We have covered a lot of distance in the last 4 months, most of it by bus. Starting at the equator, and criss crossing the Andes all the way down to Buenos Aires is a long way to go. I thought it might be interesting to work out just how long we have been sat on a bus.

Turns out it is 111 hours (4 and a half days!). We also had a 9 hour train ride, plus all the various tours which I didn’t include in the calculations (some of the trips took 6 hours by mini bus). It would have been even longer if we hadn’t taken the 2 internal flights (managed to save 40 hours there!).

In conclusion, I have decided that my 8 gigs of music is just not enough to see me through these long bus trips, and have now signed up for a free trial at audible.co.uk (affiliate program on CJ). My free download is “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, which totals around 18 hours. Never listened to an audio book before, but it could turn out to be the perfect way to help pass the time!

The last few days have been spent travelling through the worlds largest salt flat (Salar de Uyuni), and the worlds driest desert (Atacama)! The adventure started in Oruro with a 10 hour train ride to Uyuni. There was some amazing scenery along the way (until it got dark), and the train itself was in surprisingly good condition (compared to our other Bolivian experiences). After only the one breakdown we arrived an hour late in Uyuni at 11pm and got taken to our hotel (with the furniture made entirely of salt!) We had the next day free, so attempted to book a train to Argentina on our return from the Salt Flats, but turns out we would have to stay in Uyuni for an extra 2 days on our return (there really isnt much in Uyuni!) This led to the change of plans that now finds us in Chile. A lot of the tours go close to the Chilean border, and offer the option of a connection to San Pedro de Atacama (where we are now).

The tour itself was amazing, but our companions (some noisy Israelis) and the accommodation were pretty “interesting”. Along the way we got to see: the train graveyard, the salt plains and how they process the salt, the Isle of Pescado with the giant cactuses, the salt plain at sunrise with the largest shadows we will ever have!, lagoons full of flamingos, the strange little rabbit like creatures (Vizcacha), smoking volcanoes and the amazing thermal pools!

Since the whole trip took around a week we have 57 photos in the slideshow!

And… A video from the top of the Isle de Pescado (right in the middle of the Salar De Uyuni)

Tomorrow we start our tour of the Uyuni Salt Plains, and instead of returning to Uyuni afterwards we have decided to make the short border crossing into Chile. From there we will cross back into Argentina (not sure when yet…).

We decided to step off the “Gringo Trail” and visit the National Park of Toro Toro. Toro Toro is a 4 and a half hour 4×4 ride from Cochabamba and we headed off on Thursday morning at 7.30am.  We passed some amazing scenery on the way, and arrived in the little town of Toro Toro in time for lunch. In the afternoon we visited the cave with blind fish and underground waterfalls, not to mention the amazing stalactites and stalagmites. Some of the gaps that we had to crawl through were tiny, and we spent quite a bit of the adventure hanging from a rope! It was really worth it though. There were also several dinosaur prints on the way to the cave. I, like most guys, had my dinosaur phase when I was younger (Triceratops was my personal favourite!), so this was just amazing to see!

Day 2 we got taken to some amazing views of a canyon where we got to see some fantastic parrots. In the afternoon we also visited some rocks that are just covered with dino tracks! The photos really do not do them justice!

The final morning we went upstream to visit rocks full of fossils. Because we were at the end of the rainy season, the stream was fairly high, meaning I had to take off my boots and take part in some major cliff hanging.

Overall we loved Toro Toro, and it is definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

We have just finished nearly a week in La Paz, and it has been far better than we are expecting. The highest capital city in the world doesn’t have the best of reputations, but we have really enjoyed it! In the city itself we have spent quite a while just wandering the streets, seeing the famous San Pedro prison and the witches market (where our hostel is located). We also visited the Coca museum and took a bus tour of the city which gave us this gem of a statistic.

* “The average life expectancy of males in Bolivia is 60, and females is 63. And the retirement age for the country is 65!!”

Yesterday we decided to visit the ruins of Tiwanaku for a whole day trip. It is meant to be an hour and a half journey to the site, but due to some unforeseen strikes all the roads were blocked leading out of La Paz. This didn’t stop our determined tour guide and bus driver though! We went well off route for a couple of hours, and ended up crossing 2 river beds (at one stage i was sure the bus would topple in) and we all had to get out of the bus on several occasions so it could make it up some steep slopes! In the end the 1 and half hour journey took 5 hours, but as they say.. it´s the journey not the end destination makes travelling so great! Anyway… the ruins themselves were quite spectacular too, so overall we had a great day!

Tomorrow we take the bus to Cochabamba from where we will take a 3 day tour of the Toro Toro national park.

Photos from the last few days:

We arrived in Bolivia a week ago and our first stop was a trip to the holiday town of Copacabana (currently in La Paz at the moment). We only stayed for a couple of days, but it was a really quiet and peaceful place. We also took a half day tour to the Isle Del Sol. We have a few photos, although the most interesting are of our bus/ferry journey.

Photos from La Paz to follow soon…

On Tuesday the 10th of March we crossed the border into Bolivia! We then spent 3 days in Copacabana (photos to come soon), and now we are in La Paz! We plan to spend around a week here as there is a lot to see.. Photos and a longer blog post to follow in the next few days.