La Paz, Bolivia

Our three days in La Paz were spent doing a variety of things, including a bit more drinking than we'd intended, as we met up with an Irish friend of our friend Vincent who'd been managing the Arequipa branch of the Wild Rover hostels and was in La Paz for 'training'.

We spent our first day doing a day tour to Chacaltaya mountain where we were able to hike the last 1km to the summit (a very dizzying walk at 5400m/17400ft). The tour also took us to another Valle de La Luna, though this one was very different from the Moon Valley we saw in San Pedro de Atecama, Chile. It was a bargain of a tour at $70B/pp ($10US).

The climb to the top of Chacaltaya was the highest altitude either of us had ever been, and even though the summit walk wasn't very long it still took us the better part of an hour because after 10 steps we would be gasping for air. The view from the top was pretty amazing however, and made the climb well worth the effort.

The Valle de la Luna was also pretty cool as it's basically a small valley that contains thousands of huge, eery spires that have been formed by erosion of sediment left by a lake thousands of years ago. We saw four wooden stumps at one of the lookout points and so, naturally, the four of us (Charlotte, Merryn, David and myself) had to do the karate kid swan-kick pose for the photo.

The next day we didn't do much as there was a Smurf costume party in the hostel bar the evening before and so all we could muster the energy to do was go see a movie (Cowboys & Aliens was playing in English at the downtown theatre) and figured out logistics of our overland cross into Peru. It was a pretty funny site however to see a few Smurfs still bobbing around the hostel the next morning, most of whom hadn't gone to bed from the night before.

The next day we boarded a 4-hr day bus to the town of Copacabana which is on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is about 300km north of Lake Poopo, which Charlotte quickly grew tired of hearing me say, and laugh at.