A quick hop down to Santiago and back (a meagre 2500km away)

Everything was going so smoothly...Mike was in La Paz writing his last blog entry, about to drop off his laundry and book a nice hotel for Emma's arrival, when things went a little awry. He spoke to Emma on the phone at 3pm British time (5 hours before her flight from Heathrow) to sort out final plans, when she dropped the bombshell that American Airlines weren't going to let her fly into La Paz. This was because the Bolivian miners were striking in the city and fuel supplies to the airport were cut short. Fortunately, she managed to negotiate flying to the same continent, but the best AA could offer was Santiago, a cool 2500km away. Mike had to make it down to Santiago within 48 hours. To accomplish this formidable feat, he had a rickety Bolivian bus not unlike one of these:



whereas she had one of these:



The race was on! When it became apparent Mike wasn't going to make it to Santiago before Emma, he got off the bus at Arica in the far north of Chile, and hopped on a cheeky plane the next morning to cover the final 1500km, thereby thrashing her to the finish line.

We had a lovely couple of days in Santiago, spoiling ourselves by staying in a surprisingly cheap 5 star hotel (shoestringers to the end), before heading back up to Bolivia. The question was, what means of transport should we use to travel back up to the border? We went to the bus station and were faced with having to wait over a day until the next bus, and then to spend about 24 hours on the bus itself. Hmmm, we thought. How about we get on a quick bus to the airport and see if there are any more cheeky flights? We got to the airport one hour before a flight, promptly bought the ticket, ate some tasty donuts and got on board. Once in northern Chile we made our way to the border town of San Pedro de Atacama, where we hoped to get public transport over into Bolivia. However, we found out that the only way to travel in this part of South America is by 4WD tour (since the whole area is one roadless barren wilderness). We booked ourselves onto a tour and got going the next morning.

It was rather fortunate to be crossing the border with a group as there wasn´t even a proper road there. Once in Bolivia, we got comfy in the back of a Jeep and rocked down the bumpy roads. The landscape was absolutely stunning with an incredible mix of snow-capped mountains and brightly coloured lakes.









On the second night of the tour we stayed in the Casa de Sal, a hotel built almost entirely from salt, brilliant.



The other highlight of the trip was the Salar de Uyuni which covers 12000 square kilometres, the largest salt flat in the world. When covered in water, the salt flat acted as a mirror, giving the illusion that we were in the clouds. Rather controversially, there are islands in the middle of the salt that are home to many many big cacti.











On arrival in Uyuni the driver announced that we were to visit the town´s greatest attraction, a train museum. We rolled our eyes a little but were thrilled to find that we were actually allowed to climb on the rusting old trains. It´s great to be away from England´s health and safety crikiness!