The Wild Rover was the name of the hostel, and I´d been assured it wouldn´t lack for atmosphere for New Year´s celebrations. After repeatedly failing to get through to them by phone, my bed was reserved by a bloke I met in the pub. When I turned up, it actually had been.

The culture shock set in.Top bunk in a 8 bed mixed dorm, grottiest kitchen ever and a cell-like TV room that was only fit to accommodate hungover people fit enough to crawl off their 8 foot high bunks but not fit enough to venture outside. I was warned from the outset that I wouldn't get much sleep and it really did seem like the long termers in the hostel had become night creatures.

Being the night before New Years Eve, I´d expected it to be a quiet night in the bar with people saving themselves, it wasn´t. I sat in the TV room, all of us having drawn the sofas up to the set to try and hear over the raucous bar next door. After 7 episodes in a row of ¨Weeds¨, I couldn´t handle any more and ducked my head into the bar on my way to the dorm - mistake. I was dragged in and told as the newbie at the hostel I had to start the karaoke. Being that stone cold sober isn´t my preferred state to sing karaoke so I negotiated a free shot (something green!) and went on to sing ¨I will survive¨. The evening was a great laugh, most people were up for making complete fools of themselves, so as I snuck off at a decent hour of 1am, I was heartened that there was a good crowd to drink the New Year in with.

I continued my wanderings around La Paz the next day. I was intrigued by San Pedro prison. Anyone that´s read ¨Marching Powder¨will know tourists used to be able to go in and have tours run by prisoners. There was a whole hierarchy ruled by money, prisoners bought their own cells and those with money basically did as they pleased. There was also horrendous violence and in a micro-society where the prisoners set the rules, nauseating tales of retribution and murders made the prison too surreal and shocking to be true.Right in the centre of town, I walked around wall that could have been any other building to the gated archway where locals where being signed in and out by prison guards, and there hanging on the bars which fronted a courtyard were some prisoners. I stood fascinated, not really knowing what to do and a couple of them started to ask me where I was from.I answered them and they told me I couldn´t come in as it was too dangerous. It suddenly hit home that this wasn´t just another tourist attraction, that I was standing, and these men were imprisoned in an institution where those unbelievable things that I´d read in the pages of a book in Australia had occurred, that I was standing in a country so ruled with corruption that those stories are probably just scraping the surface. I thanked the prisoners and turned my back towards a pretty, square, full of flowers that faced the prison, but it took a lot longer for me to shake the nagging sensation that had entered my cotton wool surrounded world.

New Years Eve was riotous, a costume party at the hostel, dancing on the bar, Auld Lang Syne, Salsa Argentine style and fireworks at 5am, I made it to bed by 9.So I greeted the New Year with a hangover.Another cold, grey day in La Paz. I´d been there since Boxing Day and run out of sights and sounds. Bolivians do take New Year´s Day as a holiday so couldn´t get out and had to content myself with the night bus of the 2nd. I bided my time, trying to sleep as much as possible, a couple more episodes of Weeds, hanging around with other hungover people, queuing up for my 15 minutes internet and going to the cinema 2 days in a row (kiddies seasonal flicks, I was desperate!) The 2nd rolled around at last, and as I sat packing my rucksack an American guy came up the stairs and announced no buses were leaving because of a blockade 48 hours. I´d just planned to catch up with JA and Anne in Southern Chile which was pushing it as it was. My travelers greys (the colour of La Paz) set in severely. Suddenly any traveling budget was of no consequence.I instantly invented a Tori mope fund and started investigated any way out, plane, train or automobile. In the end it didn´t come to that.The opposing factions negotiated an agreement and I left on my night bus as it rolled over into my birthday with a big smile on my face.

Travelling in the third world I´m reminded daily of what a privileged life I lead, but nothing has impacted me as much as my visit to Potosi mines.In the Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) 25,000 miners work in appalling conditions with no modern equipment for up to 40 years of their lives or until their lungs give in to Silicosis, life expectancy is around 40 and they start at the age of 11 or 12 in the hope of making a big strike. In reality the last silver strike was in 1992 and not the miners toil for up to 15 hours a day to mine ore which contains minerals or small amounts of silver. Any silver powder gets exported, cheap as chips, for processing as the government wont invest in a processing plant here. What is so sad is that they have no choice.Potosi is the highest city in the world and too high for crops or farm animals. Tradition and large families has meant that the only option for sons is to follow their fathers footsteps into the mines.

My own 2 hours were harrowing enough.What started off seeming like an Indiana Jones type adventure quickly got tough. Dust filled shafts, sometimes only small enough to crawl through, rickerty make shift ladders taking us down the levels, deeper into the hill. 2 men pulling and pushing a trolley full of ore along tracks they derail on every corner and have to reset the load weighing a ton by hand. Shovelling the ore into bushels to be pulled up to the next level. Right at the bottom, an hour from daylight, via a labyrinth of tight tunnels was a lone miner stripped to the waist, sitting in a hole, only just bigger than he was hammering away an explosive hole, which he said would take him 5-9 hours. The heat was infernal and when he was done and set the dynamite he would only be able to get away 10 metres before the explosion. We handed over the gifts we´d brought, dynamite, coca leaves and a soft drink, it did seem a pathetic gesture. I battled mentally with the claustrophobia and physically with strenuous weaving through the levels of the mine whilst trying to breathe through the incredible dust that had my nose streaming and throat aching. I´d been there for 2 hours and I coudn´t get out of there fast enough.

The Potosi above ground gleamed and I appreciated all the fresh air and UNESCO heritage streets and houses built off the backs of the generations of those poor men. My birthday afternoon was spent receiving wonderful birthday greetings from friends and an unusual version of Happy Birthday sang down a Skype conference call from Mum and Dad and Auntie Mary and Uncle Legs, then treating myself to a birthday brownie. I wasn´t particularly looking forward to my second evening on a bus but the combination of joy of being on the road again, fear of getting stuck in more blockades and the half a continent I had to make up to meet Anne and JA in a week had me forging on. Plus my night bus from La Paz, the previous night had been great, comfortable, plenty of sleep and on time. On the Potosi - Uyuni bus I had no such luck.It left 90 mins late, my seat didn´t recline, although unhappily the guy´s in front of me did, there were no lights, it was freezing and I was directly under the speaker pumping out reggaeton at concert levels. I clambered over the man next to me and knocked on the drivers compartment to ask them to turn it down. They did, so it was only at night club levels, so I sat still deafened even with ear plugs in, head torch on, trying to read the book on my lap through the 4 inch gap between my chest and seat in front of me, shivering. The old man next to me, who honestly did seem sweet offered to share his blanked with me but after too many tales of women being touched up on public transport, I declined. The 7 hour journey was the bumpiest ride over dirt and rocks and I wouldn´t class myself as a violent person but there were moments I wanted to smash that speaker in. I´ve got to say I felt really stupid after what I´d witnessed during the day in the mines and the fact there were actually people traveling in the passageway, that I´m so spoilt that such minor frustrations get to me. We arrived at Uyuni at 2am, my bladder about to burst. I glanced around for the most salubrious looking place to stay. Luckily after leaning on the doorbell of my first choice a woman came to the door and I happily settled into my single cell for my first 5 hours in a bed and shower in 42 hours.