The Highest Hostel in the World

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Well, according to us anyway.

Anyone who says that the Tibetan Plateau is the roof of the world has clearly never been to Bolivia. Here they skip and jump at heights mere mortals only dream of. We felt that a few days in San Pedro de Atacama (Chile), situated at a paltry 2,400m above the deep blue, was high, but boy were we wrong.

A small change of plans had led to us throwing Bolivia into the mix, instead of our planned leisurely stroll up to the end of Chile (which decidely isn´t) and across the drug smuggling border to Peru. Now we knew La Paz was the highest capital in the world and we were more than prepared to buy a few more llama jumpers - the national export of South America. But what we weren´t ready for was the direct 2,000m ascent from San Pedro to the Bolivian border, making our total height one of 4,400m! That´s higher than Lhasa (Tibet), higher than Kathmandu (Nepal) and a hell of a lot higher than Ben Nevis.

But this wasn´t to be the end of the mammoth feat of oxygen defying madness, oh no. We were to head all the way up to Laguna Verde and Laguna Colorado crossing passes up to almost 4,850m in the Bolivian Andes. At altitudes like this your head spins and just breathing becomes a little tiring. However, it has to be said that as we summitted heights similar to those of Mont Blanc and the smaller Himalaya our 4x4 Jeep seemed a much better way to go than all those nutters who just walk up mountains. After all we had a cook on board and some sweeties to keep up going through the cold.

The purpose of this seemingly silly expedition was to visit some of the most amazing sights in nature. I mean, who else has seen a bright red lake. Blue sure, green even (although not as green as the one we saw), but red. Bright shining red complete with gleaming white islands and oddly perched flamingoes. Truely weird or ´Geology in Action!´as we have taken to saying (blame the altitude - we´re obviously not getting enough FLUIDS).

However, this land is still a desert and come time for the sun to set the temperature rapidly dropped from, ´not too bad in the sun´, to ´give me more layers- now´ in a matter of minutes. Our hostel for the night was missing a window and at 4,270m up that kind of thing can leave even the water in the toliets frozen solid. Six people huddled together in a freezing dorm room left thinking just how much they paid for the privlege.

One of the main reasons for this was reveled the next morning, however, with one of the great South American voyages across the amazing Salar de Uyuni. A giant salt flat somewhere near the size of Wales only a little flatter and a bit dryer. 12,000 square km of perfectly still white crystal punctuated only by tour group, upon tour group, upon tour group - all of them French.

This unfortuately has been the bane of our lives the last week in that it seems lots of people want to go the same place as us. It´s just not fair that they can´t leave these pristine wildernesses the way they are and head to Tenerife instead. I mean I want to see the desert and I want to be alone while doing it. Lets hope La Paz is full of Bolivians and seeing as we´re going to be there for the biggest party of the year, Independence Day, it should be.

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