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quiggsy on tour
Another day another border to cross.....
But I'll do things in order -
Firstly, we did find the hot springs. Turned out it was a random lake in the middle of nowhere which was hot! But very nice to spend an afternoon in. And we randomly met another 2 English girls (one of whom, it turns out, knows Tom Palin - for anyone at home, v rando).
We landed in Uyuni, apparently the home of the bext pizza in south america (it was very good i have to admit), with the plan to stay a couple of nights with one day visiting the Salar de Uyuni (the largest, highest salt flat in the world). After a night of lots of yummy food and more than a couple o glasses of sangria we were rudely awoken at 8.40am by a random Bolivian man trying to tell us something. I tried to understand, thought it was perhaps something to do with the electricity going off at 9am, and then went back to bed. Another rude awakening 5 mins later from Geoff to tell us that indeed the electricity was going off in ten minutes and that we would then be leaving for the Salar in at 9.30am instead of the planned 10.30am due to the fact that there was going to be a strike in Uyuni for the foreseeable future which would involve road blocks stopping us leaving..... So the long and the short of it was that we would have to leave that night to avoid them.
So we set off in jeeps to go across the salt flat. On the way our jeep managed to get a puncture. Apparently one of the Bolivian women in Kate's jeep said it was because of all the 'fat tourists' in it!! Nice. But anyway we were on our way again faster than a tyre change in formula one and made it out onto the Salar. It was absolutely amazing - just miles and miles of nothing but white salt (photos to come, this computer is rubbish). We drove out to an island in the middle of the Salar which has loads of cacti and not a lot else on it apart from amazing views. Our guides produced an awesome lunch out of nowhere, and after a brisk walk to the top of the island to take some photos we went back to Uyuni via a train graveyard....
From Uyuni we had to set off for Chile that night to avoid the road blocks. After a rather random night in a 'refuge' somewhere high in Bolivia we made our way to the border via a number of beautiful lakes (again, photos will come). As there is very little vegetation at 5000m we have adopted a boys at the front, girls at the back system for baños (toilet) breaks. I was just waiting for another overland truck (we have run into a couple at various points on our trip) to come over the hill while we were mid-baños. Bit of random information but anyway.....!
So the Bolivian border crossing consisted of a tiny little hut in the middle of nowhere with one man in it. But he seemed happy with us as we gave him all our left over food - apparently the Chileans are obsessed with not letting any organic products into their country.
We are now into our camping phase - that's about 3.5 weeks without a bed..... Nice. And it's freezing here at night. But hey, we are still alive. Last night we went to see the sunset over another Valley of the Moon. Lots of lovely views over the desert after my newfound fear of heights reared its ugly head again.... We had to walk up a large sand dune and then scramble up the last part of rocks to get the best views. But it was worth it.
This morning had to get up at 4am to go see some geezers (sorry, geysers). Was pretty cool, if a tad nippy (well below zero in my humble opiniom, being at 4000m at 6am...). The geyers spout hot steam and water and some of them were safe enough to swin/paddle in. Reiko was the only one of us brave enough to actually swim but the rest of us had a nice paddle to warm our frozen toes.... toasty.
And so to the football. Penalties. Against Portugal. Again. The result was inevitable really but it has left a few of us rather depressed.... And now we are going to Argentina and they are not even in it anymore... Is there any point watching the remaining games? Well, I have a rather controversial interest as I drew Portugal in our sweepstake so I still have a chance to win 40$!
Anyway, more from Argentina soon!
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