Salt flats, Coldsville, Bolivia.

In Bolivia we learned that Bolivians will tell you the most ridiculous lies in order to get you to buy their product.

We bought a 4 day expedition across the Salt Plains of Bolivia from 'Torres'. They said we would have an English guide, and 2 litres of water each per day. Bastards. When we got into our jeep on the morning we left, the English tour guide was outside the jeep and he said 'No room for me, sorry!' and he waved us off with a driver and cook who had not an ounce of English. Also the people who were on the tour with us were told that Elaine and I had superb English and Spanish and would be able to translate everything for them. Moral of the story, never trust anyone. We never knew what the driver was telling us so we always had to get 1 of the Germans to translate. Our little Spanish phrase book wasn't too helpful.

It was a good ould adventure though. It was cold and arduous. On the first day we stopped for lunch in a plain that was full of llama crap and llamas. We were given a peculiar lunch that day. Cold llama meat, a boiled egg, and some bean type stuff. Oh and Fanta. It was funny to eat llama meat while looking at llamas.

There was the driver, the cook (a round little woman who laughed at EVERYTHING), and three Germans; Sabastian, Philip and Meischa. They were grand. They spoke English sometimes and when they did they were sound. They could translate Rammstein lyrics for me.

All 3 nights of the trip were freezing. The drinking water froze in the bottles at night and in the morning. Temperatures went as low as -20oC and it made sleep alot harder. We slept on concrete/salt beds that had a fairly harmless mattress over them. Elaine and I had been forewarned about how cold it would be at night when we tried to sleep so we had bought 3 blankets for about 5 euro. Deal. We also had a hot water bottle. We know what -30 is like from living in Toronto so we knew -20 is not a laughing matter!

We reached altitudes of up to 5000 metres. If I remember correctly, it is 13 miles from sea level to the beginning of the ozone layer. Therefore on this trip we were one quarter of the way to the exit towards outer space. The air was awfully thin and our hearts pounded rapidly any time we did anything even as strenuous as climbing a staircase. Everyone felt it, it made one or two people a bit panicky at night because they would wake up feeling like they were suffocating.

At night we could see the Milky Way more vividly than ever before, due to the lack of lights pollution from nearby towns or cities, and also because we were closer to space. The blue streak across the sky was a brilliant sight. It was a pity it was much too cold to watch it for more than five minutes. And the camera could not take a good photo either.

I think we are a bit used to looking at tonnes of mountains from being on the Rocky mountains road trip, so the mountains on this excursion didn´t dazzle us that much. Spoiled brats we are. What was great though was that we saw loads of different coloured lagoons. Red, green, brown, purple. It was like the hue of the whole landscape had been adjusted. They were created from all the volcanic eruptions that had happened between the last few decades and the last few millenia. There were natural hot springs we could bathe in and natural craters bursting with steam. It felt like we were on Mars sometimes. The gases in places was very toxic so we were warned about that too.

We drove past an active volcano aswell. Sher not a bother to us!

At night I tried a few times to play the guitar at the drivers request. At least I think that was what he was asking for! But it's very hard to play the guitar with mittens on or when you cannot feel your fingers. Poor cold neglected guitar.