Saline Trip

15 - 20.10.08 The Salt Plains via trains and automobiles
Travel from Rurrenabaque to La Paz (20hrs) escaping several close collisions and our bus nearly overturning when a wet road gives way beneath us - danger is this road´s middle name!

Take another bus to Ururo (6hrs) and then a train to Tupiza (13hrs) - a ghost town with a good spirit. Stay at a hostel with modern ammenities including cable TV and an electric shower - at least one that gives us a low voltage shock whenever we touch the taps. Wear flip-flops while we wash.

21 - 25-10-08 Trip to the Moon
Arrange a four day tour of the Salar de Uyuni, a lunar-like landscape that God must have created on the Saturday night...while tripping on acid (perhaps why he chose to rest on Sunday). Meet our travelling companions, two ladies - who also happen to be lovers.

From hot to not
On paper, the prospect of sharing a dorm room with two lesbian nurses carries enough material to script several scenes of an X-rated film.
In practice, they are real lesbians - far removed from the pretend porn stars that fuel male fantasies. Nonetheless, it´s personality that counts and they have plenty. We forge friendships that won´t be forgotten. You could even say that, ´Lesbians love Dick!´ (albeit as an abbreviation of my name:)

Day One - Go West
Leave Tupiza and enter a landscape straight from the scenes of a Spaghetti Western - it´s also where Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid outed their last laws. Overwhelmed by the sheer size of the panoramic views, which stretch further than our peripherals can reach.
It´s the sort of scenery where you would expect to see Wile.E.Coyote (smoking a Malboro Red) crouched above a canyon, hands on a detonator about to be foiled by the fallability of ACME´s latest bird-catching apparatus.

Psychosomatic addict...but not insane
Our new nurse friends diagnose my earlier injury as a broken bone and confirm that my shoulders will remain as assymetrical as a Jamie Pearson haircut for life - contrary to Flo´s assurances that there is nothing wrong with me!

From hot to not 2
Ask any Bolivian about the Salt Plains and they will reply, ´Mas frio´, with an animated shiver. It´s difficult to believe during the bright, sunny day but as night falls - the wind chills are multiplying. Stay in an uncomfortable bed in a freezing, basic hostel...dreaming of sleep.

Day Two - Technicolour Dreamworld
Spend a full day in a 4WD jeep travelling across a barren but beautiful landscape sculpted by the elements over millions of years. Words cannot begin to describe - but these are a few of my favourite things...

* Endless horizons punctuated by towering peaks and falling canyons painted in a myriad of earthly tones bleached pastel by the sun.

* A kaleidoscope of coloured lakes, each determined by a variety of chemical rich compositions. The most surreal being a blood red lagoon where flocks of pink flamingos come to feed, occasionally flying awkwardly across the surface.

* Imposing mountains adorned with swirling Pucci-esque patterns of coloured sand that are symetrically reflected in crystal clear lakes beneath.

* The wind isolating eddy currents that stir the sand into minature twisters, which dance erratically across open desert expanses stubbled by cactus growth.

* Hallucinogenic rock formations - so mind bending that they have been named after the artist Salvador Dali. And, a hot spa pool surrounded by steaming lakes at the base of a mountain - the best bath in the world!

Day Three - Just Deserts
Wake at dawn to watch flamingos sleepily unfurl their necks from beneath their wings - incidentally, they make the same sound as Flo when she is dreaming (like a nasal fart:). Cross vast deserts where the heat creates shimmering mirages in the distance that separate the mountains from the horizon - leaving them floating like islands in an invisible sea.

Stop for an alfresco lunch surrounded by weird and wonderful rock formations that resemble forests cast from stone, while active volcanoes exhale plumes of noxious gases in the background.

No shit!
Another adverse effect of altitude, aside from instant exhaustion, premature ageing and hair straightening, is the irregular affect it seems to have on my bowel movements.
Despite getting gale force wind, it´s a strain to deliver an end product for the three days we spend above 4,800m sea level. Constipation only adds weight to the argument that I am full of shit!

Stay in a hotel made almost entirely from salt. If only there was a lounge of lemons and a bar built from bottles of tequila we could get this party started:)

Day Four - Salt of the Earth
Having just witnessed some of the most alien landscapes imaginable, I found it difficult to believe that I could be impressed by an empty ocean of salt...how wrong I was.

Surrounded by a sea of white Bolivian powder we could be somewhere in the Arctic - or Billywood over Christmas - save for the sun. The salt crystals sparkle magically for as far as the eye can see (1200km2) and are etched with a honeycomb pattern created by wind and water. It´s bleak and desolate but ultimately more spellbinding than anything we´ve seen before.

The better you look...the more you see
It´s also a photographer´s dream where it´s virtually impossible to take a bad picture. The blinding white backdrop lets us experiement with a series of perceptive altering ´tricks of the white´shots. Have an idea to create an album entitled, ´Around the world in 80 frames´featuring the best of our travel pictures - coming to a slide show near you soon (yawn:)

Nervous about a breakdown
A sweet return home hits a sour note when our guide, aka Pro Evo 2 as he´s the spitting image of the President Evo Morales, gambles and runs out of petrol - I thought only I did that! We drive until we exhaust our fuel and wait for a rescue vehicle, which adds a couple of hours before we reach the hostel and draw a line under our Bolivian experience.

Film Four
Bolivia is one of the most diverse places I have ever visited. In the five weeks we have spent here we´ve tasted a full course of different experiences - like watching four different films in the same night:

We started with the the open water expanses of Lake Titticaca (The Big Blue). Spent a few crazy nights in La Paz (Sin City). Then ventured by boat into the Amazon (Appocalypse Now). And finished high in the clouds of cowboy country (High Plains Drifter). Fade to credits...

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