After sadly bidding farewell to beautiful Sucre and a unusually uneventful 10 hour bus journey we arrived in the little town of Tupiza. It is known as the "wild west" of Bolivia, which you can see from the photos - lots of massive red purple mountains and cactuses.

It is lucky the scenery is so brilliant as the town does not boast any culinary delights. Although, to be fair, Dave and Emily are now exclusively eating in crappy touristy restaurants following disastrous after effects of Bolivian cuisine, so the more authentic Bolivian restaurants might have been brilliant, we shall never know.

To fully appreciate the scenery we embarked on a 2 day horseriding tour. Some might have said that after Dave´s total experience of 3 hours on a horse, 2 days was a bit ambitious, but we were not to be daunted. We met our guide, Javier, who we were initially worried was about 12, but we later found out was just a very small, energetic 16.

The views were amazing, really hard to describe, but stunning. We left the path and rode through a massive split in a wall of bright red rock into "Valley of the Pixies", then past other crazy rock formations that looked like Inca faces or gothic towers.

Towards the afternoon Emily and Dave were becoming increasingly confident and enjoying some trotting action. Emily even managed to do that rising and sitting thing during the run. We had met up with an American and German by this point and the American challenged our guide to a race. Off they scampered into the distance.

Dave and Emily trotted sedately afterwards, however they came up against a small tree covered hill and it was not easy to see how to get through. Dave´s horse thought it had found a way, but unfortunately this involved going under a low branch, which Dave wasn´t happy with, so he pulled hard on the reigns. This completely freaked out Chavo the horse, who then reared up, throwing Dave into a heap on the floor.

Emily was stuck trying to hold her horse and Dave´s naughty horse and Dave was lieing dazedly on the floor until our guide eventually noticed and came back to have a look at the confusion. Although Dave hit his head on a rock, his hip took most of the impact and apart from some nasty bruising he escaped in tact!

A few bottles of cheap Bolivian wine with an American, German and Indian American helped to dull the pain (and later helped us sleep in the oven-like fly infested dorm room).

Dave wasn`t delighted with the prospect of jumping back up onto Cheeky Chavo the next morning, but as we were in the middle of nowhere there wasn`t really a choice. The scenery was even more spectacular on the return. We rode through massive fields of grass which came above our heads and had 360 degree views of mountains of every possible colour.

It had rained during the night and the rivers had risen a lot. Our first few river crossings were good practice for our 4th where the water came up to the horses` bellies and up to our knees. The Indian American guy wasn`t too sure about this and started trying to direct the situation in English (although our guides were strictly spanish speaking only)... "stop! wait!... what are you doing?!"... and "who`s in charge here?!"... very funny.

So, after a thunder storm and a crazy wild horse trying to charge us down, we finally made it back to Tupiza (relatively) safe and sound. And the moral of the story is... always wear a helmet!