arth!!

On the way we stopped and helped out another driver who had a flat tyre and was struggling. He was very young and obviously quite new to the job, so Hualdo, who’d been doing this as long as he could remember, stopped and gave a hand. It’s great to see this kind of co-operation between drivers from rival companies - anywhere else (with the exception of Tibet) and they’d have just raced past. I guess that amongst the booking agents in the towns it’s like that but out here in this inhospitable place then everyone needs all the help they can get!!

Our lunch spot this day was at another mineral deposited lake filled with flamingos. We were getting quite used to the company of these amazing pink birds by now. This place also followed the trend of toilets improving as we went on, this one was apparently totally eco friendly and tended

to with loving care by some little Bolivian guy who was extremely proud of them and was very happy, even eager, to give us all an explanation of how they worked!! He was particularly taken with Fiona, I believe she got an offer of being taken out for lunch!! Quite where he had in mind around here was of course a mystery!! We sat around for a while and then unfortunately as I got up it quickly became apparent that I had been sitting on a sharp piece of bark on the log we’d perched on, as I tore the backside out of both my trousers and my undies!! Modesty was out of the window for the remainder of the trip then as they were the only pair of trousers I had!!

The rest of the day was another long drive through the desert towards the great Salar de Uyuni. We stopped to have a look at Volcan Ollague - an active volcano complete with smoke coming out of the top!! The final stop to stretch our legs