So since I last wrote I've passed through 4 countries, all of them different in their own way…

After finishing the Inca trail, I spent my last few days in Peru in Arequipa, from where we visited the Colca Canyon, a canyon twice the size of the Grand canyon but less spectacular and where there was the most interesting museum I think I've ever been to - el Museo de Santuarios Andinos, which housed the mummies of a few Andean children from Inca times, whose corpses were found completely intact about 10 years ago near the peaks of 3 of Arequipa´s highest mountains.

I then continued my journey with some new companions - Nikki, Ciara and Tibo, who became commonly known as French (simply for being French) to avoid the constant wrong pronunciation of his name. We carried onto Puno, a pretty boring town on Lake Titicaca, one of the highest (if not the highest) lake in the world, somewhere between 3500 and 4000m above sea level. From there, we took a 3 hr boat to Isla Taquile, a traditional island set almost where the Peruvian Bolivian border met, stopping enroute at these floating islands…basically islands made of nothing but dried reeds, with reed houses and reed boats, where locals even eat the reed, although we weren't too impressed ourselves. Isla Taquile was a pretty strange place; all the locals still wear their traditional clothing: all the single males would wear white hats, all the married ones would wear red hats, authority figures could wear multicoloured ones, young women would wear bright colours, except for yellow, and the older would wear dull colours. After 2pm, when the couple of tourist boats left, it suddenly became lifeless and very very quiet…but we´d decided to make the most of it and stay there for the night in a family house…interesting in itself. This was the beginning of many stomach issues due to altitude sickness.

So, then we all arrived in Bolivia, in a small, quite touristy town called Copacabana. There was not that much to do except for eat in one of the 20 trout restaurants along the lake front, but we stayed in the cheapest place of my trip so far (costing about ₤1.50 each for a private room), although we did have to knock on the wall when we wanted the water turning on for a shower.

The next stop was La Paz, one of the most exciting places I've so far stopped on my trip, staying there for nearly a week. There was loads to do and see here - a witches market (selling lots of weird and wonderful concoctions for illnesses), the Museo de Coca (very interesting considering how rife cocaine is within the country and their neighbouring countries), where I learnt that Coca Cola and some popular wines contained cocaine until 1911, biking down the most dangerous road in the world (a very thin gravel road which gives way to a drop of a couple of thousands of metres - a lot of fun!) and probably the most interesting of all, a visit to San Pedro prison.

We entered the prison with a European prisoner, Luis, who is Portuguese and inside for drug-dealing. The first thing that I noticed was the number of women and children inside the prison and soon learnt that they actually lived there, with their husbands and dads who were inside for numerous different crimes. All of the prisoners just wandered around as if in a little town and that is exactly what it seemed like - with shops, restaurants, hairdressers´, a pool room, a laundry area, a games yard where they hold football tournaments and a giant TV left on during the day - and for exactly this reason most of the inmates don't actually want to get out, some leading much better lives on the inside than on the outside. It was also really apparent that money means everything in the San Pedro environment, beginning with the prisoners´ cells. On arrival, prisoners have to BUY their own cell, and depending how much money they have, depends on the sector their cell would be in, the two best sectors having a higher security, closing their gates at 9pm to the rest of the prison. Cocaine makes up the main trade of the prison, where labs are set up inside for production, and on leaving the prison it became evident how easy it is for the producers to smuggle it out with their wives and children, as not one of us who had gone in to visit Luis were searched.

La Paz was also full of international restaurants and nice bars which we took advantage of, not having seen many for a while…the best of which had to be the curry house where we indulged in a very tasty Llama Tikka Masala.

From La Paz then, the group split up and I continued on another terrible, broken down bus, with French to Sucre, the country´s old (and still judicial) capital city. Being the Bolivian elections on this weekend, we knew the weekend would be quiet, many restaurants and bars closed and there was an alcohol ban for 4 days. Sucre was a nice little town though, lots of white washed buildings and easy to wander around. After the weekend we moved on to Potosi, the highest city in the world, at 4200 something metres. Potosi was, and still is, famous for its silver mines, although these days there is hardly any silver left to pick. Dressed in all our gear, we went down into the mine, finding it harder and harder to breathe at every level we descended to. It was a really interesting experience, but also quite sad to see how young some of the miners were, having to pick instead of go to school in order to help their families…the poverty here being much more apparent than in La Paz. It was in Potosi that we met Willie, an Irish guy from Kilkenny, who left with us the next day for Uyuni.

From Uyuni we took our tour to the Salar de Uyuni, the famous, absolutely beautiful, salt flats in the South West of the country. It wasn't however, so easy to get there…our 7 hr bus journey turning into a monstrous 14 hrs after our piece of junk of a bus left us broken down in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere with no phone or mobile signal, forcing all the newly found ´mechanics´ on the bus to fix it themselves with a pile of stones and a makeshift hammer. But anyway, the saltflats were beautiful; as far as the eye could see the whole ground was a bright white. Our group was really sociable, the 3 of us, 2 Argies and 2 Belgians, all about the same age, so it made sharing rooms and car space a lot more comfortable. The first night we stayed in a hotel completely made from salt, even the light shades and beds were made of salt…but lights were turned off for the most part of the evening to save energy so there was a lot of fumbling about. After the gorgeous sunrise, we spent the next day visiting some beautiful lakes and lagoons - and saw lots of flamingos! The final day of the tour was a very early start, and as we started driving at full speed in the pitch black across the flats, our headlights conveniently decided to just turn off. So we sat in the pitch black waiting for another jeep to either drive straight past unaware that we were stuck there or to just crash into the back of us. Luckily neither happened and the drivers mate turned up to help him fix the jeep. Pushing on, we still made it to the geysers before daybreak - lots of bubbling, shooting mud and steam to keep us entertained for a very chilly hour or so, before we had the chance to warm ourselves up in these gorgeous outdoor hot springs, in the middle of nowhere. After visiting a couple of other pretty lagoons, we made our way back to Uyuni, the highlight of the return trip being when we had to stop and wait for a mini tornado to cross the road, taking a few bushes and other plants with it. Then came the exciting part of the day - trying to get out of Uyuni. Unsuccessful in getting train tickets and finding all the buses completely full for the weekend, we had to resort to lying to a bus lady and begging her to let us on the full bus to sit in the aisle for the 12 hour bumpy ride, otherwise we would miss our non-existent flight in Argentina the next day. It worked, and we found ourselves in Argentina the next morning, catching an onward bus and arriving in Salta after a 4 hour wait at immigration, just in time for my first taste of the best steak in the world and Willies birthday night out. Saying goodbye to French I continued the 50 something hour journey the next day and eventually arrived at Iguazu.

The Iguazu falls were fantastic, the most impressive part being the Devil´s Throat drop, and the most exciting being a very wet boatride under some of the smaller, but still pretty huge falls.

I then caught my night bus from Iguazu into Brazil, for once I left with a couple of hours to spare, and a good job too, as customs stopped me for an hour and a half when Interpol flagged up my passport as being suspected stolen, grrrrrrrrr. So the following day (we are at the beginning of February now) I arrived in Florianopolis, South Brazil, where I met Asha (who was 2 days late because of the snow at home), and we were then to travel together for the next month...