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 ...

Yes this is the last blog entry from Chile. The final leg of our journey through Chile involved a great deal of sand, high altitudes and good roads for a change. Before leaving Arica we collected the new window winder from the UK and Peter had no trouble fitting it so we are back in one piece again. I even managed to convince the carrier TNT that they were trying to charge us twice for carriage from Santiago to Arica and saved us £50. Peter was well pleased...

Finally after many weeks we have reached the coast again. What a lovely sight the sea is after sand and dust and mud. We drove up the coast road all the way to Iquique. On the way we camped one night on a beach (shame about the litter) and slept to the sound of waves crashing on the rocks and Pelicans squawking- or whatever noise they make. Some areas of the beach were so white I thought it was the rock itself but it was Pelican pooh! We had a bad introduction t...