CHILE - SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA

The 10 hour journey between Salta and San Pedro de Atacama was the best journey yet. You continuously wind up and round the mountains, the scenery is beautiful - deserted landscapes that change so many times as you pass through, from sandy deserts to snow topped mountains. Lush! This is what we came to see!

Arriving in San Pedro was like arriving in the middle of nowehere, just dusty orange ¨roads¨ and one storey buildings made out of clay. Our hostel was out of the centre, over a rickety bridge, and run by a really lovely Chilean lady. It was amazing to see the mountains so close - apparently Chileans always know which way is north as the mountains are always to the left of them.

As we arrived late afternoon we just mooched around and had some amazingly tasty food - 3 courses for 4000 pesos which is 4 quid!

The next day was spent in tour offices (they are everywhere - pretty much every other shop offers tours), eating more cheap food and looking around the shops. That evening we went stargazing, which was absolutely amazing. We would definitely recommend it to anyone.

We got picked up at about 9pm and were driven out to the Atacama desert. Just getting out of the car and looking up was breathtaking - as there is no light pollution you can see so many stars. We then got to look through the telescope at the moon which was amazing. You could clearly see the sea and the mountains, such an amazing sight. Our guide pointed out some constellations, and then we got to see Jupiter and Saturn through the telescope which again was awesome. Saturn didnt look how we expected it - you think of it as a planet with the ring around the middle, but the view we saw was the round planet with the ring around the outside of it like concentric circles.

It was soooooo good, and has made us really want to know more about astronomy, look through even bigger telescopes and see even more planets. When we were done at almost midnight we were dropped off at our hostel ready for an early start the next day.

BOLIVIA - SALAR DE UYUNI TOUR

We had booked a 3 day tour to get to the salt flats at Uyuni, which is a must-do activity if you are in this area of the world. The whole trip cost about 100 pounds and was well worth the money.

We were picked up by minibus and driven about 45 minutes to the border crossing, which again was super easy. We then had brekkie and were separated into small groups, introduced to our drivers (ours was called Edgar) and headed out in 4x4´s for our first day of adventure. And what a first day it was! We saw snowy mountains reflected in mirror lakes, a volcano with a lagoon in front of it that changed colour as the wind blew due to the sulphur in it, went to the Dali desert, so named after the landscapes in Dali´s surrealist paintings, chilled out in some natural hot springs (which was great as it was freaking freezing due to the altitude) and visited the geysers.

For anyone who hasn´t seen a geyser, we can tell you that they absolutely reek. The sulpher that bubbles under the surface, belches up out of the holes in the ground and let off steam stink a really strong eggy smell. All four of us in our jeep had really bad headaches when we left the geysers, partly due to the smell and partly due to the fact they are 4,950 metres above sea level. We all slept in the jeep back to our hostel, and drank cocoa tea and ate cocoa sweets when we got back to help with the altitude sickness. Luckily all we had was the headache and dizzyness, not the being sick part that often comes with altitude sickness.

In the afternoon we went to a lagoon that is home to hundreds and hundreds of flamingoes. They are such strange but cool animals, and make a really weird sound!

We were glad that was the only activity that afternoon as we were all feeling a little fragile, so went back to the hostel for an evening snack and a relax..... until our hostel caught fire!! One of the drivers decided to make things more comortable for us by lighting a fire in the wood burner. The clever chap tried to light it with gasoline in a bottle, the bottle caught fire and he threw it. A small fire started on the floor, he threw water on it so we all thought it would go out, then WOOSH the whole back wall and floor caught fire, and it was huge! We all legged it out of the room as fast as was could, poor old Hickey was in the toilet when he heard a big bang, ran out and was faced with the fire right in front of him! Luckily there was a French firefighter on the tour who successfully put the fire out. Also, luckily, the hostel was made of cement so it wasn´t a lot worse. The walls and floor were black, and the place reeked of toxic fumes.

So in the end instead of sharing a room with 4 other people, about 20 of us had to share a room, with mattresses being bought in for us to share and sleep on!

After a terrible nights sleep we got up for day 2, which was not as good as day 1 but still had beautiful views. It wasn´t so high up so we felt a lot better that the first day. That night we stayed in a hotel made of salt! We were due to have an early night as were getting up for the sunrise the next day, but as they served red wine with our dinner we got a taste for it and stayed up with a Spanish girl, her German boyfriend, and another German girl Finnja!

The sunrise over the salt flats was amazing. We had to climb a really steep hill covered in cacti, and all around us were the salt plains which looked like a huge body of really still water. We sat on the rocks and watched the sun come up which was really cool - the colours were so bright (even brighter through Hickey´s sunglasses - everybody had a go with them!). The highlight photo wise was the salt flats, where the vastness and whiteness allows you to mess about with the depth perception. We got chased by a dinosaur, I balanced in Hickeys hand, flicked a tiny Hickey off my hand, and we had a fight with another dinosaur. None of this will make sense without seeing the photo´s, which unfortunately we cannot seem to upload here!

Our last stop was the train cemetry. The trains stopped running in Bolivia in the 40´s and loads of trains have come to rest in one place which makes an awesiome sight. I´m surprised they are all still there - if it was England the trains would have been dismantled and the metal sold as scrap long ago!

After lunch and Hickey purchasing a travelling hat we killed some time at a bar in the town of Uyuni before catching an overnight bus to La Paz.

BOLIVIA - LA PAZ

La Paz - what a crazy city! After a ridiculously bumpy freezing cold journey our bus arrived about 7 in the morning and the city was already buzzing with people on their way to work, and ladies selling their wares at the sides of the road. Although the day was really grey La Paz was a sea of colour as the women all dress in tradional Bolivian clothes - massive shiny elasticated skirts with loads of petticoats underneath, shawls around their shoulders, big brightly coloured blankets fashioned into bags as big as them over their shoulders carrying god knows what, and what looks like a stretched bowler hat a couple of sizes to small perched precariusly on the top of their heads!

We were booked into the Wild Rover hostel, an Irish party hostel that the Lonely Planet states "twenty sometyhings will love and thirty somethings will loathe". Well we certainly proved them wrong and had a whale of a time there! If you want to have a relax this is not the hostel for you. It is really socialble and so easy to meet people - you pop into the bar for one drink and end up staying all night - especially when the words "free shots" are shouted by the bar staff at about 6pm!!

We didn´t just drink in La Paz though, we did get out and about to explore the crazy city. It is set on a huge valley so all around you you can see houses stretching over the hills for miles and miles. Think of the favela´s in Rio, times that by a thousand and you get an idea of what La Paz is like. The centre is soooo busy, with people everywhere - brightly dressed women selling all sorts, shoe shine blokes who look like ninja´s with their faces covered up, brightly coloured buses with people constantly jumping on and off (I don´t think actual bus stops exist), taxi´s and mini buses beeping their horns to attract the chance of a fare, all at 3800 metres above sea level so you get out of breath walking up and down the hills.

There is a massive market held every Thursday and Saturday so we went to check that out. We got a cable car there and back as it is right at the top of La Paz, and spent quite a few hours mooching about looking at the array of items on sale, from car engines to pigs and llama´s! All we ended up buying was a bracelet, pair of shoes and some yummy lunch, but could have bought a lot more had our backpacks not already been rammed!

AMAZON PAMPAS TOUR

After 3 days and 3 crazy nights in La Paz we ticked something else off our amazing things to do in South America list and did a pampas tour of the Amazon. We flew to a small town called Rurrenbaque on a tiny plane that landed in what looked like the middle of the jungle. No-one knew what to do when we got off the plane - usually when you arrive in a new place you are surrounded by taxi drivers, but here there was nothing!! Finally a bus turned up and we all piled in and got taken to the town centre. As we were hungover on the journey (what a surprise) we headed straight to our hostel for a shower before heading out to compare tour prices. We found a tour we liked the sound of that went at 9 the next morning, had a stupidly cheap Mexican dinner, bought some cheapy clothes for the next day (long sleeved tops and trousers were needed) and had an early night.

Our tour started with a 3 hour jeep journey to the Maddi National Park, then a 3 hour cruise down the river in a long boat to our accommodation. Within 2 minutes of getting in the boat we saw river Dolphins which was amazing. We also saw (and fed) some really cute squirred monkies, saw all sorts of birds, turtles, and when we arrived at our lodge found out there was a resident aligator residing there!!

There were 8 of us in our little tour group, staying in a very basic little lodge. When we were told we would be going to see the sunset we thought it would be a nice little intimate viewing, but when we pulled up in the boat we found out that there were probably about 100 other people doing the same tour, all at the sundet viewing point. We did plan on using this time in the Amazon as a detox, but there was a bar at the sunset sight so we ended up buying a beer and a bottle of wine, and watching a football match of locals vs tourists as well as the sunset.

As the sun went down the mozzies came out in force! As we got on the boat Lorry could feel the b*****s biting her bum - it wasn´t until we got back that we found out to what extent... she had 37 bites on her bum alone!!

Day 2 we got up at 5 for the sunrise which was pointless as it was rainy and cloudy. We did see more dolphins though and also a howler monkey. The noise they make (their howl I guess) is nothing like we expected it to sound, it didn´t sound anything like a monkey and was pretty creepy. We also saw spider monkeys and another type of monkey I cant remember the name of! That was the reason that we chose a pampas tour instead of a junlge tour - you get to see more animals. That afternoon we went pirahna fishing - what ugly creatures!! Hickey was really good and caught some, Lorry was terrible and only managed to get an eye! That night we got to taste what we caught, they look ugly and taste pretty bland!!

On our last day we had the opportunity to get in the river to swim with the dolphins! Lorry declined knowing that this was the same river that we fished for pirahnas´s in, but Hickey the Brave went for it! The dolphins were shy at first but then became really playful splashing the people in the water with their tails.

After 3 days of cold showers and jungle dirt we were looing forward to spending the day at the pool at our hostel in Rurrenbacque the next day, however on the boat back from the tour the heavens opened and it rained so heavily and constantly that had we not had poncho´s we would have been soaked. Oh well it is called the Rainforest for a reason I suppose!

The rain hadn´t stopped when we got back so we did what any self respecting human would do - we got drunk! We had a few drinks in our hostel then headed out with some Swiss girls, a couple of French blokes and some locals. The next day was a nightmare - we had planned to sunbathe and swim in the pool but that was out of the question as it was pouring with rain. We also planned to have a planning and booking session for the rest of our trip but that was out of the question as the internet connection in town was down. So we were tired, hungover and with nothing to do, and all the films in the TV room of our hostel were in Spanish! We could not wait to jump on the plane the next morning and get going again....

Until we got to the flight office at 7:30 in the morning, waited around for ages, then were eventually told at 9:30 that due to the bad weather all flights were grounded and we wouldn´t be able to fly until at least Friday, 2 days later! After trying to find other options we eventually gave in and booked a bus back to La Paz - a 20 hour journey vs the 45 minute flight!

BOLIVIA - COPACABANA, LAKE TITICACA

We arrived in La Paz at 6 in the morning with bruised shins due to the bumpy ride and close proximity of the seats in front of us, and got straight into a minibus to Copacabana, scared that if we stayed in La Paz we might end up back at Wild Rover and never leave!

Copacabana is a little town on Lake Titicaca, so we had to get a ferry part way there. As we were now a day behind schedule due to the flight fiasco we only had one night here, so went straight on a boat trip to Isla del Sol, and island with traditional communities and Pilko Kaina ruins, which was a temple built pre-Inca times. We declined the tour (to save money) and decided to walk around the steep island ourselves, but bumped into the tour guide who convinced us to join for free! It was good as we got to hear some of the actual history rather than guessing!

It would have been great to have some more time and to do a whole day trip on the island rather that just a half day, as the views are amazing and I am sure there is lots more to see. The town of Copacabana itself is really nice aswell, a proper tourist trap but still with bags of character. Plus you can get a 3 cvourse meal for 2 quid!!

I know we say this all the time but i think Bolivia is our favourite country so far, the scenery is breathtaking and the people are still so traditional that it really feels and looks how you imagine South America should. If only we hadf more time to explore it properly! Oh well, Peru next so can´t complain!!