Hello to all! Apologies once again its been a while since i updated this.... last update was from Uyuni in Bolivia.... from here we went to Tupiza in the south of bolivia for a couple of days. Its basically a dusty desert town but we did a horse tour around the canyons which was really amazing, its proper wester type country and is where butch cassidy and the sundance kid met their end... horse tour was pretty fun and we all said we were great riders and so gt some fairly spirited horses which bombed around a bit, fairly exciting and no broken bones...

After Tupiza we took the bus up to potassi...we all have a fairly relaxed approach to travelling so didnt really plan anything or look it up and that was the only time its been a bit of an error as it turns out that potassi is the highest city on earth and as such bloody freezing! so we were standing in the city centre at 5 in the morning with no hostel booked and wearing shorts t shirts and flip flops...eventually found somewhere that would take us in, never been happier to have a bed!

The next day we did the mine tour which was really quite an experience... you pay to do a tour which was fairly cheap and they give you boilersuits and a helmet. before the mine you go to the miners market where you buy the miners gifts basically, things like coca leaves which they chew constantly and in large quantities as it combats fatigue and hunger, 97% proof alcohol and best of all; dynamite! anyone can just stroll up and buy themselves as much dynamite as the want its amazing! so we got all the stuff and headed up to the mine where they did some demonstrations of the dynamite, all of us had pictures of us holding a lit stick of dynamite etc... pretty loud explosion too you can feel shock waves and so on....

The mine itself was pretty full on....they have literally medieval practices, they have to push a cart with a tonne of minerals up a rail track for ages and its pretty exhausting work and in damp cold dark conditions they have to do every day...poorly paid and there are a fair few kids working down there aswell. last year 47 people died just because they've got next to no safety measures, people falling down holes or putting dynamite in stupid places.... they have to use hand operated winches to lift the minerals from the bottom of the mine to the top....so we did the tour down there which basically consisted of following a few miners and seeing each stage of the process... quite an experience..

From Potassi to sucre for a few days to meet up with Jon and aimees parents, also bumped into a few people i know from home so that was good fun, didnt really do much in sucre, went to the markets and bought a fair few cheap dvds etc then went out in the evening... just a brief stop again..

From Sucre to La Paz, stayed for 3 or 4 days... we did a mountain bike tour down the most dangerous road in the world on one day which was really great fun, not really that dangerous on mountain bikes although had a couple of close calls...great adrenalin though! you can see why so many people died on it in terms of traffic because its a really small dirt track wrapping its way round a mountain, you've got plenty of blind bends and 600ft drops on either side, all the way along is lined with crosses where people have gone over the edge. we all made it without injury so all good....

We also did the tour of san pedro prison... possibly the most surreal thing i've done, its quite hard to explain but basically its an open prison and you can bribe certain people to go in and have a look around and see how they all live. Its a bit hard to do at the moment as interpol have cracked down on it due to the huge amounts of cocaine smuggled OUT of the prison (they make it inside) we went into the rich section and were shown around by a fairly important prisonner (was caught smuggling 9kgs of coke on bolivian border) and his 'cell' had a double bed, shower, toilet, cooker and two tiers including a little breakfast table. pretty amazing! they've got restaurants where you pay for food inside the prison and that kind of thing... its pretty hard to explain but you can read a book review for Marching Powder on amazon if you want some sort of explanation.

Righty...from La paz we went to lake titicaka on the bolivian peru border but didnt actually go onto the island on the middle as it was raining so we headed straight to arrequipa where i've been for the last week... its a really nice city surrounded by mountains and volcanoes so pretty scenic... however i got a stomach bug somewhere in bolivia so for the first 3 days was feeling pretty sorry for myself and also lost a fair bit of weight...but fortunately they had hammocks so spent most of the time in them... was great to chill out for a while as we've been moving pretty fast recently... nightlife was really exellent aswell.. they served most of the drinks in buckets which is different but cheap and cheerful! it was Jon (one of the aussies i was travelling with) s birthday on one night and his sister and some others went and got him a HUGE (like foot and a half long) barbie cake including fairytale characters stuck on the top. as predicted it quickly descended into a huge food fight which everyone including barmen got involved in. epic night.

From Arrequipa i took a bus up to Lima which is where i am at the moment, i've got a couple of hours to kill before heading off up north so i thought i'd get this done.... i was planning to head to trujillo and go surfing at La Chicama which is this amazing wave but unfortunately its 7 and a half foot and breaks onto reef so am giving that a skip and going up north to get some sun and more suitable waves, am headed as such for Mancora near Ecuador. Also now that Chavez and thingy have kissed and made up i'm heading for colombia fairly soon, assuming war doesnt break out in the next month or so.... if you've managed to read this far i'm very impressed as this has turned out much longer than expected.

hope you're all well, please get in contact as would love to hear what you're all up to xxx

ps i've just got skype so can chat if theres anything important!