!Hola from Bolivia¡

Hope everyone is well.

Bolivia has been fantastic and really opened our eyes to South America providing exactly the kind of stuff we have been longing to see. We are now in La Paz after a 17 hour bus journey from Uyuni. The journey was supposed to be only 12 hours but the roads are pretty terrible and really waterlogged at the moment as its the wet season. We spent hours struggling through mud and rivers across the road which made sleeping kind of tricky and we made bizarre stops in the middle of the desert for about an hour. Have no idea what for. At least we made it, others were not so lucky and we saw a bus completely stuck in the mud and going nowhere.

La Paz is pretty interesting. As you pull in on the bus you can see it set in a valley with houses climbing up the sides. Its incredibly polluted and walking down the street and breathing is a real struggle.

Makes a real change after the last 4 days which we spent on a guided tour of the Salt flats and the Bolivian landscape with Chris and Jo from Australia and Stefano and Ombretta from Italy all in the capable hanbs of Ricardo our driver and Mamita our cook. We started in a place called Tupiza about 5 hours hair raising bus ride into Bolivia after crossing at La Quiaca in Argentina. We had missed the last bus to Uyuni where most of the tours go from so stayed the night in Tupiza. It’s a very small town with not much to do especially when it rains and it rained big style. The whole town was flooded with water running down the streets almost a foot deep. Took us ages to try and navigate our way back to the hostel from the town without wading knee deep in the dirty water (we are both quite short).

This was an indication of things to come for our tour but it all started very brightly in warm sunshine climbing into the mountains around Tupiza. The landscape is absolutely incredible and real cowboy country. We drove all day continuing to climb and stayed the night in San Antonio de Lopez at 4200m. Altitude was starting to do strange things to us (particularly Betty´s stomach) and it was absolutely freezing in a dorm with no heating but we managed to sleep OK.

The next day we made it up to 5000m which is a very strange feeling. Just moving around makes you very short of breath so probably a good job we were in the jeep all day. All day really means all day lasting for about 12 hours. The road conditions were really starting to worsen and the jeep sliding around in the mud on the edge of a cliff is an experience we probably will not need to repeat. We survived in tact though, which is more than can be said for the jeep. The fuel pump decided to stop working and was obviously then no longer providing any gas to the engine which can be problematic. Not to our ingenious driver Ricardo, who rigged up McGuiver style a gravity based pump running from a tank on the roof via a length of hosepipe. This carried us to our second night of accommodation via some incredible lakes and a hot spring. We did break down for about an hour in the middle of the desert en route and roughly every hour after but little did we realise this was the pattern from here on in.

The third day we were supposed to be heading toward the Salt flat for our last nights accommodation and a warm shower. It didn´t exactly work out as planned as after 1 hour of driving the jeep again broke down more seriously again in the middle of the desert. The warm sun kept everyone occupied and Mamita provided a great lunch to keep us going. The problems were unfortunately just beginning as after a couple of breakdowns later we were told the road to our accommodation and the salt flat was impassable. We had to change our route and head to a Salt Hotel and it was very unlikely we would even see the Salt flats due to the rain. This was pretty disappointing and the journey became even more arduous as the jeep continued to break down with now predictable regularity. On the way we did see the Arbol de Piedra (the stone tree) and other strange rock formations as well as lagunas in different colours full of flamingoes.

We made it as far as San Christobal when the real problems started. The roads had been kind of tricky up until then but worsened when we headed into snow and hail. Fortunately we drove through that (?????) and met torrential rain. At this point we noticed that the lights were not working properly which combined with regular breakdowns on a pitch black pot holed road made the journey to Uyuni about 3 hours longer and many times more terrifying than it should have been.

It had been decided by now that the Salt Hotel was out of the question as we struggled every step of the way. However, on arriving in Uyuni we discovered the hostel (only 1 appeared to be acceptable to our Tour company) was full so we had to continue to the Salt Hotel anyway. Predictably it continued to pour with rain and the jeep broke down every 100 meters. Everyone was tiring of this now especially as it was now coming up to midnight and no one had eaten since midday. Humour was provided by our accompanying jeep disappearing leaving our guide with a broken down jeep and no idea were the Salt Hotel was. A particular low point. He wandered off leaving us to plan our own escape but miraculously returned 10 minutes later to fix the car and take us there. Relief just does not cover it. The rain continued to hammer down as we pulled into the hotel. Low spirits were overpowering us and almost finished us off when we discovered that rather than hot showers our new accommodation had no running water. We dragged our now soaking bags off the roof, crawled into bed and swore that the tour was now over.

However, we woke the next morning in better spirits and decided to head to the edge of the salt flats to get as far as we could in the water. We managed to head all the way out to another Salt Hotel and the water was pretty manageable. Stefano who spoke fluent Spanish had a chat with some people who had been out further on the flats in particular to Isla de Pescado, perhaps the highlight of the whole trip. So began an hour long debate in which Stefano tried to persuade Ricardo to take us out to the Isla. After many protests and some completely unintelligble negotiations we bought some gas from another tour company and headed off.

This was really the highlight of the trip. We drove across an enormous area with a couple of inches of water where you can see the sky perfectly reflected, then across an enormous white expanse. We reached the Isla after about an hour. It felt pretty stange to arrive by car as it all looked like a big lake. There we walked amongst the huge Cacti (up to 10 m tall). The weather was fantastic and everyone was in a good mood, even Ricardo. What we really needed was a breakdown. Happily the jeep obliged and we spent about an hour on the flat replacing the newly installed pump with the more reliable plastic tank to engine via hose method. We then broke down about 3 more times but made it back to Uyuni for about 8pm. A fantastic day then celebrated with a pizza an a few beers.

Alls well that ends well, kind of thing. At least we can look back at most of it and laugh and the rest was truly incredible.