The blogs have been coming a little slow lately, apologies for that, but we hope you're still reading them! After three excellent weeks in Peru, we crossed the southern border into Bolivia - another relative unknown for the four of us but nevertheless an exciting prospect. We spent a few days in Copacabana (not to be confused with the Brazilian beach destination!), a town set on the edge of the beautiful Lake Titicaca. We took a boat (the slowest boat in the world) to the famous Isla Del Sol and spent most of the day trekking across it. It was Rhys' birthday and he celebrated in style with a mean bout of the squizzers and was forced to leave a few 'presents' in the sacred hills! We returned late afternoon to see Spurs winning 5-1 against Arsenal - greeted by Alex dancing around the street with occasional fist pumps and cries of 'Come On!'. Typical Laffan.
From Copacabana we made the short journey to La Paz, the Bolivian capital set high in the Andes. We had originally planned to mountain bike the 'world's most dangerous road', a stretch famed for its winding roads beside sheer cliff drops which has claimed
the lives of many locals. Believe it or not it's extremely popular with travellers but due to the fact it was the rainy season we were warned against it. We heeded the advice! Instead we enjoyed the incredibly low costs of Bolivia - especially food, beer and obscene quantities of ice cream in the many ice cream parlours.
After a few days in the capital we headed to our next destination, but for the first time it was without Alex who was off to Buenos Aires to meet Jamie and not to be seen again until Australia. The three of us were travelling further south into Bolivia to a town called Uyuni. However, having barely just said our farewells to Alex we were ambushed by an American girl, Dre, who had been staying in our dorm room and happened to be heading to the same location. Under normal circumstances we would have been happy for the extra company, however to say that we weren't her biggest fans would have been a huge understatment! Nevertheless, she tagged along on what would prove the toughest journey of our trip to date. A 15 hour bus ride on non-reclining seats with no
leg room, driving over surely the most undulating dirt track in South America!
It was certainly a relief when we finally arrived in Uyuni and by which point we had managed to exchange Dre for an English girl called Emeline. Uyuni is the base location for 3-day tours of the surrounding area - consisting of salt flats, desert, vlocanos and more. We organised our trip for the next day only to arrive in the morning to discover that the one remaining spot in the 4x4 had been taken by our American friend Dre! Fortunately she improved over the next few days and the 5 of us got on very well. The tour consisted of a long 4-wheel drive for the 5 of us, a driver/guide, a cook and the cook's 5-year old son Chino who would provide us with great entertainment along the way.
Our first destination was the salt flats - an enormous stretch of land as far as the eye could see of salt rock/desert. As we were in the rainy season (although we experienced blue skies for the entire time) there was an inch of water covering the flats, which if anything, added an extra
dimension to the beauty. We spent at least an hour attempting to capture the perfect perspective photos - see the attached ridiculous snaps. Dave & Rhys were then invited to sit on the roof for the drive across the flats, which after our initial safety concerns, proved to be great fun. Over the next 2 days we drove through one amazing place after another and witnessed some of the best scenery of the trip. On the second evening we even enjoyed a game of desert cricket after finding a block of wood! We were fed 3 excellent meals a day and at a total cost of £40 for the 3-day tour, food and accomodation it was pretty decent value!
Despite all the warnings of traveller risk in Bolivia and our distinct lack of preparation, we once again enjoyed a mind-blowing three weeks - the salt-flat tour being a particular highlight. We'd lost Laffan (a planned and agreed loss, it should be added), but we hadn't lost the travelling bug as we headed further south into Argentina through Chile. More must-sees and must-does awaited.
Chino!Pots with the main attraction of the 3 days.
LadsDave, Pots & Chino taking some time out.
Bolivia's Flag
Map of Bolivia