Bolivia, the land formally know as ´High Peru´ was an unexpected highlight, mainly because we had no plans at all to go there!

As with Guatemala, we took a detour from our original itinery and explored countries that other travellers had recommended, and like the wonderful country of Guatemala, Bolivia was a fantastic experience and one we will not forget for both good and not so good reasons!

Observations of Bolivia:

1) As you may expect from the fact that it was once called High Peru, this country is high up! We went higher than we have before, lived at a staggering 4400metres above sea level which brought on headaches, but then went up to 5000 metres, and as we know Dave was beyond his limit !

2) Partly due to the various altitudes of this country, the landscape changes with amazing swiftness. One minute you are in the rugged mountains, next you are in a featureless desert and before you know it you are shivering in windswept snowfilled hills. We seems to have experienced every enivronment that this planet has to offer in 3 weeks.

3) One downside was the Bolivian food, we were advised by travellers coming the otherway that if we are to get sick from food posioning then this is the place. It took all of 2 days for Dave to get struck down, and then again both of us suffered a few days later by dodgy food. So after twice getting in trouble with the local food we resorted to safe items such as pizza.

Bolivia is obsessed with pizza, There are uncountable pizza restaurants in every town or city. We must of eaten about 10 pizzas each in 2 weeks. Now we both like pizza but we couldnt take much more by the time we left this country!.

4) Public transport ! What can we say?!

They are crazy. Organisation does not seem to exist and all the buses leave and arrive at the worst possible times, either leave late at night or very very early in the morning (3am? really?!) and arrive at their destination around similar times. Arriving at 3am in the morning in a country like Bolivia is not advised, but the bus companies do not seem to consider that.

Also the roads are madness, they cannot really be called roads but more like narrow mud tracks or streams of water running down a mountain side. How we survived the bus journeys we will never know.

But that is the experience of travelling and the hard long dangerous bus journeys are something we will never forget!

5) We had a great and memorable Christmas and New years in this country, and was humbling to see the terrible poverty in this land (the poorest in South America) and to be so close and interact with these unfortunate people on Christmas day was an experience we will never forget.

6) As in Peru, we were treated to some amazing local traditions such as going to a folk dancing show, eating a traditional Bolivian Christmas dinner, and of course seeing all the woman and children walking around in traditional dress.

7) We soon found out why all the local woman wear big skirts in Bolivia. On two seperate occasions we were walking along when some woman just dropped to the ground in the street and went to the toliet. The big skirts hiding the act. Quite a logical thing to do we suppose but it was a bit of a shock to witness (you get arrested in England for doing that in the street!!)

So Bolivia was the hardest country to navigate but one of the most rewarding It really is a developing country but has the most spectacular landscapes we have ever seen.

Bolivia done, now onto the last country......Chile!