SALAR DE UYUNI, SALTY!!!!

The 4 days we spent getting to Salar de Uyuni, the worlds largest salt flats, were the best so far of our trip. This is why below.... the reward at the end. But it was just a jewel in the crown really, the icing on the cake. Are you getting that we liked it yet?

We nearly didn't get to leave as the night before we left our car got run into by a drunk, off duty, Bolivian policeman ( as you do). Poor old Milton, our driver, was unlikely to get any help with paying for the damage and was up at 6am to get the door fixed. In the end it was OK, but we set off 2 hours late... I spent my time hanging out with the local ladies........

To get there, we went from Tupiza, a slightly different tour to most but I think worth it. You climb up and up endlessly and it´s a little hairy at times as you head through the Quebradas and to the flat plains beyond at a high altitude of about 4300m. This part was just full of amazing rock formations from millions of years of erosion.

The little black cirlcles on this photo is wher¡e llamas have been to the toilet. They only like to go where one has been before

We stopped to have lunch in one of the little villages that still function very traditionally and the boys had a quick game of high altitude football. Over quickly at 4300m!!! The ´campesinos´ here love their 1st ever Indigenous president Evo Morales, as he fights for their rights on a socialist platform. As a result there is graffiti everywhere in honour to him. This village had been provided with solar panels by him, giving them a few hours of electricity and hot water each day. Its a shame that Evo´s rule may lead to the disintergration of the country due to his collision course with the US of coca eradication (he is pro coca, being an ex grower himself) and more sadly due to internal tensions about redistribution of wealth. The province of Santa Cruz, which is the richest in the country, is just about to hold an illegal referendum about declaring autonomy because they are unhappy about the constitutional change that Evo is ushering in.

The llamas are cute, but they also taste nice and there´s thousands of them so we figured it´s ok to eat them. These ones had pink ribbons on their ears for a Pachamama festival.

Donkey meat is a 10th of the price of llama meat so the locals dry it and mix it up and then sell it at a profit in the city. On route we found a spot where they´d been doing this. The huge pile of llama and donkey bones proved alot of fun. I'm a little worried about the 'beef' we had for dinner in our stew that night, because it was different from any I've ever had before.....

We drove on that evening with a beautiful sunset around us to our, shall we say basic hut for the night. We had alovely dinner cooked by our wicked cook for the trip, Jessica. We dont know how she managed to consistently cook such good food on a pair of portabloe gas stoves. Our jeep partners were Denise and Ranald, 2 lovely Scots! Oooops, sorry Denise, but I think you were a Scot at heart.

The next day, after a freezing cold night´s sleep, or none in my case, we got up at 5am to set off. We drove through very arid desert like plains past Dali-esqu fields of weathered rocks and finally reached our lunchtime destination, 37 degree hot springs! Needless to say no one wanted to get out for lunch!

After lunch we finally got to see flamingos grazing in the lagunas. The lagunas vary in colour (pink, blue, green, white) depending on the mineral deposits found in them. The minerals are mined in places, but not enough to destroy the rugged beauty of the area. The highest point we reached was about 5000m where we saw sulphurous mud geisers, spewing out a eggy farty stench. It was so cold there was snow falling. From red hot deserts to snow all in one day....

click on the arrow to see the video

The 2nd night saw us in our most basic accomodation, but at least this time we had booze, a fire and Ben and Kate, and Chris and Marcia from the other jeep to keep us company and play cards with. Rum and coca tea is a surprisingly good combo. We also got a lie in of sorts, till 7am

The 3rd day saw travelling past more lagunas, more flamingos and more amazing rock formations and finally ending up to a salt hotel (yes a hotel made of salt) on the banks of the salt flats themselves where we finally got a shower, had an amzing meal of quinua soup followed by some llama steak (tasty!) and were subject to some tourist tax by local school kids on some pan pipes.

The sunrise over the salt flats was amazing,and the day just kept getting better. Over dinner the night before we had questioned wether or not the salt flats could be any better than all the fascinating scenery we had seen over the last 3 days. How wrong we were. Its hard to express just how huge an expanse of nothingness it is, or how beautiful its is. I hope the photos do it justice.

The most amazing thing is the perfect geometry of the hexanol crusts where the summer rains have evaporated. Another crazy unexplained phenomena is the humming birds that manage to make it across to germinate the flowers of the 1000 year old cactii in an island at the centre of the flats. Normally humming birds have to feed every 3 seconds or so because of their high metabolism and tiny little bodies....

We had a lot of fun gooning about making taking photos that took advantage of the distortion of perspective.

I suppose I should give a little explanation of what the slat flats are. They were caused by the receding and evaporation of an enormous inland lake, which left huge deposits behind. They are 12500 square kilometres in size (a million and a half footy pitches), and the salt is about 8m thick. The locals mine 20000 tons a year of it, scraping it off into little piles and carting it away. This may change with the fact that there is huge quantities of lithium there too, but lets hope that big business doesnt spoil the beauty of the place.

A massive thank you has to go to our driver, Milton, and cook Jessica who made it such a great 4 days

Tupiza - ride 'em cowboy!!!

After our submerged under water horse riding antics in The Pantanal, we decided that some more horse riding was in order, but this time in the dry and Bolivia was probably the best place to do it.

We were in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid territory (they did their last robbery and had their final stand just up the road) so it seemed rude not to get on a horse and explore the wild west countryside around us.

We hooked up with a very funny couple called Ben and Kate and met up with our unlikely named teenage guides (better than a paper round) Brian (?!) 16 and Xavier 14. We were a little concerned about their experience until Xavier explained that he'd been riding since he was three. This didn't stop me be being a little concerned following him into crossing raging muddy waters.

My horse was a new romantic and Nicky´s had a pimp limp.

Despite none of us having any real experience of note (apart from Kate being a Gymkhana veteran) we got stuck right into some pretty treacherous terrain, river crossing and frighteningly fast galloping up dirt tracks and dried up river beds.

Xavier in particular was found of asking, ´quieres mas rapido?´and then whipping the horses arses before he´d got much of a reply.

The craziest part of the day came when Nicky did some amazing stunt woman antics. Its a complicated story, but bare with me. We were walking along side a river, when we came across a pipe bridge (a water pipe about a foot in diameter hanging from some cables, like a suspension bridge but with a pipe not a road). The pipe meant we couldn't get past unless we went down the bank a bit to the river´s edge, which is what 1st Xavier and then Kate did, having to duck just a little to get under. My horse followed suit but didn't fancy getting his feet wet so stayed on the bank and I had to lean right forwards flat on the saddle to get under. Nic´s horse wasn't the sharpest tool in the box and I don't think it realised it had Nic on its back, so it didn't really go very far enough down the bank, meaning that the the pipe was approaching Nic at about her at chest height. This obviously alarmed Nic a little so she let out a little scream of, ´´oh my god, I'm not gonna get under it, I'm not gonna get under it!´´. I turned round to see Nic approaching the pipe, looking anxious, and thoughts rushed through my head; what if she hit it really hard and fell off, what if she got pushed off and her feet got stuck in the stirrups and she got dragged along by her dopey horse, what if she got off OK but got trampled by Ben and Brian´s horses? To our astonishment, Nic proceeded to do one of the coolest things Ive ever seen her do; she grabbed onto the pipe, let the horse walk on and then calmly dropped to the ground and stepped aside of the horses that were following all in one fluid graceful motion, coolness personified. After a brief silence we all burst into applause.

I´ll let the photos do the talking when it comes to the scenery we saw along the way

This railway track was the scene of the most adrenaline filled moment of my trip so far. With little real encouragement or warning mine and Kate´s horses accelerated up to a gallop faster than we had done so far all day, and then after a little while it was like they changed gear and suddenly started to fly along at a speed that was truly insane given that we had no helmets on. We named it the Ubergallop (sorry to any Germans reading, i cant find the umlow key on this keyboard).

This is us at lunch. We weren't looking quite so pleased with ourselves at the end of 8 hours in the saddle.

Potosi, down the mines.

From Sucre we travelled by taxi for 2 hours to Potosi, the worlds highest city at 4090m. We were really worried about Altitude sickness but it was mostly ok. It has now however got very cold!!!

The only thing to see in Potosi are the mines of the Cerro Rico. The miners have a really a really hard life. Some of them are as young as 12 or 13 trying to support their families. Better wage than the average Bolivian but life expectancy is really low because of Silicosis of the lungs.

Check out the alcohol the miners drink on fridays, 97% proof!! We went on a Thursday so we were encouraged not to buy this as presents and opted for juice, cocoa leaves and dynamite instead. Don't think they need much encouraging on the drink front.

Ed made it down the mine but I only managed the trip up and into the refinery before freaking out at how small the tunnels were.

Not really miners but doing a good impression

These are the real ones

Crawling through that would definitely have made me look that freaked out

This is the God or really the Devil Tio that the miners worship to keep them safe. They are pretty scared of him. Rightly so, check out his willy! They give Pachamama style offerings to him of booze, fags and sweets and ask him to keep them safe.

I spent 2 hours outside the mine with Kally the 10 year old above. She lives on the edge of the mine so not a great place . She was cool though telling me all about Adam and Eve etc. She certainly knew more about the bible than I did.

Sucre - Bolivia's most beautiful city

Sucre is Bolivia's judicial capital over La Paz. It really is beautiful. We didn't do a lot as I managed to catch the gringo tummy that seems to plague so many people as soon as they arrive in Bolivia. Not a bad place to chill out that's for sure. I did have to watch Ed eat the lovely griongo food they have there while I ate bananas a rice though.

Check out my ''self pity'' face after my blood test in the picture below.

We visited the Indigenous textile museum and this lovely lady from the Tarabuco region was doing some amazing intricate weaving. It takes 3 months to make 1 weaving and they only charge about 100 quid for them even in the fair trade environment of the museum. She was so skilled.

Loads of lovely markets and things top buy in Sucre too.

We did some Spanish top ups with a lovely lady called Aida. She had a wicked talking parrot called Lorita who liked to mimick my laugh, thus making me laugh more. It went on for hours......

She was so great when I needed a doctor, a bit of a mum really. We also know what to say next time!

Santa Cruz (its not that far)............

The journey to Santa Cruz from San Mattias on the Brasilian/Bolivian border was horrific, so we were very happy to find that it was a very cosmopolitan place. But not very Bolivian as we expected.


The main square is very impressive; huge brick built church and they are trying to do some kind of devolution autonomous rule thing because they dont agree with Evo Morales' socialist reforms. Basically because they are the rich of Bolivia and he stands for the poor.

Piranha for tea (80p from the market, sadly i didnt catch it myself)

Not much meat on it, but very tasty.

The toucans in the guest house were crying out for a Guinness photo op

Nic finally got to see a sloth and some monkeys too

But she cried in the zoo, there were beautiful jaguars and bears in cages that looked so sad. Bolivia is a bit of a different world in terms of how they treat animals. No more zoos......