Day 1 - The Tour Begins

We left our very comfortable hostel in the town of Tupiza at 9.00am. We piled into a 4WD along with a fellow Brit, Leanne, and German Girl, Lisa, who we had met on the bus to the border the previous night. Fortunately Lisa is fluent in Spanish and English, which has proved a huge bonus given that both driver and chefs from the two jeeps speak zero English and none of the us tourists speak a great deal of Spanish. We also travelled alongside another jeep of Irish guys, Dom and Neil, another Brit, James, and Aussie Marcus, who we had also met at the border. Travelling in a big group proved to be pretty cool for the atmosphere as we set off into the wilderness.

Going into this trip we didn't really know what to expect, however we were told that today consisted mainly of travelling, although we didn't quite realise how grueling travelling over Bolivian terrain in a 4WD would be. In total we covered approximately 200 km (about 120 miles) and it took over 9 hours. The first 3 hours of the journey was possibly the scariest of my life, it made our Rio taxi journey look like a walk in park, we drove inches from a 1000 m plus drop to certain death at frightening speeds.

The terrain today probably resembled Mars, the vast scale is mindboggling and there is no sign of civilisation for hundreds of miles except for the odd village consisting of 4 or 5 shoddy homes.

The highlight of the day included some of the most amazing rock formations and eating lunch with hundreds of wild Lamas.

We travelled up to 4500 m above sea level which is very high, to put it in perspective that's half size Everest and 3 times size Ben Nevis. At the end of the day we slept in a very basic hostel at 4400 m, in an indigenous Bolivian village, which is by far the most isolated and primitive places we have ever seen. Even well travelled Aussie Marcus commented on the fact that this is one of the most primitive forms of living he has witnessed with a population of under 100 people.