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Well, after Puno I crossed to the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca tocomplete my lakeside experience.  Copacobana was a small, friendly town and a perfect introduction to Bolivia.  I walked up to a viewpoint where they conduct religious ceremonies for another view of Lake Titicaca.  Not totally satisfied I also took a tour out to Isla del Sol and Isla de la Luna to see the Inca ruins on the islands, including the oldest stone in South America... or something.  The only negative aspect of my time in Copacobana was witnessing NCFC being given a lesson by Manchester United for 70 minutes, after which I was so depressed I left my bag (with everything I own that is important or valuable in it) in the bar.  Luckily after much running around the next morning I woke the owner up at his house and was re-united with my possessions! 

Lake Titicaca, Bolivian side

From Copacobana I headed to La Paz. Being the highest city in the world meant La Paz is pretty darn cold.  The first day I witnessed a streetprotest before taking a bus out to the ethereal and very tranquil Valle De La Luna, formed from some strange rock erosion.  It was so peaceful I fell asleep, but just for a short while. On my second day in La Paz I took a collectivo out to the Inca ruins at Tiahuanaco.  They were very disappointing, consisting mainly of two stelae and one doorway, all roped off. I was glad I hadn't paid the 25 B´s (approx $3) entrance fee, preferring rather to bribe the guard a crisp 10 Boliviano note after realising there was no secret entrance! It also started to snow whilst I was there, wandering around in my flip flops.  I spent the rest of the day back in La Paz getting cold feet and stopping regularly for the Bolivian specialty of coffee with bread and cheese for dipping. Delicious. In this state I also managed to sign myself up for a days mountain biking down the "Worlds Most Dangerous Road".  I only went in the agency to see the price (the most famous agency charging $49) and when I was quoted $28 with a t-shirt I couldn't resist. 

The only problem with the mountain biking is that the next day there was a blockade around La Paz, protesting at the privatisation of the petroleum industry. We left early but still found our bus being pelted with rocks at the first picket line, I felt like a real scab - "Up the workers!). We escaped out of La Paz by crossing a river bed and taking an off road route up the side of the hills, La Paz being set in a valley.  This resulted in the Oil line on the bus becoming cracked and so a further delay of 2 hours. We eventually got to La Cumbre and began the descent of 3600 m to Yolosa, 7km shy of Coroico. The weather hadn't improved that much and we biked the first section in the fog, visibility reduced to twenty yards.  After we got to the end of the asphalt road and onto the real dangerous stretch the weather cleared up and we were biking through the most amazing scenery - on one side the mountain face and on the other a sheer drop into the canyon. To make it even more interesting the usual Bolivian rules don't apply and instead of driving on the right you actually drive on the left because when descending you drive on the canyon side.  Giving way to lorries on the way down became an interesting proposition. We finally got to Coroico, had dinner (which was supposed to be lunch) and ascended the road in the bus, in the pitch black, which was probably even more scary. Still I made it back to La Paz in one piece, albeit at midnight, four hours late and very knackered.  Still in true South American tour style I had been well fed all day - fizzy drinks, chocolate, sandwiches, more cake than I could eat and a grand dinner of steak, chips and rice! 

The road to Coroico, Bolivia

After spending one final day in La Paz, hanging out in Mercado Lanza, eating all sorts of foods - stews, rice, chips, amazing fruit salads (Served by a friendly girl called Palmira) and more ice cream from Dumbos, I left on the night bus to Sucre, the other "capital" of Bolivia. Sucre was full of beautiful colonial architecture but I did not really enjoy it as I found the city to be too crowded for its size and also I thought the Sucreans were more stuck up than the friendly Bolivians one found everywhere else. Is this because of the "real capital" claim? 

I left Sucre after just one night and headed on to Potosi. I arrived on the day of their annual fiesta - an event that attracts crowds from all over South America - and immediately found myself in the middle of a grand celebration.  The fiesta included many dancers, bands and otherperformers, decrepit fairground rides, hoop-la, stalls offering prizes for shooting cans etc. For me the main highlight was all the food - Bolivian favourites such as salteñas (small Cornish pasties), South American favourites such as lechon (whole pig carcass slowly incinerating stuffed with rice and veg)as well as old favourites such as burgers, hot dogs, chips and toffee apples (not as good as my Nans!), candy floss and donuts. Just like Great Yarmouth. There was also a chicha (soft drink made from corn) that had a beer-like taste, well actually it tasted like beer-bottle sweets but that's the universally approved beer taste - and was served up in a variety of oddly shaped receptacles carved from wood. And I haven't mentioned the dead sheep, helium balloons, foil windmills and invisible dog leads! And everyone got steadily more drunk. 

As a break from the hedonistic festivities I took a tour of theco-operative silver mines the next day.  There was only one miner on shift (usually over 4500), the others having the Sunday off lucky bleeders, but it was still incredible.  It was so eerie, crawling around in the dark, damp mines, passing shrines to the devil, jumping over deep holes and along the side of crevices within the mines.  After the tour I also got to buy some dynamite, light it in my hands and blow up a small chunk of the hill! After taking my guide out to lunch afterwards I returned to the fiesta and spent the rest of the day withthree Bolivian girls from La Paz, one of whom – Guely – I got one specially well with and nearly missed my bus to Uyuni because of this. 

On the bus I was sat next to Frances from Oxford and we kept the bus up all night by chatting constantly. We spent the next day in Uyuni not doing much, its hard to find much to do there, other than eating at regular intervals and doing some essential shopping before splashing out by eating at a posh pizzeria where I met Anna and Sophie from the Puno tour and also Frances friend Claire from France.  The next day we recruited an Australian girl, Charmaine, to our cause and got her signed up for our Salar de Uyuni tour the same day. The first day of the Salar tour got off to a bad start - an hour and ahalf delay, surprise, surprise! - but after this it was all good. It was a small group of only 5 - myself, Frances, Charmaine and an English couple Terry and Jane. We visited the blinding Salar de Uyuni, first at a point where the salt had been made into piles and then afterwards at a point where all one could see to the horizon was salt, we also visited a hotel made of salt and a mountain right in the middle of the Salar covered in cacti.  The next day we visited Volcan Olyanvey and a variety of Lagunas full of flamingos at 4000m altitude and saw a rabbit-like ceature called a Viscacha and afterwards the Arbol de Piedra (Tree of Stone) and the deep-red Laguna Colorada. Throughout the tour were regular stops to feed the gringos, I think South Americans believe we need about 6000 calories a day, which doesn't bother me, especially with cheese or egg sarnies, stew and chicken n' chips on the menu! Today we got up at 5:00 to see the sunrise amidst a field of geysers, one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, stopped at some thermal baths for a quick dip before breakfast and passed LagunaVerde (Green Lake) before leaving the tour and catching a bus in the middle of nowhere to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. 

Salt farms, Salares de Uyuni

That's where I am now. There seems to be an inverse relationship between GDP of a country and the amount of street stall food available and this meant I was very happy to be in Bolivia! Fruit salad and yoghurt costs around 14p, a two course meal for under 30p, coffee bread and cheese for 14p as well. My personal favourite was the saltena (the small pasties, remember) which I consumed by the half dozen! I think Bolivia may well be the cheapest country I have ever travelled in, certainly it would only be beaten into 2nd place by India. Of course the flip side of this is that one ends up eating and drinking virtually constantly, a trait compounded by the frigid climate. So for the first time ever I am actually putting on weight while travelling. Altogether now...."Who ate all the pies...."