I got up today in a rush to find an agency to take me into the desert. I was already kind of in the desert, but there was a tour of 3 days that everyone was offering that took me into Chile after. Ii was 9am and most agencied left at 10:30am. After asking around, there was this guy that chased me down the street telling me in English: "You are looking for a tour? I have one place left if you want." I wasn't sure that I should trust him, but then he said the magic words that any guy would be convinced..."You will be with 5 other girls and only girls". That sold it for me!

I followed him to the agency, and it ended up costing me 100 USD for 3 days including entry into Chile. A little pricy, but it included meals, too. After settling the tour, I felt a little relieved and went to go have a relaxing breakfast. in the background I heard the military batting their drums and blowing their horns. It was Bolivia's independence day afterall.

When I got back, the guy from the agency introduced me to the other girls. There was Aggi, Maggie, and Dany from Bavaria, Germany, all of which spoke English, but only Dany spoke a fluent Spanish. There was also Olivia, a girl from Florida, but who has been living in Guatemala for the past 3 years. She also spoke a fluent Spanish. And finally, there was Stephanie, a girl from Australia who kind of had the same story as me. She was 24 years old, hadn't travelled much and for so long, did not want to wait on her friends to go with them so decided to travel alone, and could not believe that she did not travel like this earlier in her life.

Our guide, driver, and cook was amed Andreas. He was a really nice guide that took care of us with great attention the whole trip. Our first stop was the railroad cemetary. This was a place where old trains were just deposited there for tourists to see. I walked with Olivia a bit, we took pictures of each other with our cameras. Olivia was a very laid back girl that spoke slowly and would be very attentive to you when you talked to her. She was a 28 year old that served for the US peace corp for a while.

When we got back to the car, on our way to the Uyuni desert, I sat in the back with Stephanie where we talked for a while. Stephanie is a really sarcastic girl that tends to be a ball buster with guys who tease her. Right from the start we started teasing each other like a brother and sister. I brushed off any insults she would pass at me because I knew it was just her defense wall that was way up.

We got to the Uyuni desert and decided to make some cool perspective pictures (Eric you would love these since you are into graphic design...). After the desert, we visited a salt hotel which was really cool, but cost 200 USD a night! We then went for lunch to this random island in the middle of the desert that had cacti and other such vegetation, a restaurant and washrooms...

We had llama for lunch which tasted exactly like steak. After lunc, we took more perspective pictures and then went off to our next destination, our hotel for the night. We were only 3 agencies that were allowed to stay at this hostel. It was another beautiful salt hotel. The lady at the hotel wanted to charge us for using the shower. I began to wonder how far people are willing to go to take advantage of people they think have a lot of money. I had a feeling that this was not going to be the first time such a thing was going to happen. After fighting with her for a while, we negotiated to a free shower, but only 5 minutes...

After we deposited all of our things at the hotel, Andreas brought us to this place called the Galaxies. This place was discovered by two local Bolivians, one of which greeted us at the entrance in order for us to pay a 10 boivianos entrance fee. The place was basically crazy rock formations in a cave of a mountain that looked lke you were in another world...I don't mean to sound hard to please, but the frecken thing was one room of deformed rocks and that's it. I think that the guys that discovered it just thought that they could make a lot of money out of this if they hype it up. Near the entrance was a newspaper article documenting their "wonderful" discovery...

We also say a cemetary of a population of midgets (or so that was what Andreas said). It was thought that these people were really important. After the cemetary we walked around a bit and went back to the hotel to have tea and biscuits (like the British!). An hour later we had supper. I later took my 5 minute shower (it was actually 15 minutes, but don't tell anyone!) and went to bed. I was exhausted! The night was going to be really cold. We were told that it could reach -20 in the desert. Thankfully we had a lot of blankets that night...