Beach break After our trip through South America we felt like we needed another holiday to get over it. We wanted warm weather, good food and hammocks to laze away the days in. As it happened Thai Air was running a special to Bangkok and so we booked to leave about a month after our return. We arrived in Bangkok late at night and had no trouble getting a public taxi to the Nakorn Pink Hotel and they had plenty of rooms available although the cost had gone up to 490 Bt/night for a double fan room. We dropped our bags [View Full Entry]

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Day two -Volcanic landscapes Up at 6am and away before 7, heading out into even more spectacular volcanic scenery. Coming from a temperate, fluvial climate we are used to seeing the well etched and eroded remnants of volcanic cones but here all erosion is by gravity and wind giving the cones a softer form. The valleys become flat plains filled with volcanic debris and snow is a rare sight even though you are at 4-5,000m. The lakes that have formed are mainly thermal in origin with several levels of sinter flats exposed, some of them metres thick. Spicular sinter and [View Full Entry]

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Salar - First day We arrived at uyuni in the midst of a tremendous dust storm and the town looked like something out of an old western film - the only thing missing was the tumbleweeds! It was so cold that we grabbed a room in the first hotel we saw. Nothing flash but at least we were out of the wind and cold. We then had to try and find the recommended tour company Avi Tours, after wandering the town for some time with no joy (including ages waiting in the cold outside the Tourist information kiosk). Eventually a policeman [View Full Entry]

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Potosi Had a lot of trouble trying to find the hostal we wanted (La Casona), no-one seemed to have heard of it. In the end got dropped off in the main plaza and I went searching whilst Jill looked after the bags. Eventually found the hostal about 2 mins away from the Plaza. Great place, large room with two heaters, TV and a balcony ($20 US/ night). Checked out the mine tours and eventually decided to go with the one from the Hostal (80 Bs for English), slightly more expensive than some of the others but well recommended. Only 3 of [View Full Entry]

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Altitude sickness Haven´t really talked much about the effect of altitude sickness on us. In the planning part of our trip we tried to keep rising in altitude as we travelled and also to give ourselves time to acclimatise after after each rise. Jill has been more affected than me but even so the effects have been minor compared to others we have seen/heard of. The effects here at 4,000m are such that if you try and move too fast then it feels as though your brain has been left behind and it takes a moment or two for it to [View Full Entry]

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Oruro One of the interesting features of travelling long distances by public bus is the appearance of salesman on the trips for the first hour or so. They preach the benefits of coco tea, multivitamin powders, arthritis creams and all sorts of other forms of snake oil. The surprising thing is that they are extremely successful with sales to 40-50% of the passengers. We initially struggled to find a room but eventually ended up in Hostal San Miguel (70 Bs/night). Being a Sunday the City seemed deserted and very little was open apart from the Central market. We eventually found [View Full Entry]

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La Paz Not really much to talk about here but have a few photos [View Full Entry]

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Rurrenbarque Booked our tickets for a Amazonian Basin experience (3 days/2 nights) in La Paz and were told that we would be met at the Airport on arrival. Taxi to Airport was 50 Bs, a bit more than we expected but evidently more or less the correct price. The plane was a 20 seater turboprop and there seemed to be a lot of people waiting to get on but most were hooked out of the boarding line so perhaps they were all standbys? The plane skimmed a wee bit close to some of the mountains as we threaded our way through [View Full Entry]

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Bolivia We got up early at Olly and did all our washing so we could have it dry in time to return to Cusco. We hung it up on the rooftop lines and went to breakfast and then returned to pack. At 1030 I went up to collect it and was grabbed by the receptionist and given all our wet washing back saying that they needed the lines for the sheets and towels. We didn´t want to travel with wet gear so we walked out of town to the river and strung them over the bushes to dry. After lunch we [View Full Entry]

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Machu Picchu After talking with people up at the hot springs we decided that it would be best to try and get up at 0430 in order to ensure that we would get in the first 200 so we could climb Wayna Picchu. In the event we need not have bothered setting the alarm as a family in the Hostel got up at 0400 and probably woke everyone else up. We ended up being 2nd in the queue for the 1st bus up the mountain (0530). On arrival we found that many of the tour groups transport their people up the [View Full Entry]

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