We spent three days and two nights on the salt plains of Salar de Uyuni. More accurately the tours is one day on the salt plains and two days travelling around the interesting coloured lagoons in the moon-like areas south of there. You start out from Uyuni, an isolated town that reminds me of the film Westworld. The town has strange models in the centre of the roads, one looked like a giant witch and another a group of half naked soldiers. I half expected the locals to turn into robots and start to shoot up the place.

In Uyuni we stayed at the Tonito Hotel, which was a fantastic little hotel with an awesome pizzeria inside called "Minute Man", run by an American . I would encourage anyone to go into the hotel and eat there - they do great coffee and cookies too, and top breakfasts. The next day we clamber into our Land Cruisers, three of them for our group of twelve and head out on the tour. Our first stop is a strange train cemetery that had rusting trains from the past 100 years, it sits on the edge of the whiteness and the Westworld comparison is furthered. From here we head into the world´s largest slat flat, sitting at over 3,600m and covering an amazing 12,000sq km it is the most surreal place I think I have ever visited. You need your sunblock and sunglasses big time, and when you get out into them and cruise at 50mph in the 4x4´s you feel like you are in an advert.

There is no perspective and so you can get some amazing pictures. Stand 30 feet behind someone who has their hand held out and you can make it look like you are holding a miniature person, it is very cool. We tried lots of different pictures, pushing a giant wine bottle, by placing a normal wine bottle on the floor and standing way back you can look like you are the same size, and we also tried a few where we are coming out of a cowboy hat . As you drive around you will see the odd group of workers digging the salt out into mounds for ferrying back to society, they wear black balaclavas and goggles and it adds to the unrealness of the area. There are a few settlements in the plains and they provide a little respite from the blinding travelling. This is definitely a highlight of the trip, so far.

After this we head to our basic accommodation for the night, which has cold showers and a generator that stays on until 10pm. The landscape the next day turns arid and a mixture of yellow, orange and brown fill the horizon as we leave the white mass of salt behind us and head into the South West corner of Bolivia. We visit a bunch of strange rock formations and several lagoons, some have a green complexion and others red, all are filled with flamingos of different types. The air is very dry and the tracks are horrendous and unforgiving throwing us around the inside of the vehicles and a couple of people unsurprisingly get car sick . But the views are fantastic and we climb towards 5,000m.

The accommodation on night two is even more basic, no running water for toilets or showers and the guys and girls are put into rooms of their own. The night sky is incredible, shooting stars are abundant and the constellations are spell-binding even to the most disinterested star gazer. The nights can get as low as -20C out here but at the moment it is very mild, around 6C. After a breakfast prepared by our cook we head off at 4.30am to watch the sunrise and visit geysers.

As the sun comes up we arrive at the Sol de Manana geyser basin with their boiling mud pots. The sulphur smell of bad eggs whips in the wind. Having been to Rotorua in New Zealand, where you are told how dangerous the geysers and surrounding land can be, I am probably not surprised that there is nothing of the sort here and you can walk around these ones as much as you want. At Rotorua it is all safety sings and purpose built walkways, here you can dance into the middle of the steam.

From here we head down to local hot springs for a bath. It is just 7am and still very, very cold, so we decide to have breakfast first and await for the sun to warm up the place more before we strip off and head into the comfortable 30C water. When we do it is a serene feeling, chilling at 4,200m in the springs on the edge of a lagoon surrounded by mountains and volcanoes.