Next stop in Bolivia was the Salt Flats, something we'd both had ear-marked on our 'must do' list from the start. After looking around La Paz for good tours, on a trip that has notoriously bad safety records for drunk and speeding jeep drivers, and poor accommodation and food, we settled on one of the many Spanish speaking only, guided excursions with 'Esmerelda Tours'. After purchasing a large bag of medical supplies for Sophie to continue to change her nose dressing each day, we took an 11 hour bus to the town of 'Uyuni'; this was no luxury bus and was absolutely freezing cold, with Trevor unable, slightly ill from a suspect empanada he bought off a grubby looking lady at a street stall in La Paz and unable to catch much sleep despite taking two sleeping tablets! Uyuni, the nearest town to the salt flats was even colder than the bus when we were dropped off at 7.30am, and we quickly dumped our stuff in the tour agency office before grabbing a hot chocolate in a cafe.

At 10.30am everyone began to be loaded into various jeeps and we clambered into our white Lexus Land Rover with an Italian couple, a French couple and our driver, 'Juan'. First stop was a 'train graveyard' full of rusty old trains in a desert-like area that were formerly used for mining, and that for some reason everyone insisted on climbing upon to have their picture taken! Next we stopped at a few souvenir stalls at the edge of the salt flats, where we had hoped to buy a salt lamp as our Bolivian souvenir...there were none to be had and we ended up buying a tiny piece of salt chiselled from the flats-possibly our worst souvenir yet! We then proceeded to make our way on to the salt flats themselves; the 'solar', and whilst this began a dirty brown colour near civilisation, the flats soon turned into an enormous expanse of bright white salt as far as the eye could see, apart from mountains creating reflection mirages in the salt in the distance, the solar being completely flat to the horizon. Blindingly white, we had to put our sunglasses on just to look at it even through the car window. When we stopped for a closer inspection, we stepped out onto the solar which crunched beneath our feet, and was cracked into amazing hexagonal-like shapes around us, while we watched cold water bubbling out of the salt crust. That day we had lunch in a salt hotel; not as grand as it sounds, although the tables, chairs, walls and floor were all made of salt, and we tucked into some chewy beef, rice and salad. After lunch we moved on to a clear area of the solar where we would be able to take perspective photos due to the uninterrupted flat surface. Unfortunately our grand plans of making Patch and Brian look much larger than us didn't really work, despite our best efforts of trying to get the right angle by lying on the salt, although we think the resulting failure pictures are just as funny! Our final sight of the day was 'Isla Incawasi'; a large rock island in the middle of the salt flats covered in giant cacti and petrified coral rock formations, and we climbed to the top to get a better view of the extensive, surreal solar. Meanwhile the Italian guy flew a drone over the area which he had brought with him on his holiday, as Trevor looked upon the gadget with envy! That evening we drove out of the Solar and across arid desert landscapes, while Juan informed us of various accidents that had happened on the salt flats, including 2 jeeps colliding as one of the drivers fell asleep, and a jeep rolling a couple of years ago due to speeding and being over-weighted with the result of the jeep exploding in flames due to gas canisters being tied on the top of it...luckily we seemed to have bagged a pretty sensible driver, with only the occasional drifting off route while he reached into his bag of coca-leaves! Our first night was spent in a basic concrete room with salt floors, which made it impossibly cold! We had hot showers, although the hot water stopped working halfway through Sophie's which she wasn't best pleased about, and we went to bed shivering for a fair while!

Up at 6.30am the next morning we packed our bags, grabbed some breakfast and left in our jeep, in which Juan said the heating wasn't working (we're not sure this was true), and we all sat there with our feet going numb in the freezing cold temperature. Additionally Juan blamed us for being half an hour late, despite all being ready on time and actually waiting for him to emerge that morning! Our first stop of the day was at a viewpoint for 'Ollague Volcano' which was smoking ahead of us. Next we drove through more arid desert landscape before spotting bright pink flamingos on the lagoons of 'Cañapa', 'Hedionda', 'Chiarcota', and 'Ramaditas', which are used by the flamingos as points of feeding and resting during their migratory movements. The lagoons were icy and frozen, and watching the flamingos we couldn't imagine anything more painful than standing our legs in the water and dipping our heads under to feed while the wind bellowed strongly at our backs...sadly Trevor wouldn't give it a go to prove the theory! That day we tucked into chicken and pasta for lunch at a windy lagoon-side setting, before passing through the 'Siloli Desert' and stopping briefly to look at the 'Árbol de Piedra' or stone tree; a strange rock formation carved out of strong wind erosion over time...our stop here was short to save from having our faces eroded by the wind! After our journey was delayed slightly by Juan enthusiastically hopping out of our jeep to help another that had broken down along the way, we made it to 'Laguna Colorada' containing striking red coloured water, and again home to a number of flamingos, along with chunks of white ice, and once again the wind tore through our numerous clothing layers. Here we paid our National Park fee for the 'Reserva Eduardo Abara' and arrived at our second nights' accommodation where we all shared a dorm room in an even more chilly stone building...this trip was proving to a be a lot colder than we'd first imagined with temperatures a night reaching -15°C!

Next morning we were once again blamed by Juan for being late, despite having been sitting around waiting for him, and we were once again refused heating in the jeep. Trevor was also exhausted, practically getting no sleep as his stomach battled the bacterial onslaught of an empanada from hell back in La Paz! First stop of the morning was to visit some bellowing geysers at an altitude of 4,950m, which were of an impressive size, but as usual smelt of eggy sulphur, and the wind made the freezing temperatures hard to bare! Next we visited some hot springs outside, but we all decided it was far too cold to fathom getting changed to go in them! We continued to drive through the Dali Desert where the wind began to pick up further and our jeep kept having to stop while we were battered with dust storms completely obscuring the road ahead, and shaking the whole vehicle. Battling our way through, we briefly visited 'Laguna Verde', a vividly green lake, before arriving at the Bolivia-Chile border for 9am, where we were to leave the group to continue into Chile. Bidding everyone goodbye, we hopped on a bus and waited stationary for around an hour as the dust storms continued to rattle the vehicle, before being driven an hour out of the desert, along well developed roads to the entry border for Chile. After another long wait, during which we longed for a shower and a warm bed, we went through customs into the town of 'San Pedro de Atacama', in the Atacama Desert region of Northern Chile, and finally checked into a hostel to warm ourselves up.

The salt flats themselves had been an amazing and surreal sight; the enormous flat, bright white expanse like nothing else we've seen on our trip, but the rest of the tour was blimmin' freezing and we believe it was the coldest we've been on our whole travels! Unfortunately the area has become quite a money making scheme, with safety being dropped and poor quality of services, but the sight of the Solar made it worth Juan blaming us for being late every morning! Bolivia had been a mixed bag; we saw some brilliant natural wonders in the salt flats and the Amazon jungle, but having spent two months in Peru previously in South America we were keen to move on from Andean culture and experience something new. By the time we left we were both a bit run down, Sophie just recovering from illness in the jungle, and Trevor now just coming down with something. It was more of a struggle than we'd thought!