HI everyone! Yes, we are still alive and kicking, although that may be hard to tell considering the lack of blog activity on my part… I suck, I know, but in my defense we have had little net access and have been busy bees!

I have attempted to write this blog twice now (third times a charm aye??) and both times the net has crashed, so now you have me in a peachy mood (not) and trying to remember everything I have tried to write twice!!! I’ll fill you in day by day on the important days, which I am sure is every day so that you’re all up to date. Anyway, I can assume (safely I think…) that this is going to be a long one (although maybe a bit shorter as I am sick of writing it…) so make yourself comfy, grab a coffee (or a stiff drink) and read on!

*This photo is of the pretty pink cathedral in Salta – where we have just been!*

Sunday 31/1:
Still in La Paz at this point – did the last of our market shopping which included more tacky touristy goodness and lots of burnt dvds! Think I have about 20 dvds now hehhehe. We had tickets to the Cholita wrestling for that night so hopped on a short bus (hehehe Nikita and Bradely, you’ll know what I’m talking about!) full of tourists and drove up to El Alto – this is the part of La Paz that has spilled out of the basin and developed at the top of the cliffs… A bit hori-er than the rest of La Paz, but meh. The wrestling was in a garage style sports area and had a boxing ring etc where they wrestled. Here’ s a link to an image of the style of wrestling: http://ravasz.net/wordpress/wp-content/cholitawrestling.jpg
Yes, your eyes are not lying … it’s the little ladies wrestling! And wrestling men too! Now, don’t get it wrong – it is totally choreographed and a complete piss take of WWF, but was hilarious and even managed to include wrestlers being thrown into the audience! We were in the first row so that meant having them fight at our feet! Crazy times!!

Monday 1/2:
Caught the bus to Uyuni tonight – aiming to arrive early Tues morning, just in time for our tour of the Salt Flats. Unfortunately our company decided not to send out it’s busses cause the road was too wasted from the weather… Not entirely sure why, as we all know this country isn’t that hard core about safety and s***t…. Yes, I am bitter. You will all find out why in a few days of blog… Anyway! They put us onto another company that apparently takes a different route, so a few bumpy hours, and one river crossing (our bus driver ignored the other busses lined up and stationary that couldn’t/wouldn’t cross the tiny river and instead paused, revved and honed over it!) we arrived in Uyuni. Woo.

Tuesday 2/2:
Today we set out on our tour of the Salt Flats. We were heading into Salt Flat territory for 3 days, 2 nights for what I was expecting to be three days on the actual flats. I don’t know what I thought we would do for three days on the flats lol so I guess it’s lucky that it turned out to be a completely different tour to what I thought! We all piled into a tiny little run down jeep, that nearly didn’t make it into even an hour of the tour! The police stopped us before we entered the flat area to check that the car was safe etc, (again with the safety measures,…. Weird???!!!) and it nearly didn’t pass. But out 13 year old looking guide/driver managed to sweet talk the coppers and our jeep passed, cracked windscreen and all! We had a cool group in our jeep – B and Glen from England, two Germs – Johannes and Martin and Leandro from Argentina; we were very lucky with having such a cool group of peeps as it made surviving the tour a lot easier!!

First stop was a tiny little salt town just before the flats that makes money by making things out of salt… including miniature salt llama sculptures!! Yes, I am still obsessed!!! From here we went to the salt flats. They’re covered in a layer of water at this time of year so we waded through in ankle deep salty goodness for a couple of hours before having lunch (food cooked in the boot of the jeep by the driver) outside the salt hotel (note: OUTISIDE, not inside!). Our lunch set up was pretty sweet though, on seats and tables that were crafted out of salt and looked very funky, but turned out to be the most uncomfortable seats in the entire world! The layer of water makes for crazy views though and it’s real hard to tell where the ground ends and the sky starts!

After this we went to the train graveyard, which basically is a piece of land with a train tack (who would have guessed) and lots of old trains that were left (i.e. dumped) there to (rust) be a museum… Right. More bumpy hours passed by, which might be a good place to add that somehow us three girls ended up in the back seat. Not the most comfy place in the jeep! Didn’t help that on one of these bumps, we went up in the air and the force of our three asses combined, broke the seat…. Did the boys care? No! They just told us to stop moaning and that it couldn’t be THAT uncomfortable having a pole jabbing into our butts…. We stopped in some tiny towns and then finally arrived at our hostel. Not the salt hotel we had been promised, but a dingy hostel. Too bad. But it was a bed, food and a good place to play cards with our group (yay, the Akl tourist cards I bought came in handy hehe).

Wednesday 3/2:
Had our all inclusive breakfast this morning which consisted of a rock hard lump of bread then made our way to some rocks. Hahhaha sounds exciting hey? It actually was though, as boring as all the driving was, the scenary was pretty amazing! We did some rock climbing, even me! And had some photos. I can’t really remember the order of stuff we did this day so am just gonna tell it how it pops into my head lol.

We went to Laguna Colorada, which are about 4 or 5 colourful lagoons. First we stopped at the sky blue coloured one, which was amazingly bright and pretty awesome to see. It even had a few flamingos in the water and llamas just chilling on the edge! Epic! We had lunch here (again, food from the boot, including chicken that had been marinating in heat and chicken juice for 24 hours…) with an amazing backdrop then went on to the rock tree! Yay a rock in the shape of a tree!! Hahhaha, yeah, that wasn’t as interesting for a 15 minute stop, but the boys entertained themselves by climbing up huge rocks that had been carved into crazy shapes by the wind. Highlight of the day slotted in around about between lunch and the rock tree, when B managed to make the boys switch seats with us! Approximately 1.5 minutes later and there was a continuous stream of complaining coming from the back seat about how uncomfortable it was, and that we must switch back. Man flu symptoms I say, harden up boys!

Next stop was in the desert. I hadn’t been to a desert before so I don’t know what you guys expect when it comes to desert scenery but I know I assumed it was tons of sand, cacti and the odd mirage. Yes, I know that would generally occur after a few days of dehydration and whatnot but I expected that all the same. Yeah, so it turned out to be lots of rocks, pebbles, and well nothing much else! But, cool views again, and I wasn’t disappointed yet. After this, we stopped at the red lagoon which gave a cool panoramic view of the colourful lakes, and had a gazillion flamingos just chilling in the water, feeding on the bacteria or something.

All this is in a “national park” – again I had ideas of a national park being, well, leafy. But anywho, it isn’t wrong, it’s different… We stayed in a hotel in the national park this time, pretty basic accommodation i.e. no shower, but we had a good night and I even learnt how to play poker!

Thursday 4/2:
Had an early start this morning at 4 a.m. to drive, along with heaps of other, better jeeps, and see volcanic activity and the sunrise. The geysers were pretty cool to see, esp in the dark – they smelt like Rotorua by the way! And we managed to catch about half of the sunrise – after our jeep putted along up the hill, and was overtaken by all the others! The sunrise was pretty spectacular although it was freaken cold!! Like, cold enough for me to warrant wearing every piece of clothing that I brought on the tour with me! We stopped to watch this by the thermal pools which was actually volcanic water and was something like 40 degrees if I remember correctly, which I probably don’t, but you get the idea! Had cold pancakes for breakkie then continued on to Laguna Verde. Which is, in English, the Green Lagoon…. That isn’t actually green at this time of year! Something to do with the wind, or bacteria, or something that I obviously didn’t pay attention to! We had a stop on the way here though, in the middle of the Salvador Dali desert which was pretty cool.

By now we had driven so much that we were at the border of Bolivia and Chile and we dropped the Germs off here. Luckily we got transferred into a nicer, faster jeep for the ride home. So although it was slightly more uncomfy for me and Cherie in the back, the drive went a hell of a lot faster and we were even able to stop at some more rocks that apparently looked like faces… I won’t lie, I found it hard to see the faces.

Back in Uyuni, with the realization that this town was s***t and there was nothing to do, we had dinner with B and Glen – mmmm grimy chicken and chips… It is carnival in Bolivia around this time, and that involves bratty little children throwing water balloons and us having to spend the entire night trying to avoid getting hit. Unfortunately, Cherie wasn’t so successful.

We then went to catch our bus to Villazon where we would cross the border to Argentina. We bought our tickets quite late in the evening and managed to get seats 1 and 2 – our favourite because they are right at the front = good view and lots of leg room. We didn’t really wonder why no one took these seats, but found out pretty quickly after getting on the bus! The front seats included a radiator, and stunk of fumes! Our bus driver was almost senile he was that old, and spent the whole trip chewing coca leaves, smoking cigarettes and talking to his friend/mechanic for the bus? Weird, I know. We started going up a bumpy road which turned into a cliff face road… and to cut a long story short, an old piece of s***t bus + lunatic driver + road that is too small for a bus + 180 degree turns/corners = not a pleasant drive! We ( us and about 10 other tourists) got off the bus 3 times when the bus didn’t make it around the corners – when the nose was hanging off the cliff and the wheels were about to go off too, so that we could potentially watch the bus go over, rather than be on it. Lol and I am not exaggerating when I write this. It was terrifying! I was crying a lot of the way and neither of us have been this convinced that we were going to die! Eeeek!

Silver lining for that experience though, was that we met Jemma and Steve – a lovely couple from England who became our new buddies for the next two days!

Friday 5/2:
So we arrived in Villazon safe and sound, just a little shaken and wanting a stiff drink. First we had to cross the border though. Which basically entails getting an exit stamp from Bolivia and an entry stamp to Argentina. …. Yeah…. 4 hours later and two very long, very slow moving queues, me, Cherie, Jemma and Steve got in a taxi to the bus station. Another 9 hours later, and two more bus rides (thankfully decent ones – Argentina = civilization) we were in Salta. Yay.! Since we obviously didn’t get a lot of sleep on the death bus, we had been travelling non-stop since 4am Thursday morning = 45 hours! Grah!

Saturday 6/2:
Salta! Such a pretty little town! We went for a wander, looked at some shops – although they close between 1 and 6pm… weird?? Met Jem and Steve for some beer and then again later for dinner at a very Argetine time i.e. 10pm hahha. Slept like a log! Lol!

Monday 8/2:
Yay, up to date! Hopefully you all are still awake, and this has been semi coherent as I am tired and probably forgetting things and being bitten alive by mossies! In Mendoza now! Real cool town, with lots of sun, leafy trees and awesome vibes! Def loving this place! Had a yum lunch sitting on the sidewalk (at a café, not being a homeless) and watching the world go by… without realizing that the shops shut here in the middle of the day too! What the hell?! Mucked around until the shops opened and then shopped til we dropped! Which we plan to do again tomorrow!

Well, now that I have written this without losing the entirety of the message, I am going to bed! Yay!

Love you all, lots and lots!
xxxxxxxxxxx
Arohanui!P.s. more photos up! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=174989&id=754266194&l=d9f0ed3235