Blogs from Bolivia, South America

I am writing this in a bus around an hours drive east of Santa Cruz. It is 9am, 12 hours after we left the city. We were due in Quijarro, on the Brazilian border at 6am. Instead we are in the middle of a blockade that stretches for kilometres on either side for us. There are hundreds of buses, and many more trucks parked at various angles on the side, and across the road, with most of the occupants aimlessly wondering around the road with a look of despair. But let me go back a few days. Two days earlier, we had walked 20 minutes from our hostel in the middle of Santa Cruz to the third ring of the city. The city is made up of 9 rings, expanding from the middle, with an extra ... read more

Loved, loved, loved Sucre! The white city really is beautiful with gorgeous buildings and suspiciously well kept gardens everywhere! The 5 nights we spent there flew by, arriving at the hostel at around 6.30am on Monday only to be told that reception doesn't open until 8 and there "might" be beds for us right away. Luckily we were able to crawl into bed by 9 (oh after climbing a ladder up to the loft where we were sleeping) and have a nap before going out to explore the city a bit. First job; find somewhere for Spanish lessons, yep I had 16 hours of Spanish lessons over 4 days and I think I must have improved a bit (or I at least hope) the good thing so many people are awesome at Spanish and English I ... read more

Santa Cruz After our rather long bus journey across the Chaco, we pulled into Santa Cruz´ huge and chaotic bus station where Chris tried to get some money out of an ATM whilst hoards of small children clung onto the back of his rucksack seeing if they could persuade him to part with a few dollars, before we took a very cheap taxi across town in search of a hostel and some dinner. Finding a fairly central place to stay proved not to be too much of a problem, and a few blocks from this we came across a fairly non-descript looking Italian place which we decided would suffice for a bite to eat before we went to catch up on some much needed sleep. What we hadn´t realized was that we had selected the best ... read more

I failed miserably at writing any sortof blog whilst in Whistler, so a quick recap. Lots snowboarding, lots of drinking, lots of spending and so far the best 6 months of my life! Met some of the most amazing friends ever and plan to keep in touch with lots of them for years to come, so I do apologise to anyone in advance if you ever get stuck with a group of us, listening to endless Whistler stories. But anyway on to the current adventure, having arrived in Santa Cruz de la Sierra I must admit feeling slightly relived to be on a different continent to my insane insane family, I somehow managed to clamber into a taxi barely speaking a word of Spanish. As far as first impressions go, I will say I'm pretty convinced ... read more

Hi everyone ! Sorry for being so slack lately! So we did the Salt Flats through Bolivia which where amazing! We started the drive in Uyni, a small town which at the time of our stay had no electricity – which was interesting. Also when they said they hadn’t had electricity for three days, choosing what would be safe to eat at Bolivian restaurants was even more difficult than normal! The town is just one tour agency after another, and they all do the same thing. You go in a 4 wheel drive car, with generally 6 people max. First stop is the old train graveyard, with rusted trains just left there, and you get to climb all over them (safe im sure). Then you drive to the actual Salt Flats which ... read more

As i mentioned in the last post, Uyuni is full of rubbish, but there is one area where there is cool rubbish, the train cemetery. It's about two kilometres out of town, and is home to 100's of old bits of locomotive's rusting away. We got into Uyuni around 2pm, and seeing as there is sfa to do in town, we decided to head out to the graveyard late afternoon, after a well needed shower, and after watching Barca get destroyed by Bayern Munich. We went with Dot & Too, and the Moncica's, two fun loving, and slightly nuts Swiss women, who we met on the tour. They are two middle-aged flight attendants who travel together each year to far flung areas of the globe, this time doing Bolivia and Peru. The Monica's managed to negotiate ... read more

The last blog was a long one, so i will keep this one brief, and beef it up with photo's... We are granted a sleep in until 6.30 on day 3, but it is still bitterly cold when we leave the homestay. Shortly after leaving we arrive at the Arbol de Piedra, the petrified forest. It is not a petrified forest, but a cluster of large volcanic rocks in the middle of the desert that had been spewed out by a volcano millions of years ago. Soon after we reach Laguna Hondas and find that is completely frozen over, even though it is 100's of metres wide. There are still some brave (or stupid) flamingos walking on the ice hoping that it will melt and provide them with a feed. Next is another lagoon, Laguna Negra, ... read more