8 - Bolivia

We wereexcited about Bolivia, but we very quickly changed our attitude. Bolivia is a stark difference to the countries we had visited. It is much poorer and the people are far less accommodating, although it is far richer in traditional culture.We began our often frustrating travels crossing the border from Chile.Most people take a tour from the Atacama to see Bolivia's Salt flats, we had decided that we had seen them already and thought it would be easy enough to cross the border ourselves.It was until we reached Bolivia and had to wait 4 hours for a bus to take us across to Bolivian immigation. We waited and waited and eventually the bus was ready to go crammed full of people and their market goods - I think we saw 3 boilers get wedged into the bus.We made it to Bolivian immigration where we got charged to enter - not a good start.5 long uncomfortable hours later we made it to the town of Uyuni.We didn't want to do a tour of the salt flats so we decided to leave the following day.Uyuni is not a friendly city.We borded an evening bus to the mining city of Potosi.The bus journey was an uncomfortable 8 hours, we were wedged in the back with 2 Swedish girls who were trying to get out of Bolivia as soon as possible.This did not fill us with confidence.The roads are so poor in Bolivia that the driver and his assistant have to get out every so often to check if the road is passable, on top of this there are sheer drops at the sides of roads.Needless to say we didn't sleep!We arrived in Potosi which is the highest city in the world at 4300m, with the intention of visiting the mines.We took a tour I could only stomach the first 600m on the first level, Mark went down to the fourth level and was in there for 2 hours.It was an incredible experience, if not to reinforce how fortunate we are, but also to see that children and adults still work in the most appaling conditions and it is accepted.Mark got some incredible footage that unfortunately is too long for our blog.

We left Potosi pretty much as soon as we arrived and headed for the city of Sucre.Sucre was a breath of fresh air (apart from the huge numbers of child beggars) - it could have been any European city.We spent 3 nights here indulging on good food and riding the "dino truck" to see dinosaur footprints on the outskirts of the city.Great fun!We left Sucre to head to the capital La Paz - we had heard mixed reviews of this city and quickly came to the conclusion that it is not a place to hover around for too long.The city is one humungous market.We got ourselves on a tour to the Pampas in the Amazon Basin.To save money, it was decided to take a public bus for 18-20 hours to the village of Rurrenabaque where our tour was to begin.I think this was the longest period of time in my life. The journey was along sheer mountain edges, to make matters worse the weather was really bad and the awful roads were worsened by continual rain.The driver had to constantly reverse on bends which overlooked sheer drops.I was forever thinking that people can simply buy their driving licences as opposed to take a test, so I thoughtwe weren't going to make it (sorry mum).To make matters worse, Marky slept through pretty much the whole journey and there I was clinging to the window looking for an escape route!We made it 20 hours and 1 brake down later.Once in Rurrenabaque we stumbled upon their festivities which involved bull tormenting/rodeo.I don't think we will want to see anything quite like it again.The only good bits were when the tormentors slipped up and the bull took full advantage!

The Pampas tour itself was good, we spent 3 days and 2 nights in the Pampas, sleeping in a very basic hut.We saw a tarantula (it lived in a tree outside) pink dolphins, monkeys, tucans, capiaburas and cayman.We even had a resident caymen named Pedro that I thought took bit too much of an interest in us!At night the sounds of the animals was incredible, we even went out at night in our long boat looking for cayman.We saw 2 baby cayman and many pairs of adult eyes.Not somewhere where you would want to fall in!

We returned to La Paz by air (there was no argument from Marky) our plane was really bizarre it sat 18 people, there were no cabin crew and you could see exactly what the pilots were doing.The best part was the information, we had a sign saying if the plane loses pressure, cabin crew would come round and hand out oxygen masks. hmmmmmmm..... I think I would rather the pilot stayed where he was!We got back safely and it only took us 35 minutes.From La Paz we made our way (quickly) to Peru via Copacabana where we visited Isla del Sol for Inca ruins.

We were definitely not sorry to leave Bolivia, unfortunately our experiences of peoples poor attitudes and their constant desire to rip you off made the country a very uncomfortable one to travel.It is not somewhere that we would return to in a hurry.