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The strangest place on Earth?
So, when i last wrote we were in Sucre, Bolivia, soaking up some sun on the hostel roof. We were in for s bit of a temperature change at our next stop - the amazing salt plains of Uyuni. The strangest but also the coldest place on earth for us. We got to the strange little town of Uyuni when it was already dark and in a burst of organisation, we managed to book ourselves onto a salt plains tour for the very next day. The salt plains in Bolivia are the largest in the world and were formed when expanses of natural salt lakes dried up. The landscape is just made up of miles and miles of bright white salty ground as far as the eye can see and looks almost like snow except you can see the cracks of the salt crystals across the ground and if you scrape your foot across the surface, raw salt will scrape off. There are families and businesses in certain parts of the salt lakes who process the salt to sell comercially. We've never been anywehere in the world like it and it almost feels like you're walking on the moon. We saw some breathtaking places on our 3 day tour - in the middle of the huge salt plains is an island full of cactuses called 'Fish Island'. The whole island is made of 'petrified coral' (Lar's new favourite words!) as it was just coral under the water before the lake dried up. There are hundreds of cactuses on the island as tall as 12 metres - it's the strangest place I've ever been, in the middle of nowhere.
The first night we stayed in a hotel entirely made from salt, just to add to the randomness of the whole thing. We also saw lots of different beautiful lagoons in the national park bordering the salt plains - a red and a green lagoon which reflected off their bright colours when the sun hit them. The red lagoon was full of flamingos (and dead baby flamingo corpses on the shore which wasn't so nice, but apparently the cold weather kills them off in the winter).
We had an 'interesting' group on our tour full of some people we nicknamed 'the moaners' and the others who were just a tiny bit crazy... I think we were a bit of a difficult group because the tour guide was despairing of us before we even set off the first day and had to call a group meeting! Head Moaner, Roy, an older English guy seemed to enjoy the group meeting a bit too much... Roy also threatened to throw me in the river at one point because I'd been making fun of him but he was just so easy to wind up - and it was all said in fun. Me, Wills and Lar were the easy going group and we got on with everyone of course. The crazy group was made up of 2 Canadian girls travelling with an English guyand they had a million props with them for their photos including plastic dinosaurs, banners and costumes. They entertained the tour guides with their attempts at Spanish and one of the tour guides said in Spanish to another one that if they were his wives, he'd 'hit them'. They didn't understand what they were saying so that was probably a good thing. The crazy group and the moaners didn't always see eye to eye and a game of Uno nearly turned into a world war at one point but it was very entertaining to watch, hehe. The canadians had come on the tour armed with run though so that solved most of our 'group issues' (social work speak).
The last night we were warned that we were staying in 'basic' accommodation and they were not lying. It was so cold that we all slept in all of our clothes. At 5am the next morning we got dressed (or some of us jusdt rolled out of bed already fully clothed) and we were driven for sunrise to some huge and powerful natural hot geysers. The force of them was incredible and one of them shot at least 10metres into the sky from the ground. That morning was truly the coldest any of us has ever been and we were wearing about 6 layers of clothes each, like michelin men. I really thought that I was going to lose some toes. Even with all the woolly alpaca gear we had on. The week before all the tours had been cancelled because of heavy snow. And a lot of that snow was still on the ground in heaps - thats how cold it was, we were told it was minus 10 degrees at least. But it made the landscapes extra special at the time - we went through deserts like the Salvador Dali desert which was punctuated by heaps of bright white snow and snowcapped mountains formed the backdrops to all the multicoloured shimmering lagoons.
So our last morning we were expected to peal off all our layers to take a nice relaxing morning dip in some natural hot springs. So yesthe three of us did wimp out but we managed to defrost our toes in them which really, really burned. When we got back to Uynuni later that day we had to hit the road again as soon as possible. We managed to strike a deal with the local hotel who let us all take a shower for 50bolivianos (around 4 pounds - gold star for Em's Spanish!) and we were straight on the bus that same night to cross the border to Argentina. All of our next adventures would start on that very bus. But more of that later. First of all, some things that we'll remember about our beautiful Bolivia:
1. The colours of gold and blue everywhere - golden brown mountains, blue skies and the deepest blue waters.
2. So many different landscapes - jungle, mountains, tropical Santa Cruz, lakes.
3. Tea with cinnamon.
4. Showers that look like they'll electrocute you.
5. Telephone wires and cables - hundreds of them that hang casually across the streets.
6. Beautiful people and beautiful kids.
7. Special Bolivian Spanish that took us weeks to understand and even longer to practice ourselves but now its the only Spanish we know!
Goodbye Bolivia, we loved you.
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