Salt Flats and bizarre noctural occurences!

So, following very little sleep we dragged ourselves and our backpacks to the pick up point for our Salt Flats tour for 8am the following morning... it hurt! We met our fellow 'saltflatters' and companions for the next 3 days.. there was 6 of us; myself and Katy, Jo and Mike (an English couple from Kent) and Jean-Baptiste and Chloe, a French couple.. who luckily for us spoke fluent Spanish.. handy! Pic here.. L-R front Katy, Jo, Mike. Back; Jean-Baptiste & Chloe.

First task of the day was to navigate our way across the border (a hut in the middle of nowhere that is! Pic here is Katy and I at said border!) to Bolivia... that successfully completed we hopped back on the bus for our trip across no mans land before stopping for breakfast at the entrance to the Bolivian National Park... a national park like no other you've imagined before... all very sparse dry desert lands, rocks, volcanos and crazy lakes of varying colours... and obviously the Slat Flats but we'll come to those later!

Once across the border we swopped from the mini bus to a jeep that would be our transport for the next 3 days, it was nice and cosy and our guide (and i use that word loosely) Leon, was at least a decent driver - there's very little else i can sing his praises about I'm afraid.. as much as I'm sure he's a very nice man, he was entirely disinterested in us (other than to stare intently at whoever was sat in the front with him) and offering us any information on the sights we were seeing around us!! That day we stopped at numerous laguna's... the first being Laguna Blanca, (for those who haven't twigged yet, that'll be the White Lake) standing at 4350m above sea level, then Laguna Verde (green lake) before a stop at the Hot springs, pictured here, it was freezing getting in and out but while in there was like a lovely hot bath, with a backdrop of mountains and flamingos!! Then came the Geysers, with the volcanic activity found in this vast park these were amazing. Next stop was lunch, at what was to be our home for the night, what we didn't realise at the time was how utterly cold beyond belief we were going to be there. We had a little break after lunch, and for me a much needed nap thanks to the lack of sleep the previous night as well as me not dealing too well with the altitude... little did i know it was only going to get worse!!

Anyway, after our little siesta, we headed off to Laguna Colorada... the Red Lake... this was probably the most impressive of the lakes and we spent a good while there running around taking pics of the scenery, flamingos and lamas that were mooching around all over the place before heading back to the 'hostel' ... and i use that word in the loosest possible way... for dinner. The food so far was ok, although that would all change soon too and dinner passed in a blur of chatter and random encounters with some friends of Mike and Jo's turning up there too. It also randomly transpired that night that Mike knows people I know from home.. small world eh!

Anyway, that was our first day, a good day and some incredible sights, the likes of which I've never seen before and I was most impressed! Little did I know I was about to have one of the most uncomfortable, disorientating nights of my life... the hostel is situated 4800m above sea level, I thought i'd pretty much adjusted to the altitude thing by now but clearly not. We'd been warned that the hostel was basic and had no running water but we were entirely prepared for exactly how basic it was.... we all had beds, not the most comfy but it could've been worse, what we weren't prepared for however was the cold.... I don't think I've ever been as cold in my life (and my lot back home know how i hate to be cold!) dusty, dirty concrete floors, a very minging bathroom and a completley pointless fire... so we went to bed wearing as much as we possibly could... including thermals... never have i been more grateful to Luke for giving me his thermal top as at the last minute before I left New Zealand.. thanks Pucas! and Jules, your sleeping bag is being put to good use here too!! The hatred place is shown in the pic below... its not as innocent as it looks, trust me!!

I did manage to fall asleep, at least I'm assuming I did because the next thing I'm aware of is that I woke up at what i think was about 3am, needing to pee... something we were all praying we wouldn't need to do til the next morning... I however, couldn't ignore it so I reluctantly managed to get myself out of bed and get my trainers on, find my torch and navigate my way to the dorm door.... that's all i remember... the next thing I'm aware of is that I'm lying on the cold concrete floor in the doorway of our dorm with 2 people and a torch light comnig towards me.. i have no idea how long i was there for, although Katy tells me it wasn't too long, but I then managed to get myself up and make my way to the bathroom.. the 2 people said something to me although i have no idea what it was.... and again, the next however long is also a blur... once more I found myself lying on the floor, this time in the bathroom, once I'd realised where i was and what i was trying to do I managed to get myself to a cubicle and finally pee (too much information I'm sure but hey, too late now!) After that, i wasn't capable of getting myself back to bed and I was ridiculously hot too, so having stripped to just one layer, i lowered myself on to the floor (a realisation I didn't welcome the next morning when seeing the bathroom floor in the daylight!) and waited it out until i felt human enough to make it back to bed. It didn't even occur to me until half way through the following day that I'd fainted!! I've never fainted before in my life (at least not to my knowledge... right Ma?) so why on earth would i have done so now?! It was obvioulsy the altitude, my body clearly didn't like it much but at the time it was actually really scary, I was completely disorientated, felt terrible in a completely unknown way and had no idea what was happening to me... and no you skeptical lot, there was no alcohol involved!! The next day, apart from a few random bruises that I'm assuming are from the falls, I felt fine!!! All very bizarre!!! I wasn't sorry to leave that place as you can imagine.

Anyway, there's my little tale for you all.... the next day we were up and away by 7am, with various sights to stun us once again along the way, including Volcano's simmering away, stone trees, more laguna's, a stop at San Juan village (where you can see me hugging a cactus in the pic below!!) and a very very random lunch at PMA Chiguana Army Barracks, which our guide assured us was a 'normal' stop for all tour groups.... the fact that they were totally unprepared for any such event and Leon, as we discovered the following day, had to give away some of our food as a 'fee' for eating there, didn't exactly convince us of the normality of the whole event... its safe to say we also encountered THE worst toilet in the world here... and I've seen a fair few dodgy ones too!!!

Luckily that night we were staying in a nicer hotel, although no thanks to our guide who wanted to put us up in another similar venue to the previous night... thankfully the lady that ran the place had decided to take herself off somewhere so wasn't around to check us in ... resulting in us having to go to the Salt Hotel.... a lovely hotel, with all the walls and everything made of salt.... although for us, the best feature was the hot showers.... it was utter bliss i can tell you. We were there fairly early and just chilled out and chatted until dinner, had a little 'fight' with Leon about getting up for sunrise over the salt flats the following morning... basically he didn't want to but its something that's promised as part of the tour and we were naturally all keen to do so. Thankgod for Chloe and Jean-Baptiste who could effectively argue our case with him! With case settled and wake up call set for 4am we all headed to bed in our comfy warm hotel, where you'll be relieved to know there was no repeat performance from the night before!!

4am came all too quickly and we were packed up and on our way relatively on time to Isla Incahuas, where we were to watch the sunrise. We actually only just made it, Leon ended up forgetting the meat that everyone ended up wishing he'd left behind and we had to turn back, adding some vital minutes onto our journey... we hotfooted it up to the top of the island... not an easy task at 3660m above sea level... we were shattered by the time we got there! We did make it though and it was an amazing sight, well worth the rush. This pic here is of the sunrise, it doesn't really do it justice but you get the idea. Once the sun was up, we headed back down for brekkie and then had some free time to wander out over the flats and get some pics.... the place is unbelievable and I'm so glad I got to see it... its one of the things that was recommended to me to do in Bolivia and I'm so glad i listened. Its such a strange feeling to be walking out over a massive expanse of salt that looks like it should be the ocean.

After we left there, we drove across the salt flats, stopping for pics and encountering a crazy couple cycling their way across the flats and the park.... nutters!!... saw the salt being mined, manually, as it still is and collected into little mountains as you can see in the pic, stopped at another salt hotel for a peek and then headed to Corchani for lunch.... a tiny village with a random salt museum and lama's wandering around, as they do. Lunch was in a word.. hideous.. with half the veggies lunch having been given to the soldiers at the barracks the previous day and the meat for te others looking anything but apetizing...we were all looking forward to reaching Uyuni, our final stop, for some more food!

Anyway, after 'lunch' we had one final stop before the tour was over... the train cemetery... which is what the title suggests... basically a big area where trains go to rust and end their days. We climbed around on them, had a little look, took some pics then got on our merry way to Uyuni... which we reached at about 2pm. Katy and I were intending to stay overnight in Uyuni but when we arrived, as ok as it was, there wasn't much to it so we decided to just get on our way to La Paz so we'd have a few days to chill out and enjoy the place before heading to Peru for the Inca trail. We booked our overnight bus, then killed the rest of the afternoon eating, catching up on email, shopping and eating some more. We bumped into Mark, a colleague of Katy's from home in the fab pizza restaurant we were spending our last few hours in Uyuni in, who as it turned out was also heading to La Paz that night. Our bus left about 8pm and we managed to cause about as much fuss as 2 girls could when we finally got on it... we managed to siti n the wrong seats twice, the second time, we'd packed all our stuff into Katy's packsafe and tightly attached it to our chair before being asked to move by the seats rightful occupant..... i think by the time we were settled, we'd pretty much made ourselves unpopular with just about everyone on that bus!! oops!

The journey took about 11 hours, and Bolivia being the poor country that it is, means the buses aren't as nice as the ones found in the rest of South America and the roads not exactly well made. Katy was feeling poorly so was out for the count the entire time, which was lucky methinks... me on the other hand, didn't sleep so well.... i managed to forget to get my trusty eye mask out (and we weren't undoing the pack safe for a 3rd time i can assure you!) and it was all a bit uncomfy.... I also found myself with a french girl, venturing out into the middle of nowhere in the pitch black to relieve our bladders while we desperately prayed that the bus wouldn't leave us there!! It didn't thankfully and several hours of no sleep later we arrived at our next stop, bolivia's capital La Paz!!

Now, I know it sounds like i've complained a lot about our Salt Flats tour but don't get me wrong, its the tour company that left a lot to be desired, not the tour itself... .the place is unbelievable with sights you can't imgaine and the Salt Flats themselves just blow you away... I completely recommend to anyone that that should go and experience it... just with a different tour company!! xx