Before starting the events of the last three days, it’s worthwhile knowing just how much the South American Struggler despises tours of any kind. Yet here he’s gone and booked his second tour – the reason why is because it just seems a tonne easier to see everything. It also means I get to meet people more weird than myself.

I came to Bolivia with the intention of heading to Uyuni to check out the salt flats and to get a few cheeky photos. All I wanted was half an hour on the salt flats to get my pictures and that’s it however after learning the overnight local bus trip down would take fourteen and a half hours and wouldn’t stop for toilet breaks (was not a toilet on the bus either) I found myself sitting next to the most horribly smelling big built German before starting a three day tour. The German kept blowing stinky breaths of air with his lips like a horse does right after it neighs. It was so rank. The others on the bus, the locals, seemed to have a demeanor that if I were to take my shoes off or not hold onto my bag at the end of my feet, both my shoes and bag would be gone before I knew it.
On the trip down, road signs kept saying ‘desvio’ followed by ‘detour’. Considering I was on de tour, I figured we must have been going the right way.

Uyuni was a pile of junk, much like the rest of the towns and places we stayed as I very quickly discovered. On the second night the mould on the torn apart wall and the palm tree leafed roof made me appreciate the luxury of a shanty town.

The first nights accommodation sounded really good; a salt hotel. In my mind, a two or three story building made completely of salt. Upon arrival the majority of the building was made of salt and I realised how inconvenient it must be to live in a salt building with salt floors. How do you vacuum? What if somebody spills a glass of water? What happens when it teams down with rain? These are the sorts of issues that have to be dealt with when using perishable materials to build. Obviously the tale of the Three Little Pigs didn’t make it over to Bolivia.

As this three day tour began, I gained very valuable insight that I was neglected the information that the bloke driving the salty busted up Toyota Land Cruiser that everyone kept calling a jeep for some reason, only spoke Spanish. Not that it was fantastic news but what made the situation so much greater for The Struggler was that the others in my tour group were a Bolivian family who didn’t know English. What an opportunity to learn Spanish ! I now know that ‘freeo’ means cold and ‘caliante’ means hot. I remember this because on the third morning at 5100m above sea level it was minus five degrees and my brain’s concept of “it’s South America, it’s summer, it’ll be boiling” was ridiculous. Deadset could not Bolivia my luck but who else would it happen to.

Funnily enough the salt flats didn’t impress me a whole bunch and I can’t even describe my disappointment that we didn’t get a chance to visit the pepper flats. What I enjoyed most about this tour was the last day when we had a geez at the geyser’s and had a dip in a natural hot spring. It’s amazing how much a bit of gas shooting in the air from the ground made Earth look like another planet and how a little bit of hot water tickled my fancy. I also saw a flamingo and was disappointed that the image painted in my head in kindergarten of them being really really pink was completely different to their actual pale pink complexion.

There’s not much else to say because not much else happened. The photographs tell the story the best.