We got on the bus at 2pm for what would be our shortest journey so far, only about 5 hours south down to Valparaiso. We got to the bus station and while we sorted ourselves out ready to find our hostel, a dodgy dude came up to us asking for a cigarette and then hung around shiftily for longer than was necessary. At this point, a friendly bus driver told us to watch ourselves as these guys are renowned for running off with travellers bags. It’s common sense of course but still very nice of the guy to look out for us and gave us a good feeling about Valparaiso immediately. We found the hostel only a few blocks from the bus terminal and entered a marine inspired world with life-jackets and rings, captain’s hats, bugles, ... read more

After leaving the Salar, we drove parallel to the train tracks until we reached Uyuni...and what a shock to the system after the beauty of the Altiplano. Uyuni was once Bolivia’s gateway to the outside world and an industrial, modern town. Now however, it’s dirty, depressing and shabby and it’s only due to its proximity to the Salar that it hasn’t turned into a ghost town. We said our goodbyes to the girls and Alberto and Lucy and made sure to give them a nice, fat tip for having looked after us so well. The three of us then got dropped off by the train station in Uyuni so we could try and figure out the mystery of the Bolivia - Chile train. We’d heard about a 23-hour train journey that takes you across the border ... read more

Imagine if you will the following 11 hour bus journey... • no toilet • baggage falling from the overhead storage area all night (down to some crazy driving skills) meaning we had to keep everything on our laps, • incomprehensible issues with seating numbers resulting in us having to move seats twice and give up our functioning reclining seats to two of the most selfish travellers we’ve met who then proceeded to put the seats back so horizontally that their heads were in our laps, made worse for us both due to the fact my newly assigned seat didn’t go back at all and Ian had a woman with a small child on her lap behind him so couldn’t put his back anyway, even if he wanted to, • windows that flew open all night (again ... read more

We arrived in Sucre at 7am and Lisa got chatting to a couple of English girls in the bus terminal to see if they could recommend any hostels, but they’d only just arrived too, so we got into a taxi with a friendly driver who recommended a few places which we went to check out. The first one we looked at was, to say the least, a little stinky as the bathroom was in the room, which is fine in itself, but seeing as there’s no ventilation, en-suite is never going to work. The next stop was Torino, which seemed nice, even though it was right next to an apparently never closing market, right outside our window. The bathrooms were great and pretty new, the best yet actually, and we had a private room. As we ... read more

The bus unbelievably made it in early to Cochabamba (I thought everything was always late in South America?), at 5am, which was not what we wanted as we couldn’t go to the hostel till about 7am, so we had a 2 hour wait in the terminal. It was actually quite an interesting few hours as we people watched the whole time. The place was absolutely rampacked, even at that hour, and we saw crazy things like a sheep getting on a bus, ladies carrying round petrol jerry cans filled with tea and coffee for sale, lots of indigenous ladies, machine like in strength yet rather on the large side, kids running around playing the Daytona machine happily and helpful bus employees watching the women lug around their heavy bags while chatting to their mates. Outside the ... read more

Got up early for the first time in a few days, showered, packed and paid up, finally managing to actually leave the hostel after Edwin, the hostal owner, banged on for a while about reviews we could write for him, bad reviews others had written about the hostel and what we should see in Puno. We said good bye to the pussies, grabbed a quick breakfast in the bakery and jumped in a cab to the terminal. Which turned into another nightmare - we got there at 12 as requested, at 12.15 went to try and get through the gates, where the security guy wouldn’t accept our tickets. He then ran around the gate, gave them to the police who wandered off upstairs with them, there was total confusion as one guy was saying that there ... read more