Hola Bolivia! Salt Flats Capers

Salt Flats Tour- tree of stone

Firstly,typing this on a keyboard with no letters (a few have kindly been tippexed on, ever so helpful), so apologies for typos etc from what might possibly be the slowest internet connection in the world.

We made it to Bolivia! Having taken an overnight bus from Salta, Argentina, and worked our way across border towns, we are now safely ensconced in Bolivia. We met a few people on the bus - along with the 3 guys from our hostel we buddied up with an English couple and a Kiwi, and did the Salt Flats tour with them.

The Salt Flats Tour is quite a bit more than just the Salt Flats, which are spectacular in themselves but make up just one of the four days of the tour. The four days were fantastic. We´ve been extremely lucky in that our group of seven got on like a house on fire. There´s been a lot of chat, banter, inside jokes, and as is inevitable with altitude sickness and Bolivian food poisoning, many, many conversations about bowel movements. (On that note, I seem to have a stomach of steel, and one of the few without issues....long may that continue!)

Each day we got up early, saw spectacular sights and stayed in the most basic of accommodation, from what we think was a village hall to a place where the beds, walls and ceilings were made from salt. There are too many silly incidents and amazing sights to mention, so I´ll leave a selection of highlights here so as not to bore you all to pieces....

• The Swedish twosome, Thor and Freddie, who smoked, boozed, played their guitars, caused capers and pretty much did everything you´re advised not to at high altitude, and were completely fine. All this while wearing traditional ponchos and yelling ´hola perro!` to every dog we passed.
• Very, very cold nights, where an hour of electric light in the evenings paved the way for a regular ´team penguin huddle`. Six people encircling the seventh, making strange penguin noises (we sounded more like seals) with the sole aim of keeping warm (at this point perhaps the altitude got the better of us). I slept in at least three layers every night, plus a sleeping bag and four blankets.
• Regular bowel updates and epic games of ´would you rather`. Much of this based on ´would you rather see another blooming lagoon,or....`(we saw a lot of lagoons. A lot.)
• Gladys, our cook and object of our affections. Liked us until Devon, struck down by altitude sickness,  vomited outside her bedroom door, after which she probably cared less for us, but still cooked some pretty yummy nosh
• Traditional pipe music and singing from local children, and a very persistent little boy who made us play hide and seek, blew bubbles in our faces and eventually stormed off (see below)

• Breathtaking scenery (even the thousands of lagoons were pretty cool), extinct volcanoes, dips in thermal springs, llama spotting, dangerous driving, ´bano naturales´, abandoned haunted town
• The incredible night´s sky on our last night - have never seen so many stars.
• Seeing sunrise over the Salt Flats on our final day, and taking some ridiculous photos based on the tricks of perspective created out there. Jules and I have lots of me holding her in my hand, her blowing me down, the whole team being eaten by Jon from a spoon. However, the best has to be the boy´s very impressive ´evolution of man´, as below. David, our crazy driver who had a real love affair with 80s power ballads, loved it. Gladys, thankfully, took this moment to snooze in the other car.

We´re now in Sucre, enjoying the luxuries that are electricity, lie ins, mobile phone signal and internet. Having travelled about 500km for about 6 GDP to get here, we´re relaxing and wandering about before taking an overnight 15 hour bus to the capital, La Paz, tomorrow evening. Last night we treated ourselves to a bottle of rum and had drinks on our hostel roof terrace, before being told to either go to bed or go out at 10.30pm.  Friendly! Tonight´s plans revolve around a BBQ with some others from the hostel, so we´re off to the market to buy provisions. 

More updates soon(ish!).