A couple of things I've forgotten to mention in previous entries. Our last leg of the trip as full of fools asking dumb questions. As most of you know, I don't suffer fools gladly and my patience can run very thin. At the border, we were handed immigration forms. Now, bearing in mind that every country in the world requests you to complete these so everyone on the truck has done at least one, Michael was asked the following questions:

-How many forms do we need to take? (Well, unless you have a split personality, I would have

thought it was fairly obvious that you only need 1 form)

-Do we need a pen? (No, these are new magical forms that complete themselves by reading your thought process)

The funniest one was at the salt flats when we were at the mill (now remember that the salt flats are an area of 12,000 square kms and reach 27m deep in the middle). The question came to the guide: "But where do they get all the salt from?" I'm deadly serious! Unbelievable!

Anyway, back to me, where was I? We set off from La Paz on Saturday afternoon. Gaetano had to stay behind to get a new passport so Michelle took the front seat (my turn tomorrow!) and did a great job at keeping Michael straight! It was a pretty short drive at 4 hours but did involve a rather dodgy river crossing where we were out on a little boat and Michael had to drive the truck onto a kind of raft thing that was very unstable. He got across ok but there was a bus that was toppling around all over the place - am surprised it made it over in one piece. Apparently occasionally they lose the odd vehicle into the river!

Forgot also to mention that the day before Michelle and I dedicated a song on the truck to Bill as he was leaving us in La Paz - Can't Smile without You by Barry Manilow. Not sure the singing was that good from our end but the thought was there at least!

Arrived in Copacabana accompanied by the Bazza song of the same name. I had a painful (and potentially disastrous!) accident while getting out of the truck. My plastic bag burst and a bottle of red wine flew out, hit my big toe head on (ow ow ow), bounced off the ground and rolled down the hill. I was in agony (and scraped my nail polish!) but the wine stayed intact. Good old Trapiche.

On Sunday morning we headed out to Lake Titicaca which is wrongly described as the highest navigable lake in the world, even though both Peru and Chile have higher ones! It is high though at 3,820m and is pretty huge at 230km long and 97km wide - it looks like the sea from most angles as you can't see anything on the horizon. It straddles both Peru and Bolivia and, similar to the salt flats, is a remnant of a prehistoric inland sea/lake. We took a 2hour boat trip to Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) which is the legendary Inca creation site and the birthplace of Inca mythology. We discovered that Jacques Cousteau helped make this area famous as he discovered some ancient bits and bobs (Sorry, I switched off at this point and can't remember the exact facts) including some kind of frog with big testicles. I really need to google this as she didn't explain it very well and now I'm confused over why he would have found a large-testicled frog?!!

Anyhooo, we did a 1 hour trek up a hill (not easy when you're at altitude and get out of breath just standing still!) to some ruins of some houses and a sacrificial table (where some local bloke in a simple hat had laid out all his wares so you couldn't actually get close to see it!). There is also a famous rock shaped like a puma's head (couldn't see it myself) where the Inca creation legend began. To be honest, none of it was all that impressive and I don't really think many of us were in the right frame of mind. Most of it just looked like a bunch of dry stone walls!