Salt flats tour - day1

One of the guides feeding the lamas

We got up and took our last showers before having to go 3 days without taking one. We got into our jeep along with our 2 travelling companions Rachel and Dan who are barristers that live in Manchester. Each jeep also has a cook and a tour guide/ driver – ours were called Nico and Slyvia, a little typical Bolvian women who tended to burst out in laughter randomly. Neither Nico nor Sylvia spoke a word of English which was perfect for me as it meant I had to translate everything. Also travelling alongside us was a jeep full of four Irish girls who we would stop and have meals with and who stayed in the same accommodation as us.

Jemma eating the coca leaves

The first day of the tour we drove around lots of tiny indigenous villages and we stopped at one where we tried to take photos of the locals but they ran away scared. According to our guide, a lot of Bolivians either a) Believe if you take a photo you are taking their soul or b) They feel inferior and shy of westerners. However, we suspected that they may be more to it than this as every time we tried to take a photo of a child (including at one point a tiny toddler) they would say 'pagar pagar!' which means 'pay!'. We stopped for lunch in the middle of the mountains and had a picnic out of the back of the jeep – it was really nice – rice, beans, salad and potatoes. We arrived at our accommodation at about 16.30. The accommodation was very basic in a tiny native village of houses made our of mud and bricks. Our house was freezing cold, with no running water and no flushing toilets or electricity. But the beds were at least warm ad they had thick lama wool blankets.

We sat around waiting for the cooks to make our dinner and amused ourselves by playing cards with the other people from the two jeeps. We were talking about what food we would eat if we could choose anything in the world and I said I could really fancy a shepherds pie. Strangely enough, what food should appear on the table but mash potato and a kind of spicy shepherds pie. Yum!

After tea we all went straight to be because we knew we would have to get up at 5.00am the next morning.

More photos here:

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