Breathless in Boliva

Above: Our Landcruiser and the Arbol de Piedra (tree of stone, chiseled by the wind)

What a country. And how lucky we are that the gods sent us on this unplanned journey into the clouds.

It started with a double-take - severe rain in the driest place on earth (San Pedro de Atacama) meant severe snow at 5,000m and two days of waiting at the Chile/Bolivia border for our 4x4 to be allowed to cross.

And since then we´ve been operating at altitude (around 4,000m). After nearly two weeks the discomfort of dull headaches and nausea is gone (plenty of coca tea), but we still wake up out of breath and the slightest incline sends the heart on a pinball course. (Maybe the heavy breathing has more to do with our deep awe at the spectacular countryside than with altitude sickness?)

Colour-coded delights
The four days in the Toyota Landcruiser united us, and Gavin and Felicity from London and Luz and Miguel from Santiago against Grumpy Git, our Bolivian driver. It is also, in all probability, the most spectacular scenery we've been lucky enough to find ourselves in (sorry, South Africa), from which even the intense cold and atrocious toilets (balance back in favour of SA) could not detract.

From different-coloured lakes (algi, salt, and other minerals made for Lagos Blanco, Verde and the red Colorado (pic on left) packed with flamingos, to snow-covered volcanos, geysers spouting sulphur into thin air, the wind-eroded arbol de piedra and miles and miles of sky, we had it all.

And then the Salar de Uyuni. Nothing can adequately explain the expanse of whiteness that is this salt flat. Or the mirror images that the 1500m-thick salt crust, covered in summer rains, exposes to our overloaded brains. We cling to Grumpy Git, desperately hoping that the experience won´t end. But the futility sinks in as he slams his door, races off and refuses to stop for more photographs. (Pic below: Coups and a mirror image on the salt flat.)

Precarious pueblos
A six-hour bus trip through yet more spectacular countryside makes us hope with innocent fervour that we´ll never reach beauty-overload, and brings us to Potosi, an unlikely mining town clinging to rich Cerro Rico at more than 4,000m.

A trip to the mines - a good source of income for the mining co-operatives - makes for an uneasy experience as we meet 13-year-old boys pouring with sweat in the heat of the inner mountain and see wiry men push 3-tonne ore trolleys down ill-lit shafts. We keep moving on.

La Paz, too, clings unfeasibly to its mountainside, and you wonder why. But, still hanging out with Gav and Flick, we walk throught the witches market and grimace at the llama foetuses, and Coups indulges in some consumer therapy. (Pic left: a lady doing what ladies do in La Paz)

And then we go down the mountain
We whizz down the 69km that is Most Dangerous Road in the World (according to all the guide books) from La Paz to Coroico on mountain bikes in about 4 hours. And it is scary. So scary that they force traffic to drive on the left - so the lorry drivers can accurately judge the few centimetres they have on the gravelly cliff edge.

Wanting to keep up with the boys, I come off my bike, suffering no more than a grazed fore-arm, dinky thumb and stiff hip and shoulder. (And bristly ego - silly 38 year old). Coups turns out to be fearless, and after my fall I never manage to see her backwheel for more than a few minutes.

But we made it - and have the T-shirts and multi-media CD to prove it. We´re loving it.

Over to Amanda for the Lake Titicaca instalment.

(Pic left: Clearly deeply traumatised by my fall on the Most Dangerous Road in the World)