¡Hola! Salta was my first stop in Argentina and, although the city (town!) itself was nothing special at all, I had an awesome time, mainly because I was concentrating on being sociable, going out and drinking.I decided to stay at a more gingoey backpacker place and I met some guys at the bus terminal intending to do the same, so we went to a place called 'Backpackers' and shared a dorm - the first time I have done this since I was in Nicaragua nearly a year ...

¡Hola! I stopped in San Pedro following a night bus journey involving a hellish two-hour stop in freezing cold Calama at 5am.I fell asleep on my bag in the terminal there and woke up ten minutes after my departure time, but mercifully the bus was late anyway - phew. San Pedro is a dusty little place in the middle of the desert, surrounded by rocky valleys similar to those around Tupiza in Bolivia, which I guess is not too far away actually.It's a total gri...

¡Hola! Well, leaving Bolivia was very sad, but the views on route to Arica more than made up for it, as the eight-hour bus journey weaved its way through a handful of huge snow-capped volcanoes, including Parinacotaand Pomerape, before dropping down thousands of feet to the desert-fringed beaches of the Pacific.I realised I had descended from 6088m to 0m in less than 24 hours; shouldn't my head have exploded or something? Arriving in Arica was very weird.C...

¡Hola! Huayna Potosí is a 6088m (19,974ft) snow-capped mountain in the Cordillera Real (Royal Range) just north of La Paz.It had always been lurking on the periphery of my travel plans since I became very jealous of pictures of two of my friends from the Parque Machía project, Marianne and Ross, at the summit in the middle of a blizzard.It's said to be one of the easiest 6000+ peaks in the world to climb, not because it is simple technically, but because La P...

¡Hola! After leaving Cochabamba I flew south down to Sucre, the judicial capital of Bolivia, to soak up some of the convivial colonial atmosphere.The city is definitely one of Bolivia's prettiest, with very well-kept streets full of colonial buildings and a grand main plaza reminiscent of that of Cuenca in Ecuador.I climbed up the hill to the Mirador café to enjoy a great view of the city over lunch and then bought some Sucre's famous Para Tí chocolates to gr...