10th - 13th Juy 2007 We left Tupiza on the 10th for our 4 day Salt Plain tour in a Land Cruiser with 2 other French Couples, a cook Betty and a driver Edwardo who looked about 15. This was to be our home for the next 4 days. We ascended up through the mountains in the Jeep and within a few hours we were at 4000m sucking in the thin air yet again. The scenary outside of Tupiza was stunning, with large red and and yellow, strangely formed rock formations. Glen made an immediate effort with our French companions, keen not to get off on the wrong foot and introduced himself and Sal to them all in French. Luckily they all spoke perfect English, and obviously guessed that Glen´s French was crap so all of the conversation for the next 4 days was in Anglais. Martin and Camil were from Lille in Northern France and were on a 3 week holiday in SA. Ben and Emily were from Paris and also on a holiday. We all got on really well, language was not a barrier, thanks to their excellent English and there was none of your age old French/English hostility. On the first day after driving through one arse end of nowhere village, some toothless locals stopped our jeep and told our guide about a roadblock on the way to our destination for the night. This caused a few problems and we had to go off the beaten track, to say the least, to get around the blockade. It all began with a heated debate in the middle of nowhere with the 2 other jeeps we had been travelling with from Tupiza. A random local appeared from the arse end of nowhere at this point and clambered into the Jeep to give us directions around the blockade. Where the bloody hell he came from we do not know. We were literally in the middle of nowhere and he appeared, it was like the floor had opened up and produced him. We had to get out of the jeep on a couple of occassions while the jeep forded rivers and struggled up hills (having to give a helping push most of the time). Just as it was getting dark and we were getting quite worried we were lost we arrived at a small village, which was to be our home for the night. It was pitch black and freezing by the time we were kicked out of the jeep, where we were kept waiting for about half and hour while the 2 guides disappeared to find some accomodation for us. We were given a large room with 6 single beds and plenty of blankets, we were going to need them. We then went off to another room for some tea, biscuits and a spot of dinner. The nights were so cold we all slept fully clothed with sleeping bag liner, sleeping bag and 2 blankets over the top, oh and not forgeting the thermal hat. The next 2 days were pretty much the same, long boring stints in the jeep, which were only made bareable by the guys we were with. We visited various lagoons, coloured lakes and volcanoes, surrounded by pink flamingos which were really cool to see. This place was so wierd, on the one side of the jeep there was high peaks and snow, on the other side red mountains and desert bathed in sunshine. It really did feel at times that we were on Mars, off this planet definitely. We also got to see what they call the Dali rocks in the middle of the desert, made famous by his paintings. These were wicked, large rock formations just randomly sitting in the desert. In typical Bolivian style though it stank of pee, obviously a toilet stop for all the tours, nice! On one lunch break we stoped at a lagoon which had a thermal pool, Glen and Ben both went for an after lunch dip in their underpants, crazy, it was so bloody cold. On the 3rd day we ended our sight seeing at a geyser at nearly 5000metres, surrounded by hot mud pools and clouds of steam, it was freezing cold up here and the air was really thin. It looked like how you would imagaine hell on earth and felt like it. The highlight and pinnacle of the trip was definitely the Salt Plains which we hit on the morning of the 4th day. This made up for the 3 days of jeep driving and was one of the most impressive things we had seen all trip. We had to get up really early to get there with enough time to see things, in true Bolivian style we were woken up late and found ourselves jump starting the jeep at 4:30am, with no breakfast (Sal´s stomach was not impressed). We arrived at Fish Island just before sunrise, this was a small rocky island that sat in the middle of the salt plains. As we climbed to the top of the island the sun came up and gave us an amazing view of the plains which looked like water. Words can´t really describe this place so we wont try. Just amazing. After sunrise Betty cooked us up breakfast, maderia cake with jam (what?!) and some coffee. After spending about half an hour mucking about on the plains trying to get silly photos with perspective we were off again to the middle of the salt plains, for yet more silly photos. This place was immense and felt very wierd being there, it kind of played with our minds. If you were left for days here you would surely go insane. The middle consisted of just a huge expanse of white salt ground, surrounded with mountains on the far horizon, which looked really close but we were told were atleast a week away on foot. It was just so bloody wierd. Before we finished our tour we stoped at a salt hotel, which is exactly what the name says, a hotel made comletely of salt. The beds, tables, chairs everything is made of salt. The tour finished on a bad note unfortunately, we were droped off on the pee stinky streets of a town called Uyuni whilst the jeeps from Tupiza tours buggered off and argued about who was going to drive us and Camil and Martin the 6 hours back to Tupiza. After being left for hours a heated phone call to the tour office soon made them all turn up, friendly Betty our cook dumped us onto another guy who was very unhappy about driving us back. He drank beer all the way back and drove like a comlete maniac. We were so happy to arrive back in Tupiza to our hotel! We thought the inside of the jeep was the last thing we would ever see. We finished the night off with a bite to eat with Martin and Camil.