We moved North, with the Andes on our right into a landscape of hilly red desert punctuated by tall Cardon cacti and a rolling ocean, often cloaked in thick sea mist. At La Serena we turned East into the brilliant sunshine of the lush Elqui valley to Vicuna. We drove past grapevine plantations following a meandering river through small whitewashed villages, tiny churches, plazas with shady trees and bright purple bougainvillea. We stayed in a small adobe mansion house with large shutters opening onto a garden of palm trees surrounded by mountains.

In the evening we visited the Mamalluca observatory, perched high in the mountains, and spent a couple of hours looking through a 30cm telescope at the brilliant night sky.

Continuing North for 14 hours we crossed an almost flat desert landscape, then drove up through a deeply eroded canyon and down into the San Pedro oasis with its river and green trees. The tiny whitewashed adobe village of San Pedro De Atacama, with its dirt streets and grass thatched church became our home for a few days.

Then we had an incredible journey via the Jamu pass (4300m) across the high Puno and volcanic Andes into Argentina. This ended in a beautiful sunset as we passed through canyons and descended down hairpin bends, in the moonlight, to Salta.Breathing was easy at 1200m in this beautiful colonial town. We visited the Maam museum which is dedicated to 3 Inca children who were sacrificed 500 years ago, on Liullaillaca mountain, (6739m). The altar discovered in 1997 is the highest man made structure known to date.

There are over 100 exquisite artifacts creating a miniature world for the children to take into the next life. They were fed beer before being tied in a cloth sack and buried alive. We hope they slept peacefully.

On into Bolivia’s border town of Villazon where small chunky ladies in wide pleated skirts, tight cloaks and bowler hats throng the pavements often with a child or goods strapped across their backs. The pavements were full of ladies selling everything you could think of.

We carried on into Tupiza from which we took a 4 day jeep tour across the Uyuni salt flats. We stayed in basic accommodation high on the freezing plateaus. We crossed Dali like landscapes of weathered rock, snow capped volcanoes, boiling mud pools, beautiful lakes of emerald green and turquoise, some filled with flocks of flamingos, finally reaching the vast salt flats for a breathtaking sunrise. The 9000 sq km brilliant white salt flats looked like a flat sea beneath a deep blue sky.

Reaching Uyuni we continued on to Potosi (4070m), founded in the 15^th century with its grandiose Spanish architecture, built during the boom of the silver mines. Now there are 12000 miners who work in Dickensian conditions hoping to strike it rich. Life expectancy is low and families large. It was cramped and scary in the mine when the dynamite exploded.

Our next stop was Sucre, a delightful University town with a gorgeous plaza. We took a spine tingling trip to a cement quarry, that 280 million years ago was a lake, where over 230 different species of dinosaurs have left their tracks on the mud. As the Andes formed this muddy shore became a vertical wall. The footprints were uncovered as the quarry was mined and these are the largest dinosaur tracks in the world.

We are now in La Paz, which is set in a deep bowl from the surrounding plateaus and mountains; it flows down like a table cloth and is an amazing sight at night. As always the streets are full of ladies selling goods.

A three day walking trek began on the bare La Cumbre pass (4900m) following the ancient Tiwanaku, (500 to 1000 ad), trading route. It clings to the mountain edge passing through a beautiful cloud forest with prolific flowering trees, vines and butterflies, finally reaching the sub tropical forest at Coroico, (1300m). We returned to La Paz via a dizzy, hairpin bend road, nicknamed ´The death road´.

We took a 4 day trip into the Bolivian Amazon basin to visit the Pampas in Madidi Nat Park from a thatched river lodge. Here we swam with pink dolphins, fished for piranha and waded up to our thighs in a mosquito riddled swamp to search for anaconda, no luck, and sipped beer watching the sunset over the flat grassland. Along the coffee coloured river thick with emerald green foliage the wild life was prolific with, howler and cappuccino monkeys, alligators, cayman, eagles, vultures, terns, snowy egrets, herons, tortoises and the prehistoric Serera birds. We also spotted a sloth and a chunky Capybara. We had a fabulous return trip in a 20 seat plane over the snowy Andes to La Paz.

We are now preparing to leave Bolivia for Peru and Lake Titicaca, more next time.