We headed off from Potosi and boarded our bus to Uyuni. We had especially selected this bus because it left at 10am, 2 hours earlier than any other bus and so would get us into our destination quicker. Stop reading now if you like stories with happy endings.

After about one hour of traveling, our bus stops. On this road that is in the middle of nowhere. Turns out we have run out of oil. Here begins a 2 hour wait while the bus driver hitches a lift back to Potosi to get us another bus.

2 hours later he arrives back. All the bags are transferred to the new bus and the journey continues. The bus is full of very smelly passengers. The journey is long and there are some pointless rest stops in towns that stink more than the bus. Some drunken kulaks get on the bus and say "we love you". We say "KULAKS!"

Six hours later, all feeling very uncomfortable, we finally reach a point in our journey where we can see the lights of Uyuni. But what is this up ahead? That?s right, it is a road block where children are protesting from the University about lack of funds. No one is allowed to pass. The road is covered in large boulders and fire. Some taxis draw up on the other side of the road block. We ask the driver to get our bags off the roof so we can get a cab to complete our journey. He says no because he is a lazy kulak. We complain very loudly in English. Antonio, who is traveling with us, tells us that the people on the bus have understood what we have said and they are very angry with the student protesters for upsetting the tourists in Bolivia! Ha ha.

Two hours later a large JCB clears the road of the fire and rocks and we arrive at our destination. What was meant to be a 6 hour journey took 11 hours.

We checked into a massive hotel with about 2 batrooms for 60 rooms. But they had little gas heaters in the bathrooms so it wasn't too bad when you had to queue.

We spent the next day checking out different tour companies for the Salt Flats tour. We were going to do a 3 day tour, which included seeing all the lagunas and other stuff, but other people that had already done the trip advised us just to do a one day tour, as this meant you avoided the freezing cold nights on the salt flats themselves.

So we picked our one day tour and Antonio signed up for a 3 day epic, which included staying in one of the salt hotels. We spent the rest of the day buying kulak shopping bags and neck warmers. Charlie decided to play his favourite game of blowing in the faces of unsuspecting dogs. However this was observed by a krazy kulak who followed us around for about 20 minutes, muttering about respecting Bolivia. Kulaks, respect is not a right, it is something that needs to be earned. Frankly, you all have a long way to go.

Charlie was not the only one targeted by kulaks in Uyuni. Antonio was shushed by a shop keeper when he tried to buy something and a shopkeeper refused to give Lisa a bag.

The next day we all headed off on our respective tours. Antonio was told that he would not after all be staying in the salt hotel, the sole reason that he chose the tour. We were told our trip had now become super fantastic, and included a trip to a volcano that we didn't want to see. Never mind.

We set off in our jeep and visited a salt processing place. How interesting. Next we saw the salt flats, which were quite amazing. You were meant to be able to take weird perspective pictures of people in your group, e.g. people standing in your hands, but our guide didn?t do this with us. Thanks. We then drove to the volcano and saw some mummies. Again. It was here we had a hideous lunch and the driver and the cook had an affair.

It was now getting dark by this point so we were driven off to Isla Pescada which was a weird "island" in the middle of the salt flats covered in cacti. We then visited a salt hotel, which was quite good.

On the way back we were meant to visit the train cemetery, which had lots of old rusting English locomotives. However, the kulak hadn?t left enough time and it had got dark, so we couldn?t visit it.

We arrived home depressed (because we were still in Bolivia) and excited (because Argentina is only one town away!)

Mark out of 10 = 5.5

Final thoughts: Maybe our trip was influenced by BDD (Bolivia Depression Disease) or maybe it was just crap. Great landscapes, shame about the company.