We enrolled ourselves for the 3 day tour to Bolivia, where you visit the popular Salar to Uyuni (salt flats). We checked out of Chile at 2500 meters above sea level and then rapidly ascended to the Bolivian border at over 4000 meters, in roughly 30 minutes, which resulted in some expulsions of altitude sickness from a poor French boy on our tour.

The altitude sickness seemed to magnify throughout the day for this boy and several other people. We were ok by comparison although Nikki felt quite sick and dizzy on the first night and we all woke up with headaches but once we had acclimatised over this day the other two days were fine, apart from the constant breathlessness - especially when peeking at 5000meters above sea level on the 2nd day!

It's hard to sum up what we saw on the trip as we saw so many amazing sights which included hot springs, geysers, various coloured lagoons, volcanoes and an abundance of strange wildlife…. Rabbits with long tails, desert foxes, and llamas!

Everything that we saw was incredible - especially the couple of lagoons that were host to so many flamingos. So beautiful and awe inspiring, we could have watched them for hours!

We were warned you spend a lot of time in a jeep, and you do, but its worth it for what you see, you also get to experience some fun off-roading, especially if you had Rueben, our driver, at the wheel who seemed determined to take the least smooth path all the way there! The one thing however you cannot guarantee if who you get in your jeep. Unfortunately for us we were the loner English couple surrounded by French, French Swiss and Spanish.

In our jeep we had to contend with possibly the most interfering Spanish women who, according to her could understand English far better than she spoke it and we were told to not speak slowly and simply just normally to her… so we did… and, guess what, she didn't understand, so back to talking slow and loud! She also decided on the last day, and on her turn to blast some ipod tunes out into the jeep, she would play only Spanish hard rock which no-one else knew and were utterly bored by and yet she insisted on turning around to us head banging and smiling… I tell you the faces she got in return were not ones of amusement. The previous two days of music were much more enjoyable - us and the young French couple had blasted out some classic 80´s tunes (which Rueben, or for that matter any South American, is a great fan of!) combined with some Abba, Queen and rumba R&B which we all knew and could enjoy… singing our little hearts out as we continuously hit our heads bumping over the rough terrain.

The best thing about the trip was undoubtedly the sights we saw; the worst thing about the trip was the cold! On the first day I think we were doubly unlucky in that we had gale force winds to contend with. The day consisted of - drive in jeep - jump out of jeep - take pictures "snap snap" - run back into jeep - continue driving…. Not only was it freezing cold but on this first day we had to practically get naked in the bitter winds so we could experience the hot springs! Never have you seen anyone get unchanged and sprint towards the warmth as we did that morning! But it was so unbelievably worth it! The hot springs were boiling, such a luxury and it took an immense amount of will power to heave our freshly toasted bodies out of the pool and back out into the cold to get changed! After the first day of winds the second 2 days calmed down and with the sun out you could pretend it was relatively warm. The nights however were another thing all together!

The accommodation for starters was basic, were talking little stone or salt shacks with straw roofs! No heating and the first place had no showers. Cold doesn't even come close to describing how we felt. Each night we layered up like the Michelin man in about 8 layers (including 2 pairs of trousers and 3 pairs of socks), hat, scarf, gloves, rented thermal sleeping bag, 3 blankets, 1 silk liner and a sheet and still we were cold. The first night we had 5 beds for 6 people, luckily the French couple were little enough to share and due to the wind the plastic part to our roof lifted and rattled all night, not much actual sleeping went on between the noise of the roof and the chattering of our teeth! But we all had high hopes for the second night, promised to be warmer and with hot showers. But alas when we turned up to the Salt Shack we knew any form of luxury was off the cards. We picked out our room, aptly named the Salt Cell by Sven and couldn't bring ourselves to, firstly queue for the one hot shower and secondly freeze our extremities off when we had to get out it, so we skipped the shower and cosied up for another night of cold, this time only to the noise of Nikki's quiet sobs.

The final day we saw the piece de resistance - the salt flats, a blindingly white expanse of salt desert! However, due to our driver getting blind drunk the night before, we left an hour late, and had only a short snippet of time to get our photos done. Our over imaginative group kept themselves to themselves until we managed to encourage them join in for some classic perspective photos, unfortunately the girls who took the photos obviously have no idea of how to snap a good perspective shot so our attempts are not quite as impressive as we hoped but we had fun trying which is the main thing!

We arrived at our final destination of Uyuni in Bolivia and quickly decided that the first bus out of here would be the best course of action! Uyuni is a shockingly sparse desert town and we didn't fancy another dose of simple cold accommodation. We spent the 3 or so hours before the bus in the Extreme Fun Pub laughing at the menu of Llama boobys, shots of Llama sperm and the fact that this pub alone could contribute to all of Britain's binge drinking with the extreme drinking competitions it holds, if only we had the night to prove our drinking culture but alas we set foot on our first and most dramatic bolivian bus journey to Potosi…