We arrived in La Paz really early in the morning so intended to climb into a hostel bed, not as easy as it sounds. For anyone arriving in La Paz early in the morning be warned most of the hostels are closed! You can buzz for as long as you like but they will not answer the door! And by early i mean 6am! But we eventually found a place and just crashed out untill mid afternoon, cama buses arnt as comfy as everyone would like you to think! We spent much of the afternoon just wandering around, it took us a while to find anywhere on the map because the lp guide map sucks! But just wandering was good enough for us. Everywhere you look you can see huge mountains towering over the city, with ... read more

Death train? pfft. It was a bit dissapointing actually. 14 hours, two american films (in spanish, though we got subtitles for the second one... then fell asleep) and some bad food. It was nothing more than a slightly bumpy train. If anyone died on it it was probably from some nasty meal rather than any train induced injury. One nice thing about it was the people selling things at the stations - when we arrived we would open our windows, lean out and buy cakes, breads, drinks, set meals.. it was great. Super-pullman class (one above 1st class) turned out to be little more than British Rail´s 2nd class, but it was good enough to survive the journey with some sleep to boot. We were tired when we arrived here, so booked into th first hotel ... read more

Well first things frist, we~ve put up a load more photos, including our Pantanal trip ones, so check them out. We put the Bonito ones on the Pantanal blog, and vise versa... by mistake. We´ve now departed sunny Bonito and arrived in sunny Curumba - it´s been consistenty in the 30s the last few days. Tans are coming on nicely, and a little bit of sunburn too - even though laura was wearing factor 50, grr. Anyway, as we said before, Bonito was just a dirty track, basically. We saw people quad biking around the place which looked like fun, but we decided against it as you can do it anywhere, and on Friday went ´tubing´down a river of the clearest water we have ever seen! even in the deepest parts you could see all the ... read more

Night buses are funny things. You sleep alot, but to call it sleep is lying to yourself.The seats are really comfy,and recline to almost lying down, but that little bit difference stops any real effect. plus the driver ran over something in the early hours... Anyway, yes,we got the bus to Campo Grande - two busses in fact, and 14 hours. now here we are, in the middle of nowhere in Nowheresville - a 50 horse town with nothing to entertain even one of them. Well we´re off tomorrow morning to tour the Pantanal for three days... so who cares. We did our first proper bargaining today and got a 640 R$ tour for 550, plus a free night in this hotel. Today was spent wandering around Campo Grande wondering why everything was shut... and then ... read more

It poured with rain today, then it stopped, then it poured again and then it bucketed. We still had a great time though. This morning we had in mind to get the bus to Assucao, the capital of Paraguay, tomorrow night. Then we saw a sign for cheap coach rides to Buenos Aires and thought that was a good idea, as Spanish lessons will be difficult to find in Paraguay, as untravelled and tourist-centred as it is. Anyway, we decided against both of those things, as they sidetracked from our trtekking plans in Peru and Bolvia too much (Buenos Aires is about 1300 miles south of our plans for christ's sake!), and will get a coach to the Pantanal area tomorrow instead - the Pantanal is the largest wetlands in the world, on the border of ... read more