On the 30th December we jumped on a bus from Tupiza to our next stop Uyuni. This is the starting point for the worlds largest salt flats and also our gateway to Chile.

We saved the worse, most uncomfortable bus journey for last. Only 6.5 hours long but the most bumpy, scary and dangerous. It started off with a perilous drive up into the mountains, along dirt tracks not much wider than the bus, and hundreds of metres of sheer cliff on one side. This then got worse as the rain came down and turned the already dubious ´road´ into a flowing river!

After a few hours we managed to nagivate this tightrope and get into the wasteland and desert. Here there were no roads at all, so the bus just bounced around on the sand. For the entire 6.5 hours we were bouncing up and down, not ideal when Dave is still bruised from his horse accident (and both Dave and Emily suffering already from sore horse bums!)

Eventually we arrived in the random, desolate and very wet and windy town of Uyuni, first port of call was to check in our new hostel and then book a salt flat tour for the next day. However it turned out that were no available tours until the 2nd Jan.

So just like that we were stuck in a very isolated and random town for new years!

Turned out to be not too bad as there are quite a few restuarants and bars that seem to exist purely for the stranded tourists here. The hostel was nice with a large living/dining room and tv with a selection of dvds to keep us amused.

New years eve came and we decided that we are too old to be going out drink until midnight so we got some nice Bolivian wine, some snacks and two pirate dvds from the market (Rise of the Planet of the Apes which was great quality and a very good film, and the last Harry Potter which turned out to be filmed in a Russian cinema, so not such good quality)

We only made it to 11:45pm so didnt quite see the new year in, but we celebratede at 8pm which was midnight in England, which we thought was more relevant.

New Years Eve done with,we spent new years day in the traditional English manner of sitting around doing nothing, eating and watching films. 101 Dalmations was on tv which we both enjoyed. It was a cold overcast day in this random part of the world and we were grateful for a nice hostel and some fellow stuck travellers to enjoy the day with!

A New years we will never forget !