Bolivia

11th to 15th April
The flight from Santiago to La Paz stopped off in the desert like landscape of Inquique airport. It was quite a sight as we flew in over the glassy pacific waters passing over the returning fishing fleet. The landscape in Inquique is almost Martian with tall sandhills looming over the narrow strip of flat dusty terrain that separates them from the bouldery shoreline. On to La Paz where a sprawl of red brick housing splays across the El Alto area and over into the canyon below. La Paz sits at 4150m and although we weren't greatly affected by the altitude, any staircase or the unavoidable steep roads would quickly pump our heartbeats up to some ridiculous rate.
We did our best to see the colourful side of town but apart from the incredible array of fabrics on show at the witches markets the town is overall pretty grubby and run down.
We took the opportunity whilst in La Paz to take on the much feared and greatly recommended Death Road. Now that was something to remember! We were pretty anxious making the call but it was one of those things you had to do - and so we did it! And my oh my! What a blast! At first we started off at 4500m surrounded by snow capped peaks. Taking a nice asphalt road you drop quickly away from the snow through the clouds till we had to pull up because a rockslide had taken the road out. This was an unforeseen problem and after quite some deliberation we jumped back in the van and took a quick detour to get us back on track. At this point we start the gravel section rarely wider than a couple meters wide that winds down along near vertical mountain sides covered in lush vegetation. Vertical drops are almost continuous along the edge with the greatest somewhere near 200m. All in all it might sound deathly scary but in truth as long as you concentrate and don't do anything stupid it's quite a breeze. The views are absolutely breathtaking and by the time we reach the bottom at 1700m we were absolutely pumped that we had done it.
Back to La Paz to pick up a few souvenirs the next day before heading on to Copacobana on the shores of lake Titicaca. It was a pretty interesting bus ride that saw us jump on boats while the bus was floated across the water to the peninsular. We also met a new friend named "Turtle" on the journey. Turtle, from Lake Tahoe, describes himself as an intellect but you couldn't help but place him the alternative basket with his lone dread hidden under his train driver hat and his choice of khaki attire. A cool interesting cat in any case and we were glad to have his company. Copacobana had a really good vibe about it and the three of us set up camp in the colourful if not slightly run down Hotel Utama. The next day we took the long and very slow boat ride out to Isla Del Sol, reputably the birth place of the Sun God, and were joined haphazardly by a lady Shamen and her aid who gave us the full rundown on praying to the sun god whilst being accompanied by drum beat and coca chewing. We decided to trek the three hour walk across the island passing by old inca ruins and a landscape very similar to that seen in the Greek islands. We were joined by a lovely older couple from Montana in the US who invited us to join them should we pass through their neck of the woods come July. Eventually after another very slow boat ride we made it back just in time to catch the bus on to Puno and eventually Cusco in Peru.