We arrived in Villa Tunari following two journeys, the first a particularly bumpy, crappy and cramped bus journey through the night from Sucre to Cochabamba, the second a bumpy, crappy and cramped shared taxi ride for three more hours. Villa Tunari was not what I had pictured or hoped for, although in retrospect, I had been overly optimistic. In my head I pictured a beautiful secluded little town next to a national park, in my head, Villa Tunari was going to be Bolivia's equivalent to Thailand's Pai - my favourite of the few places I visited there. Instead we were dropped off in a town with little more than 2500 people, next to a major road. Despite my initial disappointment, the four of us found a nice hostel which had a pool that was most welcome ... read more

There are a few towns and certainly a few villages found higher in the world, but they are all small. Potosi is the worlds highest city, with a population of 163,000 at a brain melting altitude of 4000m. Alongside it’s epic height, it is well known for its crippling mine system, which reaches throughout Cerro Rico a mountain looming over the city at 4824m. Potosi was founded by the Spanish in 1545 after they discovered indigenous people mining silver. During subsequent years colossal amounts of silver was mined, during which an estimated 6-8 million indigenous and African people died, directly and indirectly from the abominable conditions inside. Potosi had the banner of largest city in the America’s during the early part of the 17th century until the heavily mined silver supply began to deteriorate and the ... read more

Day One Crossing the Salar de Uyuni was one of the things I was most looking forward to in South America and it is one of the renowned trips of the backpacking world. Much like Machu Picchu and Foz do Iguaçu, if you are South America and anywhere near to them, it is compulsory to go. We arrived early on the morning of 28th June, at the office of La Torre Tours and were quickly introduced and left in the care of our guide and driver for the trip, Franco, and his wife, Ancelma, who was our chef. Lots of tour groups leave every day from Tupiza and as such, we there was a long line of 4x4’s being prepared and we noticed that ours was several years older than any of the vehicles present. It ... read more

Oh Cafayate.... I am writing this a month after I was there and yet the memories of the place and how superb it was are still ripe and fresh. Cafayate is a three hour journey south through an Andean basin south of Salta. It is the smaller of Argentina's two main wine regions. The mountains scenery got harsher as we travelled, the mountains sharper and the volume of their colours increasing. It was an incredible bus journey and could probably be sold (and probably is) as a tour. We arrived in Cafayate and found Mark and Sarah in a hostel just off the central plaza. We caught up briefly and heard what Mark and Sarah had been up to the past couple of days before heading to our first vineyard. After the heavy night previously, this ... read more

The journey to Salta was a long long one. We took another huge semi-cama buses from Asuncion all the way Resistencia where we had to change for another huge journey to Salta. The journey was smooth to the border. Here everyone had to get off the bus. What should have been a simple process of checking out of Paraguay and checking into Argentina was made over complicated by some young men who insisted on taking our bags and getting us to stand out of the queue. No English spoken. They seemed to keep wanting to move our gear one way and then another way. They kept speaking aimlessy in Spanish. One thing that is a bit sad to be said of your average South America, same as most people I guess, if they notice you only ... read more