We were up and had to leave before breakfast started at the Koala Den. We needed to be at Potosi's bus terminal for 7:30am so we just checked out and asked for a taxi to be called to pick us up. The driver who came for us was a complete ass. To begin with he told us the fare would be Bs.40 for the four of us whereas it should only be Bs.5-6 per person. We refused and he radioed back to his control asking what is the price for taking "tourists" to the terminal. In the end we agreed on Bs.30 which was still way too much but we had to get there on time. He then proceeded to drive like a lunatic through the streets, driving on the wrong side of the road, running every red light and just to finally **** us off, he didn't even drop us by the door.

At the Globo Tour ticket counter, instead of confirming our seats, the lady wrote out new tickets for another bus company, Boqueron. It was an older bus, a bit dirty and one of our seats was broken. We were only thankful that we hadn't bought the tickets through an agent in the town for Bs.90, we only paid Bs.40. It seemed that all the companies consolidated their passengers into one bus which also meant that the bus didn't leave until 8:45am.

The bus journey was really uneventful but that was because we were sleeping most of the way. At one point we got quite close to the Cerro Rico mines and later in the journey there was some nice cactus mountain landscape.

We stopped for a 10 minute lunch break in a small village a couple of hours short of Tupiza. Without air conditioning, the bus was very hot and even outside there was little respite from the heat.

The lunch break ended up taking 35 minutes and then we were on the road again. We finally arrived in the Tupiza's bus terminal 6 hours after we left, even though it was supposed to be 5 hours. Perhaps in Bolivia they only count the driving time and not the time for breaks during the journey.

It was only a short walk from the bus terminal to Hotel La Torre. We quickly checked in, dropped our bags in a nice, rather big room. We didn't eat during the bus journey so we were all starving and went to Milan Centre which was highly rated. The service was pretty slow and David was into his second litre bottle of Argentinian Quilmes before the food arrived. The pizza was very good though and definitely worth the wait.

After eating we had a quick wander round the plaza and the central market before heading back to the hotel to find out more about the Uyuni tour. After a lot more questions, we finally booked a 6 day, 5 night option which included a day to climb a 6,000m volcano. We agreed that if the weather prevents us from climbing the volcano, the tour would be cut short, we would go to Chile early and get some of our money back. Let's see how that goes in the end...