Bolivian roads are truely appaling. Our overnight bus from Oruro to Uyuni would surely take 3 hours at most on a paved road, but sadly we spent 9 boneshaking hours crammed into a tinpot bus on what must be the worst road in South America. And thats really saying something. It wasnt really a road, but simply any area of desert free of rocks and shrubbery, and it seems that the driver may have been a practisicing rally driver, looking to improve his skills and therefore taking the most challenging and difficult route possible. But we made it, just about in one piece, and after being thrown out of hotel simply for asking to see a room before paying for it (normal practice, but Bolivians in general arent the friendliest of folk, they simply seem to hate tourists, fair enough for many of them but you would have thought those who had chosen the tourist industry as a profession but work on their manners a bit. no danger) we found a place to crash for the morning.

The next day we found ourselves on a 3 day 4x4 tour of the Salar de Uyuni, the worlds biggest salt flats. First up we visited the train cemetery where loads of old rusty wrecks are dumped in the desert. Then the salt flats themselves, over 3500masl and over 2000 square kilometres of blinding white salt. It was such a bizarre place, the entire horizon was a mirage with small black blobs suddenly turning into huge distant mountain ranges, a stupid attempt at removing my sunglasses resulted in at least 2 minutes of not being able to see, everything is so bright, and because literally all you can see is white white white perceptions get very confused.

In the middle of the salt flats is Isla Inti Huassi, an old coral island (used to be under the sea hence all the salt) which now is home to some truly enourmous Cacti. They grow 1cm per year and some are over 10 m high... We climbed to the top of this island for an amazing and bizarre view, white for as far as our squinting eyes could see. We stayed the night ina hotel built of salt, which was actually suprisingly hot!

Our second day we set out at 7am, bright and early as lots to do that day. Then an idiot with a mullet stopped our jeep. He was attempting to drive his VW polo around by himself without a guide. He had got stuck in some mud on the edge of the salt flats and wanted our help. This tool had literally just driven himsefl deeper and deeper into muddy sand and had absolutely no chance of getting out, yet our guide took pity on him. And sent his mates jeep into get him. The jeep sunk. Then our driver got into our jeep and made to go in after his mate, like some kind of ridiculous slapstick comedy sketch, but thankfully he heard our groans of dismay and changed his mind. So we set to work on trying to get the jeep out, with stones, branches, and a gas canister. Intelligent men our drivers, using a full gas canister as leverage for a big pole. We stood well back. After 3 hours of fannying around in the mud we eventually freed the jeep, and said a jovial (we were happy anyway!) farewell to the american mullet who remained stuck in the mud. I like to think his car is still there, as i can see absolutely no way he could have got it out. If he had a proper haircut we may have felt pity on him. maybe.

For the second day we drove around in the Atacama desert, a bizarre landscape dotted with coloured mountain ranges, Vicunas, Llamas, and multicoloured toxic lakes full of flamingoes. Late in the afternoon we arrived at the strangest rock formations, the high speed winds and sandstorms have whipped and eroded rocks into amazing shapes, in particular a huge rock whose base had been bashed into a small stem, making it look like a tree made of rock, hence its name the arbola de piedra. Our final day, rising at 4.30 am, found us in yet another unworldy like place, visiting some desert geysers. Although absolutely freezing in minus temperatures and shorts (good mix) we wandered through geysers trying to avoid bubbling mud pools feeling like we were part of some space age 80´s top of the pops video. The same underground vents that create the geysers luckily where on hand to warm us up a bit, in the shape of a 35 degree hot springs. It took some persuasion to change into our swimming stuff in the middle of a freezing early morning desert, but we were glad we did! So so warm, after the chillblanes went away it was fantastic.

Then - the 500km journey back to Uyuni, past countless mountains and odd rock formations (some painted by Salvador Dali proving just how surreal this region is) and through an area where the only road signs were yellow llama warning signs. We stopped in an odd town for lunch, where one man owned two jetskiis. Nothing unusual about that, if for instance there was a large lake or ocean nearby. But Titicaca is thousands of kilometres north, Bolivia is landlocked, and the avrage Bolivian is extremely poor. Our guide explained that many of the inhabitants of this town "visit Chile for work regularly". It later became clear that the owner of the jetskiis, and many other males in this town, were drug smugglers taking coca leaves and processed cocaine from the northeastern jungles of Bolivia through the border into Chile. Suprisingly we didnt feel much safer getting back into the jeep in the afternoon, as a massive electrical storm hit. We were literally the only thing above 1 metre high at this point, and whilst the old fable that a car is the safest place to be in an electrical storm may be true in most places, it isnt when your 4x4 has a gas cansiter and two full barrells of petrol strapped to the roof. Some of the lightning forks were literally no more than 100 metres away from the car (we tried counting the seconds between thunder and lightning to try and kid ourselves it was further than it looked but it was instantaneous). One fork hit the road directly in front of our jeep, if we had been 50 metres further we would have been hit for sure! The driver turned his pan pipes cd up and put his foot down! A crazy end to the strangest three days, i doubt we will ever encounter such an odd place again it really felt like we had briefly journeyed to an entirely different planet.