WHERE AM I GOING?

"All the world is a stage and and all the men and women are merely players", that's what Shakespeare said, wasn't it? Well if that's the case, can someone tell me what role I'm meant to be playing, because I don't know anymore. You see, while nearly all my friends are growing up in life, by having babies, getting married and getting mortgages, I seem to be at the age of 31 rebelling from it all by wandering round south America, partying, having flings with guys from foreign lands and trying not to be responsible in anyway shape or form. The truth of the matter is, I'm completely lost at the moment, I have no clue where I'm going or what role I'm meant to be playing but it's OK, because I'm traveling and it's OK to be lost when traveling. It's because of this reason, I have decided to extend my trip by a month. I will now not be back until the end of May. My family and friends who say they miss me, have waited this long for me to come home, they can wait a little bit longer for me. I'm not ready to come home yet. I don't want to come back to reality. I want to be lost a little bit longer.

Speaking of lost, I now seem to have found myself now in Chile, which again is a detour from my travel plan, but what a lovely detour it is. This is the story of how I got here.

Me, Eva and Tanja took another awful Bolivian bus ride from Potosi (the highest city in the world) to Uyuni, which once again included terrible roads, having to pee in the open and bad 80s music, which also comprised of a Spanish cover of Chris de Burghs, lady in red! Eventually we arrived at Uyuni, which was a complete dump! Still it was a must on the Gringo trail as it was the gateway to Salar Uyuni, which is the biggest salt desert in the world and a must see in South America.

As much as I have loved Bolivia as a country, I have been very disappointed with the people. After the kindness of the Colombians and the Peruvians, the Bolivians seemed rude, unfriendly and had a really bad attitude to Gringo's. Added to this Bolivians bad roads and that Uyuni was such a horrible place, me and the girls decided on the plan of taking a 3 day tour into the Uyuni desert, after which we would get dropped at the Chilean border and get the hell out of Boliva.

As I have learnt from traveling, when you take a tour, your experience depends a lot on the rest of the group. Well the rest of our group consisted of all Brits! Now I try and avoid Brits abroad, as they are usually just that (Brits abroad!) and I find myself apologising for their behaviour, even more so when their ages range from 18-21, which the rest of my group was; all ten of them! Four of them girls, who all dressed the same, could not be separated from each other, even for the toilet; all they seemed bothered about was the way they looked and between them had the brain capacity of a pea! The boys were just one big bag of testosterone, who only seemed bothered about getting in the four girls knickers and trying to act hard to disguise their public school boy past. All in all it made for entertaining 3 days if nothing else! There was one other member to the group, a another Brit Elliott who at 26 was more with us as he fell into our age group, of the golden oldies, which we had began to feel like!

The group was split into two jeeps. Our jeep consisted of me and the girls, Elliott and two of the young guys; Johnny and Dave, who seemed very reluctant as Eva was sick and they thought she was going to throw up over them and they couldn't be with the other girls and work on getting into their knickers!

So off to the desert we went. The day consisted of the boys drinking loads, the girls stripping off to their underwear in the desert to take photos of each other, the boys getting erections, finding some binoculars and shouting " Oh f**k, that's so hot!" a lot. As distracting as this juvenile behaviour was, it did not ruin for me the salt desert of Uyuni, which has to be the most amazing landscape I have ever seen in my life. It's so magical, it doesn't look real, even when you see it with your own eyes. I do believe there is nothing like it on earth. What I saw there will stay with me to the day I die.

We then had a three hour drive to our hotel for the evening, so we decided to get in some beers. The boys had got some nasty local spirit and were mixing it with coke and kept offering it us. Well if you can't beat them, join them so we did. Before we know it we are all soooooooooooo drunk. We are singing our hearts out to Oasis songs; Eva is mixing the drinks and getting whiskey all over her arms, which she makes the boys lick off; we piss off our driver, Mario by having to stop to pee ever two seconds; we have to pee next to llamas; Tanja is soooooooooooo drunk she starts trying to catch a llama; Tanja starts kissing Johnny and the next thing Elliott asks to kiss me and I say "OK, then"! It's totally crazy. I'm drunk in the back of a jeep in the desert, kissing some guy over the seat that I don't even fancy, like a thirteen year old. Hanging with teenagers has turned me into acting like one. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur. I do remember Tanja throwing up and being put to bed; me thinking I was fluent in Spanish while talking to the locals; me losing my bag; me finding my bag and me nicking one of the pea head (I now refer to the group as the pea heads!) boys toilet paper because I couldn't find ours!

The next morning we all woke up with huge hangovers and Tanja not knowing where she was. I sat with Elliott for breakfast and we both hadn't got a clue why we had started kissing and laughed about it. Then it was also revealed he had kissed Eva later that night, even funnier, though he did start quoting the bible to her after (worrying)!

The rest of the day was quite painful, because not only did I have a hangover, I had to deal with the pea heads too. After surviving the day and seeing some amazing scenery, we arrived at our accommodation for the night. After eating me and the girls decided to have a early night because we felt so rough.

Unfortunately we were sharing our room, with the pea head girls, who decided they were going to go to the pea head boys room and play drinking games to the early hours of the morning, which is shit when the walls are paper thin. You can hear everything, so when they crawled back to the room late, I was still wide awake, which should of made me angry as we had to be up at 4.30am, but I would not have wanted to have missed the following for the world! Please imagine the following conversations, in the most girly, squeaky, stupid voices you can imagine.
"Oh my God girls, the boys call us the untouchables, because we are so untouchable! Isn't that cool?"
"yeah that's cool"!
"So cool"!
"Cool!"
"Steph, I think you should get off with Dexter!"
"I can't! He looks like my dad! I can't get off with my dad can I?"
"Lucy, Brad loves you, I think you should have sex with him".
"Really? Does he? Maybe I will have sex with him"?
"Is it wrong to shave your stomach"?
"No Paris, it's cool, I did mine in the shower this morning".
"It's cool Paris".
"Cool".
While this is going on I'm under my sheets, shoving my pillow in my face, so they cannot hear how much I am laughing. I find out the next morning Tanja was doing the same.

After really no sleep, but a very entertaining night, we head out to see the Geyesers and the hot springs. All the girls are put in one jeep, which I quite enjoyed as I am finding the pea heads very funny now, probably for the wrong reasons, but funny all the same.

We head for the hot springs, which all the pea heads are very excited about: the boys because they get to see the girls half naked and the girls, because they get to show the boys themselves half naked and they have also shaved their stomachs. Me and Tanja sit and watch with amusement, but when we head out of the spring, we realise the boys are making comments about us and having a good stare at us in our bikinis. I guess the girls aren't as special as they think they are. When guys are that age, they are so testosterone all they really need is a woman who is breathing, and with breasts. I then realise I have left all my dry clothes in the jeep and have to runaround in my bikini. That said there is something very liberating parading around the Andes in just your bikini.

After breakfast me, Tanja and Eva have to go to the border in a jeep, to catch our bus in time. This seems to be a very traumatic thing for the Pea heads as it means three of them have to come in our jeep, thus separating them all for more than 2 minutes. The girls flatly refuse to come with us (selfish as well as dumb)! The boys all can't decide and the whole thing turns into a mission, which we are getting very angry with as we might miss our bus. After shouting at them, three very reluctant boys sit riding with us to the border. We reach the most remote boarding crossing ever and I'm glad to see the back if them all. I'm too old for all their rubbish and I'm reminded why I would never want to be 21 again. No more teenagers, though I can't say it wasn't a very entertaining experience, just one I don't want to repeat.

I am now in a great little town called San Pedro Accama in chile. It was so the right decision to come here. The people are great, there is brilliant wine, I'm out of high altitude at last and back into shorts, vests and flip flops. The only regret is that I haven't got more time to explore Chile. Tomorrow, we head for Argentina. At least there is one place I know where I'm going in life.