At Lake Titicaca we went out to the Isla del Sol where the sun was apparently born. This is also where the Inca empire started so plenty more ruins to see here. We spent the night there before heading to La Paz, the capital. The bus journey to La Paz involves a crossing of Lake Titicaca by boat. It was pretty strange to see your bus sailing across the lake on a raft. This was all organised by the Bolivian navy who don't have a whole lot to do any more since they lost their coastline to Chile 70 years ago.

In La Paz we visited a couple of museums and bought some more knitwear with pictures of llamas on it. We also went to the Bolivia v Uruguay world cup qualifier while we were there. Bolivians are a bit more reserved than other south americans when it comes to football. We were expecting mexican waves, flares, riots etc. but it was pretty tranquil. One stand would shout Bo Bo Bo, the second Li Li Li and the third Via Via Via. We were in the Li stand although it took us till after half time to work out what was going on.

We then headed onwards to Cochabamba another big city. We thought we would try and head off the Gringo trail and go somewhere a bit different. It turns out that everyone goes to the same places for a reason as there are things to see and do in those places. Cochabamba was just a city full of people going about their business, and not a lot for tourists to do, we couldn't even buy any llama themed knitwear. Lesson learned we continued south firmly back on the Gringo trail.

Sucre was the next stop, a posh place by Bolivian standards. Park Cretacico is the number one tourist attraction here. It's a cement factory where they were quarrying and discovered hundreds of fossilised dinosaur tracks running up and down a cliff face. An amusement park had been built around this complete with replica dinosaurs and piped recordings of dinosaur roars. I also had my first experience of south american food poisoning in Sucre. I will leave out the gory details and just say that I've never felt so empty. We visited a market just outside of town to stock up on some knitwear. It was full of middle aged French tour groups doing the same. They were also really keen on photographing every indigenous person they encountered, there was even one standing in the middle of the market holding a video camera and rotating slowly.

The next stop was Potosi which during colonial times was one of the largest producers of silver in the world. Now there is hardly any silver left in the mountain but there are still 10,000 miners in the town tunneling away. They probably make more money out of tourists visiting the mines now rather than silver. You buy presents for the miners like coca leaves, dynamite and juice and you can go for a visit. A stick of nitro glycerine complete with detonator and fuse only costs one pound fifty and you don't seem to need any sort of license or explosives experience to buy it. The mines themselves were pretty scary as there were bits you had to crawl on hands and knees to get through. Everything seemed to be held up by timber and there were unsettling sliding noises all the time. Kate threw a wobbly after the first level and refused to go any deeper. Afterwards we got to make some dynamite and set it off, health and safety laws don't seem to be a big thing here.

We caught a bus on to Uyuni where we are at the moment. The bus was called 'the champ' and there was a coffin tied to the roof. Judging by the way they lifted it onto the roof it wasn't occupied. Uyuni is a real one mule town and the only reason people come is to visit the salt plains which surround it. It gets very cold at night here so all the knitwear will come in handy. We are heading off across the salt plains in about an hour finishing up in Chile. When we got back to our hostel last night the key snapped off in the lock. Assuming the guy at reception cared we let him know that we couldn't get into our room. It turned out he didn't care that much and suggested we smash the window and climb through. After a bit of discussion it became clear that he was taking no more to do with the situation. As all our bags were inside there didn't seem to be anything else to do. Some of you have extensive window breaking experience (Mark N) but for me it's a new experience and it's surprisingly difficult to do. We have a bit of spare time so are going to head over to Argentina for a week before returning to Chile.