You could write it, but they wouldn´t Bolivia

UPGRADE! who said Bolivian buses were difficult? Ok, our last bus here had no toilet and deposited us at 5am in this slightly scratchy area of town, but we just paid £2.50 each for 7hrs travel and have just been upgraded to Full Cama (top class seating) because our bus was so empty it wasn't worth running.

Bolivia is a stunning, if slightly more difficult, place to be. But there earlier stuff to cover first:

From my birthday wine-up in the vineyards of North-Eastern Argentina we hot-tailed it back into Chile via 'traveller's favourite' Salta (c. lonely planet's pack of lies and exaggeration). We only stayed for a day-long enough to check out the Colonial Square (lovely) and a museum containing the naturally-mummified remains of three Incan children, sacrificed by means of getting them drunk and leaving them at the top of a nearby volcano (lovely). Ok, a bit grizzly really, but the exhibits formed quite a nice taster for the exotic world of lost civilisations we were about to enter.

The bus trip across the Andes- our second- was utterly stunning this time. I have harped on about colours before, and will again, but won't apologise here because the canyons in this bit of the world are famous for it: strata of rock are filled with different chemicals and ores which give them markedly different hues, and over time they have been stretched and folded and sliced to incredible effect, in terms of put aesthetics but also as a clear sign of the powerful tectonic activity here. As we dropped over the other side of the ridge the salt flats started: huge stretches of white in stark, barren landscapes which gave us our first glimpse of what the altiplano would be. And then gently down towards San Pedro de Atacama, and the shuddering halt of Chilean customs.

The Chileans do not want you to enter the country with a shred of organic material on your person. On previous entries (we will have made four by the time we finally leave the place behind) I have panicked about mere breadcrumbs in my bag, such a the warning signs of fines etc. It has taken a few hours to get through each time, yet after such build-up the baggage check at the end has on each occasion been disappointingly cursory, as if the guards themselves were bored of the wait.

But I should stop there lest I sound like anything other than the laid-back traveller I have become.

incidentally, my aforementioned imaginary bag of illegal things (see previous posts, which I have invented only to demonstrate the laxness of border controls when not flying) would have been at risk for the first time on our first entry into Chile, having made it all the way from london to the caribbean and down the Eastern seaboard without a single baggage check. Ironically, the sniffer dog would have actually been looking for contraband vegetables, something I am resolutely unlikely to be carrying.

San Pedro de Atacama itself is a funny little place, a lovely historic little village completely overtaken by tourism; where homes would have been there are now hostels, restaurants and tour operators. and more gringos than street dogs. in a slightly guilty way, I quite liked it. it felt quite cosy and safe. But of course it is all about the surrounding Atacama desert. One night we went on a stargazing tour. The night sky is impressive, and it was quite rewarding to see Saturn's rings pretty clearly through one of their telescopes. However, amongst all the other tourists I couldn't help but feel slightly smug that the view of the night sky from the deck of the Aristote in the middle of the Atlantic had been much more impressive.

Ah, the Aristote. I wonder how and where she is. It is an odd feeling, the nostalgia that creeps in for things at the start of this trip: the ship, Trinidad,  Roraima. In ports like Ushuaia and Valparaiso I have felt a real affection for the cargo ships in the harbour, and am really happy that we are (hopefully) heading back on a cargo ship too.

I digress. After returning from the stargazing at 1am we got back up at 3.30am to head out for a sunrise in a geyser field in the mountains. As Hes has mentioned, they have the antisocial habit of showing best at this unearthly hour. They were indeed impressive, simply as another manifestation of the...

*I am writing this on the bus. There is a guy who just got on to sell his books, and he is pitching to the entire floor from next to our seats. I have never heard a sound like it. He has not stopped for breath for about 15 minutes. I am inclined to shout something. My head is beginning to hurt and I cannot think straight. I am losing the will to live*

...remarkable geological nature of this place. *thank God that is over*

The best part, though, was a natural thermal pool, which was actually scaldingly hot in places. I was in there as the sun appeared over the uppermost peaks of the Andes, and lit up the steam coming from the water so that we were bathing in a hot, golden fog. It was quite a moment. A moment not at all undermined by the 'boff's and 'aw-haw-haw-haw's emanating from the Frenchmen around me. A pleased Frenchman is a wonderful thing, and they have a habit of sniffing out and congregating at the most beautiful places in the world, so you know you are on the right track when you hear those sounds. I like the French.

Anyway, after returning from the geysers Hes decided, sensibly, to catch up on a bit of sleep. However, there is a red-pen markup on my things-to-do-in-South-America map which says 'Valley of the Moon', so I had a cup of tea and went out to rent a mountain bike and pedal up there for sunset. The place is simply a pretty singular landscape of orange dunes and muddy pinnacles, all frosted in salt, which exaggerates the utter lifelessness of the place. I got a bit of a masochistic kick out of freewheeling down between the peaks at high speeds, not entirely trusting my hired bike and knowing that a salty graze would be doubly painful. Then we had a lovely evening with our new Romanian friend Paul, whom we had met on the Navimag and bumped into in town. Sometimes the 'gringo trail' is not so bad when the people you keep bumping into are so much fun. (he reads this blog).

The next morning we met our new friends for the next three days- a German couple, a Japanese chap and a Costa Rican fella, and took a bus to the Bolivian border where a 4x4 was waiting to take us across a 5000m high pass, across the altiplano to the salt flats of Uyuni. I mention them, and their nationalities, because it is so lovely when such a disparate bunch can bond so quickly and get on so well in just three days. It makes you feel optimistic about the world. Across the three days of travel we saw some pretty incredible landscapes. Richly coloured lakes in red, green, blue, all sorts (check the photos on facebook) which were full of flamingos- the new penguins in terms of Hester's interest and camera-memory-card devotion. There were boulders ejected from since-dormant volcanoes and strewn across the dunes, then sculpted into Dali-esque shapes by the wind. In fact it was all a little surreal, a sensation no doubt enhanced by the altitude, which induced a constant and slightly menacing feeling of approaching headache and nausea- like a kind of unfair hangover, without the preceding fun.

We visited an artesanal market on our arrival in Uyuni, where I started my long-intended stock-up on ethnic tat with a very gringoey woolly cardigan and some colourful throws, for which I had previously made room in my bag be sending home a few bits and pieces. Come to think of it the contents of my bag have changed quite a bit since September. I now have more pants than handkerchiefs, having bought a couple of pairs of the former in Brasilia, and lost all but three of the latter; chambermaids and cleaners all over Latin America have had the pleasure of finding a little 'tip' left under the pillow. Or, in more recent locations with lower standards, it was probably the next residents benefitted. I have also worn through the crotch area of both pairs of trousers, but have only been able to throw one pair out, as hes pulls a shocked face every time I point out a perfectly reasonable pair of ethno-trousers. Jeans ripped at the knee are acceptable, but this level of wear and tear is not. So I am resolved now to pick out the stripiest, baggiest, crustiest pair of traveller trousers when we get to La Paz, and see how she likes that.

The salt flats themselves were great but a little underwhelming, as we only visited them from Uyuni itself, and didn't go deep enough in for the full 360 panorama if nothingness- due to the fact it I still rainy season. nonetheless, it is quite a stunning place. Finally we spent a lazy afternoon drinking and playing cards with the tour group, before going for (what I humbly believe to be) the best pizza so far in South America.

Which is remarkable only because the food here has not been wonderful. The latest speciality is Pique- a big bowl of beef, chips, hot dog sausages and tomatoes- very much in the 'chorillana' vein of hangover grub. There is a lot if fried food and grey meat at the moment. Thoughts of food from home have started haunting me, in the following order:

5) beans and cheese on toast with Worcester sauce

4) a set 5 from the caff near work

3) a chicken biriani with extra Dahl from sweet and spicy, again near work

2)taste the difference Toulouse sausages with McCain oven fries, salad with balsamic dressing and loads of Dijon mustard

1) lasagne made by me or any other member of the Wrigley/Farrelly/Jarvis family, they are all good

From Uyuni we took the bus to Potosi, a town of faded colonial glory now famous for the hideous conditions miners suffer to glean the last scraps of silver from the nearby Cerro Rico- the mountain which made the town the centre of the Spanish colonies. Neither of us fancied the tourist trip down the mines, from fear of claustrophobia and death by mine collapse, as well as, I suppose, a slight unease about propagating the miners' status quo with our gringo dollar. Though it was probably mostly plain claustrophobia. I always feel a bit guilty about 'missing out' on stuff like that, until I remind myself that I am now too laid-back a traveller to care about 'missing out'.

So instead we just happily wandered around town, and took away memories of a pretty little place filled with cloisters and timber bay windows where the local dish is a delicious soup with a red hot rock in it so that comes burbling and popping like a mud geyser to your table.

We have done much more in Bolivia but i have digressed too much, and now I am tired and hungry and we are nowhere near La Paz yet and ergo less positive. So I will stop there and perhaps leave it to Hes to speak of some of the other places we have been, and get back to you soon.

Joe.