Hi, yes we are still alive......... and yes, we know it´s been a while.......... but it´s been an adventure and a half since we set off from La Serena.

We managed to get onto the Observatory tour at La Serena, on a very cold, crisp night where the stars were out in full force and with great visibility (apart from some light pollution from a nearby town, which was a bit surprising). Our guide got us to look through a telescope several times at different parts of the milky way, open and closed clusters (groups of millions of stars that look like nothing much to the naked eye), we also saw Jupiter through a more powerful telescope, and were able to see some of the lines across it and also 4 of its many moons, which was pretty impressive. We then had a powerpoint presentation, which put all of it into perspective in terms of galaxies, the vastness of space, Milky Ways, Mars Bars...... Snickers..... Seriously though, it was a very informative evening and we´re glad we finally got to go on a tour.

The next day was spent trying to find more warm clothes (woolly tights etc, yum yum) for our trip into Bolivia which we were assured was going to be incredibly cold........ and they weren´t wrong!!Read on for more details....

So, after LS we had our lovely 17 hour overnight bus journey to San Pedro de Atacamba, right on the Chile/Bolivia border. SP was a little ¨Indian¨ town and was much more what we were expecting from a S Am town. The main street was just a dirt road, and very sleepy. However, having said that some of us got together and hired mountain bikes and sandboarding equipment to go off into the sanddunes to play! This was incredibly good fun and we even managed to get down the dunes upright (eventually!). One of the local dogs ran with us the entire 6km cycle ride, stayed with us whilst we played on the dunes, then ran back with us all the way to town. He wasn´t much of a tour guide though as we all got lost on the way there and ended up with an extra 30 min off-road cycle in the midday sun. Madness, but fantastic fun. We were both sad not to go skiing this year, so sandboarding has made up for it a bit - it´s a hard life, eh!?

Later that day we hiked up a major sand dune to watch the sunset over the mountains, then all ran down the other side as darkness fell. Considering we´d reached at least 2,500 meters staying at San Pedro, this was all probably a bit daft for our first day at major altitude, but it was then or never.

From SP the fun really began. We all piled into a mini bus which took us to the Chilean border, but then bizzarly we then travelled another hour and a half up hill in the mini bus before we got to the Bolivian border. It was one of those classical moments when we were in the middle of nowhere, no mans land, and on the radio came James Blunt´s song.....¨gotta ask yourself the question, where are you now¨!! How apt.

The Border post was a ramshackle hut, unlike anything any of us had ever seen. Nobody checked any bags, we could have taken rocket launchers through and they´d never have known!! Anyway, it was there that we said goodbye to the mini bus (and civilisation) and piled into our 4 wheel drive jeeps for the journeys ahead.

We continued to climb throughout that day, all keenly aware that the onslaught of some form of altitude sickness was sure to be lurking just around the corner. We saw several different lagoons: blanco (white), verde (green) and Colorado (red), as well as active volcanoes, weird landscapes, geysers and bubbling mud, and where we stopped for lunch there was a hot pool for us to dip our feet and legs in (and one brave/mad soul Rachel actually went for a swim!). Lunch was served at a mere 5,300 meters above sea level, and boy did we know it! Linda was incredibly headachy (and already suffering a bad head cold since Santiago) and Pen was sick and breathless, but she´ll delight you with more of the gory details in a separate entry (bet you can´t wait!!).

Anyway, we eventually arrived, sick as dogs, at our 5 star hotel for the night. There were 2 communal non-flushing toilets, no running water, no heating and the generator was turned off at 9pm prompt.... the joys of the altoplano.....well, it literally was in the middle of nowhere!

Most of us were still feeling the effects the next morning as we set off on the next leg of our trek. It had snowed quite a lot overnight, so was incredibly cold and required all our layers, including woolly tights!!). However, as the morning progressed it then got really hot and sunny - you can never second guess the weather, it´s so extreme and changeable. We saw lots of weird rockforms this day, and a vast amount of pink flamingoes, llamas, vercunas and donkeys. We also suffered incredibly bumpy roads, except they´re not really roads at all, just tracks made by the jeeps going both ways over the planes. Our drivers know the planes like the backs of their hands, which is just as well coz there are no road signs.....well, no roads actually!

That night we stayed at a much better hostel at the beginning of the salt flats. We all enjoyed our dinner thanks to feeling much better, but it was still 9pm lights off as the generator went to bed.

We were all looking forward to the next day (Saturday) when we were going to travel over the salt flats. The day lived up to its expectation, as we travelled for mile upon mile of compacted salt that takes on the look of vast honeycombs. It´s the largest saltlake in the world, and is amazing to think that a couple of meters beneath is just water! We took some very weird and wonderful photos because of the perspective created by it being so flat, vast and white. Watch out for photos on flickr - that´s our mission for tomorrow, honest!

We also stopped at a place called Cactus Island, literally right in the middle of these vast flats, where there are countless numbers of Cactus (funnily enough) and a walk to the top gave an amazing 360 degree panoramic view. It was incredible to see discreetly placed solar panels and a sattelite dish in the middle of this island 3,600 meters above sea level in the middle of absolutely nowhere.......WOW!

Our day included a tour of a salt processing plant, having crossed by the salt mining area, where we saw children filling and sealing 500gm bags of refined salt using a naked flame..... a very challenging and difficult process to witness, but Bolivia is most certainly way behind in terms of what we´re used to in the ¨developed¨world.

That night we reached the edge of the salt flats, and thus ended this leg of the adventure. However, given that we had a popped tyre and ran out of fuel on the salt flats it was amazing that we got there at all!! The drivers we had were fantastic and were top rate mechanics, constructing an emergency fuel tank inside the engine using a plastic 1 litre coke bottle and a piece of string. Marcello was our driver, and was totally blown away when we used an Ipod and Itrip to play the Beatles and other music through his radio....... he just couldn´t work out how we did it! Two worlds definitely collided that day.

We stayed at a really lovely hotel that night, run by a guy from the US who made the most incredible pizza - we had spicy llama flavour, which was actually really tasty. Next day we piled onto a local bus for what felt like a very long 6 hour journey from Uyuni to Potosi. It was a bone shaker ride all the way, and the loo stop was a very interesting experience involving a couple of bushes and not a lot else. Locals are very happy just to squat by the side of the road in full view, but we westerners couldn´t quite bring ourselves to ¨go native¨.

Potosi used to be a very rich city due to silver mining but now all the reserves have been bled away leaving only tin, making it a very poor and depressed area. We could have gone on a mine tour but all decided to boycott it because of unsafe practices and appauling worker conditions.

We´re now in Sucre, a lovely white city where we´ll stay for a couple of days, get washing done, see the sights etc.... more to come hopefully before wemove on to La Paz on Wednesday night.

Well, if you´re still awake at least you´re now up to date. That´s all for today, but hopefully more to follow tomorrow.

Bye for now. Love from Penny & Linda :-)