Hello to everyone who didn´t condemn me for eating poor little pets and actually hello to those who did as well :)

Aye, La Paz was great, but because there's no heating in Rossio's house (well, the heating and isolation is unheard of in the whole of Bolivia and Peru) I was sleeping in grandma's woolen socks, beanie, gloves, jumper and tucked in a sleeping bag covered by three thick wooly covers (no kidding). The last day it even started to snow!!! We decided to change the scenery and move on ...

Our next destination was a small town Uyuni (approx. 550km down south) that serves as a hub for Salar de Uyuni, a world's unique Grand Salt Plains. The journey was a short bus trip (3hrs), small lunch and then 7 hours on a train (btw, again, no isolation so 7 hours on the train = 7kgs of dust eaten). Some entertainment was provided by Bolivian national sport = Road Blocks. As we read before leaving UK, whenever Bolivian Juan doesn't like something, he takes his truck (tractor, wheel-barrow), places it across a busy road and lays down in front of it (or wherever the shade is) so poor people than need to get somewhere must take a detour through fields, meadows and other places not meant for heavy vehicles. Luckily for us half hour was enough to drive around such roadblock, but the bus ahead of us wasn't so lucky. It got stuck while trying to cross dry river bed and all its passengers had to get out and collect stones to build a shift-made road to get the bus out. Rest of our journey was uneventful so I'll jump to next day.

We had some sleep and waking up in the afternoon we decided to do a minitrip to a train cemetery at the end of town. After 30 minutes walking south we hit some old rails and embarked its direction. Another  20 minutes got us on the place. There's not much to say about it other than wandering through tons of old iron is quite fun.

Our plan for today is Salar de Uyuni itself. It's the biggest (10 000 square km) Salt Plain in the world. It was created some 40 000 years ago when a big lake Minchin dried up. The plain is now a place for salt mining, an ideal road between small towns around the plain and of course a huge magneto for tourist. We decided that one day expedition should be enough and saved some time for south Bolivia.

Misinformed we arrived on the meeting point 20 minutes late and under hate-filled looks of our fellow explorers we boarded our Toyota Landcruiser. Our first stop was a tiny village where they pack the salt, second stop was a place where few guys mined the salt (digged it with pickaxes and shoveled it onto a truck) and the third stop was a hotel made out of salt blocks. Our last stop was the Fish Island named by its shape. Quite interesting sight, a rocky island (filled with cactuses of all kinds of sizes and shapes) growing from snow-white salt flat.

Again I could not help it and I have to show you another entry (two) for my retard's photo series. I got to admin that Mort and Rossio are natural superstars so all I have to do is just aim and "click" :)  And I also got few pics for my mum (thx Mort). About half an hour ago we got our train tickets to Tupiza where I hope to get some serious photo shoots. It's an area known for mining so hopefully I'll get few dirty individuals to have their souls stolen :) The train departs at about 11pm and arrives there at 4am. This is the only alternative how to get there so keep fingers crossed so we can find some beds to sleep in over there...

- translated by Mort.