special. It was here he also explained about the weird compass thing which I mentioned earlier and how even he still sometimes has difficulty finding his way across the flats. He said that in the rainy season when the whole salt flat is filled with a thin layer of water, it becomes like a mirror and is extremely difficult to navigate. Not only do you get misjudgements from the landmarks, you also can’t see the holes and he knows of many people who have got stuck in one of these holes. He also that it was a beautiful sight to see and if we were lucky there may be an area still covered in water as it had rained pretty recently. We were also told that the salt flats are increasing each year, again I can’t remember by how much, but I’ll endeavour to find out when we finally get back to England.

Once again, we all climbed aboard and headed off once more. The next stop was the site of the

original Salt hotel. Thankfully the hotel has been closed down due to environmental reasons, and I think it’s great to hear that countries such as Bolivia are more concerned with the environment than they are with making a fast buck! In fact Bolivia couldn’t rip you off if it tried, everything is cheap and this tour cost $110 each plus $25 for the (other) Salt hotel per person, and that is for everything. Transport, accommodation, food and snacks and water. The only other expenses are national parks fees which are next to nothing, gringo toilets and beer or wine if you wished to indulge! So that’s £67.50 for all of that and some of the maddest scenery in the world!

The old Salt hotel was pretty similar to the one we stayed in. It had to be relocated due to the water damage being done to the salt. The pollution was causing the salt to deteriorate and become off colour and was detrimental to