Hi everyone, Got a fair bit to write about today as I´ve now been in Bolivia for nine days and have seen some great stuff, although I´d still much prefer to be travelling independently rather than on a tour. From Argentina to Bolivia the scenery changed quite rapidly into a bare rocky bare desert spotted with the occasional candelabra shaped cactus. There is a lot of dust, and in some places we see what looks like patches of bush regeneration, usually gum trees appear to be the preferred tree to be planted. Many of the villages and farm houses are hand made of mud bricks with thatched roofs made from local long grasses, sometimes the roof is a sheet of corrugated tin with big rocks strategically placed around the edges so it doesn´t blow away. We passed a cemetery surrounded by a mud brick wall, but they must have run out of bricks ´cause there were the shells of two burned out cars completing the enclosure on one side. It appears to be common to have blue pompom type things to decorate the tombstones. As we drove through little villages we saw many people just sitting around on the streets doing nothing. Some are sitting under umbrellas or tarps at stalls selling breads or fruit, and one wonders how they make a living with all the competition of the neighbouring stalls selling exactly the same things. In such small villages, in the middle of what appears to be nowhere, where it's highly probable that everyone knows each other, I wonder why people bother sitting out in the gutters in the stinking heat or freezing cold offering there wares. I'd assume that it would be much more comfortable to stay at home and when someone needs something, they go to the appropriate neighbours house to acquire whatever it is they need. It just seems that at the time when we pass these villages, none of the stall owners ever have any customers. And one wonders how constantly tourist buses pass thru to enable these people a steady income. I haven't really noticed, somehow, the traditional dress of the Bolivian man, but the women all wear shin length skirts, usually with an apron type thing over the front, a long sleeve jumper or shirt and cardigan, and stockings or long socks that come up to under the skirt. Most where a black bowlers hat, which I haven%27t worked out the purpose for yet... it seems quite impractical, and a brightly coloured stichworked cloth thing looped and knotted around their neck, over their back and under one arm, and usually containing a baby or small child. If such a load is unavailable, I guess they fill it with other stuff. Virtually all women wear their dark hair in two long plaits and have dangly hair elastics tied at the bottom. Sometimes the hair elastics are joined together by a string. Again we've been spending a lot of time driving during the day, and we%27ve done a fair few free camps, which is when we just pull up on the side of the road and camp there. One day we spent driving along the path of a dry river bed, so we were lucky that it happened to be dry... not sure how we would have got to where we were going otherwise. It's now too cold to sleep under the stars and a mosquito net, the lowest altitude we've been at is about 3,700 MASL (metres above sea level). One day just near where we stopped for lunch, there was a heard of llamas, and one of them had a newborn with her, it could hardly support itself on it's undeveloped legs. Another time we passed some kids and women shepparding a huge heard of goats along the side of the road. And one lunch time Nicko and I went on a walk up a nearby hill which was covered in all different types of cacti. That was a week ago and I've still got one of the damn prickles in my big toe from when I fell over. Not a good time to have been wearing my new "kiddy combat" flip-flops I bought in Brasil. A couple of the boys on our tour bought a guitar together, so one night we sat around the fire drum in which our dessert was cooking and Neill, a very funny, young Irish guy played and sung a few tunes while we waited for our dinner to be prepared. That night there was an electrical storm not too far away which was great to watch in the absolute surrounding darkness. The last five days have been quite a buzz. Firstly we were in a town called Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4,160 MASL. We had a memorable night there when about eight of us went to a local restaurant for dinner. Nicko had a llama steak. After dinner a traditional Bolivian Folk band played for us. There were eight musicians, six of whom played various sized, very breathy sounding,  pan-pipes, one played a big llama skin drum and the other played a snare drum. They all sang bits and pieces, and sometimes substituted the pan-pipes for other traditional woodwind instruments that we don't really have a translation for, like square shaped recorders. For the most part they stand in a u-shaped configuration, with the snare in the middle, and bopped around on the spot, but every so often they burst into dance following each other in a ring. They were all very into their music, apart from the snare player, you could tell they were all really enjoying themselves. The eight of us, being the only patrons of the restaurant, were having a ball as well, clapping and tapping feet was pretty much an instinct reaction to the lively beats and tunes. The owner of the restaurant suggested to us that the best way to acclimatise to altitude was to join in the dancing. So we did. We only really lasted for one tune though. The songs go for about 15 - 20 minutes, and they are fairly fast, and together with the reduced oxygen levels, it really takes a lot out of you. But it was great fun. There wasn't anything overly special about the Potosi itself, but behind Potosi is a mountain from which they mine silver, zink, tin and other minerals, albeit very cost inefficiently. It's a very primitively run mine, run by several co-operatives, where each co-op leases areas within the hill. We went on a tour, and saw several miners working away on their designated mineral vein with a crowbar and a mallet. Slowly, slowly, chipping away at the granite by the light of their little miners torch. It was a very sad and disturbing experience seeing how these people earn a living. It makes the IT department at Macquarie Bank look like it's living up to the company reputation of being one of the top employers (...oops, did I say that out loud?). In the mines they have rock carvings of the devil and Pachamama , Mother Earth, to whom they give gifts of coca leaves, cigarettes, water and Carnaval ribbons and flags. In return they believe the two Gods bring them health, safety and prosperity in the mine. Many of the workers spend 10 hours a day, 6 days a week for the majority of their lives in the mine. There is a $USD1,000 fee to initially joint the co-op, and the experienced and long service miners are paid 40 Bolivianos ($USD6, $AUD3) per day. Their accommodation in Potosi costs about 50 Bolivianos a month. They have to pay for their own tools, clothes, helmet, torch, food and other working needs, and also rely on tourists buying them presents from the miners market in town. Nicko bought a kit of dynamite, which cost 10 Bolivianos, and on average each miner uses 3 sticks of dynamite a day. Each stick blows away about 1 metre square of rock. I bought a bag of coca leaves, with a bit of mineral stuff called "the catalyst" which enhances the effects of the coca leaves, and a packet of hand rolled cigarettes for 7 Bolivianos. The other gift alternative that some people bought was a litre of 96% alcohol. For those of you who don't know, coca leaves are the base product of cocaine. I can explain a little about them now because today I went to the Coca Museum. Coca leaves have been chewed on from about 2000BC, as they have an anesthetic and slightly euphoric affect on the chewer. Apparently they help altitude sickness, but, as discovered by the Spanish Conquistadors and their slaves, the chewing of coca leaves greatly enhances the ability to stay alert and work longer. (Why they don't put coca leaves instead of cookies in the office kitchen I do not know). Anyway, the tour of the mine was very interesting, and quite uncomfortable, even though we were only in there for an hour or so. It stunk of sulfur, apparently had asbestos in there, was damp and very muddy, and the height of the tunnels were often too low to stand up straight in, even for little me. Thankfully the tour company had supplied us all with a helmet, jacket, torch and gumboots. I had a go at using the crowbar and mallet, and it was really difficult. Both implements are really heavy, and after each time of bashing the mallet into the crowbar into the rock, the crowbar needs to be twisted 18 degrees, and only the tiniest bit of dust falls off the surface of the rock. It's very disheartening to put so much energy in for such a small result and so little financial return. We had a tour guide, and also a guide's assistant. A 14 year old boy by the name of Zafael, who is learning English and French at school, and he desperately wants to become a tour guide when he's older because being a miner is too dangerous, miners only live about 10 years after working in the mines. As it is he earns more per day, not including tips, than a young miner earns. He%27s a bright, funny and friendly kid, and he assists with tours on weekends and in the mornings and attends school in the afternoons. A day or so later we went to a town called Uyuni. We stayed in what was apparently the best accommodation in town and it was pretty damn awful. Outside the town for kilometres on end, is flat land, part of  the Altiplano, and it's covered in litter, mainly plastic bags, bottles and cans. It%27s an absolute disgrace, but unfortunately is of very little concern to the residents of the town. We stopped off briefly at a train graveyard and climbed all over and inside the rusty shells of the steam trains that used to carry the minerals between Potosi and the north of the country. The rest of the day we spent at a truly amazing location called the Salar de Uyuni, a 12,000 square kilometre salt pan. It had the most water in it than our tour guide had ever seen, and it was only about a maximum of 30 - 40cm deep. We got a brief tour around the salt processing plant. This consisted of a big roofless room with some ovens around the perimetre where the salt is dried and the packaging room. Here two women sit in front of a 2 metre high mound of salt scooping 1kg portions into pre-printed plastic bags, and sealing the bags by running the top through a flame. They get paid 40 Bolivianos ($USD6, $AUD3) per 1,000 bags they seal. They didn't let us take any photos. After the tour we hopped into 4WDs and drove straight through the salt pan. It was like driving on a mirror, the reflections were that perfect. I'm no spiritual person, but I imagine that if heaven exists, it probably looks like what we were driving on/thru. A perfect blue sky broken up by fluffy white clouds above us... and below us. It was almost difficult to determine where the horizon was, where the earth finished and the sky started. Our destination, though not quite driving to Chile, on the other side of the salt pan, was a good two hours drive away from where we started. An island called Isla de Pescadores (pesca is Spanish for fish), because it apparently resembles the shape of a fish, but I didn't quite see it that way. The island itself was an spectacular site itself. When he first pulled up, there was a Rhea, or Nandu, which is a bird very much like, but slightly smaller than an Emu. How it got there and what it was doing there, other than pecking around the lunch area, was a mystery. The island was covered in massive cacti, some candelabra shaped, some a single prong, and others a complex shrub. I don't know how high the rocky ledges on the island were, but when you climbed up them, the view all around was just spectacular. On the way back, Nicko, a lady by the name of Joan who is the oldest person on our tour at age 44, and I sat on top of the 4WD rather than in it. It was quite a different view from the drive over, where the windows had to be closed so we wouldn't get salt spray in the truck. By the end of the ride our clothes and faces were covered in a white mist of salt. It was such a buzz riding in the wind with the water sometimes spraying over us when the driver drove thru a hole in the 1 metre thick salt or over an uneven edge. We could see the polygon shapes the salt crystal form into when the pan is hot and dry and cracks. Kind of like when hot and dry mud cracks into almost circular areas and curls up at the edges. We spent the two hours making shapes in the clouds and reflections, staring in awe at our surreal surroundings in absolute awe, laughing and joking and looking over the edge and squashing our nose against the front windshield... okay, okay, only I did that. Somewhere between the Island and the edge of the salt pan is a hotel made of salt. We would have gotten to stay a night there had it not been closed several months prior due to sewerage disposal problems. We stopped off and had a peak anyway, all the bricks were covered in salt, there was outdoor furniture and statues and furniture inside that were made of blocks of carved salt crystals. After driving for a full day and then free camping somewhere of little importance we arrived at a bit of a situation at about 9:15am the other day. Along pretty much the only road between the South of Bolivia and the capital of the country, La Paz, some discontented miners had decided to set up a blockade and not budge until they got what they wanted which was essentially four members of parliament to resign. We drove up quite close, not knowing what was going on, as there was only another bus, a van and a minibus stopped at all angles across the road. When we saw the state of the buses windshield, which was smashed to smithereens, our driver Bill decided to turn the bus around and then ask questions. We drove a bit further back down the road so we wouldn't get blocked in by vehicles yet to arrive, and we just sat in the bus and waited. The drive to La Paz was only to be 3.5 hours, and there was talk that the blockade would be open around 6 or 7pm. At 5:30 we drove the 20 minutes back to a tiny little town to get some dinner. Just as Bill parked the bus, four trucks full of rowdy protesters drove past throwing bottles at our truck. Finding food in this 2 donkey down was a challenge in itself, having only two restaurants, with seating capacity for about eight people per restaurant, and having 34 hungry, impatient and irritable tourists all demanding to be fed simultaneously. We arrived back at the blockade at about 7pm and there was now about 60 or so trucks and buses backed up along the road. News was that they were letting private vehicles through, but they'd blown up the rail way tracks and had concrete blocks and rocks and people strewn across the road blocking access for larger vehicles. By this time we knew the bus couldn't get through, but it was too dark to set up tents, so we had to sleep on the bus. Nicko, being the tall guy that he is, decided to brave the cold and risk the presence of disgruntled protesters and sleep under the back of the bus. Everyone else slept in the isles and seats on the bus, and it was rather squashy and uncomfortable. We were all awake early the next morning due to the bright natural light and discomfort we were in. Dynamite explosions had been going off all night and there were people calling in through the drawn curtains of our bus. We played a bit of frisbee and kicked around a football in the field on the side of the road.  We walked the kilometre or so up past the caravan of parked vehicles to get a closer look at what was going on, but all we could see was lots of people mulling about and puffs of smoke here and there from fires and dynamite explosions. After lunch, a bunch of us decided to walk through the blockade and take public transport to La Paz from the other side. La Paz is the capital of Bolivia, and was a location we were all really looking forward to. About 20 people weren't confident enough to walk through, so decided to stay with the bus. The group that was moving on packed a day pack of what we thought would be useful, and headed off. Nicko and I got separated from the others right at the beginning ´cause I left my camera on the bus and wanted to go back and get it. We were lucky that the protesters seemed to be fairly relaxed and not overly drunk and vicious yet. It was like a big picnic, people playing soccer, drinking, eating, sleeping and calling out to the passers by. It took about an hour to walk from our bus to the other side, and we didn't feel threatened at all, but admittedly we also didn't understand a lot of what they were calling out. Many of them were just saying hello and asking us how we were, where we were from and where we were going. On the other side we jumped in a cab with a bunch of other people and went to the next town, about a 20 minute ride away. From there we only had to wait fifteen minutes before the bus left for La Paz, and we arrived at the hotel we were booked in at at about 6pm. The rest of the group that had walked through were already there. Brett, our tour leader, had arrived a couple of days earlier with a passenger Alex, the one I went paragliding with in Rio, because Alex had to be taken to hospital and put on Oxygen due to altitude sickness. So the two group halves were both with a Toucan tour employee. Our first full day in La Paz, Nicko and I had booked ourselves on an adventure excursion doing some high altitude mountain bike riding. There was a group of about 10 riders, a couple of guides and a van driver. We were driven up to the starting point, 4,700 MASL to begin our 5.5 hour ride down to 1,200 MASL. It was absolutely spectacular, as there plenty of clouds hovering about in the valley below us. The road was paved and we got some awesome speed without having to pedal at all. Well, Nicko decided to pedal to get that extra bit of speed and broke a link in his bike chain about 20 minutes into it. I had to stop and take photos every so often, and I know I say this all the time, but this seemed like one of the best things I've ever done. About 1/3 of the ride was on this fantastic, fairly wide paved road, and you could look down into the valley and see a white water river, and we passed a couple of little villages, and there were dogs and pigs wandering around on the side of the road. Thankfully you could see the road descending below as it was very steep hair pin bends and there were big lorries and buses making there way up and down the mountain every so often. It was an exhilarating feeling being in the crisp fresh air, with the wind making my nose run and eyes water, and I probably caught a couple of flies too, ´cause just the whole way down I had this massive smile on my face... it was soooo excellent. The last 2/3 of the ride were fantastic as well, but very frightening. The road was rubble and rocks, and eroding away. Sometimes it was wide enough for two vehicles to pass, and others it was only single file. My hands ached from gripping the hand breaks so hard, as well as all the bumps. I love the speed, but on such a loose and rough surface I was terrified of going too fast and then hitting one of the many pot holes or rocks and flying off the side of the cliff. Oh, I haven't yet mentioned the cliff. Probably a good 200 metre drop, covered in ferns and trees. Often we passed memorials to people who had died on this road. Oh, yes, something else I hadn't previously mentioned... this road, called Death Road, is the most dangerous road in the world. If we looked down into the valley at certain points you could see the remnants of trucks, buses and cars that had veered off the edge. We saw a plaque dedicated to a minivan of 15 Israelis who had perished that way, 4 mountain bikers, including a guide, all separate incidents who had lost control of their bikes and gone over the edge, one of whom was a young Israeli girl, and many other wooden crosses and memorials dotted along the side of the road. We rode under 100 metre waterfalls and through cascades that crossed our path. Every time a truck or bus approached, it would honk at us, and we would have to find an area where we could pull over and let the vehicle pass. The drivers and passengers would often wave, and we'd wave back. Several times there were people who just stood on top of the truck, so that if it did tip, they'd have a chance of survival by jumping off before the vehicle rolled. There was one bit where the road had eroded away so badly that not only could only a single vehicle pass, but it had to scrape it's side against the higher cliff to enable it to fit without it's wheels going off the edge on the other side. We could ride at our own pace, and there was always a guide at the front and a guide and a van at the back of the pack. We had certain meeting spots where the faster cyclists would stop and wait for the others to catch up. Nicko had a puncture in one of his tires, and had to periodically get it pumped up. Not sure if the puncture was there to start with or Nicko´s hard riding put it there. Doesn't matter anyway. But he was always one of the first to arrive at the meeting spots, except sometimes at the end where he'd ride with me. I was going plenty fast enough for my liking and pain tolerance in both my hands and bum. By the end of the day we were absolutely filthy, having had mud splattered up from our own bike wheels and people riding in front or beside us, and we had ridden part of the way through a bit of rain. Also I managed to navigate through the deepest part of one of the cascades over the road, and so my boots and socks were saturated. In the whole journey only about 1/2 an hour was up hill, and this was really difficult, but I'm pretty proud of myself ´cause I only walked my bike up about 30 metres of the up hill bits. From the bottom of the trail we rode, the van drove us back, and to be honest, this was even scarier than the bike ride down. Partly because it was dark and partly because we were inside a vehicle, and if it rolled we wouldn't have been able to get out, and partly because I had a window seat on the cliff side and got a funny feeling whenever I couldn't see the edge of the road out of my window. As exhausted as we all were, none of us slept on the ride back to La Paz. It took about 2 hours to drive the route we'd cycled. The excursion started at 8:30am and we did not return until 9:30pm, and then went out for a quick bite of dinner (lunch was provided in the excursion). It was an awesome day. It was a long day. We slept well that night. When we got back to the hotel from the bike ride we found out that our bus and the remaining passengers had got through the blockade the previous day, that is the same day we did. The people who walked through left at about 12pm and got to La Paz at about 6pm. Everyone else got through at about midnight and arrived in La Paz at about 4am. This was great news because it meant that our bags had arrived by the time we got back from the excursion and we had clean clothes to wear. We hadn't packed a spare pair in our day packs when we walked across, and had the bus not got through, we would have been in a spot of bother. The next day the first thing we did was take a big bag of stuff to the laundromat. Then we went and did some touristy stuff. One of the guys on the biking trip had recommended a tour around San Pedro prison in La Paz, so that was first on our agenda. The tour cost $USD12, went only for about 1/2 an hour, was guided by a Bolivian-American English speaking prisoner and his personal body guard and absolutely blew us away. It's considered one of the worlds most bizarre tourist attractions and I totally agree. It costs 10 Bolivianos to visit a prisoner in their cell, or you can talk through a caged booth for free. We arrived and there was a big queue of people waiting for a booth. We walked straight up to the guards at the gate and there were some other tourists talking to someone on the inside in English. I asked the inmate if he was Luis, the guide the boys from the biking had had the previous day, and he said he was, and the guards let us all through. The San Pedro prison is unique as it is more like a village, no, a resort. The prison is run by a board, consisting entirely of prisoners, and is funded by the prisoners. It is not for murderers or rapists, although our guide's body guard is convicted for manslaughter. He was previously the body guard of a city mayor, who is now also in San Pedro. The mayor stole $USD67 million of public money, and the guard's job was to keep a few witnesses quiet. So he popped them off. When the mayor was found out anyway, both he and the guard were incarcerated. When the mayor gets out of prison, he has the $USD67 million waiting for him where ever he left it. There are no guards or police inside the prison, just the ones at the front gate. These guards are interviewed and chosen by the board of prisoners before they are employed. The inmates have to pay for their cell. There is an entrance fee, and then, depending on the prisoners financial situation, they can choose a cell between 2 and 5 stars. The cheaper cells can be rented for 50 Bolivianos a month. The 5 star cells can be purchased for up to $USD5,000. We were taken to the cell of our guide's security guard which is a 2 star cell. On the bottom floor is a large colour television, a chair and table. On the table was the school books of one of the prisoner's two sons, both of whom live in the jail with their father. Climbing up a ladder to the second floor is the maid's bed room. The maid takes out the rubbish for the family, ensures the cell is clean, cooks for the family when they choose to eat in the cell, helps the children with their homework, and other jobs. On the third floor of the cell is where the prisoner and his two sons sleep. The walls are covered in posters and stickers and has an electric light and a small heater. So, even though the three floors only consist of one tiny room, it is still a 3 storey cell! In the prison everyone has to have a job. If an inmate has no skills, they are trained up in carpentry or metal work, where they make furniture for a school set up and run by the prison. Each prisoner is paid a wage of 300 Bolivianos per month. The wives and children may live with the inmates. There are communal pool tables, cable television, basketball and soccer courts. There is an Italian and a Greek restaurant, several snack bars, and a fresh fruit and veggie market where the inmates, or their maid, can purchase ingredients for 1/3 of the price of products outside the prison. Each inmate must pay 25 Bolivianos per week for food contribution. So if they decide to eat at a restaurant or have a home cooked meal, they forfeit that contribution. If they forget to pay the 25 Bollis, they have to kitchen duty for that week. The kitchen cooks for the 1,500 residents each day, but because not everyone eats from the communal kitchen, the homeless and the poor are invited in to have what ever is left over each day. The prison has a semi-professional soccer team called The Hooligans. They play in a competition versus teams of police and other local teams outside. Inmates who make the soccer team are sponsored, so they don't have to pay for their cell, they are provided with a soccer coach, a physician, and get to go outside for their matches. As the team progresses up the ladder in the competition, the prize money is put back into the prison funds. The prison has medical and dental facilities for the prisoners, these staff are not prisoners, but professionals who go home outside each night. There is also an accredited university inside, so a prisoner can leave with a degree. All these services are free. There are also social workers employed by the prison for the residents, and also for the orphans which are brought up inside. When the orphans are 14 they are found a home outside. Inside there is a church, a synagogue, a place of worship for Muslims and Seventh Day Adventists. Luis, our guide has 3-5 months of his 5 year sentence left to go. He was originally sentenced to 20 years in a high security prison, but for $USD15,000 he bought 15 years off his term and his time in San Pedro. He was busted exporting 3/4 of a ton of cocaine out of Bolivia. Luis is happy because he didn't have to return or hand in the $USD50 million he'd made in his drug smuggling career, so his family is living well. He is also happy because he didn't have to pay for his 5 star cell. He inherited it. His grandfather is still in the prison, for being busted doing a deal with 10 tons of cocaine, but Luis inherited the cell from his father who has been released, and he in turn inherited it from Luis's grandfather, who got it from his father. All cocaine related offences. When Luis gets out he intends to establish a tour agency and continue doing the tours of the inside. He's not going to sell his cell, ´cause of the family history... someone will probably need it again. It all sounds like a joke, but I kid you not. And you're probably thinking that it sounds like a better life than some of the inmates would have outside, so what's to stop them re-offending when they get out so they can get straight back in again. If they re-offend they're sent to maximum security prison... a very different story to San Pedro. I'm sure there are other strange things that I've forgotten to include, but you can find out more information by doing a search on the internet using keywords like San Pedro prison, La Paz, Bolivia. The rest of the day we strolled around the markets, including the witches markets where they sell stuffed cats and lama fetuses, and other bizarre stuff for superstitious Bolivians and tourists. Of course they also sell their beautiful embroidery and wood and stone work and Llama wool hats and coats and things. We also went to the Coca museum which was very interesting, giving the history and medical facts about the use and production of Cocaine and coca products. Well, that's enough for this episode. You can now pick your jaws up off the keyboard from the bike and prison stories. All true, I promise. Happy birthday Zeyde, Jem and Mum, and anyone else I've missed. Hope all is well with everyone. ciao for now, love Niqui