Round The World Trip 2006

Good day to you all, I hope this email finds you well. Lynn and I are currently in the city of Potosi in southern Bolivia. It sits at an altitude of 4,070m and apparently it's the highest city in the world. It's an old, Spanish colonial city and 400 years ago it was one of the richest in the world. The reason is that it sits at the foot of an enormous mountain that was virtually solid silver. Nowadays the silver's all gone and the city survives on the mining of tin and the tourists who all pass through either on their way south to Argentina, west to Chile or north to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia and then into Peru. We are not in the best of spirits at the moment and I shall reveal why as I get to the end of this email but for now I shall continue where I left off last time. We left San Pedro de Atacama in Chile on Tuesday 23rd May for a 3 day tour of the extraordinarily beautiful salt flats and 'coloured' lakes of south-western Bolivia before arriving in the after...

Hello to you, I hope this enormous email finds you healthy and well. Lynn and I are both fine and at the moment we are at an altitude of 2,440m in the small village of San Pedro de Atacama which, for the less astute amongst you, is in the Atacama Desert. The Atacama Desert, located in Northern Chile is the driest place on Earth. There are areas of the desert where, since records began, it has never, ever rained. Therefore it will probably come as no surprise when I tell you that everywhere is dusty as hell. The air is so dry and dusty that every breath feels like you are trying to find oxygen through a full vacuum-cleaner bag. Every morning I wake up with a layer of grit and sand in my teeth and even clean clothes in my unopened rucksack are covered in a layer of dust. How? I don't know. We are staying in the YHA Youth Hostel here which is a small, quiet place with only 7 rooms, 3 of which are doubles and the others are dorms. Our room, like all the rooms and indeed like all the bu...

Hello once again! I have come to the conclusion that you, my friends are the sort of people that watch the Formula One Grand Prix not to see who wins but to see if there are any BIG crashes. Or to put it another way - you've been reading my travel reports not to share in the enjoyment of my adventure but to witness the occasions when I suffer illness or misfortune. My last report told of our bad luck in Chile with hotels, toilet troubles and riots and I had the biggest response yet telling me how much you enjoyed reading about it all. Well, I'm glad my discomforts entertain you so much and thank you sincerely for all your emails! This episode sees us heading north through Argentina from Mendoza where we'd just arrived prior to my last travel report to Salta in the top northwest of the country and our last stop in Argentina. I'm sorry to say that there were no major mishaps or near-death experiences to enliven this section but maybe in the next one, eh?! So, from the las...

Hello to you! Hope you are well. We're both fine except Lynn is covered in bites again though this time we suspect fleas (not mine before you ask) and she has a cold (which might have been mine). Apologies for the fact that it's been about 2 weeks since the previous installment of my travelogue. My last update ended with us being in Bariloche in Argentina's lake district which is somewhere in the middle of Argentina vertically and on the left horizontally. Near the mountains - you'll find it. Anyway, it had rained for the last 36 hours and showed no signs of stopping. Well, it did end eventually. After about 5 days of non-stop downpour. The wind was also horrendous - each morning we awoke expecting to find the roof missing. We stayed in Bariloche for 9 days in the end, delaying our departure by a couple of days as the weather improved and both Lynn and I have agreed that it is our favourite place so far. The town is a bit of a trekking centre and is surrounded by the mo...