After our eventful bus journey and another narrow escape we finally arrived in Uynai, with our new found friends George and Cat we set off to look for a comfy bed for the night before our 3 day 2 night tour.

As usual we were harassed by everyone trying to sell us a tour to leave that day, when we explained we wanted to wait till 'mana' (tomorrow) they then tried to sell a hostel and tour! Little did we realise that no one ever stayed in Uynai, it is literally just a bus stop before your tour begins. However, we finally found somewhere after explaining that if only single bedded rooms were all that was available we would just share beds and only pay for two rooms, funny after that double rooms became available!

Bolivia lived up to its reputation on restaurant service, ordering simple sandwiches for lunch took 1 hour and even when they arrived the orders were wrong but it was too much trouble to complain and still very cheap so we just ate up! We then set off to explore the small village and look for a tour, it appears thought Bolivians don't work too hard either. It was afternoon and all the shops were shut for a sisestier! It is however a very trustworthy place leaving the doors open for all to wander in, which we did and in fits of laughter I (Becki) sat down at a desk and pretended to sell the tour to the others. We then thought it funny to leave a little note for the owner to explain that by snoozing during the day had just lost them $400 dollars! It did makes us worry about our backpacks that could be left unattended in a shop available for all to steal, so made this our top priority when talking to others about their tours. We made our decision on a tour, I think mainly due to the fact she was the only operator open, within our budget for what we wanted and she spoke English!!

When Hana and I arrived back to our hostel we found our room to be infested with lots of flies, as a fun game we set about flicking towels everywhere trying to kill as many as possible! It was hilarious!

We awoke bright and early fully refreshed and ready for our Spanish tour of Uynai (yes we are so cheap we wouldn't pay extra for an English tour, surely landscape is self explanatory!) We had a boy as a driver and a girl as our chef, we crammed ourselves into the 4x4 truck with all our little goodies. We were joined by a couple who we believe were Bolivian's and they spoke Spanish with very little English! We were very excited and were enjoying our back to the old school days of bubblegum all competing for the biggest bubble! There were no roads so the terrain was a little bumpy, no sorry extremely bumpy but hey we soon got use to this and protected our heads constantly. Our first stop was a very important train graveyard!! Yes you have all missed out on this famous landmark, im not sure why we went to see this but it was fun to climb and take some train driver photo shots.

It didn't take long before we were off again and at the starting point to the salt flats, to massive and I mean hugh lakes that have dried up leaving only salt deposits on the ground. We stocked up again eating what was to become my staple diet in Bolivia fried extremely greasy egg and chip sandwiches "Yummy!". We also stocked up on some high percentage alcohol ready for some party nights in our basic basic hostel rooms!

After only another 5 min drive and we had our breaths taken away again by this beautiful new landscape, I cant really describe why or how it was so fabulous the scenery we were driving through. For miles and miles all that you could see was bright white land, it looked like snow. There were mountains as the back drop and as the sun began to shine through the thin layer of rain water that covered the white land made the salt glisten more reflecting the sky above. As you scanned the horizon you could see blue skies above and below. If you looked closely at the floor you caught the different colours sparkling like little diamonds in the salt.

On our first stop we took are shoes off to run barefoot across what you would think would be solid ground, but with the water it had made it slightly squidgy between your toes which felt great. We stood on top of little salt hills and pulled lots of silly poses. One stop took us to the salt hotel, that as you can guess by the title was made completely of Salt. There was a kind of museum inside that had lots of different types of salt sculptures. There was one in particular that both Hana & I were convinced was a tribute to English culture and was in fact Big Ben not the what we later found out was meant to be a replica of the Uynai clock tower.

Our lunch stop was at a place called Fish Island, an island in the middle of the salt flats. Now i'm sure there is a reason for its name but not having the best Spanish I can honestly say I couldn't translate the guide explanation. It was cool thou, it had cactus and an ostrich. We played a game of chicken with the ostrich that was sitting down relaxing until we tried to see who could get the closest I believe Cat won. Surrounding the island was salt flats as far as you could see, so again we took lots of the typical over the top tourist pictures. The classic people standing on your hands, stamping on their heads and even some more imaginative ones like Hana pretending to sit on us. The sun had began to shine even brighter which allowed us to really enjoy the magical landscape and moment.

Back into the truck and we continued to speed through the salt flats until it was over and we were back to the boring dirty bumpy roads and brown surroundings. However are fun didn't stop there, along the journey the driver kept stopping and look around the truck especially at the tyres. We never thought much of it until... we stopped for the final time and he asked to get out. We only had 3 bolts holding the tyre on, we had lost the other 4! While the men did there things we played charades by the roadside, we became a bit of attraction to the others who watched in fascination at us!

Once the men realised there was nothing they could do in the middle of nowhere with no bolts we continued to our hostel, taking it slightly slower which just seemed to emphasizes the bumps.

Arriving at our first hostel it became extremely apparent that they weren't lying about beginning a very basic hostel, we didn't even have shower facilities. It didn't matter we had found our own entertainment, I found a little pink bicycle with stabilizers and desperately tried to get her to work. She didn't like to peddle much but we found other ways to play, we tried to get as many people riding. We succeed getting all four of us on there, we named her P!nk after our favourite singer and found it hilarious that we had all ridden her!! I don't think the Bolivians understood our humour and called us in to have some good tea and crackers.

We all got 'food envy' at dinner as all the other groups had much nicer food than our random noodles, but we still ate up and grabbed our vodka. We then had a interesting night trying to teach all our card games to the Spanish speaking couple, they all laughed at me as apparently when I tried to explain I spoke only English with some strange accent! But it all worked and we hope they enjoyed themselves. Later we headed back to our four white walls and played some music and a few truth and dare games. George fair played did run into a room of random people and shout "cool bananas"!

The next morning we were up early and boy I wasn't really awake enough. We had some yummy breakfast and climbed into our 4x4! It didn't take long till I think we all manged to find a small bit of comfort to sleep some more. I don't think we really missed much thou, the landscape was pretty much all the same, it is amazing how much they can drag this tour out! We saw lots of reddish brown mountains, looked a little like sand dunes. We saw one landscape that was called the mountain of seven colours, however I would of said mountain of seven shades of brown. It was pretty though. We also drove to many several lakes, that were all extremely picturesque and all filled with flamingos. Again this surprised never had flamingos as altitude birds. We spent a lot of hours traveling this day and was grateful when we arrived at our basic hostel again! We had obviously traveled up and we could all feel the effects of the altitude mainly the cold!! It was sooooooo cold and getting colder. Luckily we all got to share a room and there were some beds close together so we decided that we would be penguins and huddle to keep warm! Again we drank up the remainder of our vodka and played our card games.

Oh my what is happening we had to awake even earlier on the third and final day, not sure I can remember when I last saw 4am as a morning! No breakfast just hustled into the 4x4 and we were off. It was still dark when we arrived at our first sight and woke us up fully. We jumped out into the bitter cold and the smell of rottening eggs and roaring noise hit you. We looked behind the 4x4 and there in front of us was a towering line of gas escaping from the ground. It was so impressive, we nervously edged closer till we finally had our hands in the gas stream it was lovely and warm and just what our little fingers needed. It was still hard to stomach that smell so early. We then watch as the sun rose turning the black sky to a beautiful blue then yellow and orange, totally different to sunsets and in my opinion I think I prefer. We then drove a few meters to another smelly sight, this time it was a bubbling cauldron. You couldn't really see anything as steam was pouring out and it blocked the view, but the noise was intense and again smell filled your nostrils. BY now I was starting to think about my stomach and luckily breakfast wasn't far. We arrived at the hot springs, which had a fabulous back drop in the mountains and by far the highest point we have been at 5000 meters above sea level and our chest told us this. We stripped off into our bikinis even thou it was still only 7am, ate our pancakes and jumped into the lovely warm bath water of the springs, it would have been the highlight if not for so many tourist some sporting some speedo that should be! The rest of the trip was again filled with visiting lakes in the mountain different landscapes and all types of rock formations. It was amazing some of the things they managed to make sightseeing spots. To be honest I think we were all done and want some much need room and non bumpy roads. We were all gratefully to be back in the village, but sadden in the knowledge that we had become good friends and again were having to depart but we would meet again as we were all staying in Hostel Brazil for Salvador Carnival!!!

We went our separate ways to hunt down our buses, Hana and I becoming more and more nervous as we wanted to leave that night so not to waste some days but try as we could we struggled to find a bus that wasn't full. Some how we manged to find one but worried how local it would be. We found the girls who were having to stay, said our goodbyes and boarded our bus to Potosi for our mine adventures.