Bolivia

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With an early start we headed out to the Salt flats in our $60,000 4x4 for a 3 day tour. It started in San Pedro and the final desitination was Uyuni. Our of road beast contained Nick, Paul, our guide Javier, Winston a black man from England and the most moody non-english speaking Brazilian ever.

On the first 2 days we explored the magnificent green and pink salt lakes and magestic Flamingos. The camera must have been working on overload, as everything we looked at seemed to warrent a picture.

Sadly all was not completely well in the camp, as Nick and Paul discovered that its was maybe slightly foolish to go from sea level to over 5,000m in just over a day and with limited sleep. By our first night we were suffering from Altitude sickness, which is an immensely painful experience. Nights were also cold- about -7! By sunrise, even though we were pretty ill it seemed remarkably easy to forget about it, due to the amazing scenary and perfect wether we had in the days.

For our final night we stayed in a house made of salt. Then at 4am the final day began as we made our way to watch the sunrise over the salt flats. The whole time spent on the salt flats was surreal and mind blowing. Again we managed to take loads of pictures, but I don´t think they quite communicate the actual experience of being there. As well as looking at the salt flats, on this day we also climbed up Isla Incahuasi (a small hill covered in catus, set right in the heart of the salt flat) and visited a cemetary that pre dates even the Incas. In some of the open graves, you can still see the skeletons of these small beings.

At about 11am we arrived in Uyuni and in extreme pain from altitude sickness, we let our bodies grab a quick rest in a hostel bed, before getting back on the road at 8pm the same day, to make our way to La Paz. This bus ride was horrific, it was possibly worse than the boat ride were Jesus calmed the storm, as he didn´t seem to be filling in the holes on this shabby road (if you could even call it a road)!

We arrive in La Paz early morning and checked in at Loki hostel (a big and highly recommened backpackers hostel). Still suffering, we pretty much had our first day off and just completely crashed out. By the next day feeling much better, we went in search of the worlds highest golf course. We managed to find it, however it was slighly out of our league. 60 pounds a game, plus you have to hire your own cady. Instead we just enjoyed the surroundings and the fine food.

On our final full day in La Paz we decided to tackle the 62km worlds most dangerous road. Again we had perfect weather (oh did I mention that we still havent seen any rain in 3wks) and full of excitement set off on our bikes. 5 minutes into the ride and a girl flipped over her handle bars and broke her colar bone (sorry mum, but it had to be mentioned for the story to continue- we were never in any danger, honest). One of the 2 trailing vehicles resultingly had to take the girl to hospital. This meant that when we approached the part they don´t make cyclists ride, as its an 8km uphill stretch; there was only one passenger vehicle available. Stupidly Nick and Paul voluteered to ride this part as not everyone could fit in the vehicle. This would be quite a demanding stretch in any part of the world but even more so at 4,500m altitude where air is thin. The rest of the ride was all downhill on a narrow dirt road and was extreme to the max. Everyone else pretty much made it down safely, and our only injury has resulted in us walking with a slight John Wane walk, due to the hard bike seat. Infact the scariest part of the whole day was the drive back up the worlds most dangerous road, as its still open to transport and that when you really get time to take in the drops.

We are now in Copacobana, a town on Lake Titikaka. Over the next couple of days we will be making our way to Cuzco in Peru.

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