Uyuni to Tupiza We left Uyuni the night after the big storm, having stopped just a day or so to visit the salt flats. Our next stop was a strategic stay in Tupiza, a large town encircled with red hills. It resembled many towns that I visited in South America: low buildings arranged in a grid pattern. Not much greenery and plenty of dust billowing about. The reason for our stay was strategic, it’s only a short distance to the notoriously fussy border between Bolivia and Argentina.

La Paz to Potosi We left La Paz, this time ascending the rim of steep hills around the city in a slightly less clunky “Death Bus”. Perhaps it was because we were travelling uphill or because it was daylight, but it didn’t seem so bad. We set off to Potosi through strange towns with weird monuments (see the pictures) and Oruro where great festivals happen around Ash Wednesday each year that are famous throughout the continent.

Picking up where I left off at Machu Picchu, we headed down into Aguas Calientes (trans. “hot waters”) by coach and by the time we got there it was torrenting down with rain. So much for exploration. We waited out the downpour in a pizza place and deliberated over whether to buy souvenier snaps from the tour guides. Ironically for a town named after hot waters, it was bitterly cold. One of those places where the sound of running water follows you wherever you go, the best thing about it was the huge trains that ran down the middle of street - big clanking hulks pulling huge passenger trains.