These past few days have been amazing. I went on a tour to Salar De Uyuni, the Bolivian Salt flats, which were simply stunning. The tour included a trip to ´cactus island´. This is basically an island covered in cactus in the middle of the salt plains. I´m pretty sure that the Spice Girls´video ¨Say You´ll Be There¨was filmed on the Salt Flats as it looked remarkably similar but someone will need to google this for me.
After Cactus island, we had some fun with photography on the salt flats. See the photos for a better explanation than I could give!
We stayed in a salt hotel on the first night, which was really interesting. Everything was made of salt, as you would expect, but it wasnt as cold as I was anticipating. The floor was very crunchy, and there was only electricity for 1 hour per day. Despite this, the food was amazing.
Day 2 brought more magnificent scenery, this time in the shape of desert and mountain ranges. We saw lots of llamas and I ate one at lunch, which was delicious, albeit slightly salty. It´s not disimilar to bacon.
We stayed overnight in a desert shelter, and this was the beginning of my problems- we were at 5300m and the air was very thin. When you combine this with deep costal breathing and speaking slightly too fast - Ok, I will admit it- you have a lightheaded situation! I fainted at breakfast on a poor girl, who definately did not need a 5ft10 monster falling on her at 5am. Thankfully there was a lovely Danish nurse there who was more than happy to slap my face and bring me back to consciousness. I feel fine now and this was a timely reminder to slow my speech back down.
A nightbus brought me back to La Paz on Sunday evening and I am making plans to cross the Peruvian border tomorrow. Bolivia was excellent, well worth visiting and I am looking forward to my next country and adventure!
