Our first stop was La Serena, a popular Chilean holiday spot, unfortunately it was a little too cold to make use of the beautiful beach. We took an excursion up into the mountains to an observatory one evening. Chile has very clear skies and a lot of countries have observatories in the mountains here, they have very exciting names like; EELT which means European Extra Large Telescope and USELT (US extremely large telescope). It was fabulous to be able to see the Milky Way clearly and we had other galaxies pointed out to us as well as planets and constellations.

Having travelled up the west coast of Chile, we turned inland across the Atacama desert; the driest in the world, some parts of which have never recorded rain. We camped for 3 nights at the oasis town of San Pedro de Atacama, a picturesque little town, but by the end of our time here everything was covered in a fine layer of orange dust.

Our group then crossed the border with Bolivia and spent 3 days traversing the antiplano and salt flats. The height fluctuated between 5000 and 3600 metres and the altitude took some getting used to. We both had headaches and even small exertions bring on an acute shortness of breath, but we have gradually adjusted, the headaches have gone although climbing the stairs can still leave us feeling like chain smokers.

Bolivian ladies appear to favour their traditional dress, although the men wear western clothing. The ladies are quite short, we have not seen many over 5 foot in height. They wear very gathered and frilled skirts that come to just below the knee, these are accessorised with a bowler hat perched on the top of the head, that appears to serve no purpose whatsoever as the brim is not wide enough to keep the sun off. Patterned leg warmers are also worn, and no Bolivian woman whatever her age would been seen on the streets without a baby wrapped in a brightly coloured blanket and strapped to her back. If any western woman has a complex about her bottom this is the place to come as in this ensemble the answer to the question ´ does my bum look big in this?`, would always be YES! The skirts do come in handy if you are caught short whilst out doing the shopping, you can just squat down and pretend you are having a rest and relieve your self, we would not have believed it had we not witnessed it ourselves!

After 7 days camping we cross the salt flats taking wacky perspective photographs allowed by the completely flat landscape and we pitched up in Uyuni, a rather rough and ready little town, allegedly well connected to the Bolivian Mafia and the enormous cocaine trade. One thing of note here was the train cemetery on the outskirts of town, full of rusting steam engines.

Then a stop in Potosi for a couple of days, once richer than London and Paris this place has fallen on hard times. At 4100m it is very high. The Spanish found silver here in the 16th century and this silver funded Europes riches because the Spanish had to pay it in interest payments to the other strong European countries like England and France.The Vatican was built on the silver from here-that is how important it was. We took a mine tour, as they are still worked today for tin and other minerals. Having purchased presents for the minors we were lead underground. The presents included dynamite, detonators and fuses as well as cocoa leaves that the minors chew whilst underground to relieve hunger and filter the dust. Purely in the name of research we chewed some of the leaves that are used to make cocaine, it is perfectly legal to grow and sell the leaves. They did make our tongues go numb, but to be honest did not taste very nice so not something we are keen to try again. Whilst in the mine avoiding deep holes everywhere, we helped plant some dynamite and waited around the corner whilst it exploded, trying not to think to much about health and safety until we left. At dinner that night we thought about the risk assessment you might have to carry out to visit such a place at home: type of injury possible = death, probability of injury = certain. About 3 miners per month die on average here.

Our next city on route is La Paz, our first full day is spent cycling down ´the death road´. A 64km mountainbike ride descending 3000 metres on the road named as the most dangerous road in the world, due to the number of people killed by vehicles going over the edge of the road down a very sheer drop. Thankfully they opened a new bypass last year and it is now used mainly by bike touring companies. To add to the excitement when we arrived at the top of the run it was snowing, consequently our fingers went numb gripping the brakes as we sped along. The snow soon turned to rain and then fog before we were finally able to take in the spectacular views, and finally hot tropical forests at the bottom. Unfortunately on the drive back up the new road Eric had a stomach bug and we had to stop a few times. The dogs around here must be desperately hungry as one decided to tuck into the pile of vomit after one such unscheduled stop.