It's 2 days before Christmas now and we are off to Bolivia. After a 4 hour border crossing queueing in the heat, and crossing the Tropic of Capricorn, we arrived in Tupiza. The ladies here all wear strange hats, and get pretty peed off if you try to take photos of them. Tupiza is famous for being the place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end, and we went on a great jeep tour into the barren landscape to see where they would have had their showdown.

Christmas eve passed fairly uneventfully, then we were travelling on Christmas day. I did manage to speak to Dad, Lee and the girls which was lovely but didn´t feel very real as I was so far removed from home and all the usual Christmas build up. I did have llama pizza for Christmas Day dinner, so that was a first and it was actually pretty good.

Boxing day was fab, we spent the day at the world's largest salt flats at Uyuni. They are 12 thousand square kilometres in size, and were such an incredible sight - mile after mile after mile of white for as far as you could see. We visited an island in the middle of the salt which had 10 metre tall cacti which were over a thousand years old, and also went to a hotel which was completely built out of salt. We all got sun burnt faces from the glare off the salt, and our clothes were caked in it too.

Next day we travelled via an incredibly bumpy road to the world heritage city of Potosi, at an altitude of 4060m. We have been at altitude for a few days, and my only symptoms have been a mild headache and quite bizarrely swollen eyelids, which thankfully went down pretty quick. Wandered round the markets and took some nice pictures of the most bizarre looking mannequins I had ever seen.

Potosi is famous for its silver mines and 6 of us braved the 'not quite up to european safety standards' to partake in a tour of the mines. We were kitted out in rather fetching yellow jump suits, a pair of wellies and a helmet. First we visited a local market where we bought gifts for the miners of coca leaves and soft drinks, and bought ourselves a flimsy face mask to keep out the toxic dust (!). I think a respirator might have been of more use really. The men who work in the mines have no safety equipment at all and do not even have steel toe capped boots, just rubber boots. Air is pumped in and there is basic lighting, but they really do work in the most basic conditions. We spent 2 hours walking down the tunnels at times bent double where the tunnels were so low, and were introduced to one of the miners who operate the jack hammers. These guys get paid the most, as they are right at the seam but usually pay with an early death from lung disease as their faces are literally inches away from the dust they are producing. One of the jack hammers was passed around the group and I could barely lift it off the floor with both hands, these men certainly earn their money. It was very humbling, and made me appreciate how lucky we are sitting in our cushy offices complaining if we can't open a window.

La Paz was next and most of the boys mountain biked down Death Road, which apparently was fun if a little hairy at times! The rest of us visited Moon Valley, it's like a desert filled with stalagmites, it's creation only possible by a mixture of the clay soil and the altitude which stops it being washed away because the rain evaporates too quickly. We also visited the Witches Market where they sell llama foetuses. These are used as offerings to mother earth, along with other unmentionables!

That was it for Bolivia, Peru coming next ...