Ola!

Well, it´s been a long long time eh? Sorry, but I´ve been travelling so fast that I haven´t had time to write! So here´s a bit of a run down of what´s been happening.....

I had a great time in Santiago, hooking up with my good friend Paula. I also met her cousins, and spent my last day with her cousin Benjamin doing touristy stuff before heading off for my bus to San Pedro de Atacama. The bus journey was pretty harsh, partly because i´d only just recovered from my previous 36 hour journey from argentina, but also because the kid sat behind me felt obliged to kick me in the back and poke my head repeatedly with his sticky fingers. Anyway, 24 hours later I arrived in San Pedro and went away with the first lady who offered me accomodation when I got off the bus. It turned out to be a really nice little family run hostel, and I settled myself in. After washing off the accumulated grime of a 24 hour journey, I headed off into town to book my trip to Bolivia and see what I could do in san pedro. I ended up signing myself up for a trip to El Tatio geysers which left at 3am the following morning!! Why??! So I went to bed as early as possible and woke at 3 feeling like I hadn´t slept in days. After waiting outside and staring at the stars for 20 mins, my bus finally arrived, and the "english speaking" guide, who didn´t speak any english, showed me where to squeeze myself into the back of the van.

As we drove up towards the ridculously high geysers, the road became increasingly bad, and after a while it became so bumpy that I actually had the hold my bollocks to prevent the from smacking painfully into the seat every couple of seconds! We reached El Tatio just before the sun came up, and man was it cold!!! We were at about 4800 metres or so, and the air was like ice. Then the sun came up and revealed a landscape that was something like a cross between a sci-fi planet-scape and and post battle scene from a war movie. Plumes of steam billowed from craters in the ground, which on closer inspection revealed themselves to be filled with boiling water which was bubbling and hissing furiously. Later we went for a dip in a thermal pool, which was far from comfortable. There were two streams of water leading into the pool, one boiling hot, the other freezing cold. The idea was that these would mix and make nice hot water, but in reality there were so many people squashed into he warm end of the pool that they created a human wall that prevented the water from mixing, meaning that some people had scalding water burning their backs while the rest of us froze! Up until this point I hadn´t really felt the effects of altitude, but then I tried to do up my shoelaces and when I stood up again I thought I was going to pass out and I was breathing like I´d just run a marathon!

After this we went to a small Llama farming village, and all got the chance to take photos of llamas. After excitedly taking a few photos of these beautiful creatures i suddenly had a vision of japanese tourists taking photos of cows in england and realised how stupid i must look.

The next morning i left at 8am on my 3 day trip thru the Bolivian Altiplano to Uyuni in Bolivia. I was on a bus full of gringos, which was quite strange as i hadn´t really spoken to any gringos for quite a while. First we cleared the chilean customs, which were just outside san pedro, then we drove for an hour through the desert, gradually climbing all the way. Eventually we reached a turning onto a small dirt track. The guide pointed to the paved road that continued off into the distance: "That way Argentina" he said. Then he pointed off down the dirt track we had just turned onto. "This way Bolivia" he said. About 100 metres later we came to a small ramshackle little stone building with the rusting reamains of a rainbow coloured bus chassis sitting out front. This turned out to be the Bolivian Immigration post. It was surrounded by huge volcanoes and desert landscape, and was the only building in sight. We got our stamps and continued on to the laguna Blanca, where we stopped for breakfast. By now we were all starting to feel the altitude. Trying to move at anything faster than a slow walk would result in a fit of heavy breathing and a splitting headache.

I ended up in a 4x4 with two kiwi couples who turned out to be really lovely. I was the only one who spoke spanish and the guide, Teo, didn´t speak any english, so I became the official interpreter. I can´t really describe the trip much as it was all basically just absolutely stunning lanscapes, lakes, deserts, volcanoes, all at the ridiculous altitude of around 4500 metres. Sleeping at this altitude proved more or less impossible, because it was so hard to breathe slowly and the air dried out your mouth and nose, which was bleeding, and caused you to have crazy dreams. I dreamed I was thrown in a spanish jail for smoking weed and had to constantly defend myself against the other psycho inmates who kept trying to kill me and steal my stuff. All in all not a very restful night.

Eventually, today, we arrived at the Salar De Uyuni, the largest salt lake in the world. 2000 square km´s of salt, 10 metres deep, blindingly white, with a 1 inch layer of water covering most of it, turning it into an enormous mirror. The weather was perfect; blue skys with little fluffy clouds. The photos will tell the rest.

So now i´m in Uyuni. It feels so great being in bolivia!!! I can´t belive I´m going home in less than two weeks! I finally feel like i´m travelling again! For some reason Oz, NZ, Chile, Argentina, and Southern brasil just didn´t feel like travelling to me, as they are all basically european in culture. But this! This is nothing like europe (apart from all the european tourists of course...) The women here look like they´ve been messing about in the dressing up box. And they all have cool hats. In fact everyone has a cool hat. Hats are defintely the in thing here. Hats and wrinkly faces. And HUGE butts. Huge butts are defintely the desirable figure for women, as no woman could achive quite such a butt without considerable effort. Especially when they also have breasts to match. And I dont mean saggy flabby butt/boob like westerners have. These look rock hard. I wouldn´t be surprised if you could crack a coconut on some of the buttocks I´ve seen today.

Anyway, I think that´s more than enough for one day. I´ll just finish by saying I DON´T WANNA GO HOME!!!! I wanna see my family and everything, but other than that.... it´s february, it´s england, more precisely it´s hereford, and well, let´s face it, it´s a bit shit. But no, i will not be a pessemist, i will go home, record a smash hit album, take it down my local pub, and try to get a gig playing to all the local drunks on a tuesday night or something.....

wish me luck...