(...Contiuned)

So after a quick four day detour into Chile we entered Bolivia, the most exciting country yet. Hurrah! We started with a two day jeep trip across the Bolivian altiplano, which consisted of some of the most amazing scenery ever, again - a surreal colourful Dali-esqe landscape (and fourth coolest moment of expedition). Landscape you couldn't possibly imagine until you've seen it - brown and orange expanses, snow-capped marbled red mountains, yellow and green spiky tufts of grass, a bright blue sky, white salt deposits, sparkling rivers and pyschadelic lakes - one almost green and the other bright red, with pink flamingos in the middle. Which was insane. (Interesting fact about pink flamingos is that if it wasn't for their diet they'd be white, and in zoos they have to feed them tomato soup to keep them that way.)

We slept at an altitude of 4300m (the highest point on the altiplano was 4900m) and definitely felt it. It's a bugger to sleep at altitude. You also feel like your head's constricted half the time and it's impossible to walk up the smallest incline without feeling completely out of breath by the top of it.

On the third day we took the jeeps out from Uyuni across the largest salt flats in the world, a huge 12,000 sq km glittering white expanse with distant mountains in the background. More of the most amazing, surreal scenery ever, again. We stopped for lunch at a random rocky island right in the middle of the salt flats, covered in cacti and fossilised coral, sat down for snacks in the salt hotel and encountered a giant salt llama (fantastic). On the way back to Uyuni we visited a train cemetary and had a good time clambering over all the rusty trains. And then after drinking went out and had llama steak for dinner (pretty damn good, although to be honest as I was slighty pissed it tasted just the same as any other steak), after which I sang Quechan songs at the rest of my table, who were all sober (whoops), and then spent the rest of the evening having drunken deep and meaningfuls with Emma, inbetween hugging a lot and saying we loved each other.

(To be continued...)