Bolivia run down

We had to pay off the bolivian guards at the border because they wouldn't let us go through because our yellow fever immunization had not kicked in. luckily it only cost us $3 each. We got to La Paz on December 24th. As we were leaving the city, we got into a major traffic jam. Imagine cars taking hostage of all lanes, going in the wrong direction and cars being stuck in intersections for more than 5 minutes.

The bus trip took 12 hours. In the middle of the night, I looked out the window because I wanted to know why the bus trip was so bumpy. When I looked out, it was just all these dips in the "road". It's too much to call it a dirt road. It's like a beach where 200 people decided to dig random 1-2 feet pits and 1-2 feet high mounds. I wasn't sure how the bus driver knew which direction to drive.

We arrived in Uyuni which was basically a middle of no where town. We took signed up for a 3 day tour that would take us around the salt flats and drop us off at the chilean border. We got into an old 4x4 which thankfully did not breakdown (I read a lot about how important it was to get a car that wouldn't break down because we are going in the middle of the bolivian desert and people have waited for 8 hours before for a replacement car when they were stranded in the desert). The salt flats looked amazing. Everything is white. With the water, you've got a mirror effect. Once again, we didn't follow any paved roads. Just a dirt road with hand sized rocks. We encountered a bad rain storm (see the videos below) which made for an entertaining hour of listening to a fellow tourist sing her german songs to past the time.

We stayed overnight in a salt hostel. everything as made of salt except for the toilet and the bathroom sink.

The next day, we saw really weird landscapes like weird mountains, rock formations, lakes with flamingos. Now I know why they call the scenery Dali-esque. We saw guards getting paid off in lollipops. I thought that was pretty funny. We also found out that our driver earns about$145/month for driving around tourists 6 days a week. Cost of living is pretty low outthere. The sun was pretty intense. I mean, eventhough it was cold outside, our lips got burntas did our noses and the top of Dennis' head. That night, we stayed at an adobe mud hut where our kitchen looked like a meth lab. This place was in the middle of no where. I've never felt so far from civilization before. You know what that means? An awesome night time sky. No cities close by, even our place didn't have much light. I got a good view of the milky way. I couldn't fall asleep because hte sheets smelled like vomit and the altitude sickness was affecting my sleep. It also didn't help that someone found hairs on their bed sheets. Our sleeping bags had white stains. I prayed that I wouldn't contract lice. God answered my prayers in a good way and my head was not itchy the next morning.

We woke up at 4:30 am to see the geysers and then we hit up a hot spring. The weirdest thing is stripping down to our bathing suits at 6 am at 5 C, to get into a hot spring, with flamingoes about 30 ft away. I loved it. I think it was especially good since since we haven't had a shower since we were in Peru 3 days ago.

We finished off by going to the green lake and then we got dropped off at the border. We didn't have to pay off any border guards here. I also threw out my wasabi peas because I wasn't allowed to bring in dried food. the customs card said we couldn't bring in any semen. I started laughing. No kidding.