Leaving the country

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Well, as you may know, I'm not writing about this trip at the time but months later from the comfort of a London flat. I feel I should apologise for not having kept this up to date. The reason really was lack of time. We always had to go into town to use the internet and if the connection wasn't fast, I didn't bother doing anything more than checking on emails. So now that I have a fast connection 24/7, I hope you don't mind hearing about some of the trips I made and things I saw.

So, after 3 months after my trip to Peru, I was required by Bolivian immigration to leave the country. As the time for this departure approached, matters were complicated by a blockade of major routes in the country caused by political unrest. Basically, certain people were unhappy with the new Morales government and a traditional way to demonstrate such discontent is to block the roads. It happens quite frequently. I was going to make the trip with a friend from the community and our plans seemed to change on a daily basis depending on the news coming in and the best advice from the person we were talking to that day. Eventually, the blockade was lifted the day before we needed to leave and so we could make the journey of our choice - to Arica on the coast of Chile.

The journey was about 9 hours by bus through some spectacular country and past the mountain you see below - in fact there were two or three similar mountains

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