Hello all !

After Potosi we went further south to Uyuni – Another 7 hours bus journey took us there. It was a particularly painful journey as mid-way some farmers came up, practically sat down on Andy’s knees, while spreading a strong lama smell around for everyone to enjoy…. Boy, weren’t we happy to get off the bus 4 hours later !!!

In Uyuni we booked a 3 day trip in a 4x4, taking us through the southern part of Bolivia (the salt lakes and the Andes altiplano). For this trip we teamed up with a couple of fun Dutch people, Marloes and Rene, who we had met in Potosi and a young German guy , Christian. And thanks god, after 2 months of playing the same card games between ourselves we at last got to discover a new game called “s***head” that Andy (unsurprisingly ??) mastered !!

Our driver was a Bolivian guy, Sandro, who fancied himself as a formula 1 racing champion. His fast and furious driving left us with bruises on the bum after 3 days of dirt roads. He also acted as a cook…which says a lot about the quality of the food during the 3 days ! Check out the pics – Rice with ketchup and mustard became one of our all time favourites. Nevertheless, this trip was undoubtedly the best part of our travel so far. The South of Bolivia is so beautiful that we took more than 600 pictures in only 3 days – it was difficult to only select a few for the blog !!

Our favourite bit: the salt lake where we spent our first day. An incredible place. With a few cm of water on the salt, the reflection is such that it becomes impossible to distinguish where the earth finishes and where the sky starts . Everything is so blindingly white & crystal blue that you can’t stare at it without sun glasses !At the end of the day we were lucky to be one of the few groups staying in a fun salt hotel on the border of the salt lake. Everything was made of salt, from beds to tables and floor. Just had to break off a piece of the table to season our soup….

The next 2 days were spent cruising through the Altiplano. We discovered a huge variety of landscapes, with the earth changing colour from vivid red to brown and gold. And right in the middle of the desert we found a quantity of colourful red, green, blue and white lakes, hosting groups of flamingoes. At the end of the second day, we ended up in a hostal (if you can even call it that) with no electricity, no heating (it’s -17 degrees celsius in the region at night….) and no showers – only 2 toilets and 1 sink for 60 people. But after checking the state of the ‘bathroom’, it turned out that nobody fought over the sink and its brown tap water. It felt a lot more hygienic not to wash for one day than risk stepping into it !

On the third day, after a way too early wake up call at 4.30 in the morning (involving stumbling over each other in the dark to pack up our bags), we set off to visit the geysers and natural hot baths . After a short stop to fix a burst tyre in the dark, we got to the geysers just on time for the sunrise. The diffuse red morning light gave a very eerie feeling to the whole place. It seemed we were on another planet. The ground was covered with big craters full of 300 degrees spurting lava and letting off plenty of steam. We had to watch very carefully where we stepped since there was absolutely no security barriers – in true South American style, everything is at your own risk ! Have a look at the pictures. After that we all went for a good clean up in the hot baths !!

On the third day at lunchtime, our trip concluded with the crossing of the Chile-Bolivia border, which is basically a small concrete hut with a barrier in the middle of the desert.. It was April Day 1st….and a fool is what Andy turned out to be :)) In the immigration office, Andy started looking for his passport and discovered that it wasn’t in his wallet (as it happens, I had stolen it that very morning). Panicked, he started emptying his bag while convincing himself that he had left it in Uyuni 3 days earlier. When I saw him literally starting to shake and quite close to a heart attack I handed him back to him, with a few nice ‘April fool’ words. Surprisingly he didn’t immediately see the funny side of it, much to our groups entertainment!! 

We had planned to stay a little while in the north of Chile, but after seeing the prices they were charging for accommodations, food, tours…etc in San Pedro de Atacama we swiftly decided to keep going and to immediately cross the border for Argentina. Proved to be easier said than done when we discovered that there was only one bus doing the transfer and that it was already fully booked for the whole coming week. With our friends (the Dutch couple) we finally managed to find a private guy doing border transfer in his jeep. He charged us twice the price of a traditional bus ticket but we at least got a tour of northern Argentina included!

We’re now in Salta. So far, Argentina delights us. People are extremely friendly & smiley (we had started losing hope after 3 weeks of being plainly ignored or spat at by Bolivian people). And best of all, the food tastes good ! Since we’ve been pretty much on pizzas for the last 2 weeks (Bolivians are not renown for their gastronomy and there is a damn good reason for that !), fine cuts of “melt in the mouth” beef is heaven for us !

More to come about Argentina soon. Lots of love to all & keep well !! Andy and soph xxx