Here are some of my photos from our stay in Copacabana. This was where we took a day tour onto Lake Titicaca and visited some Inca ruins with a guide, who only spoke Spanish. I am not sure I understood everything he was trying to tell us, but I will bore you all with it when I get back! Copacabana was a nice place, and had a great custom of a daily blessing of its cars! More text in a few weeks!... read more

Lucky Bartoni :) After the coldness of the salt desert tour and the high altitude we had been in, including La Paz, we decided we needed to get back down to sea level and also to do the infamous Pampas tour that had been recommended by Ken (thank you) and Heidi and Tom (from Salta) who raved over it compared to the desert. I am so glad we took their advice. The Pampas is made of a network of riverways and swamp like wetlands. The area is full of wildlife including various birds, alligators, caiman, capibarah, turtles, snakes, monkeys. Basically we got to see it all and the amount of wildlife was better than any of us could have hoped for. To get to the Pampas however we needed to leave La Paz and take an ... read more

...it is cold, it is not very pretty and they only put the heating on at 8pm at night!! This is a very short blog as not many photos and not much happened! OK, so the Salt flat tour ended and we were dropped off in Uyuni. We did not a hostel booked so we asked at 2 places (no space or no TV) and found ourselves at Hotel Julia! The place was fairly clean but it was FREEZING. There was no heating until 8pm at night, nothing to do in Uyuni town itself so Brim and I fully clothed got into sleeping bags, threw what blankets they had over us and watched mindnumbing TV for the rest of the day and into the evening. Next day, after a long wait where I read my book ... read more

22nd June, Arriving on an Andesmar bus in La Quiaca at 7.30am in the morning it was dark and cold and damp. The town was very grim and with backpacks on we had to walk across the town to get to the border of Argentina and into Villazon in Bolivia! Unfortunately the map in the lonely planet guide didn't seem to correspond with the roads in front of us so Brim and I found ourselves walking in a huge circle only to get nowhere fast! After asking 3 different people where the border was however, we were finally on track and reached the border an hour later (instead of 20 minutes) to line up for the border crossing. A short wait later we were stamped out of Argentina and stamped into Bolivia! Villazon was cold but ... read more

8am bus from Valparaiso to Mendosa. Bus company was El Rapidio and our conductor/driver Samuel certainly made for an eventful trip :) he was brilliant fun, He liked the English chicas, making sure we were happy, winking at s between the seats and singing along to the Spanish DVD playing on the bus TV. In fact, as we crossed over the Andes he made the bus stop so we could get out of the bus and take pictures of the snow capped Andes...even throwing some snowballs at us whilst the locals had a cigarette break and smiled at the gringos taking their piccies!! The view was spectacular and Brim was very excited that the local ski centre finally had some snow for the adventurers :) slightly scary however when the driver decided to overtake lorries and ... read more