On 21 April we left Argentina for the last time & crossed the border into Bolivia.

The buses don't cross the border so it was necessary to travel from Salta to La Quiaca , in Argentina , where this is an ugly concrete bridge linking the 2 countries, with immigration & customs for both countries on either side of the river , & the town of Villazon ,in Bolivia on the far side.

We carried our back-packs for a mile between bus stations across the bridge, the furthest we have had to carry them to date. A challenge, but we made it ! The worst part of back-packing is back-packs !

Crossing the border on foot certainly served to increase our sense of culture shock on arriving in the poorest country in the continent. There were children asking for money, women in their costumes, large brightly-coloured slirts, shawls & bowler hats , selling their wares at the roadside , hundreds of people bent double carrying what looked like sacks of flour on their backs. We sat on our packs on the dirty pavement at the bus station, for a couple of hours , taking in the sights & smells while waiting for our Bolivian-style bus to take us to Tupiza.

Over 90% of Bolivia's roads are unpaved so after the comfort of Argentinian buses& roads our bus-ride was a real bone-shaker ! The country is beautiful though & our bus wound its way on dirt roads, along valleys, across river beds, balanced precariously on the sides of mountains, & travelled through a series of tunnels carved into the rock . We were soon in a red desert surrounded by mountains but everywhere there were small settlements where people lived & cultivated their dry land.

Tupiza was lovely , very tranquil & surrounded by multi-coloured mountains. Our hotel was spotless & cost 70 bolivianos ( 5 pounds ) for a double-room for the night. We booked a 3 hour horse-ride for the next morning. Our guide took us to the Inca Canyon where the Incas brought gold downstream from the mountains. It was real wild west country with more rainbow-coloured rocks & mountains, deep gorges & cactus forests. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid were finally caught by the Bolivian army a few miles from here.

The next day we left for Potosi, a mining town 8 hours away. Potosi is the world's highest citry at 4070m. It was once Latin America's largest & wealthiest city.( Sorry about all the superlatives ! ) Sadly no evidence is left of this now.

The town is at the base of Cerro Rico, the mountain that in 1545 was discovered to be so rich in silver & other minerals. Millions of labourers , both indigenous & imported African slaves were forced to work in the mines under appalling conditions. In all 8 million workers died in the mines between 1545 & 1825 under Spanish colonial rule & many still die today as conditions have improved little. There is very little silver left now but 4500 men still try to scrape a living mining zinc, tin & lead.

We opted to go down the mines. We were given jackets , trousers, wellies, hard-helmets & miners lights. The tour began by encouraging us to buy gifts for the miners , coca-leaves , alcohol,cigarettes , biscuits , dynamite , detonator, ammonium nitrate , & fuses. They have to purchase all their own dynamite , etc & they then sell their ore through a cooperative. The miners chew on coca leaves constantly. They all have a large bulge in one cheek. This apparently numbs theis senses helping them not to feel cold, tired & hungry. They chip away with a hammer & chisel for up to 10 hours in order to create a cavity into which they can put dynamite. We all had a go at it but only Ady had the strength to make any headway. I think that miner was quite appreciative of his efforts !

It was all very depressing as we scrambled & crawled through low , dark , damp, narrow ,dirty shafts & climbed rickety ladders. We were only down there 1 & a half hours but the miners work 12 hour shifts with no breaks. We met one miner who had just finished a 24hr shift. There are 50 entrances to the mines. The hill has been mined so much& so cosistently for so long that the height of the hill has reduced from 5200m to 4700m & is currently losing a metre in height each year. Ady & I wimped out of the part of the tour which lowered one with a rope under one's bum , 30m down a vertical mine-shaft. Everyone else went but no thanks !

We then walked through a few more tunnels to a cavern in which sat the devil! The miners worship the devil as the god of the underworld in a strange mixture of ancient Indian superstition & introduced Catholicism. They share their cigarettes , coca-leaves & alcohol with him & Pachamama (Mother Earth ) in the belief that if he accepts them they will have good luck & be profitable & if not then bad luck. There are about 50 of these bizarre god-idols underground. The one we saw had a large penis , moulded from clay as he was , to symbolise his relationship with the Pachamama & therefore the production of a good yield of minerals from the mountain. Women are not allowed to be miners lest the devil fall in love with them& make the Pachamama jealous, thus risking this good yield. However another girl & I speculated that we were allowed down there & he didn't fall in love with us !

Really it was grim. It was a shocking , memorable experience & we came away with the feeling that with such mediaeval working practices, with safety provisions non-existent, no lighting or ventilation, it was an inevitable huge disaster just waiting to happen. We were glad to see the light of day !

From Potosi we travelled to Uyuni. We went to Uyuni for the same reason as everyone else to visit the Salar de Uyuni , the largest salt-fields in the world.

We booked our 3day tour in a 4WD jeep & set off the following morning. Our co-passengers were 4 Dutch people :a couple our age &their daughter (22)(She had ben doing voluntary work in La Paz & her parents had come over to visit her for a few weeks) & another girl Lisa (32). We got on well enough for the 3 days. Just as well as we had to share a 6-bed room each night in the most primitive conditions !

The sight of the salt-lake was amazing .Pure whiteness shimmering& stretching further than the eye could see (12,000sq km , half the size of Belgium !) It was the smoothest road we had encountered so far in Bolivia ! The heat haze rising from the surface creates a mirage of water in the distance & the mountains appear to be floating above the surface . Very halucinogenic & we weren't chewing coca-leaves ! As we stood in hot sunshine , the surface looked like ice.

In the middle of this blindingly-white desert , we stopped for lunch at salt picnic tables next to Isla de los Pescadores , an oasis covered by enormous cacti up to 12m tall & over 1000years old. They grow 1cm per year. After lunch we walked to the top of the rocky island for an outstanding panoramic view. We stopped to look around a hotel made of salt. It is not in use this year as it is to be deconstructed & moved block by block due to environmental concerns. The tables , chairs & beds were all made of salt !

We were told our accomodation would be okay the first night but very basic on the second & to expect temperatures as low as -6degrees C the first night & -14 on the second due to an altitude of almost 5000m. When we saw our first night's accomodation we couldn't imagine what our second could possibly be like ! It was grim , it was freezing , it was dark , no electricity, no showers , 3 toilets amongst 40 people. Trying to pack up our packs by torch-light at 5.15am was a feat in itself ! But it was all worth it although I spent the second night thinking only about the 5star hotel I would find the next day !

We spent the second & third days driving long dusty distances through desert , stopping to taske photos of red lakes , green lakes , white lakes , all inhabited by flamingos , incredible rock formations , live volcanoes smoking in the distance , geysers & hot-springs spouting water up to 180 degreesC & huge steaming pots of bubbling grey mud. It was bizarre , so many extreme geological wonders in such a relatively small area.

On the last morning we stopped at 8am at some small shallow thermal steaming pools where we had been told we could bathe as there had been no showers available the previous night. The air temperature was still around zero although the sun was shining. Do you think I was going to take my clothes off there ? I was still wearing 7 layers ! No, not even for Tim's calendar ! Ady did , there he was up to his neck in hot water again. He said it was gorgeous. I'm sure it was but he still had to climb out again !

Our jeep trip continued out of Bolivia , over the border into Northern Chile to a small town called San Pedro de Atacama. It was nice to be back to civilisation , we were really tired but exhilerated by our experiences in Bolivia.