7th-8th July

We are now in Tupiza and are off on a four day trek across South-western Bolivia in a jeep with two Germans-fingers crossed they are nice! I wanted to write about how amazing our journey was from Salta. As it was such an early bus both of us did fall asleep at some point during the trip but when we woke up it was like another world. There were huge mountains, giant rocks, massive cacti, wild llamas and cowboys. We even saw a tiny splattering of snow on one of the highest mountains. You could sense the change in the people when we drew up to tiny villages; we were getting closer to Bolivia!

We had travelled to a height of 2950m and both of us got a mild bout of altitude sickness. The weather is lovely during the day but at night it gets bitterly cold. Our mega cheap hostel doesn't have heating so we were really excited to get into bed at about 9:00pm under our 5 fleecy blankets-toasty! We woke up feeling better so we booked our 4 day excursion and a horse riding trip for today. I was a bit apprehensive as we had heard reports of rogue horses randomly flipping people off, our only head protection was a cowboy hat (looked fricking well cool, but probably won't protect the skull) and when a 17 year old boy turned out to be our guide it wasn't reassuring. To add to the fact that a teenager was responsible for our safety he also kept asking if we had any experience 'poco, poco' was our reply but half way through our 3 hour jaunt we started to trot, then canter and finally galloped! James was attempting to film at the same time and you can hear me whooping and hollering as we both hold on for dear life! In hindsight going fast was really fun, despite the sore bum that I am experiencing now. The views we saw were out of this world, James's horse always had to be at the front (I confirmed that with the boy that in Spanish-BOOM) and he looked like a real cowboy. The area is where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had the big gunfight with the police, if you've seen the film you will know what I mean, and we couldn't see any other life, apart from a few goats (that James attempted to herd, not successfully) so we felt like we were cowboys/girls keeping a watchful eye out for bandits!