Arrived safe and sound in Bolivia, and now all set up for a 3 day tour of the Salar de Uyuni starting 10am tomorrow. My opinion of Bolivia so far... well it´s very different from Argentina. Straight away from the border at La Quaica-Villazon the difference was evident. An explosion of gnarly old women wearing ill-fitting bowler hats and bright ´ethnic´ garb and carrying cute smiley kids on their backs. Of course that wasn´t quite the first impression. The first impression was being kicked out of the bus on the argentinian side at 6am into a bus terminal full of locals, one of whom seemed to be throwing up everywhere. We huddled together to keep warm (unfortunately a group of unruly israelis decided to huddle up close and then use or rucksacks for a sofa) till ... read more

(sorry it’s been a week since i wrote this... taken a while to get it online - more coming soon) Back on the road, and right now on a semi-cama (i.e. coach with reclinable seat for those not in the know) for the next 20 hours or so which is setting me back 150 pesos (23ukp). It’s nice - they give you meals and champagne (well at least they did in the last one,,, which was cama ejecutivo, slighty classier, so maybe they’ll skip champers) and the seats recline almost horizontal (as low as they can go without amputating legs of person behind - incidently i’m surrounded by israelis front and back - they travel in big noisy groups and keep everyone awake at hostels - why is this?). Only other problem is the aircon ... read more

Sometimes I feel like I´m writing to myself on this blog, as I have only one subscriber so far! (you know who you are ) Anyway I´m now safely installed in a new and better homestay. The house is a proper apartment, by which i mean furnished nicely including the bedrooms and the woman i´m staying with is a 45+ year old accountant who is very kind and corrects my spanish all the time. Whatsmore she cooked me dinner last night too! I feel like I haven´t really made too much of my first weekend here. Mainly because the weathers been lousy and also I lost my friend- from-school´s phone number. Seeing as she was expecting me to call her about watching football (La Boca v. Nueva Chicago) on saturday, I ended up traipsing across town ... read more

Been in BA (as the locals seem to call it) for 2 days now. 2 very rainy days!! The rain started as soon as I left El Calafate in fact... a surprise - the plane went via Ushuaia on the way (well actually very out of the way) to BA - the most southerly town on the planet. I´d heard lots of good things about the place from fellow travellers so in a way it was a shame to be just passing through... however it turned out to be pouring with rain at the end of the earth (as I suspect it often does) so was actually glad to be on the plane. Well the plane journey was a fun five hours cooped up on the worst-seat-on-the-plane... a double-whammy: the seat right next to the only ... read more

Hey, Just got back from my day tour to Moreno glacier. That´s truly an amazing sight. By some crazy geographical coincidence a glacier that ends within about 20m of a penisular that you can view from. And plus there´s bits of ice cracking off noisily all the time - a real photographers dream. Well it was a beautiful day out there, till the last hour when the rain came... I´m going to post some photos asap, but alas I failed to get the classic iceberg falling off the glacier shot - typical as soon as your backs turned for a second they fall,,, and then you´re there for an hour camera at the ready and nothing happens! Anyway this morning I said goodbye to my travel companions since Chalten, Ed aka the Mong from UK and ... read more