We left the leaky canoe behind, said our farewells to Lago Negro and crunched back through the jungle. ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ was stuck on repeat in my head.

When we reached the channel it was pitch black. Ian had deployed our 8 Boliviano ($1.60) torch. Xenón went down to find the canoe while we waited on top of the bank.

Three minutes later he returned. No canoe. Not on the other side, not anywhere.

Hmm. Perhaps Claire and Choco Mano were still out on the lake. I mean, it was dark, but maybe they were really having fun. They had seemed to hit it off. Hmm.

There was a rundown cabaña nearby with an even more dilapidated jetty in front of it leading into Lago Gringo. We picked our way across the rotting pieces of wood that lead out to the end and Xenón did the Bolivian equivalent of a cooee across the lake.

Silencio. Nada respuesta.

Xenon went back to have another look for the canoe while Ian, Leo and I stood on the jetty, shining our torches into the lake and channel looking the red-glow of caiman eyes.

‘There’s one.’
‘There’s three little fellows together – opp, one’s disappeared.’
‘There’s a MASSIVE one over there!’
‘One, two, three, four… TWELVE!’
’Oh, yep. There’s the mum, exactly where she was this morning.’
‘See those tiny little yellow ones? They’re spiders’, said Leo and shuddered.

We wobbled back across the rickety jetty to scope out the cabaña. There was one dusty hammock inside. We joked about doing rock, paper, scissors to decide who’d get to sleep in it. Leo assured us that if we did have to stay there the night, ‘We’d see a shitload of animals – maybe even a cat’ (as in a puma, leopard, panther, ocelot – the holy grails of jungle animal-spotting). We discussed what may have happened to Claire and Choco Mano.

Theory 1:
There was a budding romance between them and they were getting hot and heavy out on the lake – after all, Choco Mano was quite charismatic and a little bit famous too.
Ewww! She was about 30 and he had to be more than 60. Gross! No way.

Theory 2:
They were catching heaps of piranhas and were on a roll and didn’t want to stop.
But Choco Mano ALWAYS gets heaps of piranhas and Claire doesn’t seem like a fishing obsessive. No, not that.

Theory 3:
They’d been taken by a caiman.
It is possible… But no, Choco Mano’s too jungle-smart for that.

It was 7pm. Xenon returned (nope, still no canoe) and started messing about with lengths of wood under the cabaña and chatting to Leo.

‘We’re going to build a raft,’ he announced.

PARDON?

‘We’re going to build raft to get across the channel using these bits of wood. Xenón found some nails. It’s not far.’

But surely this is madness? They’ll come looking for us soon – we can stay in the cabaña. Leo shrugged.

Xenón and Leo started energetically rummaging through the timber and pulling out the long bits. Ian and I looked at each other. Was this really happening? Surely it’s dangerous and unnecessary. There’s a lake full of hungry caiman out there!!

We pointed our torch into channel and spotted the nesting caiman just yards from where this supposed ‘raft’ would have to cross. The scene from Crocodile Dundee where Linda Kozlowski decides to go for a dip in a g-string one-piece flashed through my mind.

Memories of Linda Kozlowski going for a dip in Crocodile Dundee - remember her outfit?

Ten minutes later and handy-man Xenón had constructed a makeshift raft. Now to test it. Oh my god. This was really happening.

Leo with the raft

The boys pushed the raft out into the channel while I trained my torch on the mumsie caiman, alert for signs of movement.

It floated – ish.  Xenón thought it needed a few more cross-bars to give it the necessary buoyancy to make it 20m across the channel. He went off to search for suitable pieces of wood. Ian meanwhile, decided to launch his own investigation into the whereabouts of the canoe using his poxy 8 Boliviano torch.

(Two minutes later.) ‘Found it!!’

It was on the other side of the channel with a rope tied on our side so we could pull it over, just as Choco Mano and Xenón had arranged.

Xenón returned. ‘My eyes, my eyes… my torch, the batteries…’ he mumbled sheepishly.

Everyone was silent for the remainder of the journey home.

At 8pm we arrived at the lodge to find RM, Claire, Choco Mano and the kitchen staff eating together – not exactly in the throes of assembling a search party. Claire was eating a fried piranha – she’d caught none but Choco Mano had caught nine. We were welcome to eat the rest.

So we did.

Yum yum - Choco Mano's piranha

Epilogue:

1. We ended up volunteering for the conservation organisation that runs the lodge for a week or so. I helped them out with internet marketing and Ian looked into setting up a wifi connection for their office in town.
2.  The baby howler monkey got fed up with his cardboard box one morning about a week later and left the lodge – hopefully to join a family of howler monkeys that live nearby.
3.  The morning after we returned from our adventure, Ian found a tick attached to his testicle. In the afternoon he located another one on his leg. We believe he picked them up in a Rurre internet cafe rather than in the jungle though.
4. Xenón put some new batteries in his torch.

We asked Leo if he’d translated for Choco Mano yet and he said no but the more teeth a guide was missing the harder they were to understand, and well, Choco Mano was missing most of his front teeth… Xenón on the other hand was only missing one and was a really lovely guy.

We heard dry leaves crunching underfoot behind us – Choco Mano had caught us up. What was he doing here? Xenón was supposed to be the guide for our piranha-fishing expedition.

Choco Mano pulled up next to Claire and they paused and started chatting about the plants and trees (Claire was a fluent Spanish-speaker). Xenón started muttering.

Leo looked unsure whether he should translate, then shrugged and continued, ‘He says I may be a Bolivian [ie chronically late] but I don’t leave people to stand around waiting for me.’

Xenón muttered some more. ‘And he’d be more than happy to explain the plants and trees to the new girl if he had more time but we’re late.’ The three of us exchanged knowing looks.

Could it be that guide rivalry was the real reason for this ragginess?

After about 45 minutes of frantic pacing along the jungle path, we arrived at a caiman, anaconda, manta-ray and piranha-infested channel where we’d spotted a hostile nesting caiman on a walk earlier that day.

Home to the awesome foursome - caimans, anacondas, manta-rays and piranhas. Anyone for a dip?

 

Spot the nesting caiman

We had to row a canoe to the other side – about 20m – and walk for another half an hour or so before reaching Lago Negro.

There was no sign of Claire and Choco Mano.

Xenón was ropable and refused to wait. He told us to get in the canoe – we were going without them. Leo tried to talk him out of it but he was adamant. Oh dear.

We were half-way across the channel when Claire and Choco Mano arrived on the bank looking wide-eyed as they realised we were leaving them behind. Xenón looked a little sheepish (not for the last time that day).

Sensing that they weren’t welcome, an agreement was made that Choco Mano and Claire would separate from us and take the channel canoe to Lago Gringo (so-called because a caiman swallowed a gringo there some years ago). When they returned, they were to leave it tied up on the Lago Negro side so we could get back to the other side of the channel.

Twenty minutes more of hacking through vines on the overgrown path with a machete (Xenón, not us) and we’d reached edge of ‘piranha-packed Lago Negro’. A splintery dugout canoe patched with tar awaited. It was overcast, windy and getting colder by the minute – even in my limited fishing experience I suspected that the weather conditions weren’t ideal for hauling in scores of piranhas.

In we hopped – or rather, gingerly climbed.

The mouth of the lake was clogged with thick reeds and lily pads that had moved about with the wind. If you’re a caiman, these reed beds are the equivalent of a cosy lounge with surround-sound and a flat-screen telly. We’d been out caiman-spotting in a canoe the night before (their eyes glow red when you shine a torch on them) and we’d seen them chilling in exactly this sort of environment accompanied by loads of flipping (literally) piranhas.

Xenón punted the canoe from the stern while Caiman Schwarz pushed a path through the reeds at the bow with a great deal of straining and grunting.  Ian and I sat in the middle of the canoe like Lord and Lady Muck, eyes peeled for lunging caimans.

Reed-clogged Lago Negro

Eventually we emerged into the clear, greater part of the lake, tethered the canoe to some reeds and threw in our lines – at last!

Xenón advised us (via Leo of course) that successful piranha fishing required a lot of patience and a little bit of skill – the knack being to yank on your line as soon as you felt a nibble.

Xenón bails water from our leaky canoe

One hour later. Not a single bite – not even for Xenón (according to Leo, the guides always caught the most – there was definitely something up with his mojo). We moved to another part of the lake. Leo explained that it was always quiet at the beginning and then at 6pm – SHABAM. The piranhas ‘go mental’.

Six pm arrives and it’s getting dark. If the piranhas are going mental, it’s not here. The weather’s getting colder. This fishing curse appears to be a strong one.

But then all-of-a-sudden-wah-heeey! Ian’s got one! The curse has been broken!.

Ian and the curse-breaker

Night was closing in. There wasn’t time for Ian to try for the remaining 10 so we decided to call it a day. Now all we had to do was make it back to the lodge.

When we’d told our guide Xenón that we wanted to fish for piranhas, he’d gleefully rubbed his hands together and announced that we’d be going fishing at Lago Negro which hadn’t been fished for months. He assured us the piranhas would practically be reverse-piking into the boat.

Ian announced that he was aiming to catch eleven.

Last time we’d gone fishing was at a stocked trout farm in the Lake District. We’d paid £100 for the privilege of catching three slimy branches and the line of the person standing next to us. No trout (at blimmin’ a trout farm!) and £100 out of pocket – it could only be a curse.

We were supposed to depart on foot for Lago Negro at 3pm but a new tourist had arrived – a French girl. Apparently she wanted to join us but it was 3.30pm and she was still dilly dallying in her cabaña.

The chance to break our fishing curse was slipping away minute by minute…

Several other individuals had arrived on the canoe from Rurre with the Frenchie – another guide called Choco Mano (Chocolate Hand) and a three year old spider monkey that had been kept as a pet until it became too unruly and its owners begged Choco Mano to take it away.

Choco Mano:

• Of indeterminate age but very leathery looking – probably +60
• Lunatic laugh, missing most of his front teeth
• Probably the most celebrated guide in the area since his starring role in the famous National Geographic article on nearby Madidi National Park
• Our translator had seen him walk all day with an angry jungle ant attached to his leg just to demonstrate how tight its nippers were
• Called Ian ‘senorita’ when we first met him then laughed maniacally. Ian was not impressed
• Tight with RM, the owner of the lodge

Everyone (RM, the guides, kitchen staff and grounds staff) were fussing around the spider monkey and tut tutting about how it had been fed on rice and meat for three years. It seemed a bit damaged – chattering absent-mindedly and looking blankly past the people surrounding it. Or was that just normal monkey behaviour?

The three-year-old spider monkey

We hovered restlessly – Xenón looked agitated too. It was a long walk to Lago Negro.

While the staff were distracted with the new monkey, we sidled towards the box where an orphaned six-week old howler monkey was cowering beneath a blanket. He was roaring like a poltergeist that had kicked its toe, his mouth forming a perfect little ‘o’.

This adorable, rust-coloured little fellow had been bought from a drunk man wandering the streets of Rurre for $35 by one of the ecolodge volunteers. Jo, the volunteer, had let us hold him when we were at the tour office in Rurre and then he’d travelled out to the lodge with us on the canoe. RM, was hoping that he’d meet a bigger monkey who’d adopt him, or that he’d decide to go back to the wild of his own accord.

Ian and the baby howler monkey - before we found out we weren't supposed to touch him

Once we arrived at the ecolodge, RM made it clear in no uncertain terms that no-one was to touch the little howler because he’d have zero chance of going back to the wild if he grew attached to humans – ooops. She’d torn into Alejandro the witchetty grub-lipped gay cook that morning after coming down to breakfast and spotting the baby howler clinging to his shoulder while he was scrambling eggs.

The little fellow looked up at us with tortured black eyes and howled despairingly. We batted our eyelashes sympathetically but we weren’t game enough to touch him – now.

We looked beseechingly at Leo, our translator, who was supposed to be coming fishing with us. He assured us in his best tourist-appeasing voice (acting all professional because there were new tourists around) that we’d be leaving very soon.

Leo aka ‘Caiman Schwarz’:

• 22 years old
• Arachnophobic, dyslexic, Jewish political science graduate from Golder’s Green in North London
• Working at the lodge as a volunteer translating for the local guides (on walks through tarantula-infested jungle)
• Also working as a freelance sub-editor for a scientific journal despite having dyslexia – inexplicably, he hadn’t been paid for his work on the last three issues
• Covered in hickies  – the fruits of an affair with a local Rurre girl (when we returned to town we discovered ‘Leo te amo’ in green spray paint on the outside wall of a local used-clothing store)

Caiman Schwarz - Bolivia's answer to Crocodile Dundee

Leo te amo

Finally, Claire, the frizzy-haired French girl, wandered through the door of the lodge. Xenón greeted her cursorily and took off out the door. Ian, Leo, Claire and I followed suit.

We’d taken two relatively short bus rides – five hours between Uyuni and Potosí, then seven hours between Potosí and Sucre. Both were relatively uneventful (which was a bit disappointing). As anticipated, there were no toilets on board on for either trip – and no toilets when we stopped for a toilet break either. Everyone just ran off into the scrub and squatted behind a cactus. Manageable.

But now we were about to embark on our first ‘big daddy’ trip from Sucre to Santa Cruz. Allegedly it was to take 14 hours overnight.

We assembled a relatively healthy picnic dinner from the market consisting of:

• 4 tomatoes
• 2 mandarins
• 2 apples
• 1 cucumber
• 1bunch of grapes
• 1 packet of peanuts
• 4 Bon o Bons*

Drinking any liquid whatsoever on the bus was obviously out of the question so we sensibly drank two litres of water before we left and emptied our bladders.

5.30pm Sufficiently hydrated, provisioned with necessities (Bon o Bons), and armed with plans for outwitting wannabe thieves (sleeping with our backpacks locked and threaded through our legs), we boarded the bus.

No toilet – no surprise there. Bus cama (meaning seats that lie almost all the way down) – fantastic. Better than McCafferty’s. Other passengers – a bit of a motely crue but no one looked too menacing.

And we were off.

Off down a dusty, dusty road which over the course of the night was to gradually wind down several thousand metres.

6.30pm We decided to enjoy a Bob o Bon appetiser while watching Bolivia’s southern highlands pass by through a dust-screen . Children washing themselves in dirty streams. Low, boxy cement houses. Chooks. Roadside food and grocery stalls tended by weary, pigtailed women in gingham aprons. Men squatting against the outside walls of houses, not smoking or drinking but chewing coca.

7.30pm I was refused access to the cucumber on the grounds that it was too dangerous to peel (with the incredibly sharp leatherman knife) while the bus was heaving and jerking.

8pm We stopped for a dinner break although it was unclear where. It wasn’t a roadhouse, just a couple of cement houses in the middle of nowhere.

Everyone poured out. The men all hocked lergies and headed to an embankment to empty their bladders. The women were pleasantly surprised to find a real toilet at their disposal – not just any toilet, one that we didn’t have to pay for! The toilets didn’t flush so we lugged in old motor oil containers of flushing water that we filled from a 44 gallon drum that stood outside.

I returned and surveyed the surroundings. The aspect was a little different but no more depressing than the dinner stop at Miles on the overnight McCafferty’s journey from Brisbane to Blackall.

Several food stands nearby vied for our custom. A young girl in traditional dress (pigtails, gingham apron, full velour skirt) wasn’t getting much business.

“Hamburguesas de carne de huevoooo!!” she howled, brandishing a spatula. (Translation: Hamburgers of meat and of egg.)

Dogs milled around, angling for scraps. A yellow perra (bitch) stood casually by the bus staring into space while a black pup hung from her teat with a fair bit of difficulty.

Ian returned.

D. Can we have the cucumber now?
I. It’s on the bus. What do you want me to do?
D. Bring it down here and peel it.
I. I can’t peel it here.
D. Why not?
I. Everyone will think I’m weird.
YGITD: Hamburguesas de carne de huevoooo!!
D. Peel it over there in the shadows.
I. No. I’ll peel it on the bus.
YGITD: Hamburguesas de carne de huevoooo!!

We filed back on to the bus and off we went again.

9.14pm The cucumber was eventually peeled and consumed, the final Bon o Bon made hasty work of, and I was just reclining my bus cama when the bus ground to a halt and was switched off.

It was a bit soon for another meal break. Yep, the bus had broken down.

Several mechanically-inclined (nosey) passengers got off the bus to give advice. To no avail. The bus remained stubborn-llama stationery. Bus after bus (probably cheaper) passed us by. Sometimes they stopped and their busboy (all buses have an assistant busboy) passed something out the window to our bus driver. It obviously didn’t help. Every hour or so, our busboy came into the bus and searched for something in a compartment above the seats with a torch. He never found anything.

12pm (ish – who knows) We were drifting in and out of sleep when the bus spluttered into life. Could it be? Yes! Who knows how it was fixed but it was. And off we went again – except now, the bus driver was driving like a bat out of hell because he needed to make up time. We were dragged from one side of the bus to the other as we raced around corners. I peered out the window expecting to see us overtaking the Roadrunner. There was no more than 50cm between our left hand bus wheels and the crumbly precipice. But what could we do? So we slept.

4am-ish Ian was woken by a man frantically banging on the door that separated the cattle (that’s us) and the bus driver. Someone desperately needed to wee. The bus driver barked a retort – something along the lines of ‘no’ because we’re running behind time already. Given no choice, the man elbowed his way into the bus driver’s area, opened the door and weed out of it bucking-bronco style while the bus continued to hurtle down the mountain.

7am-ish We were still winding our way through the mountains but the scenery had changed from grey dust, stones and cactus to jungle. The air was steamy and moist – for the first time in years it seemed to us after two consecutive winters.

8am-ish Wee stop in the middle of nowhere. Despite not having drunk any water for the past umpteen hours I needed to go. Off I trundled with most of the passengers. Beside the bus was a plastic bag full of wee that someone had just plopped out the window. When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. By a stroke of pure luck, I was wearing a long dress which meant I didn’t have to bare my bum in jeans.

10am-ish We arrive alive in Santa Cruz having learned several valuable lessons for future bus trips, including:

• Expect the worst
• Wear a long skirt (girls that is)
• Take a small, leak-proof plastic bag for emergencies (boys that is, unless you’re willing to muck around with a funnel)
• Do not forget the Bon o Bons

Cucumber-dora at the market in Sucre

Bon o Bon denuded

The landscape when we woke up

* A chocolate made in Argentina and distributed throughout South America (the bits we’ve been to anyway). All the ingredients of the famous Picnic are present  – peanuts, wafer, chocolate. But the proportions are all different. For a start it’s shaped like a regular chocolate from an assorted box – but it’s the size of a ping pong ball. And the peanuts and wafer are much more delicate than those in a Picnic.

James, Cat, Ian and I dragged ourselves out of our hostel beds at 4.15am (them by torchlight, us by candlelight – no electricity) and flung our sleepy selves and backpacks into the Landcruiser for the third and final day of our tour.

Our ‘hostel’ was actually a family’s house with a few extra bedrooms tacked on in a two-donkey Bolivian town on the altiplano. It didn’t look like much of a place in the daylight but in the dark it really was something else. We all agreed we’d never seen so many stars in our lives – like a talcum powder accident on black velvet.

And so off we set at quarter to five in the morning with the CD player blaring the same traditional Bolivian music (“Solteras!”) that our guide Zolan had been playing on repeat for the past two days (“Borrachas!”).

Our teeth rattled in our llama wool-insulated noggins as the car bumped along in the pre-dawn blackness, dusty cactus looming in the headlights by the roadside. We hadn’t laid eyes on the Uyuni Salar at this point (the world’s biggest salt flat) although we knew we were close.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the road and land either side became smoother and smoother and smoother until it was bench-flat. And turned from dirt-brown, to cream, to white, until it was Saxa Salt white. And we were on the salar.

 Zolan switched the headlights off and we hurtled along the salt pan, the encroaching glow on the horizon erasing the stars one by one.

We arrived at Isla del Pescado at about 6.15am with the sun threatening to crack in the east at any instant. Scared we’d miss the moment, we burst out of the Landcruiser. Zolan thrust a box of Bon o Bons in front of us (“what are these?”), urging us to take a handful before pointing to the path which lead to the top of the ‘island’.

We made it for sunrise. And what better place to be introduced to the chocalatey, peanutty, wafery thing of beauty that is the Bon o Bon.

All the ingredients of the famous Picnic are present  – peanuts, wafer, chocolate. But the proportions are all different. For a start it’s shaped like a regular chocolate from an assorted box but it’s the size of a ping pong ball. And the peanuts and wafer are much more delicate than those in a Picnic.

Enjoying sweet Bon o Bons while watching the sun rise over the salt pan. A delicious contrast.

View of the salar from Isla del Pescado

Salt forever

A whole box of the lovely little fellas

Among the locals in the square selling street food from little carts and cloth-covered trays, I spotted two natural medicine carts. Both were surrounded by a throng of apparently ailing-types drinking murky potions from high-ball or shot glasses – or waiting impatiently in line to buy a treatment. Ace photo opportunity number two.

Both stalls-holders were women of indefinable age (they all are). The one with the stall in the middle of the square was tall, matronly and threatening in a cream straw hat. The other, less terrifying senora was petite and solemn with shiny pigtails and had set her stall against the wall.

Both approached their work with the seriousness of surgeons, furiously polishing glasses and whipping up potions from a line-up of recycled Johnny Walker Red bottles filled alternately with bright and dishwater-coloured liquids that frothed from being constantly shaken and poured. Jars of powders, mysterious liquids in brown bottles, an enamel pot filled with wet blades of grass, sliced lemons and limes, and a jar of honey (to make the concoctions more palatable) perched on the cart too. We could smell eucalptus.

After loitering with intent for 10 minutes and not being game enough to ask for a photo in front of a crowd, we left to explore more streets and plan the approach in detail. I decided it would be hardest for her to say no if asked her for a zitty skin remedy, rather than just grovel for a photo.

We went back and I approached the shiny pigtail senora, my speech in Spanish prepared. But lo and behold she apologised and said she didn’t have any of the ingredients left (yep, the Johnny Walker bottles were practically empty) but she’d have them again tomorrow. It would cost 2 Bolivians (about 20p/40c).

I’m ashamed to say I thought she’d slosh together any old stuff so she didn’t miss an opportunity to make a Boliviano from the silly gringa, but no. I returned after breakfast the next day after breakfast and watched as she mixed together:

A few splashes of bright green liquid
A few splashes of dishwatery liquid
A splash of rust coloured liquid
A shot of what looked like Johnny Walker
Half a teaspoon of light brown powder
A glug of honey

It tasted like a mown grass (with honey).

Two days later and my skin’s not looking much better but I think I might need to make the medicine lady a regular in my life to see a difference.

The reason most tourists visit Potosí is to see one of the cooperative mines at Cerro Rico in action. For 80 Bolivianos (about $15) tourists can don protective clothing and head into cramped tunnels 250m underground to observe silver miners working in medieval conditions. After fighting claustrophobia and noxious gases for four hours, you emerge from the ‘mouth of hell’ (what one Spanish writer called Cerro Rico) to buy the miners dynamite and coca leaves (a common remedy for sorroche).

Ian read a review where a guy had said it was the most dangerous thing he’d done in his life and there were bad vibes from the miners when the time came to give them the dynamite and coca.

I kind of wanted to do it still (I must be an idiot) but Ian flatly refused and so we’ve spent our day wandering the streets of Potosí instead – first stop was the central market.

The markets in South America are amazing places packed full of strange, delicious, colourful and grotesque ingredients – and a frustrating number of photo opportunities.

Ever since I had a capsicum pelted at my head for taking a photo at a market in Oaxaca, Mexico, I’ve been too scared to take photos of people. The temptation was just too great today though.

I walked past a woman selling lamb (cordero) and as I wandered on, I decided the image was too striking and I had to at least try to get a photo of her using my bestest, most politest Spanish. So I went back and explained to the senora that my parents are lamb farmers so ‘I’d very much like to take a photo of your stall’.

Sadly, she was unmoved by the parent/lamb connection said I’d have to pay 5 bolivianos (a bit less than 1 Australian dollar) if I wanted a photo.
I said 2.
She said 5.
I said 3.
She said 5.
And so I paid 5. Need to factor in ‘walking away’ before returning for more bargaining next time.

 This was lunch on the first day of our tour – our Bolivian guide’s version of ‘gringo food’. Clearly, the tucker was pretty ordinary but the tour in a Landcruiser with a guide, a ‘cook’ and a young English couple was SPECTACULAR – the highlight of our trip so far. We saw multicoloured frozen lakes filled with flamingos, stinking mud geysers, volcanoes, the world’s biggest salt flat and surreal, Dali-esque landscapes. I want to write ‘and best of all…’ but it was all out-of-this world.

 The day of the flamingo-penis lunch we slept beside Laguna Colorada which was a contender for the new 7 wonders of the world a few years ago(it didn’t make the grade but hey). It was minus 15 degrees that night and the water bottles we left in the car froze solid.

We’d been warned about altitude sickness and Laguna Colorada is over 5000m (Mount Koscuisko is 2228m and Mont Blanc is 4800m) so if we were going to get it, that was the spot. We were all hunky dory until about an hour after we’d gone to bed. James, the English guy, bolted to the bathroom (if you could call it that – no showers, no flushing toilets) and chundered everywhere. The chundering didn’t stop for 24 hours.

Poor bloke didn’t enjoy seeing the flamingo willies a second time.

It hit me like a bolt of electricity while cooking a zucchini carbonara in the hostel kitchen tonight. Actually, the electricity was real (static) – I was wearing llama beanie and we are in San Pedro de Atacama now, the Atacama being the driest desert in the world.

This morning we dragged ourselves out of bed at 4am to see the Geyser del Tatio. A two and half hour bumpy-as-hell bus ride later and we were in the Campo Geotermico, enjoying the sight of steaming geysers at dawn despite freezing off our proverbials at minus 12 degrees (that’s a record!) – not to mention gasping for air at an altitude of +4300m.

It really was spectacular though. I braved the cold and took a dip in the thermal pool at a relatively toasty temperature of 35 degrees. Chilly-livered Ian declined the swim and played photographer instead.

On the bus ride back we saw herds of vicunas (related to the llama but with finer wool – you can’t domesticate or shear them because they die). Light headed from the thin air and lack of sleep, we took a pit stop at a village with a population of seven and ate our very first llama (pronounced ‘yama’) kebab (1500 pesos/$4USD). It was DELICIOUS.

A red meat with a delicate taste, it was more like lamb than beef and very tender. According to our guide, who may or may not have been getting a percentage of each kebab sold, the llama meat was free range, fed on native grasses from the altiplano where they’ve been living for thousands of years, and completely chemical-free.It contains the same bacteria as pork so needs to be cooked through.

Each meaty skewer was marinated in garlic and herbs, cooked over coals and regularly basted with ‘herby water’ using a bunch of coriander as a basting brush. If I’m going to do this properly I’ll have to ask what’s actually in the herby water next time – a good chance to practise I s’pose!