Bolivia - lakes, mountains and the white stuff

Well, it's been a while since my last blog! I have clearly become too lazy with all this travelling malarkey…so here goes with a catch up.

We crossed the border from Peru to Bolivia on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest commercially navigable lake in the world at almost 4,000 metres above sea level. From the small town of Copacabana, we visited Isla del Sol, a ruggedly beautiful island and birthplace of the sun in Inca mythology.Just walking on flat ground at this altitude is hard work, but climbing 3 storeys to our hotel room in practically finished us off every time! It was worth it though to taste the fresh trout from the lake, yummy…

In backpacker circles, La Paz is known as party central with underground coke dens and illicit visits to the prison (where allegedly one can take a 'tour' round the prison with one of the inmates) hot topics of conversation. Not being fans of these activities we checked out different areas of the city, puffing our way around the steep streets of the capital and visiting the coca museum and the creepy witches market (where you can buy a dried llama foetus to put under your house for good luck - nice).

Our next stop was Sucre, an enchanting colonial city and Bolivia's official capital. I enrolled for another week of Spanish classes and had an excellent teacher Yerko, who helped me make another leap forward. We were excited to meet up with our French travel buddies Audrey and Olivier (with whom we shared many memorable experiences in Africa) and spent some happy days hanging out together and catching up.

Visiting Potosi and learning about its history was both a fascinating and disturbing experience. Potosi was established during the colonial era as a mining town following discovery of silver and other minerals in the Cerro Rico (rich mountain) that towers over the city, and brought great wealth to the Spanish crown. Working conditions in the mines were, and continue to be, extremely dangerous, with millions of indigenous and African slave labourers perishing in the mines due to dynamite explosions, runaway carts or silicosis in the lungs caused by inhalation of dust. It saddened us to learn that due to the poverty in Bolivia, there are still nearly 1,000 children working in the mines.

Our final experience in Bolivia was a fantastic 3-day trip across the Uyuni salt flats by 4x4, unbeatable value at 60 quid all in! We travelled through surreal landscapes of endless white (where we had great fun creating bizarre perspective photos with our fellow travellers), petrified rocks in all manner of shapes, coloured lakes and cactus forests. Our tour finished with us crossing the border into Chile, exhausted but happy.

ps photos to follow shortly!