deserts!

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Hi all! I´m sorry this has been such a long time coming, we got really sick of the stupidly slow internet in Bolivia and then went to the desert for a few days! Anyway here´s what we´ve been upto...

From La Paz we went to Sucre for a few days and met a really nice group of people who we have been travelling with ever since! There is Polly from UK and her fella Mark from Oz and a Swiss guy called Marc also. We since also picked up two Dutch boys and a South African girl too!

Sucre was a really great city and we even found a bar to watch the England-Holland match in (as annoying as it was!). We had a couple of really nice days there, it was good to have warm weather again and we were thinking of you guys in the UK with the dark nights and cold weather as we applied our sun screen!

From Sucre we went to Potosi in a taxi which was virtually the same price as the bus and such a treat, Bolivian buses are not good! Potosi was very interesting, it is a town that exists only due to there being a lot of silver in the hills nearby! At the height of the silver rush it was the largest city in the Amercias! Unfortunately the silver is not so plentiful now are the town is very poor. There are still plenty of mines where they mine for silver, tin and zinc. It is the only place in the world where you can visit a real working mine so of course we did! It was such an amazing experience. The atmosphere down there is so dusty (there´s plenty of asbestos, arsenic on the walls etc) and you had to crawl on hands and feet and run like hell if a two tonne wagon was coming as it wouldn´t stop for you! (in case you hadnt guessed, there is no such thing as health and safety in Bolivia!). It was a very sobering sight though, I couldn´t believe that this kind of mining still goes on in the world. The miners only have on average a further 15 years life expectancy once they start to work there. They were incredibly strong guys who seemed really proud of the work they do and happy to share it. The gifts we took helped of course! On the way we stopped at a market and each bought a stick of dynamite, a bag of ammonium nitrate (i think!), a detonator and a fuse to give to them. We also bought a spare one to blow up for fun which was sooo loud! There was a family on our tour and I never thought I would hear a 5 year old ask his dad where his dynamite was! This trip was a definite highlight so far for me, I will never whinge about work again!

From Potosi we got a bus with our new friends on the world´s bumpiest road ro Uyinui and started a three day trip of the salt flats and desert. It´s hard to explain how beautiful this place is so you might have to wait for the photos. We took some comedy perspective photos of course! There were green, red and white lagoons, geisers, a cactus island and we stayed in a lovely hotel made entirely of salt!

At the end of the trip we were dropped at the border with Chile and our transfer had gone without us so we paid a local guy to give us a lift in his pick-up and Mark and I sat in the back, it was a great view but a little breezey!

We arrived in a little Oasis town called San Pedro in Chile, a really nice and stifling hot little place with not a lot to do and only three buses a week to Salta where we wanted to go! It was also very expensive being Chile so rather than wait for four days for the next bus with space we commissioned our own minibus and managed to get 9 people to share the cost! It was almost double the bus but we saved a fortune getting out of Chile quicker! Before we left we visiting a nice park called the Valley of the Moon and climbed a sand dune to watch the sunset with wine and olives, how sophisticated are we?!

So yesterday we got our posh little minibus to Salta In Argentine which is where I am now! We got here pretty late so showered and dashed out for one of those fasmous steaks which I can assure you is just as good as you hear! We then danced til it was light so we are all chilling out today!

It is so strange to be in Argentina after Bolivia. It is very European in feel and there are no woman on every street corner selling you anything and everything! They play actual music I recognise on the radio and make good coffee! It doesn´t feel as much like South America but it is very civilised and I´m hoping I can find a cup of tea with actual milk this afternoon! Then I guess it will be time for another steak!

We´re not sure what we will do after here other than head towards Iguacu (so glad you had a great time Sarah!) and Buenos Aires, and of course eat more steak and drink more wine!

Sorry we haven´t added any photos, it was taking an hour to upload three in Bolivia! We will try to upload a selection to here soon!

We both hope you are all well and starting to feel festive! I saw my first xmas tree last night and got giddy!

Loads of love
Ames x x x x

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