Wow. I think that is all that can be said for our first day on the salt flat tour from Tupiza. I will try to elaborate more as it would be a pretty rubbish blog with only one word!!!

We started out of Tupiza at 8am this morning with 3 jeeps setting out from our hostel. We already knew all of the people who were going on the same tour which obviously helps as we will be spending the next 4 days with them. We headed out into the mountains surrounding Tupiza and it was noticeable pretty much straightaway that the altitude was increasing with our increasing breathlessness.

Our first stop was to take in the breathtaking views of the area where there were plenty of photo opportunities. We can only hope that our photos do this justice. Our next stop was on the plains high up in the mountains where we were able to get closer to the llamas and donkeys which graze there. These are both reared for meet - I can imagine eating llama but I'm not sure i could stomach a mule!!

Our next stop was in a small village where our excellent tour guide, Carla, prepared lunch for us. The lunch was great and far better than we had been expecting. Here we managed to have a bit of a kick about with a local kid. He seemed to enjoy belting the ball at all of these weird looking Europeans.

We also stopped at Ruinas Pueblo Fantasma which is the ruins of an ancient mining village which was pillaged by the Spanish when they came to South America. Apparently there is still an abundance of gold and silver in the mountain overlooking the village but we couldn't find any. The village stands at 4,690m above sea level.

Our next stop was then to see Laguna Morejon which stands at 4,855m above sea level. It has to be said that the views here were absolutely spectacular however it was freezing cold due to the biting wind so we didn't spend too long outside. There were some fantastic photo opportunities on the way from the lagoon to our hostel for the night which we hope we managed to capture but there is no guarantee given the rockiness of the roads.

We arrived at our hostel at around 6.45pm just as the sun had went down. For anyone interested, we stayed in a tiny village called Ojitos which probably couldn't have been further away from civilisation if it had tried. As the skies are so clear, as soon as the sun goes down, the temperature drops dramatically and this could definitely be felt when we reached the hostel. We were all really tired by the time we reached the hostel but we again had a fantastic tea prepared by our guide.

Overall, it was a fantastic day and we have to say that the scenery we have seen is some of the best we have ever seen!! We can only hope that our photos do these views justice.

Tomorrow , we are headed to see several lakes and some hot springs which we should be able to go in. The idea of hot springs sounds absolutely amazing as I write this in bed in temperatures which must be at least a couple below zero.