With Christmas coming up this month, Felicity Kitson reminds us that many of us spend the Holidays while on holiday.

Next stop was the tiny settlement of Uyuni. We were going to spend Christmas Day here before heading off on a 4WD tour of the Salar de Uyuni. Disappointingly, it didn't look like Uyuni was going to provide a lot of excitement. Even the Lonely Planet had said that there "was little to recommend the dull and dusty town of Uyuni."

Nic, determined to stay on schedule, argued that it couldn't be that bad. Steve said that he really didn't want to get stuck in a shitty town on Christmas Day. Teen threw a tantrum and said that no one ever consulted her anyway. I thought that we could make our own Christmas fun as long as we had enough alcohol.

But as our bus pulled into Uyuni on the morning of Christmas Eve, I started to wonder.

There really wasn't much here apart from dust. Dust and a faded plaza with crumbling concrete columns. Under the grime the plaza was a pale flamingo pink, the colour of old ladies' bathroom tiles. Past the plaza was a wide, empty street. I knew from the map wedged between my thighs that this was the town's main road and that it met the train station. From my viewpoint on the bus, it stretched only into a low horizon that made me feel scratchy.

The place felt like an abandoned Western set. I almost expected to see an unhinged saloon door lying about, with "BAR" written on it in peeling gold italics.

A Bolivian man sat on a plastic chair with three legs, chewing coca leaves. He watched the bus with inscrutable black eyes.

Where was the throng of accommodation spruikers that usually met the buses? After a month in Bolivia I had gotten used to the frenzy of spittle and hard sell that greeted new arrivals. Now I felt robbed of the chance to roll out my new bargaining skills. "No me querio, es demasiado caro!"

Maybe all the tourist merchants were at the train station. Backpackers with enough sense and money would probably have elected to take the train from Potosi. It was three hours faster and much more comfortable than the cramped, sweaty buses. God I was sick of buses.

Nicola had just shaken her head in bemusement and mouthed budget when II had made the suggestion. She had been my best friend for years and knew my disregard for money. Coming from London, I saw bolivianos as itty'bitty play pounds. In my head I had happily converted my tiny savings to a personal fortune of a trillion billion bolivianos.

Of course, the cost of jungle and pampas tours, terrifying bike rides down La Carre de Muerte and excursions into the twisted tunnels of silver mines added up, no matter what the currency. Our last big, bumpy tour was going to be over the Salar de Uyuni.

Once a huge inland sea, the Salar de Uyuni was now a formidable crust of salt stretching for over 12,000 square km. The effect was a stunning, blinding stretch of white that looked deceptively like sand or snow. The snowfield mirage was made more spectacular and strange by the sight of Del Pescado Isla, a rocky, fish'shaped island covered with cactuses.

On the standard 4'day tour, travelers also saw Laguna Colarado, a vivid sunset'red lake populated by flocks of flamingoes, Laguna Verde, a lake so green it looked like a giant liquid emerald and the spouting geysers of Sol de Manana, a volcanic crater 5000 metres above sea level.

Unfortunately, the departure point for this magical interior was the parched'canvass town of Uyuni.

Which was why we were here on Christmas Eve, feeling irritable, tired and dirty. Nicola had been sick for days with the runs, nausea and altitude dizziness. Nic's sister Teen and her boyfriend Steve had been squabbling or sitting in icy silence for the entire 8'hour trip. I felt grimy and toxic and wanted a bath.

Stoop'shouldered under the weight of our backpacks, we shuffled off in search of a hostel. We had made a group decision that if we had to stay in such a dodgy place for Christmas, we could at least go up'market. I was excited by the prospect of premium lodgings with hot running water and clean sheets.

Hotel Playa Blanca was located two long, moonscape blocks from where the bus had dropped us off. A serene looking woman with waist'long black plaits welcomed us in. Her grinning husband bobbed behind her as she gave us the tour. He wore navy overalls and big, bushy eyebrows set on friendly diagonals.

Inside, the hostel looked like a Spanish palazzo with a high ceiling and three or four terraces overlooking the central lobby. The interior was all terracotta and vivid palm fronds edged a water fountain in the lobby. After staying in windowless concrete cells, this seemed to us a shining oasis of 5'star luxury.

The last guests had checked out a few days before, so we had the entire place to ourselves. The husband was fixing the water in some of the rooms but there were a few on the first and second floors free. I threw myself onto the bed in a starfish of joy while Nic was still negotiating the room rate in Spanish.

Christmas was saved. Our hosts had even offered to set up a table for us on the roof to eat Christmas lunch. Our collective mood buoyed, we hit the markets in search of yummy food, booze and Kris Kringle presents to furnish our Christmas rooftop festivities.

Our guidebooks pointed us to the large weekend markets near the train station for all our shopping needs. If you were in need of junk paraphernalia, cut'price confectionery or witchcraft cures it definitely offered a comprehensive range. There were rows and rows of stalls with out'of'date chocolate and chewing gum packets, snacks of papas with cheese, bottles of Sunsilk shampoo with peeling labels of ladies with big hair, cartons of cigarettes, llama fetuses in jars and Barbie imitation dolls with garish make'up. Stumped, Nic ended up buying me a bottle of face cucumber cream and a bright pink plastic pen that tripled as a mirror and a brush. We had more luck finding food and all pitched in for pate, French bread, roast chicken, olives, avocado, cream cheese and champagne for our rooftop picnic.

That night we headed out for a Christmas Eve meal on the small, faded strip where the town's few restaurants and tour operators were located. All but one offered up some renditions of Italian, but feeling that a pizzeria was not so adventurous and culturally crass, we opted for the restaurant advertising an "authentic" Bolivian Christmas Eve menu.

This turned out to involve several course of meat including llama, lots of cerveza and some "export only" wine that tasted like slightly acidic Ribena.

A fragile sense of optimism tied us up in this little restaurant. Teen and Steve had even stopped fighting. We were all bursting with sweet wine, llama and goodwill. There was a guy who was sitting by himself in the corner of the restaurant. He was tall, tanned backpacker type. We had seen him that morning weaving through the labyrinthine markets with a furrowed brow.

He introduced himself as Jean'Claude; he was from the Rhine Valley in France and had been cycling on a sponsored adventure across South America for 3 months. A week ago, his super'expensive bike had carked it just outside Uyuni, leaving him stranded until the obscure brake part arrived from France.

Jean'Claude told us about a Christmas Eve disco a few blocks away, and though we were groaning with too much meat and alcohol, we decided to check it out.

"Club Bolivia" was a long wooden building that could have been a mid'Western church. Outside there were a few teenage boys smoking cigarettes and affecting a languid disinterest. The older boys on the door looked at us in amusement when we bought our 5 "bollie" entry tickets, obvious toursiticos.

In honour of Christmas Eve, we had traded our mud'splattered jeans for our clean ones and rifled in the bottom of our backpacks for a special occasion top. Jean'Claude looked incomprehensibly clean and crisp, his bottom pert under a Nike bum bag.

Inside it reminded me a bit of Australian blue'light discos. The boys and girls were on opposite sides of the room, there was a small self'conscious group on the dance floor and a huge gathering of girls loitering coyly near the toilets. To the right of the dance floor was a small, raised stage where the band were playing. With big coifs, high'collared coats and pointy black boots, they looked like they had been transported from an early'eighties Prince's tour. The music was an energetic Spanish pop'rock blend.

The boys and most of the girls were dressed in contemporary attire of jeans, sneakers, and jumpers. The few girls in traditional Bolivian dress ' huge llama wool skirts in colours of a burnt sunset, long black plaits past their bottoms and bowler hats ' stood out immediately. I wondered if they longed to ditch the traditional gear in favour of the jeans that their girlfriends wore.

Bolivia is the most indigenous country in South America' 85% of the population are native American Indian and over 50% maintain traditional values and beliefs.

The sexual politics of the dance reflected a certain conservatism. The girls and boys danced opposite each other in ordered lines, a kind of free'style line dancing. The protocol seemed to be to remain just beyond arms' length from the opposite sex partner.

Many of the girls were avoiding the dance floor altogether, and instead hung shyly in the diamond of dark near the toilets. Anonymity must have been the main appeal of the location, because the black pit toilets emitted a rotten smell.

Nic and I were so busting after all the wine and beer that we had to brave the facilities. Gripping each other's hands as we treaded into the impenetrable dark, I thought how ridiculous our fear was. We had slithered on our stomachs in the diamond mines of Potosoi as dynamite was detonated around us. This bathroom, with its starless night black and swamp beast stench, seemed far more fraught with danger.

We slid out with relief, just as the band was launching into a screeching acoustic rendition of Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach".

Back in the hall Steve and Teen were bopping cautiously near the bar, beers in hand. Jean'Claude looked like a big kid, flushed and energetic.

I got back from the bar as two nervous'looking boys aged were approaching Nic. "Quieres baillar?" They looked about 17 or 18 and both peered out from heavy fringes.

Out on the dance floor, the boys' initial temerity fell away as they moved in for some surprisingly provocative movements. My partner stared studiously at the floor while his pelvis gravitated closer to mine. I glanced over at Nic in concern' her partner's hip'grinding also looked a bit invasive. The other boys on the floor were definitely maintaining a more respectful distance from their partners. I tried to engage my partner with some faltering questions straight from Introductory Spanish, but he was far too focused on the floor and increasing the area of body contact to pay much attention.

I threw another desperate look at Nic and she gestured for a getaway. I made some hurried, probably unintelligible excuses and slipped back to the fringe of the dance'floor. It was then that we realized that our Christmas Eve dance partners had made off with more than just a small amount of our modesty... both our beers were missing. Merry Christmas, I thought.