Bolivia to Chile

Check out our pics: Bolivia_2

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Travel tip: Never conjugate the verb ‘to smell’ out loud in a public space in earshot of the proprietor of the restaurant you're sitting in. We had been analysing our horrible 24 hour bus ride from San Pedro de Atacama in the North of Chile to Santiago and the fact that we would never go on anther bus where we had seats next to the toilets. We were mortified when just after we had recited "we smell, they smell, you plural smell" in spanish, the owner came over and fiddled with the plug-in air freshener...but trying to explain with our fledgling espanol, we both felt, would have landed us even deeper into a world of embarrassment.

Anyway, since [pt], god bless 'er, last wrote, we took a bus from La Paz, Bolivia then a fabulous train to Uyuni. At first it seems a remote nothing kind of place, but T and I really liked it for some reason. We took a walk the first day to the outskirts of town, where the houses are all made of mud, and poked up and down the wasteland/rubbish dump. Bleak but fun.

As we were sitting eating some yummy stall food (carne empanadas with spicy salsa), on a bench in the center of town, Antonie, a fabulous german woman we recognized from the train ride, sat down to say hello. Before we knew it we had booked our tour of the salt flats together. We had been warned not to expect too much from many of the tour companies here, lots of tales of drunk drivers, trucks breaking down, overcrowding, terrible food, being abandoned etc. We had done a bit of research and a lot of peeps reccomended Estrella del Sur. The cool thing about our company was that while other companies visited the Salt Hotel, we actually stayed at it. And the real seller was that while other companies crushed as many people as possible into their 4X4s, Estrella had a maximum of 6. The rep also also went on about how we recieved pancakes and cakes not just bread for breakfast like other companies... Anyway, there were just the three of us so far booked for the next day but Antonie joked that she’d find really fun people to fill up our truck.

Next day we arrive at the office and sure enough Antonie has found a couple of corkers to join us- Matt and Bianca (Kiwi and Aussie) from London. We all seem to get along together immediately, and are happily chatting in the truck awaiting departure. Then the Estrella rep comes in and says there will be another 2 people joining us! But what of the 6 person maximum? ...."They small people." Well, after a lot of gesturing, bad spanish, bad english and me pointing to my thigh length in an unessesarily theatrical manner, we finally compromised with the five of us chipping in to pay for the unused 6th seat.

Despite the awkward beginning, staying not at the salt hotel and never seeing a pancake, we had a brilliant time. The scenery was quite otherwordly and when not snapping pics we had a great time laughing and singing in the truck. Our guide was a good driver and was a great sport, catch his covergirl ad in the video section, once we upload it. Another highlight was checking out the stars at night, so clear from out there. K, all for now, ciao xoxoxoxoxo