And I thought Iceland was isolated!

We are in our last night in Bolivia. While I'm certainly not going to miss Bolivia's aversion to toilet seats, there are so many things I have seen and done that I will miss. Firstly, Saltenas! Yum, yum! They are these football shaped pastry things that are sort of sweet, sort of salty and all yummy! They drip everywhere when you eat them but when Aimey and I arrived back into La Paz this morning at 6am and needed a mid morning burst of energy, we did what the locals do - had a coke and 2 saltenas. Yum!

"Why did you arrive in La Paz at 6am?" you may now be thinking. There is a simple answer to that....in addition to toilet seats, Bolivians apparently do not believe that busses should run during the day. Rather, all busses should run in the middle of the night and have passengers arrive at their destinations groggy and wanting saltenas.

We did much relaxing and internet/blog catching up when last we were in La Paz. We're here again and I get to write about an amazing time we had in the south. We booked a "must do" when in Bolivia, and that is, visit the Salt Flats near Uyuni. The only way to get there is a night bus and so on Saturday we boarded the "luxury" tourist bus and hunkered down for what we thought would be a reasonably comfortable event (we were assured of a meal, heat, blankets and pillows - how could that POSSIBLY be uncomfortable?). Three hours out of La Paz we hit they town of Oruro and apparently the end of paved roads, as we know it. Imagine the next seven hours bumping, bouncing, and jostling along in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. Sort of like driving on rumble strips for an entire night's sleep. Awesome. It was so bumpy that the water bottle I had "securing stored in the overhead compartment" woke me up from a "sleep" by falling and hitting the guy next to me and them my foot. Whoops. Then my scarf fell. Then I "woke up" to find my glasses on the floor and Aimey's Ipod under my seat. How on earth these things managed to jump out of the pockets infront of us, I'll never know. Needless to say, we didn't get a lot of sleep but arrived safely (I'm learning that this is actually far more important than comfort) in Uyuni at about 7:15 am - a measly 11 hours after our journey began.

Uyuni was cold. VERY COLD. So when we fount our tour operator, we prompty began adding layer, after layer, after layer. Until we were moderately cold. We went for a quick breakfast and at 10:40am met the rest of our group, our driver and departed for the tour. Our driver was an old, short, grumpy Bolivian named Roberto / Alberto / Rodrigo (we called him by all three names and still aren't sure of the correct one, but I'll call him Roberto because I'm pretty sure that was it). He loaded the group - Three Columbians, two Canadians, a Spaniard, and a partriage in a pear tree - into the Toyto Landcruiser and we were off!! First stop, train graveyard. Not that exciting. A bunch of old trains. You get the picture. It seemed we were out snapping pictures for no more thant 10 minutes when Roberto was saying "Vamose" (Let's go! sorry for spelling). This became his catch phrase for our tour. We got into our truck and he actually said to the Spaniard (named Jordie) "We don't have time for you to be snapping pictures all day!" Now, Mr. Roberto, isn't that EXACTLY what we have time for? Isn't that exactly what we paid for? (At this point, I was annoyed but the story changes A LOT as the days when on.)

Next stop, Uyuni Salt Flat. This is an INCREDIBLE words-can-not-describe type of place. Thousands of square kilometres of white salt. It was left after a massive lake, which covered most of southern Bolivia, dired up. As we sped through, it felt like we were on a massive frozen lake and I was ready for our truck to start spinning out. As you can tell from the pictures, it's pretty amazing. Nothing but salt for miles. I had an urge to lick the ground, but resisted! Our lunch stop was a place called "Fish Island". It's an island in the middle of the salt flat that has enormous cacti (plural for cactus, right?). They group up to 20 feet tall! Roberto graciously gave us 2 hours on our own so we played with the camera to get some good shots. Next, we sped to our night time destination. We were to stay in a town called San Juan. When we arrived we were delighted to find that we got to stay in a hotel made entirely from salt! This, we found out later, is normally reserved for the "expensive" tours (our's was the budget one) but Roberto's hurrying us along, paid off! We were going to spend a chilly night surrounded by salt! Before the sun went down and the tempurature dipped below zero (it was to be minus five that night) we headed out to a burial ground with skeletons and tombes. Yikes. Dinner was a Bolivian poutine of sorts and we had some wine and played Uno. Aimey and I practiced our Spanish by playing Uno only in Spanish. We are now experts at our numbers and colours! Early to bed under down sleeping bags (I was thankful for mine) and two wool blankets. No heating in the salt hotel meant that we had to take care. It didn't matter. I slept like a baby!!

Up in the morning and we're on our way again! Roberto saying "Vamose! Vamose" and we're trying to hurry! We really are. We're on the road by 8am and heading for hours across barren, rocky, deserts. Nothing for miles except the odd other Landrover crusing along. Roberto looking at the other drivers as a sort of challenge. I thought, for a moment, we were in the Dakar rally. He seemed keen on beating other drivers and I begain to realize that each driver was out for himself. We saw volcanic rocks, lagoons full of flamingos, and more llamas that I ever thought existed. We arrived at our second night's accomodation early (Roberto, again, making sure we weren't taking our time). This hotel was nothing compared the first night. It was dodgy and old and all six of us had to share a room. Before the sun went down, Aimey befriended a little girl named Lydia who was afraid, it seemed, of everyone else. Aimey was out sitting on a rock when Lydia, who is probably about 6, came out to change her drying laudry to move it into the sun. (Pause for a moment to reflect on a 6 year old doing their own laundry....) Aimey began to help her and within minutes, Lydia shyly sat down next to her. They played Paddy Cake, Aimey showed her some post cards and then, always the teacher, taught her to count to ten. (Remember, we are now experts because of our Uno game).

In our new abode, there was, again, no heat and we were soon to realize that staying warm was not an option. I played a crazy card game with some South Americans, met a Canadian from Toronto who has to cook her own food because she has a Koser diet, stayed by the little furnace that one of the owners started for us, and have never been to cold in all my life! Because Aimey had given her Nalgene bottle to our Inca Trail guide as a thank you, we had to share mine filled with hot water. We passed to each other until the shock of a frozen sleeping back was gone. I slept somewhat okay - I was warm enough in the end - but the 5am wake up call by Roberto came to early. "Vamose! Vamose!"

This day, however, I was going to warm up. We were going to visit a thermal pool. So, at 5am, with the tempurature hovering around 15 below zero outside, I put on my swimsuit under all my clothes under my sleeping bag. This was the only way to not freeze. We head out, under amazing starry skies, and begin another bumpy ride in southern Bolivia. First, as the sun was rising, to see 20 or so geyers and steam springs. Then a 30 minute ride to the hot pools. Roberto said "No one gets breakfast, unless you go in!" (I think this was when I started warming - no pun intended - to the old fart). We arrived and most people stood around staring at the water in their toques and mitts saying "I'm not going in there!!" but a few brave souls - including your's truly - stripped down to our swimsuits and got in. I admit, I needed some coaxing, but it was worth it! Finally, I could feel my toes! In the pool, then for breakfast and then to our last stop. The "green" lagoon - which wasn't green at all. After the lagoon, the Spaniard left us to go to Chile and Roberto, it seemed, changed personality. He was smiling, put on music, and gave us all lollipops (remind us that if we broke our teeth, it wasn't his fault.) I wonder if he just didn't like our Spaniard - who was always late and for whom we were always waiting. Regardless, we settled in for an 8 hour journey on dirt, gravel, bumpy roads back to Uyuni.

The journey was made shorter by Roberto who took a short cut, through a field of nothingness (except llamas). He cut our trip down by an hour, compared to the other guides. Although he did this by racing along, passing - very dangerously - other vehicles, not stopping to help the 6 or so trucks we saw broken down (probably 1 in 2 vehicles have something go wrong), nearly hitting a llama, driving through rivers and playing chicken with another driver! He's been doing this for 25 years and it showed. Everytime there was a 4 by 4 short cut through a field he took it. But we arrived in Uyuni safely, if not a bit shaken up, grabbed a pizza dinner and caught the bus back to La Paz. Another night of rumble strip sleeping. We were smart this time and took Gravol. I really only woke up once, when our driver turned on the lights and told us there had been an accident, we needed to get out....oh...no....never mind, go back to sleep. We arrived in La Paz tired, smelly but happy that we had yet another great adventure.

Tomorrow we head back to Peru. I wonder what that will bring.....