Hello again,

Bit of an overload of blogs at the moment but hopefully ye won´t be disappointed!

We had a great time during our tour of the salt flats. We were ultra prepared for the cold as we had been warned that it would be ´the coldest you´ll ever be´!! Luckily it wasn´t too bad, maybe about -10 at night but nice and warm during the day. The salt flats were created when the link between the Pacific Ocean and the sea in that area was blocked off by a volcanic eruption. This left a giant salt-water lake which slowly evaporated leaving behind all the salt. Nowadays its a huge flat area covered in compacted salt (as you´ve probably seen from the pictures. In fact it's the largest salt flat in the world-10,582 square km). One of the weird things about being there is that because it´s so vast there is no depth perception in photos so we spent a lot of time playing around with the camera hence some unusual looking photos and videos!

We spent 3 days travelling around in a jeep with 4 girls from Hong Kong and came across some magnificent sights. The first day we visited a hotel made from salt and spent most of our time taking weird pictures. We were then taken to see the sun set in the middle of the white salt which was beautiful. We then dragged ourselves out of the bed at 5.30am to see the sunrise and although we were completely wrecked and frozen it was totally worth it.

As part of the tour we visited not just the salt flats but also some weird and wonderful things in the middle of the Bolivian desert. On our 2nd day we set off driving up and down sand dunes and stopping every now and then to see different coloured lagoons, the highlight of which was one filled with blood-red water and thousands of flamingos. An Andean fox paid us a visit during lunch that day and our Hong Kong friends went a bit crazy with their cameras while our guide was throwing him some scraps.

At one stage I thought Ger was going to have to take over the driving as our lovely driver decided to take a nap half way across the desert while still driving the jeep!! Scary moments at the time but we had a good laugh about it afterwards. A 10 minute nap and half a litre of coke and there was not a bother on him! That night we settled into our freezing surroundings and dosed ourselves with red wine. Luckily, the gang we had met in La Paz who were in the other jeep, had the same idea as us so we didn´t look like complete alcos!! There was major jealousy among the group when I produced the hot water bottle I had bought in Cusco for the Inca trail and tucked it nicely away to heat the bed while I polished off the wine. My joy was short-lived however as I returned to my bed later that night to find the feckin´ thing had leaked all over my bed....I was ALMOST in tears! I scrambled around the room in the dark, trying not to wake the Hong Kong girls, and luckily came across a spare bed

It was an early start the next day again as we were smuggled into our jeeps at 4.30am (some of us feeling a little fragile after the night before!). We warmed up fairly lively when we stood over a few hot geysers among bubbling sulphur pools. They absolutely stank!! Rotten eggs would have been a pleasure! We were a bit stinky ourselves to be honest having worn the same clothes for 3 days solid so a dip in the hot springs on the last morning was pure bliss! It was baltic outside so I was a little reluctant to peel off the 8 layers of clothes I had on but I gave in and was never so happy. (It was a little embarrassing though as there were no changing rooms so everyone saw how many layers I had on and thought I was some sort of freak!)

The border crossing to Chile after that went smoothly and we arrived into the Atacama desert which was a shock to the system.....30 degree temperatures and thermals don´t go very well together!

More to follow soon.

Lots of Love,

Linda and Ger xxx