Hi All,

Apologies that there has not been a blog post for a while!

BOLIVIA:

Since the last blog there has been much travelling, from Cusco we travelled across Peru to Cococabana on the border of Bolivia to visit the much hyped Lake Titicaca. Although the Lake is really massive and therefore difficult to fully appreciate its size, we found out it holds no records for being the biggest or highest lake in the world, therefore we could not see why it was being billed as a wonder of the world. The visit to the lake was brief, we only spent the day there, quite simply because there is nothing much to do there. Considering it is a focal tourist point for Bolivia you would have thought they would have really built up a tourist trap with lots of activities centred around the lake. But really there is nothing there, which perhaps highlights best how poor the country really is. I would recommend anyone not to bother making a special trip to go see it, save your money and you will have a much better time visiting the Lake District.

From Lake Titicaca we headed into La Paz, the biggest city in Bolivia but not the capital (which is Sucre). La Paz is a massive city built in a 12,000ft deep crater. We intended to use La Paz as our base from where we would head to different parts of the country. First of all we went on an adventure tour biking down the worlds steepest road named the Yunga Road and nicknamed the death road. It was a 64km bike ride which started at an altitude of approx 4,000m falling to approx 1,200m. The bike ride was brilliant fun and the scenery was amongst the best we had seen all trip, although we saw graves along the way and wreckages of buses and cars that had fallen down the cliffs, the track was perfectly wide enough to bike down safetly. The trip ended in a town called Coroico where we stayed the night in an ecolodge and we got to see and play with monkeys, parrots and a baby cougar.

From Coroico we intended to take a 20 hour bus ride to the north of Bolivia to a town called Rurrenabaque where we would take jungle trips into the amazon. Unfortunately for us Coroico was having a weekend of celebrations for its 196th of independence. Which quite literally meant everyone was out in the street dancing and drinking. It was also the weekend of the rugby world cup final and we had managed to stay in the only town in the world where no one owned cable or satellite and so against our best efforts, a group of desperate englishmen scoured the town for hours only to miss the game. From that point on it only got worse. The bus drivers were all too drunk to drive, so we were stranded. At an all time low we realised that we did not want to take the 20 hour bus journey, it would have been far to difficult as we would have travelled in what can only be discribed as a cut and shunt job of part of a bedford van and part of a minibus. Add to this a bus load of local Bolivians who were either still drunk or hungover, all of whom were struggling with personal hygiene issues and you have the journey from hell. We returned to La Paz on a 3 hour bus, that was as much as we could bear, aware that there would be other opportunities for us to go on a jungle trek.

Back at La Paz we decided to head south to Salar de Uyuni where we would go on a tour of the salt lakes. It was a four day trip with nine people squashed into a jeep but we got to see some spectacular scenery, which made the trip definately worthwhile.

Bolivia really is a culture shock, it is a massively impovrished country where a four course meal costs about a pound. Alot of people recommend Bolivia because it is so different to the western world but after a while I personally found the poverty to be too much to deal with and it had a negative effect on my moral. Generally I would not recommend anyone to go travelling there.

ARGENTINA:

Now I can happily report I am residing in the beautiful country that it is Argentina. It pretty much has everything I look for in a country; lots of football, beautiful girls and massive steaks!

So far we have stayed in the town of Salta - where we went to a restaurant called Jacks and I can confirm it is the place where I have the best steak of my life. Dad should be very jealous - would love to take him there! After Salta we spent a few days in the wine provinze of the country, a town called Mendoza and sampled a few of the local wines.

Anyway, getting a bit tired of writing now, as i am sure you are of reading, so I will sign off on the promise of more frequent updates.

pete.