Today's song comes courtesy of Frankie. By the Guillemots apparently. And very appropriate because we are now in that very country having caught the train from Santa Cruz to the border. 600 km, about the distance from London to Edinburgh, and taking about 18 hours. Not the fastest train in the world. But before all of that we have to get on it. This is not simply a case of buying a ticket and then walking onto the platform. First we have to pay a 'terminal tax'....

Well! We are now in Santa Cruz (Bolivia, not California). We flew here this morning in a tiny 21 seat plane having had a fantastic experience on a three day trip through salt flats, mountain ranges and desert. Day 1 was spent travelling across the immense salt flat near Uyuni which cover an area of just over 10,000 square kilometres making them the largest salt flats in the world. Formed when an enormous lake evaporated 12,000 years ago the salt extends to dept...

There is only one reason to come to Uyuni and that is to leave as quickly as possible. Set at 3,600 metres on a desolate, windswept plain its few dusty streets hold little attraction. People come here because it is the jumping off point for trips to the nearby salt flats which, as the largest in the world, have become one of Bolivia's main tourist attractions. It wasn't always like this. Uyuni grew up in the nineteenth century as a major railway centre. Here th...

If you're travelling through the Andes sooner or later you will become aware of people using coca leaves. You will see people standing or sitting by the side of the road or in parks holding a small plastic bag containing the leaves which they dip into every now and then and add a few more leaves to the wad already in their mouth. Our hotel in Potosi has coca leaves on the breakfast buffet and you can even get it in tea bags mixed with matte - a herb used to make ...

Potosi exists for one reason and one reason alone - silver. Cerritos Rico (Spanish for 'Rich mountain") which dominates the town contains the largest deposits of silver in the world. It is estimated that as much as 60,000 tonnes of the metal has been extracted from the mountain since mining started there in 1545. The Incas knew that the mountain contained silver but, according to legend, their gods told them it was not destined for them and so they declared it ...