Tupiza to Uyuni

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Well we eventually arrived in Bolivia after our epic journey from the south of Argentina. We were all feeling tired and dirty and were desperate for a decent night sleep and a hot shower. Luck was on our side when Turner and I came across a good hostel which had everything we were looking for. We spent our first day in Tupiza chilling out and organising our next 4 day adventure upto Uyuni.

The tour we booked looked fantastic and we just hoped it would live up to our expectations. The four of us set off in the morning in a 4X4 Toyota Jeep with Willy our guide and Juila our cook. We started our climb up through the Bolivian mountains on a dirt track road hugging the side of the cliff face. Watching Bim sh*t himself as Willy drove us up the long and winding tracks was hilarious. The views along away the way were phenominal and it wasn't long before we stopped for lunch surrounded by hundreds of lama. It was then that we found out that we could taste some of these gay looking animals along with our our spam sandwiches. The first day finished at a local mountain village, 15,000 ft above sea level where we slept in mud huts with no hot showers, lights from 6pm to about 9pm and lama skins to sleep on.

At the village we managed to find a football pitch with a bunch of local boys playing. Playing at 15,000 ft above sea level was so tiring for us and the boys couldn't stop laughing at how much it affected us. After about 10 mins they were feeling quite confident and wanted to play for a bottle of coke each. Being the competitive guys we are, we accepted their challenge and stepped up our game and won 4-1 (Peters, Turner, Gareth 2) . A crowd of locals were loving it and jeering everytime we made a mistake. We did feel bad taking cokes off the poor little boys so we let them off and celebrated round the pitch much to the enjoyment of the locals.

During the second day we explored more of Bolivia and visited Volcanos, Inca ruins and huge random rocks in the middle of the desert. Along the way we saw various wildlife and some weird roddent creature that looked half rabbit and half squirrel.

We didn't see another vehicle or a proper road since leaving Tupiza and the only chance we got to clean ourselves was in a natural hot spring on the third day. We took full advantage of this and bathed for about an hour in the outback of Bolivia. The weather was sunny but it was still quite cold because of how high we were. We all suffered a bit from altitude sickness which is the same as feeling hungover after a heavy night out - something we are quite familiar with!!

On the third day we visited coloured lagoons filled with Flamingos. I didn't expect Bolivia to be this beautiful and the coloured lagoons looked stunning against the red mountains in the background. When we arrived at our next stop it was like we had arrived on Mars. We were looking at a bunch of geisers that were bubbling with 180 degree mud and it stunk like the living room of 19 Bemister after a night on the beers!

Awaking at 5am in the morning on our final day was well worth it to see the sun rise over the salt plains of Uyuni. Once the sun was up, the bright white salt flats was all you could see for miles. Another fascinating sight that won't be forgotten. Our tour ended at the train graveyard, a bizarre sight with abandoned trains left to rot in the desert. Acting like 7yr olds we climbed the many trains and played until we were bored.

Not really knowing what to expect from our tour the 4 days turned out to be a great adventure.

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