Hey again, time to update the journal for the rest of our Bolivia trip. After the giblet fiasco, we all met at the bus station, and got on a day bus to La Paz, which took 5 hours. No Valium required! The border was fun, we had to disembark the bus, join a very long queue to get a stamp to leave Peru and the walk across the border with all our bags, and then join another very long queue to get our entry stamp into Bolivia. At which point I realised I had done a Becca and left my jumper on the bus which wasn't coming with us into Bolivia! So I then had to run back across the border to get it! We do have a special knack!!! The rest of the journey passed relatively quickly probably because I fell asleep on Becca's shoulder. The next part was fun as the bus just stopped somewhere random in the middle of La Paz and we then had to find this street with all the agencies for the Salt Flat tours on- all we knew was it was somewhere near San Francisco! Hopefully not the one in America. Luckily we found it and started looking for suitable agencies- we had been told some are great and some are rubbish but no names- not much help really!! We found one that had been recommended by the lonely planet guide ( or claimed to be) and decided that would probably be ok. The lady was really nice and spoke a bit of English which is always helpful. Unfortunately the only bus to Uyuni where you start the tours from was in 45 minutes, or not until the next evening. Despite everyone being a bit tired and fed up of buses we decided to go for it! Not such a nice bus awaited us for this part of our journey-it wasn't the niceish tourist buses we've been used to but a local one. Though somehow not as bad as we expected! This bus took us to Oruro, where we all decided we needed a slap up meal, unfortunately Oruro didn't have many luxurious restaurants and we had to settle for a little cafe serving chicken and rice! Deciding not to risk the chicken the other option was rice and egg! Not being partial to egg i was left with a plate of rice! Not quite the meal we had in mind!! We then hurried back to swap buses and this was more how we imagined the local buses- smelly and uncomfortable! Valium was certainly in order this time! Becca passed out again! The valium seems to work wonders for her! I wasn't quite as lucky and managed to experience the joy that is the bolivian roads! Soooo bumpy! 9 hours later we arrived and were feeling slightly disjointed! We arrived at 3 in the morning in Uyuni and were expecting to see someone there to meet us but noone appeared so we booked ourselves into the nearest hostal. It was ok, perhaps not the nicest, no hot water except for me, where I somehow managed to get boiling water! All we needed though was a bed. The lady who was meant to come and meet us actually turned up at our hostal half an hour later having searched all the hostals to find us! Our tour of the salt flats was meant to start at 10 the next day and we didn't have a clue where to go so it was lucky she did! Next morning we got collected and all set off for the travel agency. We were to go around them on a three day tour in a land rover. There are meant to be 6 people on every tour and there were only 5 of us so we had this Australian lady called Linda join us who was lovely. She was on a years break, just travelling by herself having left her two daughters at uni ( please don't go getting any ideas parents!) The lady advised us to go and buy dark sunglasses if we didn't have any because the flats are meant to be so bright. Katy and I went off to find some and came back with some particularly stunning ones for about a pound each! We set off and reached a little town after about half an hour of driving just on the out skirts of the salt flats! They had a few stalls which we couldn't resist having a peek at! Becca and I might have bought some salt crystals that were very pretty. There was also a llama type animal there which Becca got very excited at! Katy even bought something- a game made of salt- though we're not entirely sure what the game is!!! We then headed off for the salt flats, which were absolutely stunning when we got there. Just miles of bright white flat land. See picture above but imagine flatter and brighter! We visited the salt hotel which looked like a cool place to stay! Becca informs me that actually you can't stay there because it is dangerous- its still cool though! We had quite a lot of fun taking stupid photos, you can do camera tricks as the whiteness means you lose all perspective! Think our tour guide thought we were slightly strange when we were doing hand stands benhind boxes of pringles! This will all make sense when you see the photos!! For lunch that day we stopped at a oasis of giant cactuses in the middle of the salt flats. These cactuses were also prickly as Becca found ( clever girl) when she tried to hug one!! The scenery was stunning! Had quite a nice lunch of steak and rice and salad! Not up to Valentin's (lares trail)standard but still very good! Had a few more hours of quite pleasant driving in the afternoon, with lots of beautiful scenery and at about 5 we came to a little village in the middle of nowhere and came to our hostel for the evening. It was a really nice place (someones house) and we all went for a walk to enjoy the sunset. We got slightly distracted when we all came across some seesaws! Spent about an hour playing on these!!! The sunset was amazing when it happened, I don't think any of us had ever seen sky so blue and orange. We then got lost on our way back to the hostal, don't know how- this place was tiny but the streets did all look very similar. Katy was the only one who knew where she was going, but we were too distracted by the pretty sky and lost katy too! Eventually we got there and had about a hour to kill before supper. I think I supremely impressed the girls with a spectacular card trick (Dad Thomas you are responsible for this- the one with four robbers and a bank) and also my owl noises ( which Dad Thomas you are also responsible for!). Entertainment over, we went down to enjoy supper! Next morning we had an early start (again) and headed off in the jeep again! After a couple of hours we came to a lake which was full of pink flamingos, after 30 minutes or so of bird watching and photography we set off again to the red lagoon, stopping on the way to enjoy a spot of lunch. Pasta today but still really nice. We stopped by this big rock where we saw some gerbils or something similar! After a bit more travelling we arrived at the red lagoon which was very very red, apparently due to algae that grows in it and turns it a funny colour! There were plenty more flamingos to see here and they looked particularly good against the red background! Our hostal for that evening was very close and we arrived quite early at about 3.30pm. It was freezing but we were all quite chirpy still. Becca and I amused ourselves by offering to help the rather miserable old couple also staying at the hostal build a fire. We were instructed to go and collect a wheelbarrow full of firewood by the old man, and some "Phoebe running" later we arrived back with the wheel barrow full of wood, feeling we had done our good deed of the day! Unfortunately about 20 minutes later a rather irate peruvian woman entered the hostal and demanded that we give all the wood back! Turns out it was their own private stash! Bec and I left the old couple to deal with her and made a quiet exit! Not our fault!!! I then went out to read for a bit, having first wrapped up warm. As I was sitting there quietly minding my own business, a seagull came along and I swear it was going to eat me! It just hovered above me squarking and looking like it was about to dive until I had to get up in preparation to run! Luckily Becca came out at just the right point to take photos of the sunset again. After a couple of games of leap frog and a few snaps later we went indoors to warm up before supper. Supper was good that night - spag bog ( minus the meat)! Next morning was another of those horrible 5am starts! This time we were heading off to see some geezers and hot springs! katy was quite excited at the prospect of seeing some volcanic activity. They were pretty spectacular, lots of steam and bubbling mud! We then all had the pleasure of stripping off in the freezing cold to get into these hot springs! They were so worth it though- lovely! When we got out, we couldn't shower unfortunately as the showers had frozen, just a quick change. We then all sat down to breakfast at about 7am. As we were eating our bikinis froze solid and we had a bit of fun spanking each other, with basically bits of cardboard! Also had icicles in our hair! It was that cold!! We then set off to see the green lagoon! This was stunning as the water was so still you could see the reflection of the mountain behind in it! This along with the flamingoes was probably katy's favourite place. We had to prise her away back into the jeep. This basically ended the stops of the tour and we had a three hour drive to our lunch stop, along the way our guide told us we had reached 5000 metres and Katy and Louise were both feeling the effects. By the time we got to lunch, they weren't too well. Altitude is very strange, it seems to have such different effects on different people. The rest of us felt fine! Lunch was long awaited but unfortunately i think the food had almost run out and they provided a delicious meal of rice, tuna and egg! Once again I had a dish of rice! I'm not even a fussy person! They just love their eggs and tuna out here way too much!!!! Back on the road again and heading back to Uyuni where we had a couple of hours to spare before getting another night bus back to La Paz. A few of us went off to find a shower and then we had one last meal with Linda before catching the bus! After yet another long night bus journey we got to La Paz and set off to find a hostal, we met a couple of guys who seemed to know one so we just followed them too tired to care! It turned out to be quite nice. We had a day in La Paz but didn't get around to doing too much as we were pretty tired, we explored the shops ( of course), and had a nice lunch. The two guys we met wanted to go out for a meal altogether in the evening and really wanted to go this chinese restaurant, Bec and I not being the biggest fan were a little unsure but went along with it, unfortunately it wasn't great- don't think peruvian chinese and indian measure up to the British stuff and obviously not to the real thing! The next morning we had a day bus journey to Arequipa ( a large city in Peru) of 12 hours. The first part to the border was quite nice we had a little mini bus. After more faffing at the border we then got on a coach for the rest of the journey. Wasn't the best coach in the world but to honest not many coach companies can make 8 hours fun! Arrived in Arequipa at about 6.30, a bit tired but happy we were just going to get the chance to stop for a couple of days and chill. See the next installment of the journal to hear all about Arequipa! Lots of love from us all! xxxxx