27th September 2006 - Yesterday morning I had freshly baked pancakes on a Bolivian salt flat

So, yeah-We´re in Bolivia.
This was quite unexpected.

After a delicious BBQ to celebrate 18th September (chilean independence) we headed further north the next day and stopped for lunch at a restaurant that was literally in the middle of nowhere. We went by a couple of ghost towns as they used to be nitrate mines, but now are deserted. Our guide showed us a cemetery and kindly showed us a grave where you could see some bones, another of a baby which had practically been mummifed by the heat. The place had such a strange atmosphere, very creepy. Also saw "The Hand of the Desert" which is a massive sculpture of a hand sticking out of the sand, quite randomly.

Most of the stops on our tour where quite strange, but interesting none the less. We stopped at train cemetery and had fun climbing on top of carriages and around engines, got some fun photos as well.The days are having a tendency to blurge into one and that´s the only day that I have written in the diary.So since then, in Chile, we saw:

- Peine, a small oasis in the middle of the desert

- Valley de la Luna, a landscape that looks like it´s out of space.

- Clambered around some salt caves
- Salt plains that go on for miles

- Flamingoe reservation for a beautiful sunset and more salt plains!
- San Pedro de Atacama - a very "gringo" orientated town with a fair bit of character.

So, after that we were going to head up North to Chile, but the rest of the group who we´d befriended were heading onto Bolivia, so late the night before we would leave we decieded to join them.

A bloody brilliant idea!

We saw so much.Within an hour of entering Bolivia ( in a 4WD) we saw a white lake, then a green lake, then a red lake.There are so many flamingoes, they´re just like pigeons. I probably have seen more flamingoes than any other bird in my life. They´re everywhere, and so pink! We´ve walked on dried lava, seen smoke coming out of a volcanoes, bathed in a hot spring (temp 36) where the air temp was around 5, slept in a salt hotel, been on a island covered in 1203 year old cacti in the middle of salt lake, covered our noses and pretended to be dinosaurs next to geysers and had to change a flat tyre in the middle of desert as the sunset.

We are currently in a town called Uyuni and tonight we are getting the train north, then a bus to La Paz before heading further north, via Lake Titicaca and Isla del Sol, to arrive in Peru so we can do the Inca Trek on 6th October.

Life is pretty magical and we are enjoying each moment together. We´ve managed not to kill each other. Yet.