South America Day 28

We had a later depart time today, 10:30am.  We have some camping nights for the next three days which means group camp cooking so my cook group had to go shopping for food for tomorrows lunch at the local market after breakfast before we left. We travelled today into the high Bolivian Altiplano which stretches hundreds of kilometres from the small town of Uyuni out across to the borders with Argentina and Chile taking two days to cross.   It was a bumpy ride, real wilderness, there are no proper roads across the Altiplano just a few dirt/sand tracks to follow.  Only four wheel drive jeeps and special rough terrain trucks like Amber can cross the Altiplano.  We had a local guide from Uyuni come with us to help Vikki and Eoin navigate across it. 

Never a dull moment when travelling in Amber - we had a Mexican stand off between us and a Bolivian Jeep driver.  Going uphill on a single track, our right of way, a tourist Jeep with Australian passengers and a local Bolivian driver coming in the opposite direction tried to pass Amber and in doing so knocked his wing mirror which broke the glass mirror.  His fault but because we were a tourist bus/truck he thought he could make money out of us and demanded Eoin pay for the damaged mirror.  Eoin refused so the guy, plus others from his Jeeps party blocked the road - we had a Mexican stand off!   Eoin, Vikki and our Bolivian guide were refusing to pay, our Bolivian guide was furious with the other driver but he wouldn't budge.   We waited a long time hoping they'd get bored but in the end they paid 200 Bolivianos, just under £20, half the price of replacing the mirror.  He'll probably pocket that money and never replace the mirror!  We felt sorry for his Australian tourists, we hope they didn't give their driver a tip.

After all that excitement we continued across the Altiplano stopping at some interesting rock formations on the way to the Quechua village of Villamar at 4100m altitude where we stayed the night in a hostel.  Group one cook group made everyone a great chilli for dinner.  After dinner my cook group prepared pack lunch for everyone for the next day as we had a very early start the next morning!