A quick update before our salt flat tour

La Paz from the hostel breakfast room

So, where we left off allwas good in La Paz. Until the middle of the night on Sunday when Brandon started vomiting again and had the shivers. And I was down at reception having a terrible conversation with the spanish speaking guy there. Brandon survived until morning and the hotel called a doctor to come and look at him.
After a blood and poo test (I almost started laughing at how many times the doctor said poo) at their clinic, transport in an ambulance haha, we found out he has salmonella and giardia. Yay. Obviously he caught both while we were in the jungle. Now, while I don't blame the company because things can easily get contaminated, there were two other people there who had pretty similar symptoms to Brandon. Anyway, we've got some drugs into him and I'm sure he's on the mend. We obviously didn't go on the telerifico yesterday because of all that, bummer because the view would have been awesome. But we did change the flight we had booked from Asuncion to Santiago. After Brandon had finished throwing up, it just hit me that it would be much better to skip iguazu falls and Paraguay and go straight to Chile from Uyuni. So we will now be going to San Pedro in Chile after our salt flat tour and then to Calama to fly to Santiago. Much more sensible.
Up until we got on our bus last night I was suspicious it was going to be semi cama not full cama like we had booked. The difference is full cama has less seats, semi cama is like a normal bus but the seats recline a lot, so you get to spend your trip with a strangers hesd in your lap. There are not many companies that do full cama and we were told we would get a stop to buy dinner and breakfast rather than have it provided on the bus. Fine by us, bus food is rank. Anyway, unless you count a 1am stop at Potosi as a dinner stop, and biscuits or nuts or old chicken and chips as dinner, there was no dinner or breakfast stop. Luckily, anti-giardia meds stop you from feeling hungry (I decided I would take some too since we have been eating almost exactly the same and I was mildly unwell since the jungle - that bathroom in our hostel in La Paz is going to need napalming). Our bus trip was also 5hours longer than a semi cama bus because it went the long way, but worth it for the extra room. There were also randoms getting on and off between La Paz, Oruro and Potosi, so a good idea not to store anything in the overhead area, especially while you sleep. The company we went with was Trans Omar and they were pretty decent. Only one movie (titanic in spanish) and a short time of Enrique blaring, but otherwise silence, no bingo being played here.
Try as we might we couldn't find any place to stay in Uyuni that didn't have something terrible said about it on the net. So we arrived looking like lost puppies. We asked a lady handing our tour flyers and she pointed out a few and we are now in La Roca. A pretty basic hostel that seems clean and has good wifi, and it's about $10 a night. We are yet to discover if the shower works, there's no tap fitting... We've booked on a tour starting tomorrow with Red Planet (recommended by a guy we met), done the way I like it - researched before, ask a few questions and book it, none of this checking 8 different companies...

So until San Pedro, Chile.

(Apparently you're not allowed to take food into Chile, they're not getting my chocolate stash!)