Hotel Briggs Oruro

Today the Gap trip ends, and a new adventure begins. Tonight a small number of us will break from the main group and head south to Uyuni, and then onward to see the Salt Flats and the vast expanse that is southern Bolivia, which list in the high Andes along the Chilean border.

This morning we would meet for breakfast at the hotel lobby, and spend the day shopping and touring La Paz on foot. The key objectives were to visit the Presidential Palace, see ...

In the morning we got the bikes all packed up, pretty confident we found the problem with the Buell and ready to hit the road. The first stop would be the immigration office in downtown La Paz - since we crossed the border from Peru into an abandoned ghost town in Bolivia - we had no stamps in our passports and we were all now illegal aliens. So a drive through town in hot traffic was bearable because we ...

One of the best times I have ever had in my life took place in this city, and while I canīt say that this visit was quite as special, I was once again pleased with Oruro. The cityīs main industry is mining, which would lead one to believe that it is unpleasant and dirty, but I found it to be quite agreeable, even if I wasnīt there for Carnaval this time around. This time we were simply stopping through en route to Uyuni, but we had a whole day to spend before our night train departed ...

A late start about 11, but it is a fairly short run to Oruro.
It is nearly a hour of battling mini buses before we have climbed out of La Paz and cleared the city limits.
Out on the Altiplano the blue skies are there but also puffs of cloud here and there. At breakfast I had watched cloud drifting into the La Paz valley, it soon disappeared as the heat got into the sun.
The flat plain seemed more mechanically cultivated, a lot of it had been ploughed ...

... It looked far too nice for us and the guy gave us glasses of Pepsi as we were hot and tired from a short walk, before we had even seen the rooms. They said just 100 Bolivianos or 10 quid and showed us to a lovely clean room, well decorated and with nice bathroom and even cable TV! We hadnīt stayed anywhere this nice and took it immediately. The railway line ran infront and every hour or so a train would come out and force all the stalls, makeshift restaurants, cars and ...

Goodbye La Paz. Must have set some record for length of stay eg 10 days. But it wasnīt a drag. Each day was interesting although by the time I received my new videocamera from Canada I was ready to go. Initially it was strange without my camera. Everytime I saw something of interest I would automatically ...

Wow so it has been a long time since I last posted, and I think it is time to update on our recent wild adventures. So where to begin.....?? As steph mentioned in her last few updates we have both survived our 2 weeks of speration and have since then enjoyed being back together. After a wonderful two weeks exploring the windiness of Nicaragua and the Rainforests of Costa Rica with my parents, which resulted in many an exciting adventure, I arrived in La Paz all by my self set to ...

Oruro is on the way to Uyuni. There is basically only desert between La Paz and Uyuni. This region has not recieved rain in almost 8 months and believe me it looks like it. There is nothing. Llamas, alpacas, cattle, papas....everything is in a fragile state and deaths are being reported, even within the national parks in the area. It was sad. We traveled this ...

OK the things that Bolivia is famous for include being the highest country in the Southern hemisphere; Cocaine; the country where Butch Cassidy and the Sun-dance Kid were killed; and where the CIA killed Che Guevara. After sampling the Coca leaf in Peru (a derivative of Cocaine) which is used to counter Altitude Sickness (and can be found in Coca Cola) we were aquiring quite a taste for this little non-descript leaf. . We'd now spent ...

Before I forget, today is the birthday of my sister Sam and good friend George.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAM and HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE! ;)

Unsurprisingly we were both still very tired when the alarm screeched its way into our dream worlds at 3am this morning.

We both got up without slumping back into the warm covers, dressed, packed our day ...