Living the high life in Bolivia

Sorry for the delay in this country update but Bolivian wifi isn't rocking my socks... anyways here we go. Apologies for the MASSIVENESS of the blog but we have been busy little Bolivian beavers.

After eventually getting a flight out of Sao Paulo in Brazil we arrived in Santa Cruz to begin our bargain basic Bolivian.. adventures (damn.. ran out of B's). Hardly the sexiest place on earth we quickly organised a bus south to Sucre. Usually I won't bore you with transport stories, but this bus had to be one of the worst in history. Cramped in with the locals and smells you can't describe without a M15+ warning, we sure had an interesting night.

We arrived in Sucre and explored the city and rested up in a nice cheap hotel. The highlight of our short time here was our visit to the local quary which has hundreds of dinosaur tracks measuring up to 80cm. We could only view it from far away as the wall was falling down, but was still very cool to see and to learn more about how the land was created.

We then continued our travels further south and stopped in Potosi, the World's highest city at 4600 metres above sea level. Ignoring all sensible advice we spent our short time there trekking up to town centre and walking around the sights and eating lunch. The city is famous for its Silver mine which back in the day provided millions to Spain.

Those familiar with altitude sickness would be aware it's not a good idea to exercise or eat a lot when acclimatising. I learnt this the hard way and enjoyed some tactical liquid discussions out of our moving bus on our way out of town. Lesson learnt people!

Anyways, we eventually arrived in the southern Bolivian town of Uyuni to visit the famous salares (salt flats). We sorted ourselves out with a three day tour and set off. It was an amazing few days and the pictures hardly capture the natural beauty of the region. Highlights included...

Playing around in the train graveyard...

Visiting a hotel made completely of salt...

Getting our salt flat and funny photos on...

walked inside a 5000 metre high semi active volcano and saw some amazing mountains...

From Uyuni and the salt flats we headed north to Bolivia's capital La Paz. The city lies within a deep valley with the poorer suburbs towards the top. Once settled into our hostel (Loki - awesome times) we quickly discovered a good friend Tim had broken his ankle mountain biking and was in hospital. It worked out well for me as it gave me a chance to see a familiar face from home and swap S.A stories. The scary thing was Tim hurt himself doing the famous Death Road bike ride which was to be a highlight of our visit to La Paz. 

With some new found nerves (thanks Tim!) we set off to test our two wheel chops. I am glad to report Edwina and I escaped without a scratch (well Edwina did have a couple of stacks but nothing serious). Unfortunately the weather wasn't great so we could barely see the amazing scenery. On the plus side we also couldn't see the sheer cliff drop from the unsealed road with no railings... yep they don't call it the "worlds deadliest road" for nothing. Check out some sweet pics of us ripping it up...

After our adrenaline rush and partying in La Paz it was time to blow the lid on Bolivia and prowl on over to Peru, the Inca trail and meeting up with Edwina's uni buddy Rachel. You'll have to stay tuned to see if we survive! Until next time... peace from Peru.