Bloomin Bolivia!

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Hello all!
We are now in the capital city of La Paz, Bolivia possibly our most far-flung destination so far!

Buenos Aires was great fun, we learnt a little Spanish, saw a bit of Tango and got food poisoning! Well , I guess we knew it had to happen at some point... I blame the dinner which ended up being free after two drunk irsihman took a fancy to my red hair and proceeded to serenade me (very loudly I might add) with a rendition of "when will you go, lassy go!" much to the amuzement of the waiters and other patrons who all though we were totally mad. It endd up being a fun evening though and its not often you bump into an irish rugby team in Argentina!

From BA we made our way on a 18hr bus journey (whilst clutching our stomachs) to Salta. Salta was a lovely town where we spent a couple of days wandering around and sampling the delicious popcorn sold in every 10 metres in Salta! Unfortunately it was here we watched the demise of the Argentinian football team and were nearly linched by a mob who thought we might be german.

From Salta it was another long bus journey to San Pedro de Atacama where we had planned to pick up a salt flats tour. It was such an odd, dusty little town consisting of two streets lined with restaurants , hostels and tour agencies. It proved a pleasant place to while away a couple of days before we started our salt flats tour. On the morning of our planned departure we arrived at the office at 8am only to get worried when niether driver nor the Americans meant to be sharing our tour had turned up by 8.20. Eventually our driver turned up and ferried us off to a hostal to pick up the Americans. THe Americans turned out to be a brother and sister and friend who had been studying in Chile and could speak Spanish which was a relief as our driver could not.

After breakfast at the bolivian border we packed our bags onto the top of a dusty old black toyota land cruiser and jolted our way into the national park where we had our first views over Laguna Verde. The landscape of the slat flats is near impossible to describe. Varied and beautiful it changed from impossibly bright colours; blues, purples and reds to bleak, arrid almost surrealist lanscapes of endless yellow dust. Indeed we passed through an area of strange rock formations sat in an expanse of nothing that it is named salvador Dali after the surrealist artist. You could believe they had been placed there if they werent so massive!

After an hour or so we arrived at a thermal pool where the American siblings stripped off and jumped in, Fran and I decided to pnly plunge our feet in however, it was far to cold for me to bear my naked flesh to the Altiplano! WE then saw further thermal activity of boiling mud and geysers, which I have to be honest were more impressive than those Id seen in New Zealand! The next stop was our refugio for the night where we had lunch and then headed down to lake Colarado. Lake colarado has to be one of the mpst beautiful places Ive ever been in my life. It looks as though God went mad with his paint box! THe Lake was bright pink under the blue and white sky and dotted all over with bright pink flamingos. We stayed there for hours watching the light turn the reddy brown hills that flanked the lake darker and darker until we returned for a meal and the coldest night of my life. It was about minus 16 that night and I felt every degree of it. We were sat around the table in hats gloves and scarfs which we left on when we jumped into our sleeping bags under 3 blankets! Needless to say we didnt sleep much, when we werent shverig from cold we were panting and wheezing frrm the altitude!

The next day was a long drive through endless desert like scenery coming across the stone tree amongst other wierd rock formations and past several lakes so eireely quiet it was almost like you had gone deaf. The next night was spent at a salt hotel, yes you guessed it - a hotel made entirely out of salt! Here we were able to have a hot shower, but my hands and feet were so cold I couldnt tell if the water was boiling hot or freezing cold until i investigated with softer parts of my anatomy (turned out to be boiling hot!). We were now on the edge of th slat flat ready to drive across it the next day.

Despite other peoples protestations of wanting to see the sunrise over the slat flats I found I was on my own freezing my ass off at 7am in the morning out on the slat flats. It was so cold the water in my water bottle froze solid af10 mins! THe sunrise was incredible as it came flashing over the stark white flats but it wasnt until we started driving over them a couple of hour later we realised just how massive they really were.

We arrived at hte isle of fishes whicxh was covered with cacti. From here we could climb onto a vantage point to look over the flats out to the purple hills in the distance. It was then a 2 ghour drive over the rest of the slat flats until we reached the other edge and made our way back to Uyuni.

In Uyuni we left Leo and the black jeep and went off to organise our transport to La PAz. It turnmed out the trains were on strike so we had no choice but to get a bus. Thankfully there were seats on the tourist bus -todo tourismo -for that evening so we booked ourselves on and along with every other westener in Uyuni, went to Minuteman pizza ! It was good but it did take two hours to arrive! The bus journey to La PAz was less than comfortable, It was 12 hours, only 3 of which were on paved roads. THe rest of the time we spent between the seats and the air about 5 inches above the seats! However we arrived in one piece unscathed and with all our belongings intact.

We have now met up with Rich finally after his plane was 7 hours late and will soon be joining our truck tour of peru!

Hope all is well with you and lots of love

Sarah xx

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