Bolivia

Where should i start, it had to come, one way or the other, the time to say good bye to organised travel, brilliant food, 1st class buses and the time to see different people concerning their looks, go back to basic food and a little bit of chaos where you queue in front of the only ATM in town at 2.30 pm and you are told every hour to come back and you start a party at 5pm when you manage to get money as nobody is interested in libras or as we call them english pounds.

BUT, i am jumping again. We made it to Bolivia, got to the border crossing at 6am and head to Tupiza, one of the gateways to the immense, amazing, stunning Uyuni Salt Lakes. The flats are the biggest in the world with 12,000 m2 and attract hordes of backpackers, mainly Israeli - not that we mind.

Tupzia is the place to make friends either 2 or 4 to be able to go on the 4 day Jeep Tour through the amazing Bolivian altoplano basically highlands. This incorporates being stuck for most of the 4 days in the Jeep, but being rewarded by ¨some of SA most stunning landscape¨. And it is true. Once we hooked up with our 2 aussie mates from Sydney, Claire and Mariana, we get to see deserted villages as there is no more silver, colored lagoons, llamas, flamingoes, volcanoes, desert and a lot of salt, once we make it to the salar on day 4. Other highlights include the ´Hotel de Sal´ we stayed in, the other nights we stay in very basic refugios which have electricity for 3 hours a day, no hot showers - well we booked an adventure trip and thats what we got.

In places, we make it up to 5000m above sea level and some of us need to pop one or two pills not to go mad and avoid more altitude sickness. Apparently 1 in 2 or 50% get sick, this time it is not me. Thank God !

After day 4 we get to Uyuni, the other gateway to do the salar. After freezing for several days, despite the blue sky you can see on the picis, next stop is La Paz, still on 4000m, but we might try to get flights up north....heading for hot beaches or so, or not !!!