Alastair Simpson Zoe Bowden Travel Blog (Home)

Only a couple of days left, so a little indulgence from us with a look back at some of the highlights of the trip.  We have travelled a LONG WAY, in various forms of transportation and in varying levels of comfort, so here are our Best Journeys by:

- Car: Tupiza to the Salt Flats at Uyuni, Bolivia.  4 days, 1,000km, 5,000m altitudes, bumpy gravel roads, some of the most unbelievable scenery of the trip, all in the back of a 4x4.  Click here to see more.

- Foot: The W-Trek, Torres Del Paine Chile.  4 days, 65km, many blisters, snow capped mountains, turquoise lakes, avalanches, glaciers, driving rain and winds, pot noodle lunches….stunning.  Click here to see more.

- Boat: To The End Of The World.  Without heading to the Antarctic, you can’t go any further south than the mythical Cape Horn.  4 days, 3 nights sailing trhough the Magellen Straits, glaciers, storms and 12ft waves.  Click here to see more.  

- Bus: Patagonia, all of the many bus journeys.  32 hour bus trips, only passing through 3 towns….Its a big, big place, with vast open spaces…but stunningly beautiful.  Click here to see more.   

- Bike: La Boca to Playa Ancon, Cuba.  Picture perfect, sparsely inhabited Caribbean coastline, passing lobster restaurants and not much else until arriving at the white sanded Playa Ancon.  Click here to see more. 

- Horse: Tupiza, Bolivia.  Riding around the place Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid met their maker.  Click here to see more.  

Look busy…The Messiah (Ali) has come….

We considered putting Ali to work as a religious miracle to fund our next trip….but then realised they were just blisters from from the Death Road bike ride…. 

The Death Road, The Worlds Most Dangerous Road or its real name the North Yungas Road is, well….dangerous and scary…It used to be the only road north from La Paz to the Yungas, fortunately they have now built a bypass, but that doesn’t stop tourists PAYING REAL MONEY to cycle down it…with sheer drops of 600 metres, descending 60km from 4500 metres to 1000 metres, the single lane 2-way gravel road with no guard rails, still with traffic using it (Some locals prefer it to the bypass) is not for the feint hearted (Or Zoe)…..l did it and have the t-shirt to prove it….

Tiahuanaco; just outside La paz, the best thing about these ancient ruins is an 8 metre tall, intricately carved monolith of pachamama (Mother earth)….unfortunately they won’t let you take pictures of it as it is considered too sacred…so here are some of the other big stone type things…

Due to an oversized hangover (Thanks Michael, Colin, Rianna, Robyn and Niv) this was as much as we saw of the famous Lake Titicaca….from the plane when we left La Paz…..

Some things are just very ‘Bolivian’…such as road blocks and strikes (we got stuck in one), high altitude (we experienced it), llama foetuses (no we didn’t buy one and they are supposedly for good luck), ladies wearing bowler hats (yes, Zoe bought one!) and crazily overstocked market stalls selling random crap…

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, surrounded by mountains, clinging to the valley edges.  We tried to really embrace Bolivian culture by going to a karaoke bar  - they take it WAY too seriously….trying to pay to get INTO a prison (we didn’t get in!) eating llama and struggling to walk due to the altitude…  

The Southwest Circuit; Tupiza to Uyuni Day 4: The final day greeted us with driving rain, snow and ice…not ideal for driving across a big white expanse of salt….it didn’t improve when our driver Nelson crossed himself entering the knee deep water covering the salt flats and gave Pachamama (mother earth) a blessing using whiskey….Most people see this in the dry sunshine, we experienced it in a totally different way, wet, white, covered in water but with incredible reflections and the illusion of driving into nothingness.  

Somehow our guides navigated us an island of volcanic rock with cactus over 1000 years old in the middle of the salt flats with no GPS or compass.  As we left the flats the sun came out…giving us both views of the flats…one of the most amazing places we have been to…

The Southwest Circuit; Tupiza to Uyuni Day 3: An even colder night than we ever thought imaginable….we counted 7 blaankets and a sleeping bag on our beds but it was still freezing!  Yet again Ali nearly got thrown out of somewhere by peeing in the wrong place (this time near to the famous stone tree), how on earth he managed that in the middle of nowhere!  We stayed the night in an incredible salt hotel on the side of the salt flats, salt floor, salt walls, salt tables, salt chairs…you name it.  It even made it warm thanks to the insulating properties of salt (Who knew that!) and that plus the first hot shower in 3 days made it heaven.