First Stop

When we left Salta we headed north for Bolivia.This involved a seven hour bus journey and a stop over in La Quiaca for a night (as the border is closed at night time!!).Next morning we got a cab to take us to vallazon at which point we were able to cross the border into Bolivia.
The border between Bolivia and Argentina is absolute chaos there was hundreds of people everywhere running back and forth between the two countries and there is no such thing as a queue for immigration control its survival of the fittest!!. There is a back path around the border where hundreds of Bolivians are just running across the border with as much as they can carry on there backs its amazing what they can carry i mean its mostly women with huge amounts of stuff (even bags of cement)we saw one woman with three crates of oranges on her back!and its not as if they can stop as there are hundreds of people behind them.
after standing polietly for ages we then pushed our way through!!.
when you cross the border the clocks go back an hour and so to does everything (mainly technology!)hot water does not come from the taps and none from taps in some places, you still cant put toilet paper in the toilets either.We took a bus from Villazon to Tupiza (where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid were said to have met thier maker after a big robbery!). We really noticed the effects of the altitude as Tupiza is 2950metres above sea level (headaches, tiredness, breathlessness, insomnia....i could go onn!)we overcame this by doing what the locals do chew coco leaves(yuk!).We only spent one night in Tupiza as we were egar to get to Uyuani to see the salt flats.
Next day we got on the bus to Uyuani only to be forced off it by the woman who had sold us the tickets and ordered into a jeep.
I can safely say that it was the most uncomfortable journey of my life. We were like sardines for seven hours.
1 jeep-13 adults, 2 children and a dog!!The road was really bumby too as it wasnt paved anyway we arrived in Uyuani at night time so we had to wait until morning to book a trip on the salt flats. It was freezing so i opted to stay in bed with several items of clothing onn! while Mal deceided to venture out to a local bar with a german guy we had met earlier ,apparently the bar didnt see many gringos so they were a novelty they had loads of drunk Bolivian teenagers coming over to shake their hands!.
next day we wandered around the local market and booked ourselves a three daytrip on the salt flats before visiting one of the local attractions The cemetery for trains!!! How bizzare they had heaps of really old knackered trains on a big plot of land apparently even European countries send their old trains.
On day one of our trip on the salt flats or (Solar de Uyuani as they call it) we drove for ages till we ended up in the middle of nowhere, nothing for miles (hundreds of miles!!) but bright white flat land..............Salt. Thousands of years ago it was a huge lake that just dried up!!.It is the most amazing thing i have seen and as its up so high nothing grows except Cactus and there was an island of cactui right bang in the middle of this strang landscape.It was quite a steep island and as we were climbing it i tripped and natural reaction of course is to grab onto something to break your fall and muppett here grabed onto the biggest cactus you have even seen......ouch i was picking giant needles out of my hands for days and i still have the scars!!.
When we got back to the jeep the driver had cooked us llama steak for lunch which was surprisingly good. Then he left us in another part of the salt flats to watch the sunset. It was the most beautiful thing watching the colours of the sun reflecting on the salt. Once the sun went down it got very cold very fast. That night we stayed in a hostel made of salt It was amazing even all the furniture an beds were made from salt!.We had five other really nice people on the tour with us so we played cards and drank rum until the electricity went out at 10pm. It was so cold that night the temperature got down as low as -15 degrees (i can safely say i have never been so cold in all my life).
The next morning we had a very early start we drove further to watch sunrise which was equally as beautiful as the sunset.
We saw all these little "Geezes" (gas volcanos) it was mad they gave off such a strong smell of sulphur we were practically standing in them to keep warm and you could see all the larva bubbling!!.We then went to a big mountanious area with a big Lagoona in the middle of it called "lagoona verde". It was beautiful as you could see the reflections of the mountains giving off really nice colours. Apparently Salvador Dali found a lot of inspiration for his work in the landscape of this area.
After we left Uyuani we got a bus to La Paz which is like the toilet of South America! It is a really busy , noisy and filthy city and i wont go into deatail as it only makes me feel ill!! We only stayed for two days before getting a flight to Rurrenabque.