Boliva, can you handle it??

Ok so, yes, long time, no post. here are som updates!!! Below are pictures from the southern regions of Bolivia. After visiting the northern desert areas of Chile, we crossed over from San Pedro de Atacama to Uyuni. Instead of just taking a bus from Chile to Bolivia, we did a tour of the amazing southern marvels enroute to Uyuni. There were 4 of us tourists, our guide Mario and his wife, who acted as our amazing cook. We toured all the different areas in his 4x4 red land crusier. Luggage on the roof, vegetarian food, all in all, an awesome trip. Our trip mates were an older couple from Poland, one was a spanish teacher and one a portugese teacher, so we spoke alot of spanglish and waved our hands around a lot.
The first thing that hit me about Bolivia, literally, was the altitude. Basically the whole country is up way to high in the atmosphere. Meaning there is very little plant growth, and therefore, very little oxygen for me to breath. rad. on top of that, i went into the trip with a cold, so ear pressure was a big problem. It was a bit scary that after walking a little bit, you felt as winded as if you had just run a marathon up hill. you really just have to slow down, way down, baby steps, and take everything in bit by bit, you cant rush things in Bolivia, even if you want to.

On our tour we were able to see quite a bit, from the beautiful, mountain ranges, to the strange colored lakes, to what i consider the 8th wonder of the world, the Salt Flats of Uyuni. Vast streches of salt plains, parts with water, parts just like a dried up desert.
This post covers a couple of the higlights of the trip. First picture of some of the moutains we saw as we entered Bolivia. Second, the Red Lake, set in a valley between mountains, filled with flamencos. The red color is from the microscopic shrimps that the flamencos eat, and the white is the Borax, something found in almost all of the colored lakes that Boliva harvests and sells to chemists. The 3rd is the sun rising over the Salt Flats of Uyuni, and the final picture is of me getting friendly with a cactus on the Isla de Pez (Fish Island), a facinating little island found in the middle of of the salt flats, more on that later!