Following the Peruvian gringo trail

Arequipa, Nazca & Huacachina, Southern Peru

Arequipa

We stopped off in this pretty city enroute to Nazca. It was much lower in altitude and so much warmer, very welcome after 6 weeks of cold and wet. Unfortunately I was quite ill with aforementioned stomach bug and we therefore spent most of the 3 days we were there in our hotel room catching up on CSI on the TV. Me being ill obviously gave us the excuse to veg out! Mik kindly vegged out with me! We had a wander round town then caught a bus to Nazca.

That's me keeping it short!

Cara

Nazca

Finally getting to Nazca was a special moment for me. I've wanted to go there since reading about it in my dad's copy of "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious world" at the age of nine. The Nazca Plain, just outside the small town of Nazca (what are the odds?) is world famous for the hundreds of lines, geometric shapes and animal figures etched into the dark earth across the plain. The markings, made over many centuries by the ancient Nazca tribes of the area, are of immense proportions with some lines stretching over 100 kilometres and giant birds with 130 metre wingspans to name but a few. What inspires such mystery about this place is that these figures can only really be discerned and appreciated from the air. So why did an ancient civilisation, with no ability to fly and thus appreciate their work, expend enormous resources over hundreds of years etching these figures into the desert floor? Well the answer, my friends, is that nobody has the faintest bloody idea. Theories are shipped in by the container load, but actual evidence is, unlike the lines themselves, a bit thin on the ground. One of the main reasons for this is that the Nazcans never developed a written language, so no permanent record of their endeavours exists to fill us in on the details. Well done chaps. You never learned to read or write but you have time to make 250 foot monkeys in the sand. Maybe you should have spent a bit more of your leisure time inventing an alphabet and a bit less playing in a sandpit. That way we would know what the hell you were playing at and dozy pillocks like Erik Von Daniken wouldn't have sold millions of books carping on about extraterrestrial landing sites. However, I digress (for a change!). The best way to see the lines, in fact the only way to really see them at all, is to take a short flight out over the desert and see them from the air.

It was a bit of a budget buster, but how could we not do it? Within minutes of climbing off our overnight bus into Nazca and checking into a hotel, we were chatting to one of the local tour companies to arrange a trip. The gentleman was very helpful and took us through the various options and gave us the prices. I jumped into my best haggling style, and regaled the chap with tales of how we would really love to take the flight over the lines, truly we would, but alas it was beyond our modest budget and unless he was able to move on his price in some way, we would on this occasion be unable to treat ourselves to his excellent offer. If we were able to afford it, we would undoubtedly book with him, as he was so friendly and helpful, but his inflexible approach precluded our ability to afford it, so there you go. Too bad, but that's the reality of it. The ball was now firmly in his court. How could he possibly not budge on his price? He refused to budge on his price. Not even a little bit? Not even a little bit. I moved over to the sidelines and tagged Cara. She immediately leapt into the ring and jumped into her best haggling style, which was to stare off into the middle distance and say nothing. She adopted an expression which suggested she couldn't remember if she may have left the gas on somewhere. In the face of such an onslaught, he immediately dropped his price. More, in fact, than we actually expected of him. The deal was struck and the paperwork completed.

I have absolutely no idea how Cara does this. Over the years, various employers have spent thousands of pounds training me in the art of negotiation, and nothing I can muster will ever come close to the persuasive guile conveyed in Cara's blank, silent stare just over your right shoulder. Another good example of this was the time we were wandering through Chinatown in Singapore and Cara spotted a bracelet she fancied. She asked the seller how much and the lady answered 25 Singaporean dollars. Cara just held the bracelet in her hand and affected her meanest blank stare, all the time saying nothing. You could see the jewellery seller just buckle and fold under the barrage of silence. "20 dollars" she said, immediately followed by "okay lady, special price for you 15 dollars." Cara shifted her expression slightly from "Is the gas on?" to "Have I got clean socks for tomorrow?" and the effect was immediate. "Okay, okay, just 10 dollars" came the new offer. In the end Cara didn't buy the bracelet and as we walked away I heard a small, defeated voice say "Maybe you'd give me 8 dollars?" I almost fell down a manhole I was laughing that hard. When we get home Cara should write a book called "How to stare your way to the top". I also have a book coming out soon if anybody is interested. It's called "How to live in the sun for months on end without getting the slightest bit of colour on your pasty, white skin". If anybody should want a copy of my 6 page Magnum Opus, please deposit £15 in my bank account and I'll forward you a copy as soon as it's printed.

Now, where were we? Oh yes, the Nazca Lines. We spent the afternoon in the local museum, which had some excellent displays and information about the ancient civilisation. We read all about the most popular theories regarding the lines but the essential point was no, we don't have a clue what they're for. Thanks for the update! First thing the next morning we were picked up from our hotel and ferried out to the small airport for our flight. Before we set off we were treated to a 50 minute BBC documentary about the lines which concluded that they also didn't have the foggiest idea why someone would scrape a dead straight line across miles of barren desert. Next thing, we were strapped into our little four-seater Cessna and off we went. The pilot was excellent and talked to us through the headsets as we flew over the plain, pointing out the different lines, shapes and animal figures. He would bank sharply as we flew over each figure so I could get photos of them, then turn around and bank over to the other side so Cara could get a good look also. The markings themselves were created by removing the surface rocks from the desert floor and piling them up at the side of the wide tracks, revealing the paler sand beneath. The whole area has had no significant rainfall since the last ice-age and the lines are remarkably well preserved. We could see them clearly below us as we flew around. Kick some rocks to one side and many centuries later, yahoos like me can still see them. Pretty amazing stuff. Even Cara was impressed and she'd never even heard of Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. The flight lasted about 40 minutes but seemed much shorter. It was an excellent experience and the yet another fulfilment of a lifelong dream to add to our already extensive list. Many thanks to my mum & dad for footing the bill for that one with some of the dollars they gave us as a leaving gift. After that we were escorted back to our hotel, where we quickly packed our bags and jumped on the next bus out of town.

That's me not keeping it very short.

Mik

Huacachina

Peru has a desert - who knew? It also has an oasis in the desert called Huacachina. It's really quite mad as you feel like you are near the beach due to the amount of sand around, but are in fact surrounded by the massive sand dunes of the desert. Then there is the lake around which all the hotels and restaurants are clustered. It's not a big place and it had a really chilled atmosphere. Which was just what we needed. We stayed in a place with a pool and spent some time just lazing around there, or in nearby hammocks. It was a sociable place and evenings were spent eating BBQ and trying the local pisco sours. A drink made from pisco, a spirit made from locally grown grapes mixed with lots of lime juice, ice, sugar and an egg white. Sound a bit wierd. Well I took quite a liking to them until I saw the amount of sugar that went in. Guess I hadn't really thought about how the froth was very meringue-like !!!

Tried my fisrt typical peruvian dish of ceviche which consists of raw fish and seafood marinated in lemon juice, served with herbs, a touch of chili and marinade. Delicious and a very welcome change from the stodge we had been used to. Met a lovely couple, Aleks and Anna, from Holland and the US respectively, and had a brill time hanging out with them - this entailed sampling the local wine (drinkable after the first glass), and more saltado, a dish of chicken or beef fried in a spicy sauce together with onions, tomatoes, and loads of chips - guess who's favourite that was?!

Our last day was spent being slightly more active. We set off in a dune buggy and drove around the sand dunes at high speed, it was great fun. The dunes stretched as far as you could see and some must have been over 100m high, so the drop offs were quite scary! We also tried our hand at sandboarding. Now, having attempted snowboarding before I thought I would at least be able to slide a little way down the dunes, but no! It's completely different and I was useless, Mik did far better and had to wait a while for me at the bottom of each run, if you can call a mass of sand that.

We eventualy dragged ourselves away and onto another local bus.....!

Cara

How to get lost on your way to Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu, Peru

"And if we tell you the name of the game, boy, we call it riding the Gravy Train."
Pink Floyd

Our plan, as elaborately outlined to us by the lady who owned our hostel, was to take a shared taxi up to a place called Maras, take a 3 hour trek through the countryside to the Salinas salt pans, catch a bus to Ollantaytambo where we could get the train to Aguas Calientes, the jumping off point for Machu Picchu. We would spend the night there and be up the mountain before most people realised what day it was. As I say, that was the plan.

We walked to downtown Cusco where the share taxis headed over to Maras and stocked up with crisps and pastries on the way. As luck would have it, a car was about to leave and we could get all the way there for just 2 Soles each. The downside was we had to ride in the boot of the car as all the other seats were taken (it was an estate car, you'll be glad to hear). An hour of bumping around in the back and trying to eat the snacks we'd brought and we were there, covered in crumbs and nursing sore backs. The taxis drop you on the main road 2km from the town so we then had to take another car into town at the exorbitant rate of 1 sole each. The tiny pueblo of Maras consists of a main plaza, 6 buildings, 2 donkeys and a snack stand. 4 of the buildings seem to exist for the sole purpose of giving the plaza it's four sides. Another building houses the gruff looking police and the final building was for some unfathomable reason a toilet block. The 2 donkeys seem to exist for the sole purpose of staring at me and housing the resident flea population. We bought some drinks from the stall, stared back at the donkeys and made a dash for the public loos to set us up for our arduous 3 hour walk. Big mistake. Catching a whiff of the place before going in, my hair tried to crawl back into my head and my nostrils jumped off my face and tried to hide under my left armpit. I took a big lungful of air and headed in, desperate to be in and out on one breath. The only cubicle inside was half full of a thick, brown liquid, not too dissimilar to old oxtail soup. I pulled the chain and the bowl filled up with water, although this achieved nothing more than stirring up the contents and releasing a stream of noxious gas. Just before my eyeballs rolled back in their sockets, I swear I saw a small tentacle thrash about the bowl before settling back down to the bottom. By this point I was running out of air and turning purple. I dry retched a few times and relieved myself quickly before passing out. On the way out of the building I was forced to take another lungful of air and almost passed out again. Cara, wise sage that she is, decided to give it a miss. Of course, all this has nothing whatsoever to do with Machu Picchu but it will be seared into my memory for all eternity so I thought you should suffer with me.

We set off down the trail through some magnificent countryside and enjoyed the experience thoroughly. That was until, after an hour and a half of walking, we came upon a couple of small girls who were working the fields with their father. Where are you going, they asked. To the saltpan, we replied. Well you've bollocksed that one right up, they said (I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of it). How so, we asked. 'Cos you're on completely the wrong path. You should have taken the right fork about one hour back. There's nothing this way for miles and even then it's nothing. You dozy gringo halfwits have been walking the wrong way for ages, and now you're going to have to walk all the way back to where you started. They actually said something indecipherable in Spanish, but from their elaborate mimes and hand gestures I assumed this was their message. At this point, the old farmer (he was probably 26) came over to see why his kids were laughing their arses off. We tried to explain to him where we wanted to go and he also said we were idiots. He walked with us down a narrow track and pointed to a deep gully running through the floor of the valley we were in. You want to be on the other side of that gully, we think he said. Take yourselves through these fields and across that gully and you'll be fine, we also think he said. We thanked him and set off through somebody's maize field.

After further 15 minutes we reached the edge of the gully where a family of farmers were having their lunch. What are you doing in our maize field, they asked. We're trying to get to the saltpans, we said. Well you've bollocksed that one right up, haven't you, they said. For full details of how this conversation transpired, see previous paragraph. They also kindly offered instructions of how we could get back on track. We set off again through another field, down a steep bank, across a stream, up the other bank, down a path then up a steep hill. At the top we heard a noise that sounded like "arbroogletropflunbunghandle". We looked back and saw one of the farmers in the distance, waving his arms in the air and jumping up and down. "What was that?" we shouted. "arbroogletropflunbunghandle" he repeated. "Si, si, gracias" we responded, which is the textbook response for anything we don't understand. He wasn't impressed and kept up his jumping and waving. We waved back and set off down the path into the steep sided canyon. After a further 20 minutes we came across some more young girls tending goats of the slopes of the hill. Where are you going, they asked. To the saltpans, we said. Well you've bollocksed that one right up haven't you, they said. You know the rest of the conversation. The farmer had meant for us to keep going until we reached another canyon, and down this were the fabled saltpans. Unfortunately, thanks to his complete inability to speak fluent English, we were once again lost. There was no way we were headed back on ourselves again, so we kept going down the path, heading for the road that would take us to Ollantaytambo. We never did see the salinas, but the valley was incredibly beautiful and we were treated to some great sights. At the end of the canyon, the ground dropped straight down several hundred metres and getting to the bottom was a novel experience, but we finally made it to the road. From there we eventually hailed down a minibus and got ourselves to Ollantaytambo train station.

Once there, the ticket office kindly informed us that the evening train was fully booked. So was the next evening's train. We'd bollocksed that one right up, hadn't we? There was another train that night with plenty of space, but it was for locals only and foreigners were not permitted to buy the $5 tickets for it. Our only option was to take the first train at 6am the following morning and stay overnight here. Take it or leave it. Cara and I were a bit hacked off but there was nothing we could do but get the tickets for the next morning. The ticket seller put his hand in my pocket and helped himself to $74 for the 2 one-way, 90 minute train tickets. This, sadly, pretty much encapsulates the situation for any foreigner trying to see Machu Picchu these days. The only way to get there is on the tourist train and the prices for foreigners are exorbitant. But this was not the end of it.

We found ourselves a cheap hotel for the night. At 6am, bright and breezy, we loaded ourselves onto the Perurail gravy train and headed to Aguas Calientes. Once there, we walked into the town centre to get our entry tickets for the ruins, which now have to be purchased in advance before going up the mountain. The vendor helped himself to $46 from my stash. We climbed onto the bus to take us up the mountain. I felt a hand in my pocket and I was relieved of another $12. 20 minutes later and we were finally at the entrance to Machu Picchu.

We handed over our tickets and made our way inside. It was still reasonably early and the trainloads of people coming from Cusco had not yet arrived. We quickly headed up to a place where we could see the whole of the Machu Picchu site. The weather, however, had decided that was not a good plan and the entire site was clouded over. We sat down and waited for the clouds to clear. Instead or clearing, it started raining. We both put on our splendid plastic ponchos and continued to wait. After a while nothing happened, so we waited a bit longer. Nothing continued to happen, but in a slightly less exciting way. It did finally clear up and we had our first glimpse of the ruins. And pretty impressive they are too. The buildings themselves are nothing spectacular and not much different from many other Inca ruins dotted throughout Peru. What does make them different is the location, perched atop an extremely steep sided mountain, hundreds of metres up from the valley below. I was also surprised to discover Machu Picchu itself is not that high at 2600 metres above sea level. We had travelled here from Cusco which was at 3100 metres and not on the top of any mountain. Whilst this made Machu Picchu much warmer than we were used to, it also made it much more humid. The rain hadn't helped. I peeled off a few layers and wiped the sweat from my rather fetching and sophisticated beard. After a few hours it started raining again and we took shelter inside a small hut and plundered the stash of biscuits we had daringly smuggled into the ruins.

We spent the next 5 hours wandering around and taking 7,824 photos. When we left, we decided to walk down the mountainside rather than shell out a bunch of dollars for another short bus ride. We made it down to the bottom of the mountain just fine, but as we reached the bottom the heavens really opened and out came the ponchos again. The twenty minute walk back to town wasn't the most pleasant and by the time we reached it we were both absolutely drenched. To cap it all, my sunglasses took a dive out of my bag while we were crossing a bridge and hurried off down the choked river, off to give optical comfort to some fortunate goat herder downstream. Perhaps we should have taken the bus after all.

Back in town we bought train tickets back to Urubamba, which was not where we wanted to go but meant we had been able to spend an extra few hours in the ruins and also saved us about $20. The people in the ticket office came around the counter, flipped me upside down and shook out my pockets. They left me with loose change and half a packet of Clorets, which I thought considerate. On the train, our carriage was almost empty so I switched seats to one with extra legroom as soon as all the passengers were on board. No sooner had I done this than a surly Perurail employee with all the social skills of a whelk walked over and asked why I wasn't in my allotted seat. I said this one had better legroom and wasn't already taken. She said yes, it was taken and I had to move back to my original seat. I said that of all the empty seats around me, this seat, the one I wanted, was occupied. She said yes. Several other staff came over to lend her moral support and loom over me. As it turned out, those seats were reserved. Reserved for her and her colleagues so that after spending 5 minutes dishing out tepid coke to the people on the train, they could put their feet up for the remainder of the journey. Being discourteous, lazy, self-centred tossers, I can only assume they were trained by British Rail, and what fine training it must have been, too. It is consoling to know that rail companies insist on offering a consistent standard of service no matter where you are in the world. 2 hours later we were in Urubamba where we took a taxi back to Cusco. The taxi cost just a couple of dollars and the driver was very friendly and chatty the whole way, proving that taxi drivers are not so consistent the world over.

So there you go. Visiting Machu Picchu was the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition for me. On the whole, however, it turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax. Somewhat akin to getting trapped in a lift with a bikini-clad Cameron Diaz and discovering all she wants to do is talk to you about 18th century loom building methods. Terrific scenery but you were hoping for so much more!

Mik

Cuzco

Cuzco, Peru

Arriving in Cuzco was great, a beautiful city with big main plaza complete with cathedral and many churches. The prices however weren't as welcoming. Having come from Bolivia I guess we were used to everything being relatively cheap, Peru however was turning out to be a bit of a shock on that front. We had a recommendation for a hostel which was lovely but at $25 a night was one of the most expensive places we have stayed. It was however run by a very friendly and helpful French lady who gave loads of info and our alternative way to Machu Picchu, which Mik will tell you about in the next installment.

Many people had told us how lovely the city was and that it was a place you could stay for a while. The central plaza and churches, cobbled streets and atmosphere certainly make it a great place to hang out - should the sun shine! Unfortunately for us the rain fell fairly consistantly while we were there. We were well aware that we were heading into this part of South America in rainy season, we just didn't realise what this meant here. Due to the high altitude which we have been at since we entered Bolivia when it rains it is also cold, especially at night. And of course the hostels we stay in don't have heating! Which means you can't go back to your room to warm up either. We took solace in a few cubra libras (fancy name for rum and coke), the local tipple.

e spent the day on Sunday in a small town just outside Cuzco called Pisac. It is well known for it's market which we wandered round for a while after watching the local Quechua people, in colourful traditional dress, call everyone to church using conch shells. There were loads of brightly coloured pochos and alpaca jumpers to be had, and although I managed to resist one of those I did quite fancy a nice alpaca blanket. Shame I had no room in my bag! In another area of the market they had a big kiln and were selling bread rolls, pies and .... guinea pigs, on sticks! Yep it's the local delicacy here, although we haven't quite been tempted to try one yet as they come whole, sticky out teeth and all!! The poor live ones must have known where they were headed.......

Later we headed up to see the Inca ruins located high above the village. We got a bit lost in the process and I ended up falling over in the mud at a particularly tricky bit and my language wasn't pleasant. I assumed no one around could understand me, until an American lady pointed out that maybe we hadn't chosen the easiest route. Oops!

In order to see these ruins we had to buy the 'Tourist Ticket' for the city. This entitles you to free entry to other sites of interest around Cuzco as well as museums. Apparently it also used to include the many churches and cathedral, but not anymore! In Keeping with the Spirit of the catholic church, the local archbishop decided he wasn't getting a big enough cut of the action and withdrew from the scheme to charge separately for visiting the Churches and cathedral. It also used to cost $10, now it costs $20! We did try to get our money's worth out of the ticket though by going to some of the museums included, unfortunately they were crap!

Cuzco a tourist trap - whatever gives you that idea. It was a real shame as it all left a bit of a sour taste in our mouths, but as we have figured out already the Peruvian government and people aren't interested in the long-term and keeping people coming in future, but purely in getting the money here and now. I guess they figure that as long as Machu Picchu is still standing people will come. Maybe they will, maybe they won't only time and feedback on the Lonely Planet website will tell!

The last day for me wasn't much fun as I was feeling the effects of a shepherds pie I'd had the day before. I knew the whole 'homecooked to an special Irish recipe' was a mistake. Should have gone for the guinea pig! I wasn't therefore looking forward to our overnight bus journey to Arequipa. God bless immodium.

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Guinea pig lovers and vegetarians look away now.

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Cara

Hairy Bus Journey No.37

Puno to Cusco, Southern Peru

We chose to overnight in Puno and get the early morning bus the next day so we would arrive in Cusco at a reasonable hour and get ourselves sorted and bedded down without having to rush around. At the bus station the previous day we checked out the bus company, bought our tickets and picked the best seats on the bus. Cara wanted the two seats at the front so we could see the views on the way, but after our difficulties in Bariloche I wanted the two seats immediately behind the stairs as they always seemed the most comfortable. On the bus in the morning, I quickly realised that I had made the worst choice. My seat was the crappiest on the bus. Lousy legroom, broken recliner and in the firing line of every yahoo who climbed up the stairs.

As the bus left Puno, the driver seemed to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I'm not too familiar with the street layout of this particular town but I'm guessing this is what happened as an overhead power cable we hadn't quite cleared almost ripped off the ventilation hatch that was right above my head. It managed to cling on by it's fingernails but it wouldn't close for the rest of the journey. Let's hope it doesn't rain, eh ?

As every one of the buses 126 occupants tried to squeeze past each other, they took it in turns to sit in my lap to let people through. When they weren't trying to sit on me, they were smacking me across the back of the head with their luggage. That was almost as unpleasant as having the ticket inspector's crotch 2 inches from my nose for ten minutes. After about 45 minutes of driving, we made our first pitstop and another 437 people climbed on the bus. They had plenty of time to get comfortable though, as the bus broke down at this point and we sat there for an hour while a very small man with a very big hammer climbed underneath the bus went about his business of whacking the crap out of it until it started again. Just to prove his level of commitment, he continued to whack the crap out of the undercarriage even after the bus set off again, and he had to be pulled out kicking and screaming by a colleague moments before he was smeared across an upcoming speedbump. Several local vendors climbed onboard to flog lunch to the passengers and they politely formed an orderly queue, each taking it in turn to smack me around the head with whatever they were carrying. I can reliably inform you that a bucket of sweetcorn hurts approximately twice as much as a sack of breadrolls with cheese on top, although neither hurts anywhere near as much as a crate of coca-cola smacking you in the temple. Finally, after about half an hour after setting off agin, it all settled down and I could read my book without a large Peruvian lady sticking her arse in my face. I almost felt like dozing off but fortunately for me a large suitcase jumped off the overhead rack at this point and smacked me in the stomach. Just to add insult to injury, it was a bright pink Barbie case with wheels that catch you in places you don't like to be caught, and I'm not talking about Burnely!

Just as I was getting my breath back, the bus ground to a halt once more, although this time not for a reason of it's own making. The road ahead was completely blocked by various objects, namely large boulders, broken glass, burning tyres and an unruly mob! There was some sort of ad-hoc political demonstration in progress and they would like to make their feelings known to all the road users, if this was alright with us. The crowd congregated at the head of the column of stopped traffic and made various chants and shouts about their discontent with their mayor. I wanted to tell them, if they didn't like their mayor they could have mine, but I don't think they would have appreciated having to pay £8 a day just to drive across town. After more wasted time, much sabre rattling and some effective diplomacy from the coach and truck drivers, the crowd agreed to let us through, although after all that heated political debate they really couldn't be bothered to clear the road of debris. Our coach was forced to drive off the road onto a nearby dirt track and through the small town up ahead. Now bearing in mind this town was not used to traffic much larger than your average donkey, the streets were not best suited to a large coach with 563 people onboard. 200 yards in, the bus stopped once more as it stuck in the mud trying to make a hairpin turn through somebody's front garden. The driver reversed up and tried again. Still no joy. He tried again, and again. Still nothing. All the men on the coach jumped off and we tried to push the bloody thing around the corner but it was still no use. Finally, the driver reversed his way back down a few streets and found an alternative route through the village. Unfortunately, he forgot all the men from the bus were still back up the hill and we were treated to waves from our loved ones as the bus sped off without us. After about quarter of a mile, somebody must have said something to him, because he kindly stopped and waited for us to catch up. Back on the main road, the driver stopped again and let another 27 people on. This time I was only hit round the head with an eighteen month old infant.

If some of you are a little confused as to how many people were now on this bus, let me briefly explain how transport works in this region. I will use our recent boat trip on Lake Titicaca as an example. Let's say you have two boats. Each boat has a capacity of 50 people. You have 60 people booked on an excursion, what do you do? Easy, pack them onto one boat. Okay, let's say you have 80 people booked, what do you do now? Easy again, pack them onto the same one boat. Make some of them sit on the floor and the rest go on the roof even if it's raining. They're either gringos or Argentinian students so who gives a shit? Now a really tricky one, you have 100 people. They can't possibly all go on one small boat, no matter how tightly you herd them in. What do you do? Well, apparently what you do for 100 people is get both boats, each with a capacity of 50, pack 80 people onto the first boat as per normal and put the remaining 20 on the second boat. You see, it's obvious when you think about it.
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Back on the Love Bus, we had stopped again to let on a young lady with a very large basket wrapped in a blanket. At first I assumed she was just selling cakes or corn as usual, but when she set down the basket right in front of me, opened it up and I saw a leg sticking out of it, I realised it wasn't going to be that simple. She spent the next 10 miles hacking into some animal carcass with a huge cleaver and dishing out bags of meat to everyone on the bus. I was tempted to try some, but after 15 minutes with blobs of fat and bone splinters whizzing past my head, I decided against it. After taking a peak in the basket, I could see what looked like a scaly, webbed foot with feathers, fur and horns. I can only assume it was from a species hitherto unknown to science. I wanted to keep one of the bones for research but an old dear behind me ate it with a loud crunch. Shortly after, it started raining on me through the broken hatch. We finally arrived at our chosen destination, three hours late but still in one piece.
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Mik

In search of sun on Lake Titi....tee hee!

Lake Titicaca, Bolivia & Peru

After two very wet and cold days in La Paz we were really looking forward to gettting to Copacabana, a small town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, that famous name which got giggles in every geography class. Lake Titicaca is in fact the highest navigable lake in the world and straddles the border between Bolivia and Peru. The lake itself is massive, can't quite remember the impressive area it covers just now, but it looks like the sea stretching out in front of you. We drove for ages along it's banks and even had to get across part of it by boat. We got out of the minibus and got onto to a little boat which whisked us across. The minibus however took a while longer on it's own boat. It was quite nervewracking to watch as all our luggage was balanced on top!

We had heard from those who had been that we should watch out for the strong sun around the lake, and so as our 3 hour minibus journey passed we were getting more and more excited. YES! The sun was shining as we arrived. Finally! We checked into a hotel, I changed into my vest and headed straight out into the sun. It must have been a good 50 mins before the clouds came over and the rain fell. And that was the end of sunbathing for while!

The main reason for coming to the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca is beacuse you can visit the islands from here. So off we set on our day tour to Isla Del Sol (Island of the sun where according to Inca legend the sun was born) in the pouring rain! Too many of us were piled onto a small boat, waterproofs, umbrellas and all and off we went - at snails pace. Whether this was due to them having overloaded the boat or because our 2 quid for the trip hadn't bought us seats on the best boat we will never know. Two painfully long hours later we finally arrived at the northern end of the island and headed off to walk the length of it. Apart from a detour to investigate the Inca ruins and sacred rock we walked solidly for 3 1/2 hours. Not because we are hardcore but because we weren't entirely sure how long it would take and didn't fancy missing the boat back to the mainland. Although we had started the beautiful walk in raincoats it wasn't long before the island lived up to it's name and the sun shone through. The lake is so massive that it felt like being on an island in the sea with beautiful bays and nothing else much around. You couldn't see the mainland in any direction. Not many others did the walk but we did bump into a few local kids either trying to sell sweets or posing with llamas and baby goats. For a few pence they would pose for a photo, unfortunately this girl obviously thought she looked best straight faced!! We made the boat with time to spare, and yes it took another long two hours to chug back to the mainland!

One day whilst having a wander round the town's main plaza we noticed a bit of a comotion outside the cathedral. We walked over to find that people were poring beer over the front of a van. This apparently was part of the blessing ceremony carried out on many cars every day. Looked like an excuse to have a beer, decorate your car with flowers and generally have a bit of a party to us. There was a whole queue of cars!

That evening having just eaten a delicious meal we emerged from the restaurant to see a couple checking out the menu. They asked us if we had had a good meal. We said yes and mentioned that the stew was particularly good. They looked at each other, thanked us, then added "But where are you from?" As we had spoken in English I think they knew already but we said England and laughed as we realised they may not consider our recommendation the best. Although we though they were Dutch so are not sure they would have know much better! Anyways they went into the and, I like to think, had a great meal and decided that maybe the English do know something about food afterall.

Aside from this and a climb up a hill for views across the lake at sunset we didn't do much else as Mik came down with 'manflu' and was hence bedbound. I'm sure we would have stayed a while longer had the weather been better as it was a very laidback town but after 3 days of mostly cold and rain, we headed off to Peru leaving the gnome hat wearing, hippie Argentines to it.

We then headed to the Peruvian side of the lake as we wanted to see the floating islands near a town called Puno. This was a far more touristy place and so we visited the islands, stayed one night and left. The islands themselves were unique. They are made from many layers of reeds taken from the lake itself and they are inhabited by descendents of the Uros people. These indiginous people wanted to separate themselves from the aggressive Incas and even today several hundred people live on the islands. Whilst a little commercialized it was still great to visit them and see the people living in the middle of the lake, and woozers what a sunset on our way home. Oh and one story we heard made us laugh. Apparently if the families on the islands fall out they simply separate some of the land and let them float away! That's one way to deal with noisy neighbours!

Cara

Our thoughts on Bolivia's historic capital

La Paz, Bolivia

Shithole !

The End

Mik

Sucre - una buena ciudad

Sucre, Bolivia

We headed to Sucre on a bit of a whim as we had read on the Lonely Planet website that it was a good place to learn spanish. Sucre is actually the judicial capital of Bolivia although La Paz is the governmental capital. The city is also set at a mere 2,800m which appealed to us having struggled to walk for more than 10 minutes without being completely out of breath for two weeks now. We also heard that the weather was better there, so we were all for it. We went by bus, for a change, along with several locals who wanted to sit on Mik's lap and a parrot.

We found a lovely hostal where lots of Germans were staying. Unfortunately they weren't the friendliest bunch, and boy did they get their towels out to make sure they secured the only table on the patio - day in, day out. Every time we went out or came back there they were. Not entirely sure what they got out of being on one of Bolivia's most beautiful cities but hey ho, each to their own. Still, I managed to shock a few by speaking a bit of German. Or maybe it was just that my german was shocking, it has been a while.

We knew we had to get stuck in quick before our enthusiasm wore off so we booked our lessons and met our teacher Lenny at 9am the following morning. We originally planned to have lessons seperately but were advised to do them together and it worked out very well. I think it could have been very intense having one on one lessons and we were knackered enough by the end of our 4 hour slots. In fact most afternoons we had to give our brains a bit of a rest and have a siesta! Hard life. Hence not much was added to the website! We always had homework so that was how we spent a week, going back to school. We really enjoyed it and learnt a lot but it was hard work. I found it especially hard as often german words would come to mind instead of the spanish so I didn't make sense at all. Lenny was a great teacher, and she not only taught us as much of the lingo as she could in such a short time, but also about her country. One morning we were discussing machismo and how in Bolivia the men still do nothing to help out at home, even if they are not currently working. Mik mentioned that he loved cooking and although he doesn't exactly pick up the hoover very often he's not adverse to a bit of tidying. I think Lenny wanted to keep him!

We bumped into an irish couple who we had first met two months earlier in Puerto Madryn, Argentina watching the whales. We are all travelling the same route so we have now bumped into them a few times. It was good to catch up with them and we all went to watch a south american movie in an attempt to improve our spanish. It was about smuggling cocaine into America from Colombia, so no dialogue needed really! So that's an irish couple, an english couple, watching a columbian film in spanish, in a dutch run bar in Bolivia, oooh we're so cosmopolitan!!

It was lovely being in Sucre, not just because my mountain of summer clothes got an airing again, but also because the people of Sucre were some of the friendliest we'd met in Bolivia. The city itself is one of the most beautiful in Bolivia due to it's well maintained white buildings, plazas and cobbled streets. We spent a couple of afternoons wandering around the local market. Once even trying a local fruit juice made with unripe mangos. It was delicious, until I realised it had been made with local tap water. I spent the rest of the afternoon expecting to need to make a dash for the nearest toilets. But I was fine luckily not!!

On our last day of lessons we joined all the other foreign students, mostly from Norway, for a typical Bolivian lunch and some spanish practice. Now it's all very well making a fool of yourself enclosed in a room with only your teacher and boyfriend but quite another to try and converse with strangers who are also just learning the lingo! So I was left trying to describe myself to a young norweigan lass and trying to understand a bit about her the only bit I remember now is that she was 23 oh and that she has a cat! We found out a bit more about averyone once we switched to english! They were all there for 3 months as part of their studies - not bad.

Typical Bolivia food wasn't all that. Pork (expensive in Bolivia) in a spicy sauce with potaoes and maize (imagine oversize sweetcorn nibblets) but, a) there was more bone than meat and, b) the sauce wasn't spicy, not even to me, oh and c) mashed maize is not nice, tastes like cardboard! So that meal won't be appearing in our top 5 meals list. OK so it's actaully a list of 500, and that's just since we've been away!

Later that day we headed off on our first overnight bus in Bolivia to reach the capital La Paz. After the luxury buses in Argentina we were holding our breath. It was actually very comfy, although we did pay for the best seats. It's funny actually how your perception of costs change as you enter different countries. I won't say we thought nothing of paying 20 quid a time for a bus in Argentina as when you are doing a couple in a week it adds up, but we had expected it to be much cheaper in Bolivia. So when the guy asked us for 11 quid each for the executive seats we nearly said no and went for the cheap seats. Then we took stock of the situation, realised it wasn't a lot of money and remembered that we are not the size of Bolivians. It was 11 quid well spent, no chickens on our bus!

Cara

Down t'pit

Potosi, Southern Bolivia

Our sole reason for coming to Potosi was to visit the famous silver mines. A source of enormous wealth for the Spanish during colonial times, the mines are now all but spent and the locals operate hundreds of small independent mining operations in the mountain on a co-operative basis. The work is hard, the hours are crappy, pickings are thin and conditions are often described as "medieval". The local tour guides do not recommend visiting the mines it you are claustrophobic or asthmatic and they warn that many people find the trip a harrowing experience. You also have to factor in, of course, the fact that Potosi is the highest city in the world at 4090 metres (13,500 feet for you old folk) above sea level and temperatures in the mines can often reach 45 centigrade. Sounds like fun! Count me in. Cara, being a good, old fashioned claustrophobe, decided against it and left me to check it out alone.

First thing the next morning, we were kitted out with our rubber boots, overalls and miners hats. Then we were off to the local market to stock up on goodies to take along as gifts for the miners. I can only assume they do this so that the miners will appreciate us being there and not collapse a mineshaft on our heads for their own personal amusement. Feeling a little flush, I splashed out on a stick of dynamite, some fuses and blasting caps, a few big bottles of coke, a couple of packets of cigarettes and a large bag of coca leaves. And all for about two quid! Beat that, Sainsburys. I decided against taking them any bottles of neat sugar cane alcohol (98% Vol, their tipple of choice). Call me old fashioned, but when I'm hundreds of feet underground in a confined space, I don't want my hosts off their faces on pure cane alcohol, swinging a pickaxe and thinking about how to get a few chuckles out of the gringos.

Before going into the mine, we first visited the mineral processing plants where the metals and other useful minerals are extracted from the crap dragged out of the mine. Even here the workers continually chewed coca leaves and wandered around with their cheeks packed full like big hamsters. Various unpleasant chemicals are used in this process and the life expectancy of the plant workers is not much higher than that of the miners. We wandered around aimlessly and tried not to accidentally blow anything up or fall into the unguarded flywheels or churning vats of the extraction process.

After this we made our way up to the mine proper. The entrance tunnel was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, but at least we could walk upright, albeit crouching down and with me cracking my head repeatedly on timber beams and low slung rocks. Praise be for hard hats. The whole place reeked and the air was thick with dust and chemicals. Breathing at this altitude is not easy at the best of times but in the heat of the mine and continually sucking down lungfulls of dust, it started to get very taxing very quickly. As we made our way down through the various levels of the mine we met many workers, and more than a few of them looked like they had spent just a bit too long in the dark and eaten a few too many coca leaves. Say hello, pass off a few sticks of dynamite and move on before they drop one in your wellies. As w were travelling, our guide Juan was filling us in with the details of how the mines worked and what jobs the miners did. They earn pisspoor money and not many of them live into old age. They seemed a cheerful bunch, but they never liked to down tools for more than a few minutes at a time and they were down the mine for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, slogging their guts out and sucking down a bit more dirt every day. Deeper we went, and the further we travelled into the mountain, the smaller the tunnels became. They were pretty tight to start with, but after about an hour down there I was crawling on my belly through ever downward spiralling tunnels with nothing in my field of view but the feet of the person in front of me. At one point we came out into a larger shaft and followed the tracks used by the boxcars for transporting the smashed rocks to the surface. I found myself at the head of the group and headed down the tunnel. From behind came the shout that a cart was on it's way down the tracks and we needed to clear out of the way. That part of the tunnel was too narrow to stand aside so I picked up the pace and kept going forward, stooping to miss the low ceiling. After a few dozen metres, the sound of the car on the tracks was getting louder and I looked behind to discover that apart from one other person, everybody else had gone back the other way to safety. We looked back and saw the lights of the miners helmets as they pelted down the track toward us with their 2 tonne carriage of rocks. At that point we realised there was a convoy of empty carriages coming down the track in the other direction. We looked back up the track, we looked up ahead at what was coming around the corner, we looked at each other, we both said "Shit!" and started running. We shouted to the miners up ahead that there was a full carriage heading towards them and we could hear the wheels of their cart squeal as they hit the brakes. We finally reached the turn in the tracks and jumped to the side where the tunnel widened by a couple of feet. A few seconds later the full carriage came screaming past us a few inches from our noses and smashed in to the head carriage of the other column. The empty boxcar was knocked back into the one immediately behind it and spilled off the tracks. Miners flew in all directions. So did the curses and accusations. We watched the miners square up to each other and waited for the rest of the group to catch up. Myself and the Australian guy with me let out a big sigh, I took off my hard hat to wipe the sweat off my face and immediately cracked my head on a piece of wood. Our guide eventually caught up to us, looked at the train wreck up ahead, looked at us and said "I bet that was interesting. Okay, let's keep going". Off we went into even smaller tunnels that would make a mole give up and buy a caravan.

As we headed back up to the surface, I fell behind a bit and fell to the back of the group. The tunnel we were in became smaller and smaller and eventually I was on all fours, scrabbling uphill in the dust kicked up by everyone else. I looked to see where everyone else was and they seemed to be scampering off into the distance like seasoned professionals. The last lamp glow disappeared in the distance and I was alone. The rock walls of the tunnel, constricting, closed around me like a fist and pinned me there. I could feel myself getting more and more anxious, my pulse was racing and the butterflies in my stomach were going wild. I could see nothing in front of me and nothing behind me. All that existed in the world was the small round patch of dirt and stone lit up by my lamp. Suddenly I was aware of the huge mountain closing in around me and there was nothing I could do. My lungs were screaming out for air but all I could manage to was keep panting and sucking down the noxious fumes and dust, but it did no good, I couldn't breath, and in just a few moments I would start to see black spots in front of my eyes and I would pass out. The only sounds that reached me were the distant booms of dynamite explosions inside the mountain. Boom, boom, boom, the shock waves rolled over me and dust fell from the rocks into my face and eyes, sticking itself to the layer of sweat sprouting from my skin. I thought "Oh my God, I'm trapped down here. I am going to get stuck in this tunnel and nobody is going to find me. I can't breath. I'm suffocating. OH MY GOD, I'M TRAPPED, I CAN'T MOVE. I'M GOING TO DIE DOWN HERE!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH SOMEBODY GET ME OUT OF HERE !!!!!!!!!!!"

...........and then I remembered that I'm not actually claustrophobic, and everything was fine. I got up, set off to catch up with everybody else and walked out of the mine with nothing else of any interest happening. Bit of an anticlimax, really.

Once we were all out of the mine and we'd guzzled around 20 gallons of water, one of the guides, Daniel, pulled out the one remaining stick of dynamite and went to work. He split the stick into 3 pieces and buried it in a bag of ammonium nitrate. In went the blasting cap and the fuse, the whole lot was wrapped up tightly in a carrier bag and lit. Before he ran off to bury his bomb in the dirt he very kindly passed his little package around the group for a photo opportunity. Now there's a novel experience! When the fuse was half burned down, he snatched the package and ran hell for leather across the patch of dirt and threw it into a hole in the ground. We stood there, cameras at the ready, and waited for the explosion. We waited, and waited some more. Then the dynamite exploded, we all flinched, and a dozen people took photographs of the sky or their own feet. If you want to know what it's like to have a stick of dynamite go off a few yards away from you, I can only describe it as loud. Very loud. And I don't mean loud like your nextdoor neighbours on a Saturday night. I mean loud like you can feel it rumble across your insides and hear it echo around your head long after the smoke has cleared. Now you can't buy fireworks like that back home.

On the whole, a very interesting experience but I sure as hell don't want to work there. Stacking shelves in Tesco when we get back doesn't seem quite so bad now. Where do I send the application ?

Mik

Salt, salt everywhere and not a chip to eat

Tupiza to Uyuni, Bolivia

..

One of the biggest draws to this part of the world is the Salar D'Uyuni Salt Flats, which apparently are flat, made of salt and near a place called Uyuni. Quirky! Southwest Bolivia also has some spectacular lakes and the best way to see all these things is to take a 4 day jeep safari from Tupiza on a circuitous route finishing in Uyuni. This is what we chose to do and booked it with a local tour operator that had been recommended through various channels. All we knew prior to setting off was that we would be sharing a 4x4 with a driver, a cook and four other punters, two of which we were reliably informed were an English couple who spoke fluent Spanish. A good sign because the driver/guide and cook didn't speak a word of it. It all sounded a bit cramped but what the hell.

Day 1
We all congregated at the agents in the morning and piled our luggage onto the roof of what looked like a 1937 Charabanc. It didn't look too reliable and I assumed they piled so many of us in there so that if it broke down there would be plenty of bodies to push. Our driver, Hugo, was a very pleasant chap, but not too big. In fact, he looked like a nine year old with a skin condition, but he knew everything there was to know about our steam powered car and he was probably stronger than the six of us combined. Our cook was a Bolivian lass called Damacia. She was always smiling and she handed around a big bag of lollipops after we set off which made her alright in my book. The English couple, David and Juliette, turned out not to be fluent in Spanish after all, but apparently they had been told that Cara and I were the Spanish speakers. As it turned out, they still spoke better Spanish than us, which I suppose made us the bigger disappointment. The last two passengers were a Dutch couple, called Silke and his name was something I could only pronounce if I had the last quarter inch of my tongue removed and a large build up of phlegm.

Half an hour into the journey, whilst driving along a narrow road winding around the sides of a steep canyon, we stopped on the roadside whilst Damacia layed flowers at the spot where her twenty seven year old brother had been killed the previous year when his car left the road and rolled down the canyon. This was a rather sobering start to the trip and after that we all paid a little more attention to Hugo's driving until we were safely out of the mountains. The rest of the first day was fairly uneventful until we arrived at our night's "accommodation". We were at an altitude of about 4500 metres by this point and when the sun went down, so did the thermometer. All six of us were sharing an unheated, mudbrick room in the middle of a small village. While we waited for dinner, Cara and I took a walk through the village and tried to take some photos of the sunset and the surrounding countryside. A group of curious local kids, their interest picqued by the sight of two giants wandering through town, came over to check us out and we had a little chat. They wanted to know where we came from and what it was like there. Then they wanted to know what animals we had in England. Did we have llamas and armadillos and condors? We said no, but then struggled to explain what badgers and squirrels are. In the end we gave up and pretended the green pastures of Blighty were home to wandering lions, elephants and snakes. Cara doing her best impression of each beast to the howling laughter of the kids. We all had a laugh, but I can't help thinking these poor kid's fragile litle minds will be forever warped into believing England is located 60 miles west of Nairobi! Back at our hut, during an act of petty vandalism, both David and I tried to smash up the top of the toilet doorframe, me with the top of my head and David with the corner of his eyesocket. Despite both drawing blood, neither of us managed any real damage and in the end we gave up and went to bed.

Day 2 - New Year's Eve
The second day was the longest of all. Despite having very little sleep we spent the best part of twelve hours in the back of the 4x4. To try and make things more comfortable, I detached my legs and put them on the roofrack. The next time I climbed out of the car I forgot about the legs and fell flat on my face. I would have rolled down the hill too if Cara hadn't grabbed me by my ears. During the morning, Silke discovered I had a layman's interest in popular science and from that moment on the questions came thick and fast. "Why is the sky blue?", "Why do we have wind?" and "Why doesn't the second law of thermodynamics preclude the evolution of complex organisms?". After several hours of that, the rest of the passengers were ready to kill both of us and throw us into a ditch.

During the course of the day, we visited various lakes and lagoons (no I can't tell you the difference) and I managed to take 2435 photos of flamingoes. We finished the afternoon at a natural hotsprings, where everyone took a dip or at least dipped their toes in (me), and then some geysers. By this time we were at 4875 metres above sea level, although I don't know if that measurement was taken while the tide was in or out. 4875 metres above sea level feels like about 500 metres above the point where the atmosphere ends. To put this in context, if I stood on tiptoes and stretched my arms in the air, I risked losing my fingertips to a passing aeroplane. Being at altitude is a strange sensation. I assumed it would just be like being a bit out of breath, but we should be so lucky. First off, I can't sleep and spend hours on end having bizarre waking dreams. Secondly, I get really fidgety and have to turn over every thirty seconds when I'm in bed. Third, and most serious of all, I lose my appetite. Now nobody told me that when I signed up for this!

Our acommodation for New Year's Eve was to be a room in a large block on the edge of Laguna Colorada, which you can find in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica under "Arse end of nowhere". It was so cold that we were forced to wear our hats gloves and scarves, even indoors. Damacia treated us by cooking 250kgs of meat on a barbeque, although when she brought the barbeque inside it filled the whole sleeping block with smoke. This caused an American lady down the corridor to fly into an apopectic fit that such a crime could be perpetrated against her and she spent 15 minutes hissing and swearing at everyone before eventually disappearing up her own arse. After meeting a few people from other tours, it made us realise what an amiable bunch we were travelling with and how unpleasant it could have been. We spent the rest of the night getting thoroughly plastered on Argentinian wine and at midnight everybody piled outside to watch fireworks being set off. The sky outside was completely clear, on account of there being no atmosphere this high, and I have never seen so many stars in the sky as I saw that night. The whole sky was a blanket of stars from one horizon to the other and the more you looked, the more you saw. It was quite a sight. At one point I tried counting them but lost count at 47, although that probably had more to do with the wine than anything else.

Day 3 - New Year's Day 2006
Despite nursing nasty heads, we were once again awoken at an obscene hour the next morning. Back on the road, our first stop was at a small rockface where we were to meet a family of friendly chinchillas, which are like a cross between a kangaroo and a squirrel (what a party that must have been). Despite all of us standing there making encouraging noises, we saw nothing. So remember Hugo, the next time I'm given the choice between an extra hour in bed and whistling at a rock, you know what my decision is. We visited a few more lagoons, or were they lakes, and I took 3956 more photos of flamingoes. We had lunch at the foot of a smoking volcano and then off into the eternal horizon once more.

At the end of the third day, just before we moved on to the highlight of the entire trip, the Dutch contingent, who turned out to be brother and sister (it was a while before we figured it out), decided they were going to bail out and catch a train into Chile. We have no idea why, but we were all grateful of the extra legroom in the back of the jeep. That evening we stayed in a salt hotel, which turned out to be a hotel made of salt. Who'd have guessed? And made out of salt it certainly was. Huge, solid blocks of the stuff. Except the toilet block, obviously. The shower cubicles might not have lasted too long if they were. Even the floors of every room were covered in a layer of coarse salt. Ironically, dinner that night was very bland. The four of us polished off some more wine and retired early.

..

Day 4

We had to be up the next morning at 4.30am to get to the salt flats for sunrise. 4.30am! Let's just pause here and think about that for a moment. 4.30am. It even sounds strange when I say it out loud. 4.30am. This had better be bloody worth it. Fortunately for all concerned, it was. It was absolutely fantastic. The salt flats are enormous, very, very flat and incredibly white. Apparently, all this salt is a remnant of an enormous party back in the Mesolithic Period when a caveman called Og ordered too many beer snacks and refused to clear up afterwards. The rest, as they say, is history. When the sun rose over the horizon it looked like we were out at sea, as the first part of the salar we navigated was submerged under about 4 inches of water. We stopped for a while to watch the sunrise and take photos, and I cleverly dropped my camera getting out of the car and smashed the UV filter on the zoom lense, and the autofocus mechanism now doesn't work properly so forgive me if some of our pictures now look a little out of focus. After this we moved onto 'Fish Island', which apparently is so named because it's shape resembles a fish. It should be called Cactus Island because that is all there is there. However, the views from the top of the island were great and you could see the salar stretch off to the horizon, all perfectly flat and gleaming white. Damacia made us a a breakfast of freshly cooked doughnuts and a something called 'Api', which you drink and looks and tastes abit like runny jam. We spent 10 minutes dipping our doughnuts into the pan before they told us we were supposed to drink it. Although to be fair, even after they told us this, we still kept dipping into the pan as the doughnuts were too big for our cups. We spent the rest of the morning messing about on the salt flats and taking pictures. Once off the salar we headed for the town of Uyuni, which is about as exciting as a cavity search at a foreign airport. David and Juliette were heading back to Tupiza with Hugo and Damacia and we were due to spend the night here before making our way to Potozi to the East. We said our goodbyes immediatelywent to sleep in our hotel room forma few hours. When we woke up it was hailstoning outside. A good sign.

..

Mik

And the prize for winner of this year's "Running in a very camp way" competition goes to Mr Michael Threlfall

Entering the real South America

Tupiza, southwest Bolivia

The Bolivian border town of Villazon is not somewhere you would want to stay, so we made our way to the bus station (which was crammed full of people and luggage) and bought tickets for the next bus out. This gave us 3 hours to kill so we went in search of our first experience of Bolivian food, we weren't looking forward to it. Whilst wandering round we noticed not only that we felt very out of breath but also that our hands were turning purple. We were slightly concerned but it only lasted for five minutes. We just about found a restaurant which was willing to serve food (some very strange customer service going on) and ordered steak and chips each. We were somewhat aprehensive to how the steak would be and to be fair it didn't even compare to Argentinian steak but it was fine, and combined with the chips, rice, salad (we left that!) and two fried eggs on top it wasn't a bad experience for a quid!

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, a fact which was fairly obvious as soon as we crossed the border. They also have the largest number of indigenous people. These are facts gleaned from the Lying Planet so may be a little off but what we have seen so far seems to testify to them. The streets are filled with women wearing the traditional brighly coloured clothes, big puff-ball style skirts and ponchos which aren't what you would call flattering! And filled with lots of young children asking for money, even late at night.

We came into Bolivia from Argentina instead of the usual route via Chile on the recommendation of someone we met in Bariloche. Veronica, an english lady who had been working at the Natiowide BS for long enough to have been given three years off (nice one), mentioned that you could take part in a triathalon in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid territory. The word triathalon had been enough to put us both off the idea initially, until that is she mentioned it wasn't a real hardcore triathalon. So we amended our plans and were glad we did.

We arrived late in Tupiza so we took a room in the first hostel we came to and were delighted to see that we could get decent acommodation for just 3 quid a night, result. We also tried a set menu lunch the following day which is the cheapest way to eat in Bolivia, you just don't know exactly what you might get! We lucked out and for about 70 pence we had a soup, some sort of meat in sauce (we didn't want to ask it's identity) with mash and some fruit. Not bad. We booked ourselves on the triathalon for the following day and had a wander round the town. We met a lovely retired couple from Canada and exchanged travel stories whilst sheltering from the rain. During the two days we were in Tupiza we bumped into them a lot and in the end they invited us to visit them on Vancouver Island, an invitation both of us would love to take up - but not on this trip.

We awoke the next day to grey skies and a bit of a rain shower but off we set on the first part of our triathalon - the bikes! We were handed our helmets and us and three Bolivians set off. The countryside around Tupiza is stunning and it was a real shame the weather wasn't better as the colours of the rocks would have been even more impressive. The rock formations seemed unreal, caused simply by the weather and river paths. Cycling at altitude, uphill, isn't easy and many breaks were needed, although I thought Mik and I did really well considering the Bolivians were very used to such altitudes. They did of course put us to shame by being able to speak english, which was obviously greatly appreciated at the time but made us even more determinded to get some lessons sooner rather than later.

So about 1 hour on the bikes and then they were loaded onto the top of the 4WD and off we went for a walk. We had been told it was about 2 km, in fact it wasn't even that, pah this triathalon thing is easy!! Then we had a spot of lunch by the river, tamales - thought we had escaped the corn foods, but they were actually much tastier than those we had eaten in Argentina. 1 point to Bolivia!

We were then taken to to the stables where we quickly realised that the horses weren't going to be the well kept, shiny looking Argentinian variety. They looked more like something you'd find on Blackpool Pleasure beach, although they probably didn't eat as much . Luckily they put Mik on the largest, although he wasn't thinking the same for long as his horse seemed to have a tendancy to throw itself, and it's respective passenger, in front of moving vehicles. Now considering it was only Mik's second time on a horse I was very impressed that he stayed on and stuck with it. Ít made me quite nervous until we left the road.

So off we set into the wilderness that was where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fled through before they ended their days about 60km away. And it did feel like that, and despite the rain, it was easy to imagine them galloping along. We of course took a much steadier pace, although I did dig my heels in a couple of times in the hope of a trot, but my horse either couldn't be bothered, or knew he shouldn't, probably just as well in retrospect, it's been a few years since I've been on a horse!

After a short stop and a clamber up a waterfall we got back on the horses for the return journey. As I watched Mik climb on his horse buckled underneath him, not I can assure you because of his weight, just because the poor thing was so weak. We then just wanted to get back and let these horses have a rest. Not such a pleasurable experience as we had enjoyed in Argentina, especially once it started to rain. Still we made it back and were then taken for the last leg of the trip. The views of the rock formations know as the candles from 3,800 meters were amazing but once the guide asked if we wanted to cycle the last bit down the side of the mountain we all asked if he was joking. Apparently not, we declined and climbed back in to the warm 4x4. So there we go, Mik and I couldn't even complete a triathlon of that nature! Don't think we'll be trying the real thing any time soon!

Cara