I'm in Uyuni, and I'm not stranded here! To most people, I appreciate that that means nothing, but to those of us who have been travelling around South America (specifically Bolivia) it is a wonderful thing. Uyuni is the well known start point for salt flat tours, which take roughly 3 or 4 days to travel around the beautiful national park that sits on the border of Bolivia and Chile.
Up until a few days ago the towns roads were blocked due to protests with regards to a bus terminal in the town. Something to do with them wanting or not wanting a bus terminal and then when it was put there they were unhappy with the location or the standard (my Spanish is still not up to scratch so it's hard to say how accurate my translation is). Anyway, these protests were the cause for a lot of travellers grief as it is difficult to do a salt flat tour from elsewhere. After several days of investigation and deliberation, myself and Aya managed to organise a tour from Tupiza, a different Bolivian town, which could either end in Uyuni or back in Tupiza. Given that we did not want to be stuck in Uyuni with no way back out, we decided on the latter. Fortunately the blockades were lifted during our trip so we have successfully found ourselves in Uyuni with plans to head to northern Chile early tomorrow morning.
The salt flat tour was fantastic, but I would like to paint a realistic picture of the events so as not to pull the wool over your eyes. Travelling is not all buses and beauty and fun and exploration and frolicking in the sun. Almost 8 weeks in I was unlucky enough to have my first bout of food poisoning on the first day of the salt flat tours. This consisted of 10 hours in a jeep with me yelling stop to vomit out of the vehicle whenever the feeling came over me. Nice. I blame a vegetable lasagne consumed in a small mining village called Potosi, but I shouldn't point fingers. 24 hours later I was back on form, despite being extremely cold due to the freezing conditions on and around the salt flats (who knew South America could be so cold north of Patagonia??). After my stomach had settled I really enjoyed the tour, which consisted of an array of stunning scenery and volcanoes and thermal spas and much more. As ever.. Photos will have to wait I'm afraid! Bolivian wifi is not up to international standards so photo uploads to a blog could take a lifetime.
I realise my last post was actually in Peru so I've skipped over the whole of Bolivia! We started at lake titicaca on the floating Islands which were very interesting (and technically in Peru but that's neither here nor there). We then went to Copacabana and visiting Isla Del Sol, which I suggest they seriously consider renaming Isla Del Rain due to false advertising. From here we travelled to La Paz, the main city of Bolivia. We spent 4 days here eating like kings, shopping like princesses and drinking like... Brits. It was a lot of fun and the markets were incredible. They sold jumpers, scarves, gloves, and just about everything you could possibly make from 'alpaca' wool in just about every colour and colour combination imaginable. We were also prewarned (not the right word??) that there were tons of leather shops in which you could design and have custom made leather jackets at a ridiculous price. Needless to say, we explored this possibility, and 2 days later were handed over our perfect fitting and perfectly 'us' leather jackets at only 30 pounds a pop. AMAZING!
As ever I've been unable to actually post this on my blog due to the desert lacking decent wifi (unsurprisingly I suppose!). So I am now in chile but I will write about chile after Easter island (which we leave for tomorrow!!!!!!)
