Nine months in and we were ready to take one of the tours we have both been looking forward to for the majority of this trip, and we were ready to step over the border into a country that has so many good and so many bad stories.The trip we booked was a 3 day 2 nighter and we started early doors Tuesday morning, stupidly dressed in flip flops and a pair of shorts, how wrong were we? "Oh yeah miles we'll be in and out of the car all day you'll be too hot in jeans", am I ever going to listen to you again Jones??...Noooo. We climbed up to a height of about 4000 meters above see level, and stepped out of the van to do the border cross and be greeted with a temperature that made our nipples fall off and roll around the floor. Our new tour guide who was sensibly wrapped up looked at us like a pair of eeedjits and quickly handed us a hot cup of coffee. which we hung on to for dear life in between rooting through our backpacks trying to find the thickest thing possible, which was very successful after our endless summer. The boarder formalities were completed and we collected another stamp in our passport an loaded up into our 4wd hoping that it didn't break down in the freezing cold, cause it didn't look that reliable. We also took this opportunity to get acquainted with our new friends for the next 3 days, on first impressions it was a love hate relationship with the know it alls from the off!

The three days wasn't all salt flats we were following Andes mountain range through national park with green lagoons and red lagoons which changed colour depending on the time of day, at these lagoons where pink Flamingo's and we are not talking about Gay nightclubs, these birds are really pretty and elegant although very gay looking. The lagoons looked lovely very tempting for a swim we just weren't willing to risk frost bite. Back into Van we carried on crossing the desert like landscape were we came across fox and llamas, yeah those really ugly or really unique (depending which way you look at it) sheep. We also visited a thermal spa we were given half an hour to warm our bodies in lush warm waters and bubbling mud pools were allegedly a German guy fell in 3 years ago and boiled to death, so it was fair to say I stood well back while taking pictures. Early afternoon on the first day we arrived at what would be our accommodation for the night at Lagoon Colorado, where we were cooked a lovely dinner of Smash and chopped up tinned hotdogs by the Indigenous women (village people, not that camp as Christmas band). We had the choice of wrap up in the seven quilts we were given to keep warm, or try the lung busting walk round the Lagoon to try and get closer to the Flamingos, we chose the latter and froze our bits off while wheezing our way along the walk. Later that night we enjoyed another dodgy meal its not like there is a supermarket anywhere though, they are in the middle of nowhere; and then tried to practice our Spanish while wrapping up to avoid the freezing cold and banging headaches, oh the joys of altitude sickness.

The next day our little warrior of a 4wd, failed to start and had a flat tyre. These jeeps struggle with so much salt in the area that almost everything under the bonnet has eroded, so really its just like me mums Dora then. We watched our guy fixing the jeep in the freezing cold from a distance nursing a lovely warm cup of coffee; there was no way i was offering to get my hands dirty there. Once back on the road we were warned that it would be a long bumpy arse ride through the mountains, and it was certainly that. Along the way we stopped off at the stone forest which apparently looks like a Salvador Dali painting, it had cool rock formations which we could climb all over. Ooooh I felt like a Japanese tourist there.Further and further through the day the scenery was just getting more amazing. From the snow peaked Andes range to smoking Volcanoes. We stopped under the volcano in an area with more cool rock formations to have dinner, while we were wandering round we found out that this must have been a stop off for the buses travelling between Chile and Bolivia as we walked around a corner to find a load of sausages covered in pink toilet roll... which was slightly disappointing especially as i nearly stepped in them. After dinner on the second day we headed up the side of some mountains which was really tough work for the jeep and our arses. We got a glimpse of our first real salt flat which was surrounded by hills of Rico Rico a flower that makes Mate which is like a really strong green tea, and had a defunct train track running through the middle of it. We were now coming into a little civilisation as we started to pass through more and more tiny villages, here came the amusing part... the sceptic who was reasonably good at speaking Spanish tried to make a friend with an old lady, we then realised that she started to shoo him of her land, he didn't realise that she didn't speak Spanish and in fact spoke Quechuen she then tried to get money out of him for taking pictures of her and her llamas.

By the time we arrived at the Salt hotel we were in much need of a shower, some headache tablets and a nice hot meal, thankfully we got all of the above, the hotel was amazing, everything was made out of salt from the walls to the dining suite, and the floor was covered in a thick layer of salt flakes. After our shower we were given a dinner off Chicken and chips, I wasn't sure wether it was a joke that there was no table salt on the table but plucked up the courage to ask for some, much to the delight of Aaron, who offered to scrap some off his seat!That night I think the altitude got the better of me and I was very ill indeed, headache, vomiting, insomnia are the three symptoms of altitude sickness, and I would have swapped that headache for a migraine!

The next day we were hitting the salt flats and although I was very ill I had to perk myself up, it was unfortunate that I had been wetting myself to get to the flats for the past year and I was feeling so ill! They were amazing, 12,000sqm⊃3; and 10 metres deep in some places of pure white Salt, so sunglasses were a necessity that day! We didn't{t really have the amount of time we wanted to take the silly pictures on the flats, but all the same they were breathtaking and we had loads of fun on them!When we arrived in Uyuni our luck kicked in again, when the guide took our luggage off the top of the car our cooking oil had leaked into some of the others bags, ours was fine though! So we had to guiltily scrub their luggage and some of their clothes, most were ruined! That was the last thing we needed, and I think its well time for a bit of good luck!