So why, I hear you ask, did you put James through that horrific experience of the night bus to Calama / en route to San Pedro de Atacama?

Well…. I was easing him in gently.

San Pedro is the nicer of the two places where one can arrange a 3 day jeep tour taking in the sights of deepest darkest southwest Bolivia, including the amazing Salar de Uyuni (the other place being Uyuni, which is where we are now. Even a rather nice chocolate tart in a relatively civilized bar have in no way changed my opinion that Uyuni is, in simple essence of the fact, a complete hole). The Salar de Uyuni had been one of the top items on James’ wish list when we first started planning the trip, so it was a dead cert for our time in South America. Unfortunately, the 3 day jeep tour, whilst being absolutely, wildly spectacular, I remembered from last time as being one of the most fundamentally basic of all my experiences within the continent (and I wasn’t exactly living the high life last time I went round this neck of the woods either). Whilst the scenery had faded for me over the years, the biting cold, the altitude sickness (4,900 metres at the journey’s highest point), the jowl shaking ride and the existence of the one singular town toilet in one of the little communities we stayed at are seemingly indelibly etched in the old memory banks. Bolivia being a pretty hardened opponent to progress in any fashion, I feared little would have changed.

How wrong I was. BOTH of the communities we visited had more than one toilet. Inside no less. Luxury.

It remains, however, a long and fairly arduous journey, made more so in our case by the fact that our carefully selected tour operator didn’t have enough people and therefore ditched us (without actually telling us so) on another, slightly less carefully selected tour group. Six of us in a jeep built for five. Rice for lunch when others got a gourmet feast. A hostel run by the least friendly, and largest Bolivian lady I have EVER seen though I still don’t know how she managed that living in the middle of the DESERT (when she bent over, owing to the Bolivian custom of wearing knee length gathered skirts and short socks, you could apparently see her bum. I missed this highlight regrettably). Just one bolt rather than the required four holding the steering rack in place…. interesting on a bumpy journey that last one. Obviously no showers and with the bitter, bitter cold (apparently we hit about -25 C), absolutely no desire to take off any clothes either to sleep or for basic hygiene purposes.

In other words, a proper ADVENTURE. It was fantastic!! (I say from the warmth of aforementioned civilized bar, post short session to chip off the welded on clothing of the last few days, shower and re-boot own personality).

The scenery is incredible. Unfortunately, whilst the Laguna Blanca was definitely white, it was due to ice rather than any natural colouring, but all the other sights along the way behaved admirably. The Laguna Verde shone bright green, the Laguna Colorada sat happily red in the sunshine, with a few strategically placed flamingoes to add ornamentation. The hot springs were hot, the geysers satisfyingly hissy and gushy. We stopped at another lake and saw hundreds of James flamingoes (they really are called this, which made James very happy), although this was marred a little by the knowledge that these birds are the late babies, unable to migrate with the rest of the flock and mostly doomed to perish by winters’ end. Still, jolly pretty they were.

The accommodation wasn’t even that bad. First night with dragon lady was pretty basic and eye wateringly cold, but once James and I had put into place our patented hot water bottle technology (an empty plastic bottle filled with water sneakily begged from the kitchen for tea), we achieved sleep beneath our covering of a sleeping bag and 5 thick woolen blankets. The next night we stayed at one of the twenty or thirty Hostales de Sal (Salt Hostels) that have sprung up near the Salar – all of which are built almost entirely of blocks of salt hewn from the Salar and are as a result pretty spectacular. The downside was that, waking last night from a nightmare of being trapped in some awful pitch black rocky place, I found myself… trapped in some awful pitch black rocky place. Not very intrepid I know, but I spent the rest of the night with the head torch on!!

This morning we made it to the Salar (or salt flats) itself, arriving at the Isla de Incahuasi for sunrise. Spectacular, if so cold that my toes may never forgive me. After a hearty breakfast (well, some stale bread rolls – but why ruin a good story?) we continued to drive over the flats, a mesmerizing experience as the salt sparkles in the sunshine. A few hundred compulsory perspective shots later, we were on our way back to civilization. Just not sure why we ended up in Uyuni instead.