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Well its been a long time since the last blog, sorry we have become slightly lazy. Ok so where to start?! We have taken advantage of luxury bolivian trains to travel up from the argentine border to the salt flats (these trains had a dining car with a nice meal, tv and amazing views of the mountains - nice change from buses). One scary moment (for Rae at least) when the power cut out in the middle of nowhere at night, luckily it was all sorted in no time. We got to Uyuni town and booked ourselves on a 2 night 3 day tour along with Dave and Ben (2 guys we have been travelling with). We stocked up on toilet roll and water after hearing horror stories of getting caught short out there in the desert, and away we went. The first day was surreal, travelling across the salt which went on forever and was blinding white. We stopped at a salt refinery to see how its all processed into edible table salt then stayed over night at a salt hotel! It was surprisingly warm inside, and a delicious llama steak went down very nicely.
On the second day we inhaled possibly all the dust in the world, the jeep was a bit rickety and the faster Octavio our driver went, the more the dust came in. At this point i must applaud Octavio for being the best mechanic i´ve ever seen, we got a flat tire and he changed it in about 2 minutes, I can only dream of fixing a bike puncture that fast! The cook Direa was married to Octavio and they were a sweet old couple. We spent the rest of the day looking at the beautiful desert, countless lakes and towns straight out of the wild west. The second nights accommodation wasnt as great as the salt hotel, instead we stayed in a shack with no running water, and it was minus 5 overnight. Luckily the group from our jeep made the stay fun, we had to laugh at the damp on the walls and the wonky, leaking ceiling.
The third day we were up at 4am to watch the sunrise at hot springs, it was so unbelievably cold i cant say if it was worth it, but still it was nice to dip our feet in the water. We were now at the border with Chile, having travelled about 350km over bumpy roads, this was the limit of the tour so we began to head back to Uyuni. We arrived there about 6pm, dusty, tired and hungry so we showered and went to Minuteman pizza, they did amazing pizzas which was just what we needed before getting back on the train to head to La Paz.
Will write soon with La Paz update.
Mark xx
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