Early rise of 6am for us to to all meet at the office in San Pedro. Our group was already pretty much decided for the jeep. There was to be 1 German lad named Marcus, 2 Austrians called Gerhart andKristin , Reet, Me and an English girl called Sian.

We all went together on a mini bus to the Bolivian border where we were designated our own driver and jeep. We packed up all our belongings on to the jeep and were set for the off. Firstly we had to pass teh Bolivian border control which resembled a hut in the mountains rather than any customers I've ever seen before.

Once cleared we were off. We'd started at 2600m above sea level and were due to reach a dizzying 4500m in not so long. The ascent took under 2hrs, which to anybody who knows anything about altitude is a little too quick. This soon became apparent when people from the various groups began vomiting, experiencing sharp headaches and like Ben, started to bleed from their nose. The only answer to these problems was to be found in a bag of coca leaves or some home made coca brew.

The journey was to last for 3 days in total and the scenery along the way was nothing short of truly amazing. Throughout the trip our driver was to be a local Bolivian by the name of Luis. At first he didnt look to keen on our numerous toilet and photo stops but once he´s set the ground rules and we all knew where we stood we got on like a house on fire. Ben really hit it off with him, being sat in the front as the Spanish speaker they while´d away most of the day chatting and chewing coca leaves.

The landscape was quite barren being at such high altitude as such there was not a great variety of plant life and so the animals that live there have to be quite hardy. There were lots of Vicuñas, Flamingoes and Foxes. During the trip we would spend some time at the natural spa pools, visit the lake homes of the flamingoes with the tour ending in the worlds largest salts flats.

The journey and the sickness that came along with it were worth every minute when we finally stepped foot on to the salt flats. The photos are a mist see!!