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 the barman. Most were Spanish tradesmen who had come to Bolivia looking for work.

We took an interesting taxi ride (see photos) to the nearby archaeological site consisting of a giant rock (220 by 60 metres) which had been extensively carved. The site had been occupied by four different peoples since 1000 BC, including the Incas and the Spanish. It was originally used as a ritualistic site but you needed a bit of imagination to spot the various zoomorphic figures.

After this we drove to the town of Vallegrande (a must for Che Guevara fans like me). It was here that his body and that of other guerrillas were brought after they had been captured and imprisoned and later executed (on 9th October 1967) in the nearby village of La Higuera. His body was displayed for 2 days in the laundry room of the Vallegrande hospital. After this he was buried with his companions in an unmarked grave near the airstrip. It wasn't until 1997 that their remains were found and taken back to Cuba. There is now a very tastefully built mausoleum over the empty graves.

We drove onto La Higuera (we saw a Condor on the way- they are massive). La Higuera consists of little more than 10 houses/farmsteads, one museum and one shop (another old dear selling very basic foodstuffs from her front room) and is four hours rough driving from anywhere. The schoolroom of La Higuera was where Che had been imprisoned and executed. The sweet old dear that unlocked the schoolroom tried to sell us a small bottle allegedly containing the soil form the old floor mixed with his blood (later she tried to sell us an old photo of a relative who had allegedly eaten with Che and when that failed she tried to get us to buy some food. You had to give her 10 out of 10 for persistence) It was starting to feel a bit macabre. All the buildings around the school and the plaza were decorated with Che quotations. By the plaza was a giant sculpture of his head.

We found it a bit odd that the Bolivians have made so much of his guerrilla activities when it was them that executed him, whilst the Argentinians have made very little of his being from there.

In a nutshell he was in Bolivia to try and set up a guerrilla camp from which he could travel to the surrounding countries to free the peasants from capitalist oppression. It didn’t work as the Bolivian peasants did not really support his ideals as their government had just passed a Land Reform Act giving land back to them so they saw no need to fight.

We stayed the night in a lovely small hostal run by a French couple.

After this we drove on to Sucre (the Capital of Bolivia) on a road that locals advised anything from 'it’s a reasonable road’ through ‘your be ok in a 4x4’ to ‘don’t use it’

This road was about 200kms long (120 miles) and was rough, but the scenery was amazing. The mountains in Bolivia seem to go on for ever and you can feel very isolated and small in the middle of them all. The worse section took us 8 hours of driving to go 110 Kms (70 miles) an average speed under 8 miles an hour. (Sam could have run it quicker!). In all, the entire route took us 2 and a half days.

On the way we emptied the jerry can into the tank. My job is to hold the funnel. About 15 minutes later I started to feel a tickling under my blouse. On investigation it turned out to be a beetle. At this point Peter advised that he had seen it crawling up my blouse whilst we were emptying the jerry can but didn’t say anything as he didn’t want me screaming and dropping the funnel with diesel going everywhere. He was going to tell me after but forgot! I will bide my time but will get my own back.