We spent four days in La Paz (3500 metres), a large sprawling city in a canyon cut into the adjacent Altiplano (4000 metres). The buildings hug the steep sides of the canyon. It is quite a spectacular sight. It is not the official capital of Bolivia (that is Sucre. Hands up all those who thought it was!) but it does have all the commercial and political offices as well as a lot of traffic, pollution and a population of 835,000. After our scary drive into the city...

An amazingly good paved road led from Potosi city to Uyuni, a desolate, dusty and dirty town in the desert landscape of the high south western altiplano (3669 metres). The area is so flat that the wind, which is quite cold at night, whisks through the streets. No we haven't gone mad coming here as this is the jumping of spot for the Salar de Uyuni (world’s largest salt lake with an area of 10,582 square Kms). We booked ourselves a two day tour and whilst w...

Sucre is a wonderful city, full of colonial buildings and old world charm. The guide book refers to it as an architectural jewel. Its centre is now a UNESCO world heritage site. We both loved it. On top of this it was clean with a vast troop of women (most very elderly) cleaning the streets daily (the only thing they didn't pick up was the dog pooh! Must be something to do with job descriptions). Sucre (founded 1538) was the administrative and religious centre du...

We stayed at a small town called Samaipata for a couple of days. The drive there had been on a road at about 3000 metres that ran through Cloud forest high up along an arm of the Andes. It was like driving in a fog. Samaipata has a sizable European population due to a very nice climate. Their smart houses can be seen on the hills around the town. One afternoon Peter got to see a football match (Spain V France) in a bar in town. The only Bolivian in the place was...

We have crossed the border into Bolivia, our third country. The border was interesting. It is the main route from Chile to La Paz and the queue of lorries was at least a mile and a half long. Luckily we drove passed them to the tourist and bus queue. We soon understood why the queues were so long. The experience with Bolivian immigration and customs was rather different to the other borders. There were four different offices to visit in three different buildings ...