We arrive just outside of La Paz to get our bus to La Senda Verde. We wait 45mins for the mini bus to become full before we can set off. We are a little tense as we are unsure of the route the driver will take, one of 2 options is Death Road. At the top of the pass where we started are death road cycle the mini bus driver touches his forehead, chest and then each shoulder. We look at each other immediately. The driver repeats this gesture a few more times. Oh h...

The day arrives and we check out of the hostel. Both of us are unusually struggling to manage our usual quota of free pancakes for breakfast. Pre-match nerves or the street vendor papas fritas from the night before? We're not sure. We walk down to the tour office and meet the others on the trip and the guides. We all wait for over an hour for the office to open. Not a great start. We get in expecting to pick up all the gear we're borrowing for the trip but we ...

We were woken early by the coach assistant with a type of chocolate cocopops cereal and some pinapple yoghurt. In my groggy state I try to work out where we are by wiping the misted window to reveal lots of trafffic around us on a tarmac road so I conclude from this that we must be near a major city. Tarmac however doesn't necessarily mean the road is smooth especially in the rainy season with great simularities to Sheffield roads in places but it was a damn si...

After meeting up with the rest of our group we set off to the Chilean border and entered into what can only be described as no mans land. 40 minutes later we arrived at the Bolivian border control at around 4300m. The border control was housed in a small mud and stone brick building with a corrugated iron roof held down with large rocks to prevent the wind taking the roof away with it. The altitude was very noticable and the cold wind really cut through our clo...

Arriving into San Pedro after a pretty good night bus we walked into the main square and found a little cafe for breakfast. The sun was up pretty high already and the arid nature of the area was very apparent. You could feel the moisture being drawn out of the pores in your skin. We set off to find our hostel which was a little way out of town. On our way a local befriended us and offered to show us the way. We were fairly certain of where we were going but we...