Buenos noches amigos (it´s 11pm here!) Gemma again, yes Mike is noticeably absent from the blogging isn´t he?

We are currently in Potosi, Bolivia so I´ll fill you in on everything between Pumamarca, Argentina to Uyuni, Bolivia where we finished our salt flats trip.

We crossed the border from Argentina to Chile on the 6th which involved clambering in a bus up to 4000m over the Andes which gave us great views of the mountain deserts broken up only by tussock-like grasses and herds of llama´s, vicuna´s and alpaca´s. It was my first taste of altitude which does leave you feeling worse for wear with a lot of pressure behind your eyes (although the worst was to come). We arrived at the Chilean border in what turned out to be our destination, the village of San Pedro de Atacama. We walked down into town and the first hostel we we offered by the guys trailing us on bikes. At $6000 peso´s a night it was hard to work out whether it was a good deal - we concluded that chilean money needs about three zero´s taken off it!

We set out that evening to visit the various tour agencies as the whole point of being in Chile was to start a three day trip into the Bolivian Andes to Salar de Uyuni (the salt flats). We avoided the crazy vegan man and went instead with a family run company which was leaving the next morning. After running around looking for an ATM that would actually give out money we gave up and paid the $65,000 peso´s in US dollars ($122). Up early the next morning we arrived with all our gear to find everything shut.... it dawned on us after a few minutes that we may have changed time zones... So an hour later we were off after picking up the fellow travellers that would become our new amigo´s after an eventful three days. They were: an English couple, Lauren (vet) and John (drama teacher - great entertainment!), a German engineer called Clemens and two Swiss nurses, Effy and Karen.

We had a memorable breakfast at the Bolivian border (basically a hut with a couple of guys with stamps) in the cold wind high up in the Andean desert. It is so dry all our lips are more cracked than we´ve ever experienced. We hopped in our vehicle, a Toyota LAndcruiser that didn´t skip a beat despite the fact there were no roads, tons of dust and salt the whole way. Our driver, Carlos, was one of five brothers who do the tours continuously and lives in Uyuni - where we were headed for.

The first day was memorable for me because of a nasty bout of altitude sickness. We climbed to 5000m that day and our hotel was at around 4700m. It was the most rotten I´ve felt in a long time so I was incredibly glad to have two nurses and a vet on hand! The next morning I was basically recovered, still a little sluggish but that´s to be expected with so little oxygen.
The views are best summed up with photo´s, which are impossible to upload on these computers but we saw a lot of lagoons, coloured by various minerals and by flock of flamingoes feeding in the pink waters. There were huge mountains all around but it is so dry there was hardly any snow (don´t let that fool you though, it was freezing!). Some of the volcanoes are active and smoking.
The second night was spent in a salt hotel where the walls and furniture are all made of salt and we went on our third day to the Salar de Uyuni which is simply incredible and photo´s don´t do justice to the sheer enormity and uniformity of the landscape. Especially cool to have breakfast at an island covered in cacti thousands of years old in the middle of the salt flats.
Got to go now - they need to close the office! Hope all are well and we´ll try to get Mike to do his share next time : )