Travel to Bolivia, Potosí Department, Salar de Uyuni.

I arrived in Tupiza with Mariano and a couple of Italians we had met at the border. It was immediately apparent my money would go a lot further in Bolivia, as we managed to find a hostel with beds for 25 Bolivianos per night (around £2.50)! We went out for dinner as a group and it was clear my Spanish had a long way to go, as I could barely follow the conversation.

Although my main reason for being in Tupiza was to book a tour to Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat, I found the town pleasant and friendly. I spent a good few hours exploring the Valle de los Machos, which was walkable from town, and saw the rock formations "Canyon del Inca" and "Puerta del Diablo". Tupiza was also a place for trying new things: first, coca leaf, which I had in tea (it's supposed to be a pick-me-up but I didn't notice any effects and wasn't keen on the taste), and second, llama, which was very tasty and quite similar to lamb.

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Travel to South America, Bolivia.

The 2 nights in our favourite hotel in Santa Cruz were great. This trip was part of a goodbye trip for Ben with one of his school mates. It's an apartment hotel with several swimming pools, tennis court, football and basketball pitches/courts, snack bar by the pool a paradise really. As it's winter they do packages at unbelievable prices. I always like the moment when the manager comes out and sees me and says "hello Mr Parker good to see you again"!. One time the Chef in the restaurant even made us a speical dish! So we'd arranged a separate apartment for Ben and Diego. We met them in the morning at the buffet breakfast.

I set about downloading the British Grand Prix over the wifi but in the morning found that only some of it had downloaded and I was blocked from the internet. I called up the systems manager who looked into it. He came back to me with and with a sharp intake of breath said "6Gb, that's rather a lot you've downloaded!". I'd managed to grab most of it so Joe and me were able to catch up with the world of F1.

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Travel to Bolivia, La Paz Department, Copacabana.

Sore and tired after cycling down the WMDR (yes we are feeling our age), we sensibly had an early Saturday night in preparation for a 7.45am bus ride to Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. We thought La Paz was chilly, but Copacabana takes the mickey, at just over 3800m the air is thin and cold, and when in the shade with a breeze blowing, positively freezing.

Copacabana is only 100km or so from La Paz, but it takes almost 4hrs to get there. Firstly, it is just over an hour to get out of El Alto, the ever increasing suburb in the outskirts of La Paz. It is the fastest growing area of Bolivia as all of the people from the Altiplano move in from the country in search of a 'better' life in the city. El Alto sores up above 4150m, some 500+ metres above La Paz central. At the time of morning that we were passing through, any shallow pools of water were frozen solid, and it took us well over an hour to navigate through the crazy market-laden streets.

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Travel to Bolivia, La Paz Department, Copacabana.

We arrived in La Paz in the dark. Unsure of what to expect from the highest capital city in the world, as the dawn appeared, we were not disappointed. The city's buildings literally cling to the sides of the canyons and spill downwards. Surrounded by mountains and snow capped peaks La Paz is dizzying not only because of the altitude but also it's impressiveness. Unfortunately our hostel only remains in our minds because of the dinginess of the room, the intense cold, the noise and the treacherous dash to the bathroom that was a considerable distance outside. Having had such a fantastic time on the salt flat tour the rain and cold in La Paz tried to dampen our spirits but we sucked it up and decided to get to grips with the city.

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Travel to Bolivia, Potosí Department, Tupiza.

So, we left you last at Donde Rita's on Monday 13th May planning to go camping for a night under the stars. We then got a message from our good mates James Mills and Laura Harris in Tupizia, Bolivia saying their flight home is booked for a week on Friday and they want to do the salt flat tour with us, which gave us until Wednesday at the latest to get to them and start the 4day salt flat tour from Tupizia, Bolivia to Uyuni also in Bolivia. After spending hours on the Internet and reading the lonely planet back to front we had little information about the boarder crossings and bus times to go off.

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Travel to Bolivia, Beni Department, Rurrenabaque.

A very dry day in La Paz doing no more than looking around the city and booking a bus to Rurrenabaque later we were on that bus, the one that would take us into the heart of the Amazon Rainforest. We had heard many stories about the bus ride from the capital into the jungle being a nightmare but we were both, surprisingly, looking forward to it.

It was due to set off at 11.30am and we didn't leave until 2pm, it took the guys ages to load all the goods onto the top and underneath of the bus. Its a good sign of things to come! The bus itself was no more than a public one with semi reclining seats and costing £8 for a 24 hour ride, safe to say we were sceptical now. we set off into the mountains before descending down a section of what is known all over the world as 'The Death Road'. The ascent over the mountains was slow and the decent even slower, the death road much more easy going than it had ever been in the past. The narrow gravel roads and near vertical drops had been replaced by Tarmac and guard rails, making you feel much safer than we would have before. We had a solid 2 hours of going down this kind of road but then it all changed as we took a turning towards Rurrenabaque.

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Travel to Bolivia, Beni Department, Rurrenabaque.

Following a crazy day at the Oruro Carneval (will blog about this later – great day) I decided that I couldn't pass up the opportunity of taking a short flight from La Paz to Rurrenabaque to spend a few days in the Bolivian Amazon. Its easy to get to, much cheaper to see in Bolivia than Brazil and also unlike Peru and Brazil its malaria free (just as well given the number of mosquito bites I received).

Departing late from El Alto airport in La Paz we jumped in the small propeller-driven Amaszonas plane for the 40 minute trip to the small airstrip in the jungle outside Rurrenabaque. The 3 day Pampas excursion didn't get off to the smoothest start, arriving at the airport our driver for the 3 hour transfer to the Pampas hadn't turned up. This meant having to go to the office in town and argue with the tour operators about why it wasn't possible to just wait an entire day for the driver to come back! Fortunately there was a Spanish guy with me who was suitably angry and fluent in Spanish that eventually they arranged alternate transport for the long 'road' to Santa
Croc closeupRosa. I say 'road' in the loosest sense – this was a wide, muddy trail riddled with large rocks, potholes, flood waters, animals.....to be honest I think even World Rally Cars would struggle down it! Half way through the back breaking, bum numbing journey the 4x4 we were in lost its exhaust on a particularly large pothole making us the most popular car on the road as we travelled through the various villages with shotgun like noises firing out of the back of the car.

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