Don't know what happened, this should have gone on the 14th of Feb! Bless the technology!...just skip and file maybe! Susques is about 3,200 metres above sea level and I was waking in the night and having to take a few deep breaths to stay alive….but in the morning we were going even higher….this pass is about 4,300 or so…pretty thin air up there…and they say there’s some snow about as well. Hey, lets go! Another mouthful of coca, it does seem to help! And I didn’t inhale! I stop a few times along the 130 kms to the frontera to [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, the border wasn’t as bad as some - surly, unfriendly, unhelpful - but we got thru’. Bye Bye Bolivia, Hola Peru! I should have taken the black dogs on the road as an omen, having just been thru’ another bout with my own, and having written thru’ it on the last blog. Can you tell? Anyway, most of the dogs along the way, and there have been many, have been the shaggy, fair-haired sheep dog types, (some very Candy-like), but this morning, across the frontera and into Peru, the first half dozen dogs were black! Sometimes mine is a mangy, [View Full Entry]

---

---

They just don’t know when to stop. At least by Tuesday things had somewhat returned o normal (?) in La Paz, just the odd random squirt of water, splash and splatter….here in Copacabana, as if to emulate their more famous namesake in Brasil, they just keep on with it, two groups at opposite corners of the plaza, almost in competition, couple of big bass drums, some small drums and 20 or so square recorder-like things, I hesitate to call them instruments, but no doubt in the sober hands of a musician something musical could come of it. The women, who incidentally, [View Full Entry]

---

---

It’s the 3rd day of the Carnival, no, not Rio, or Salvador, but downtown La Paz, and the energy and excitement and danger are just as full-on. In fact it’s been full-on from Uyuni, thru’ Potosi, Oduro and La Paz…the primary danger being getting soaked as packs of young, and not so young, roam the streets, armed to the teeth with water ‘pistols’, military design, star wars colours and shapes, awfully phallic, giant purple, bulbous headed, red, yellow and green shafts, the pumping action by grown-up boys, sheathed in their plastic condom coveralls, even Siggi [View Full Entry]

---

---

In this episode - the 3-day Tour, The Rasta Llama, Gringo Bingo and the search for the Lost City of the Drinkas….and also getting to Potosi, Carnival in Oduro and La Paz. (mainly due to cyber USB phobia in Potosi and Oduro without which this would have been in long ago!) Well, hasn’t Bolivia turned out to be another gem! Back in the land of cheaper prices and good service. Pity to have missed so much of Chile South but you know…and maybe things were better down south as one has to say that not only was Chile expensive, the service [View Full Entry]

---

---

Strange spending so much time so high, altitudinaly that is, when the highest real estate in Oz, Mt. Kosiusko, is only 2,200 metres or so (I think) and here in San Pedro de Atacama it’s already 2,440 and everywhere else around here is higher. Breathing is always a little laboured but with a mouthful of coca it gets easier! Did a few look-arounds of San Pedro, they really draw a long bow with some of the “famous” features, crikey, but the general scenery is soo fantastic that you can overlook the overblown toury spots general shortcomings. Valley of the Dead, Dry [View Full Entry]

---

---

Susques is about 3,200 metres above sea level and I was waking in the night and having to take a few deep breaths to stay alive….but in the morning we were going even higher….this pass is about 4,300 or so…pretty thin air up there…and they say there’s some snow about as well. Hey, lets go! Another mouthful of coca, it does seem to help! And I didn’t inhale! I stop a few times along the 130 kms to the frontera to just watch the ever closer snow capped mountains, this is very barren terrain, the odd animal, what were guanacos, then [View Full Entry]

---

---

Morning time, off to Salta…a 4-way group this time altho’ Raf annd I move further ahead as we go…..day starts with 100 kms of ripio, then nice asphalto and all of it in deserted roads, fantastic scenery, mountain range to the left like scrunched up old carpet, slabs of bare rock in parts, green fuzz over the rest, clouds hanging around the peaks, off to the right, bare rock in spectacular reds and browns, cactus plants and scrubby thorn bushes, pretty inhospitable but beautiful. Every few kms a washout, as we would say back home, sometimes concreted slipway but others just [View Full Entry]

---

---

Once more off into the great unknown…north Argentina and the crossing on freshly graded ripio, the worst sort, but speccy views. ….and another couple of terminally challenged bicyclists making their way to nowhere…..but they waved. It is soo like parts of northern and central Oz, red hills, gravely soil, scrubby brush and beautiful gums, the view this morning of the range out west of Villa Union, framed by a couple of big gums, could have been a piece of Uluru or somewhere in the Macdonnel Ranges! The road from Cordoba to Villa Union was an uninspiring 500 plus kms wi [View Full Entry]

---

---

Suddenly, around the next corner, the clouds just rolled into the side of the mountain and engulfed me. Visibility was down to about 15 inches and the condensation on the visor halved that. Fortunately I couldn’t see the precipitous fall to the valley below, the gaps in the safety barriers, the rows of little crosses dedicated to the ones they found, the oil/rubber slicks glistening on the wet asphalt, the loose gravel on the corners, the cops, the trip wires, the hit men, the imagination going wild… The road up had been sweet, cool curves and mega views back down to [View Full Entry]

---

---