There aren't enough superlatives to describe how beautiful the South West corner of the Bolivian Altiplano (high plane) is. Phenomenal and alien are the best I can do. It's a place where you can't take a bad photo and one which seems to have been dreamt up by an artist; which actually isn't too far from the truth as Dali painted a desert from his imagination and because it looked so much like one in the area it was named after him. The Salt Flats are the most fam...

According to our guide book, the journey to Tupiza should take 6-7 hours so we made that eight as per Latin America bus rules. We were therefore very surprised when we made it there in 5.5 with a lunch stop! We arrived into sunshine, heat and lower altitude, a welcome change from Potosí. We checked into our hostel, 15 minutes walk out of town and that afternoon began our quest to find a tour of the Salar that ended in San Pedro in Chile. We spent the next few d...

We caught a shared taxi from Sucre to Potosí as my (Simon's) tummy had not been feeling well for a few days. It was twice the cost of the bus but it was quicker and allowed stopping if necessary. So by 11:30 we were at our hostel in Potosí; one of the highest cities in the world at 4,090 metres. It was a bit of a jump from Sucre, at 2,810 metres, but with no towns between there is no choice. We headed out for lunch and found that the National Mint museum was cl...

Highly relieved that we had made it to Sucre on schedule for Christmas, we were even happier to discover that our hostel lived up to expectations. We were greeted warmly by the owner who proceeded to give us the best introduction to a place that we've ever had, consisting of an explanation of a well-annotated map with lots of tips about what would be open over Christmas and a guided tour of the place. The hostel had a living room with loads of DVDs which we made ...

Landing back in La Paz from the Jungle was a bit of a shock. (Climbing from 200 metres to over 4,000 metres in 40 minutes.) But luckily we weren't staying long as we were on our way to the small mountain town of Coroico. So after stocking up on cash we caught a taxi across town and then jumped on a 3 hour bus to take us up over the mountains and down the other side to Coroico (at 1,700 metres). The clouds covered most of the views but we still got to see some imp...