As our Chilean driver drew closer to what can only be described as a hut in the middle of the mountains, a Bolivian flag became visible. Yes, you have guessed it we were at the border! We were bundled out of the bus and the cold air hit me hard and for the first time since Buenos Aires I was rummaging around in my backpack for my socks and trainers.
I filled in several forms, but to be honest I can't remember what I wrote as I was too cold but the stamp came crashing down and I was in, unlike the American guy Scott next to us who was demanded to hand over his $135 American dollars for the privilege of being allowed to enter.
Our Chilean bus left and people were directed to different jeeps depending on their tour company. Nathan and I were with Scott the 52 year old American from Colorado, Djemel the 31 year old French man from Paris and Anina the 32 year old German girl from Munich. Luckily Anina and Nathan had good enough Spanish to be able to translate everything the driver Rahul said to us.
We spent most of the first day in the southwest of the altiplano of Bolivia, within Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve and we were still pretty close to the border with Chile.
Our first natural wonder was a beautiful Laguna.
The scenery was absolutely stunning, I have honestly never seen the world looking so beautiful! From the first stop I was blown away!
We stopped at a hot spring next where you paid the women 60p to get in for about 20 minutes. Nathan, Scott and Djemel got in while Anina and I took photographs. It was beautifully warm, however when people got out they were feeling dizzy and even passing out because of the altitude. I am usually one to jump straight in to things like this but I knew there was no showers for me that night and possibly the next 2 so I decided against it.
We went to Laguna Colorado for our last stop of the day which is a shallow salt lake that is so unusual as it is red due the minerals in the water. To make it even stranger and more beautiful it has flamingos dotted all over the lake, making the view completely surreal, it didn't feel like we were on Earth anymore.
After 3 beautiful lagunas, White, Green and Colorado (red) we drove to our first nights accommodation. It was a brick hut with a long corridor where tables were set and next to each table was a dorm room with 6 beds in for you and the rest of you jeep party to sleep in. The beds were made of stone with a mattress on top with sheets and two thick blankets. They are used every night by travellers on the salt flat tours and definitely are not washed but they looked warm. It was evident that as soon as night fell I would not be able to see a thing so I got my joggers and long sleeved thermal on to sleep in, one to keep me warm but secondly so my body didn't make direct contact with the unwashed bed.
Our driver cooked us dinner and off we went to bed at around 7.30pm. Everyone was really struggling with the altitude as we had gone as high as 4800 metres and were sleeping at 4300 metres. We all had banging headaches as sleep that night was pretty rough waking up constantly.
The next morning I threw on my clothes from the day before as there was no showers and off we went. The first stop was beautiful. Another Laguna but truly stunning, it was so vast and the water was a type of blue I had never before seen. It was magical.
At the second Laguna of the day we saw more and more flamingos and them seemed to be getting friendlier as we could get closer for photos.
Amongst the beauty I have to mention this hilarious sign! Too funny not to take a photo of!
The last stop of the day was the wonderful Tunupa volcano which is 5321 metres above sea level. We stopped and had a while it relaxing in the sun and admiring the view.
We then drove for around 2 hours across the desert to get to the salt hostel we were staying at. When we arrived we were given 2 rooms. Nathan and I got the twin room and the others shared the triple. We were the first jeep to arrive of 4 that were staying here so I quickly stripped off, grabbed the hand towel Nathan and I are sharing, paid my £1 and got the first shower. I was aware I only had 5 minutes so had the most hilarious shower of my life, shampoo on and the fastest hair wash and body wash of my life but it felt SOOOO good!
There was electricity in one place in this hostel and as soon as all the jeeps arrived everyone was plugging in, it made me laugh how we had all only gone 36 hours and we were desperate to recharge all our technology.
The night sleep was much better as we were at a lower altitude. At 4am we got up ready to head to watch the sunrise on the salt flats.
So I will try and explain what they are like, it looks like sand but it's white and bigger crystals and it is in pentagon and hexagon shapes which is mad and it is salt.
They are the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers and are 3656 metres above sea level
We headed to fish Island which is a bizarre hill in the middle of the salt flats. We paid £1.50 each to be able to enter and climb it. The hill is covered in Cactus.
Once you started climbing and you looked out it actually started to look as though you were on an Island in the middle of the sea which was quite remarkable.
Finally it was time to head to the middle on the salt flats and take some crazy photos. We took so many, but all with my camera so I cannot upload to my blog but will add at Christmas when I have a computer. I did take a few photos on my phone to put on the blog to show just how cool this place is!
After a few hours it was time to leave Salar de Uyuni and head to the town itself. On the way we went to a train graveyard which was odd but really interesting to see all the old trains.
Arriving in Uyuni marked the end of our tour and we said goodbye to Rahul our driver and the 5 of us headed to the bus station to book a bus on the dreaded Uyuni to La Paz route. We arrived at the ticket office and waited 90 minutes for them to open the doors. By this time there was around 15 of us in the line. We were lucky enough to be first and walked up to the desk to order our tickets to be told they had all sold out already! Oh god now it was a mad rush to get to the next recommended bus company. The big stress was that this route is not the safest and unfortunately there was a fatal crash in September of this year so no one wanted to book with certain companies.
Luckily we all got a ticket with our second choice bus company and now all we had to do was wait 5 hours until it departed.
7.30pm rolled around and we all piled onto the Uyuni to La Paz bus and were given a thick blanket as the journey was going to be very cold. Everyone was exhausted and ready to go to sleep. The bus pulled away and within 5 minutes Nathan and I were looking at each other with shocked faces and it was clear that although it was so dark there was going to be very little sleeping happening.
The bus was driving across the same sort of terrain we had been used to in the desert but we had been in jeeps then and now we were in a big, old, rickety bus! The bus wobbled from side to side, cut across fields, train tracks and was driving on dirt roads where there was no street lights for the entire journey.
The good news is we survived and arrived absolutely exhausted at 6.30am in La Paz