We've arrived in Bolivia, to a nice little town next to Peruvian border at lake Tikicaca, called Copacabana. We found a decent room for US$2pp. Hehehe, I've got a feeling I'm going to like Bolivia. We booked a trip to Isla del Sol, which is one of the islands that used to be occupied by Inkas. It is belived that the sun is born on Isla del Sol according to Inkas legend. It takes about 3 hours to walk from one end of the island to the other and that night (with hunger pains) we experienced one of the slowest services in a restaurant in Copacabana, which took about 3 hours (that's waiting time)! Ouch.

Bolivia felt much calmer then Peru, though. We haven't been hassled on the streets and people were generally very nice & helpful. The road led us to La Paz next, the highest capital city in the world. Hmmm, La Paz. Good city, has everything that most cities have; Chinese food, films in cinemas are in English subtitled Spanish, jazz clubs, witches market, nice cafes with BBC news (Chris' dream came true)...

We wouldn't complete our duty if we hadn't have gone for a mountain bike ride down the most dangerous road in the world - ¨The Death Road!¨ Ahh, loved it. It rained for a while and were soaked and covered in mud, but it didn't bother us. We went fast since all of 72km of the road is downhill. What a day!

We were hurrying through Bolivia even though there's so much more to see, but our return date to Europe was approaching very fast. We went straight to the salt lakes near Uyuni. It's amazing to see kilometers and kilometers of land covered with white salt. It's nothing quite like it and it's beautiful. The lake has even an island, which is mostly populated by 1200 year old cacti while it offers stunning views.

The trip to the salt lakes included three days of four wheel drive through Bolivian desert, where active volcanos, geysers, mud pools, pink flamingos, green lagoons and other stunning scenary can be found. Unfortunately we got very ill and cold in the desert (-20C during the night having only two blankets and no heating at 5000m).

Arrival to Chile (San Pedro de Atacama) was like a blessing (although suddenly very expensive). Nice clean hostel with duvet, not blankets, warm room, cafes everywhere... ahhh. Good place for a recovery. We visited Valle del Luna and had a nice bike ride to see more of Inka ruins. The ¨Moon Valley¨ is very dry (where it never rains) and salty and one could almost imagine and pretend to be on the moon.

After been so cold and staying on a such a high altitude, we longed for the sun, sea and sea level. La Serena was our next destination, where Chileans come for the sun and up-market holidays. La Serena wasn't any warmer, but we had a big night out and party with Chileans.

Santiago is a very modern city and it felt like being back in Oz or Europe. We decided to include Argentina into out itinerary next, which meant we had to spent some extra time in an airline office.

Petra.