Michael Jackson and Clint Eastwood

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After leaving the coldness of Potosi, we entered the cold and bleak town of Uyuni, the jump off point for visiting the salt flats. Now we have seen some grim places on this trip and well this has to be the winner (apart from Tegucigalpa in Honduras which was worse if not different). Uyuni was a cross between a recently bombed communist bloc town and a dusty and much scarier version of a mad max film, if that can be imagined!!

Fortunately we only had to endure this hell for one night, but this was made more surreal with the news of Michael jacksons death creeping round the town and a never ending greatest hits cd on everywhere. Our waiter was the man to deliver the news informing us through a surgical mask which was either a mark of respect for the deceased or fear that in fact swine flu had finally reached the arse end of nowhere.

The trip on the Salar de Uyuni is a 3 day jeep tour around some pretty incredible scenery, and some very cold evenings ( at one point minus 20 was bandied about by our guide). The salt flats themselves are spectacular stretching seemingly forever and thus allowing some great perspective shots (hours of fun). The rest of the trip involved various coloured lakes and sulphurous geysers which although impressive were not the main draw for any of us. We did freeze half to death on this trip and were unlucky to get caught with the most boring Aussie couple ever, he began every sentence in an annoying ´down under´ drone with ´ isn´t it interesting.....´ to which invariably the remainder of the sentence was anything but......

Tour over, one more hellish and still Jacksion inflected night in Uyuni and the following day we set off to a lovely town near the Argentine border called Tupiza where we would spend Julia´s birthday. Tupiza is famed (supposedly) to be very close to the last stand of Butch Cassidy and The Sun Dance Kid and set in the desert it could well be believed (although riding a horse from the USA to Bolivia would be no mean feat).

For her birthday Julia sensibly decided that horse riding would be a good bet, and when we found a company that gave you chaps and a cowboy hat, we donned our best plaid, Julia did a daisy duke impersonation, we all smoked cigars like Clint and rode unsteadily into the desert on our steeds. At 2.50 sterling an hour it was great value for money and although when horses run it is much scarier than Clint makes it look, and much more difficult to smoke a cigar at the same time, it was a great way to spend an afternoon. It was also to be our last stop in Bolivia, a country that many write off completely or only stay 2 weeks, gave us 5 weeks of fun and adventure, and even though I write this freshly showered (with hot water) and with some good Argentine steak in my stomach, Bolivia will always have good memories and incredible scenery for us to remember.

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