the other car fortunately! The first stop was the train cemetery in Unyni... Random you might think but great fun. Loads of disused, rusting MASSIVE trains which you could clamber over and through - imagine cowboy western stylie trains and you have it... Every childs playground!! I just would like to add that the best trains there were the ones made in England..! The yankie ones were shit. It was a very surreal place but strangely exciting. They had made a seesaw out of train parts which was brilliant fun - we are just sorry you cant see the pictures!!!

After that we headed to the Salt Flats. One word... AMAZING. We first stopped for lunch at one of the Salt Hotels which are made entirely of Salt bricks... Everything was made of Salt ( apart from shower and loo understandably!) but the floor was just Salt granules!!!! This is the future of house building and TSS wants this as her next carpet - no hoovering ever ever again! Yes! It was very surreal but amazing to see... Had a lovely lunch there and then we realised the horror when another of the Americans ate his food so loudly, with his lips wide open that TSS actually stared at him in disbelief. We both tried to avoid sitting next to him at meal times for the rest of the trip.. Also, TSS started the dad jokes at the dinner table - pass the salt etc...

So after lunch we walked out on the start of the salt flats. It was strange and very much like a star wars scene with the hover cars.. The texture was crunchy underneath and then it started to get wetter. TSS and Trace were in flip flops and TSS being the heavier of the two sank one foot into black tar and lost her flip flop.. Anyway, we drove on to the actual salt flats which is a vast vast vast flat area of nothing but white, snow like, salt crystals. Literally for miles - nothing but blinding white flatness and gorgeous blue sky. This allows for extraordinary perspective pictures to be taken (google this if you want an example) and we took some crackers with us standing on top of a pringle box, tracy flicking tash off her hand and monkey turning giant and giving tracy a kiss. we really could have stayed for hours and we will get the pics to you as soon as we can! They are brilliant!

After relucantly getting back in the car, we drove off the salt flats and into a more dessert like terrain in the middle of the mountains. The views were breath taking. We stopped in the middle of huge rock formations and messed about Bear Grylls style, climbing all over them. Again, we took some wicked pictures of us on and in the rocks.

As we drove deeper in to the dessert we saw snow capped mountains and volcanoes, it was like planet of the Apes! Luckily, we had monkey with us! Randomly, we came across different lakes, the first one was a magnificant bluey / green colour and had a few flamingo´s on it, you could see snow capped mountains in te background and it made the view look amazing. Afterwards we went to another lake, which was the setting for our lunch... not a bad view. There were lots of flamingoes at this one and TSS spent ages trying to get some decent photo´s of them, but the were too far away! Definately have camera envy, some of the pictures that the oters took were amazing!

We then went to te red lake, which is on facebook and is actuall red, due to the minerals from the mountains, so weird.... In the afternoon of the second day, after a freezing nigt in a sort of hostel and a good host of drinking games, we went to the hot springs and geysers, again tere are a couple of pictures on facebook. They were incredible to see - bubbling, molten rock! Later on we braved the cold and four out of twelve of us donned our bikini´s and jumped into a natural hot spring, it was like a perfect warm bath, the first one for over a month!

The last night of the tour, brought more drinking games, UK versus the yanks and of course te yanks cheated!!! Ha ha... So we had to abandon those teams after awhile before WW3 erupted. We went to bed quite late, encouraged by one of the group talking about his journal which described him finding his inner self.....BORING!!! We also did a little bit of star gazing and saw the milky way, southern cross and Mars... the stars were amazing in the desert.

On the final day, we got up way too early (TSS not happy as you can imagine) and saw the sunrise over lake Verdi, which was beautiful. We then visited lake blanco and said goodbye to Boliva and hello to Chile. The Irish boys were going to San Predro De Atacama too, so we travelled together...More of our adventures in the next blog.

Take care

---