And so the journey begins....

Well the Bolivian trip got off to a false start. Arrived at the airport at some un-goddly time in the morning only to discover the carrier we were on was on strike and had been for 10 days. So much for the confirmation that our flights were good to go All wasn´t lost, the carrier put us up for 2 nights in the Sheraton, 4 stars, a slight up grade from the roach infested place we spent the night before. After a flurry of emails/phone calls we were able to, eventually, get in touch with our next tour to tell that we were indeed coming, just going to be a day late.
Second attempt at leaving was much more successful. And we managed to clear customs in Boliva in record time and make the connecting flight with the tour group.
Arrived in Sucre, the capital of chocolate for Bolivia, only discovered this fact the day before we were due to leave, but managed to get a bit of shopping in Very nice.

It was a bit of a shock the obvious level of povety. The people on the streets asking for handouts was a little staggering, we knew that Bolivia was poorer than Peru but wasn´t quite prepared for it. Sucre is actually a really pretty town, the parks/gardens are lovely.

From Sucre we headed to Potosa. The main reason for visiting this town is to have a look at the Silver mine and the conditions that they work in. It is horredous! On arrival at the mine it was suggested to buy the miners a gift for visiting the mine, you had the opportunity to buy crackers, cocoa leaves, alcohol or dynamite with ammonium nitrate, yes you can just buy sticks of this stuff and hand it out, it blew my mind! Considering the strict rules and regs in other parts of the world in regards to handling this type of material. The mines are just a rabbit warren of tunnels heading in all directions following the mineral lines. The guys that work in the mines only live for 10 to 20 years. Not the best life to live.

From Potosa we headed to Uyuni, this town has to be up there with the uglyest towns around! The only redeeming feature was a great pizza joint called Minute Man Pizza. This town was the staging point for our trip out to the salt lakes. Unfortunately there had been huge storms it was flooded out, we were only able to get a little ways out before turning back, but we did end up doing a great tour of the desert and lagoons in the area. The landscape around there was pretty cool completely different to anything that I had seen in Peru. The altitude did play havic on a few people on the tour, plenty of which had many sleepless nights. After 4 days of roughing it in the desert, we had seen our fair share of lagoons and flamingos to last us awhile. We headed back to Uyuni to catch the overnight train back to La Paz. The train was meant to depart at midnight and in true South American style it didn´t arrive till 2am and didn´t depart till 3am. For the 2 hours that we were at the train station we ended up setting up a make shift camp out of the luggage from the other people on the tour that had decided to head back to the hotel to wait. The luggage as a wind break and a couple of sleeping bags it was very cozy. And I guess entertaining to the locals.

Once back in La Paz the carnival was going to begin the day we were due to leave, we headed down to have a look before catching an evening flight out. The first day was for the children all of them dressed up in costum armed with water ballons, water pistols and shaving cream. As you can imagine a couple of white chicks walking around made for an easy target! Needless to say we got absolutely soaked through. It was great fun all the same. It would have to be the highlight of the trip.

Now for a marathon of flights to get Argentina to catch the next trip to Antarctica!