So I left it when we were about to embark on our border crossing from Brazil to Bolivia. All we can say is what a difference 100m of road can make we went from tarmac, concrete buildings, decent cars and an almost western country to a dusty, corrupt, shack like Bolivia!

Their imigration office consisted of a small room with stale food, an old typewritter and papers just falling out of broken cupboards. Illigal money changers hanging around the streets and the roads just full of dusty wrecks of cars hanging around.

We were crossing to catch an overnight train to Santa Cruz and had been warned by our guide that it was going to be an horrific journey (I guess its wise to manage expectations!) but we all found it rather entertaining, it was so bouncy that the DVD´s they were showing just bounced along with the train and at times you felt you´d come clean out of your seat, at which point they brought dinner along, which left 15 giggling travellers all trying to get forks into their mouths with food still on it! and as for the drinks they were handing out you´d get one shot to try and down the lot before it was all over your top!!!

Santa Cruz though came round pretty quickly and to be honest was a stop more for breaking up a long journey than for anything it particualry has to offer. so we found a bar and stayed there from 3 til gone midnight sampling the Bolivian beers and cocktails as we´ve now entered a cheap cheap country!! their best beer was 80p a bottle woo hoo.

Our next stop was Sucre by internal flight; Sucre is offfically Bolivias capital but the defacto one is really La Paz and the 2 cities don´t like each other much. Our flight was only 25mins but as this is where we went from 400m above sea level to 3000m by road it would have taken 17 hours!!!

Sucre is the white city and very pretty with large squares and colonial buildings all over the place, you could notice the altitude slightly but nothing compared to our next stops. We went on an aweful city tour here, not because its a bad place but because we had a guide that only seemed interested in weaving and so we all got the pleasure of spending 2 hours in one museum of "Bolivian weaving through out the ages!" so we now know how to tell a party poucho from a funeral one and how to spot the diablo in their many different types of design - which the guide even tested us on later in the museum!! she also insisted on taking us past Bolivia´s version of the Eifle tower (supposeidly built as a replica of the real one!) at which point most of us were nearly crying as we were driven past a strange, small, red climbing frame!!! when we´d already lost the will to live!

One thing we can definately say though is the food is much nicer here in Bolivia and I´ve had my best hot chocolate of the trip so far - they just put a chocolate bar straight in to a mug of foamed milk - yum yum.