LukeStableford

I spent longer in La Paz than I planned sorting out my final travel plans and return home. I realised that as I had booked my flight early to avoid the high carnival prices, I now had very little time left in Bolivia. And I hard hardly seen anything that I wanted to see. Salar de Uyuni Trying to cram in the two most important trips, I took a night train to Uyuni - the base point for tours of the salt flats. Salar de Uyuni is the most popular tourist destination in Bolivia as I am told it is unique and the scenery is stunning. The morning I arrived I joined a tour group by jeep out on to the salt flats, along with hordes of other tourists. The salt flats appeared before us like ... read more

I decided that whilst I was in the Andes I wanted to climb a 6000m mountain. I'd already done quite a bit of high altitude hiking, but the highest peak I'd climbed was 5,100m. I booked on a three day tour from La Paz to climb Huayna Potosi - purported to be the one of the easiest 6,000m mountains in the world to climb and is about 6,050m. I, and two Australians - Pat and Alex - set off in the morning to drive to the mountain, which is a couple of hours from La Paz. We arrived at base camp at around 4,800m and after lunch set off to practice ice climbing on the glacier. We walked for around an hour and then when we reached the start of the glacier we spent some time ... read more

Alegria and I arrived bleary eyed at 6am in Cusco and slept a couple of hours before taking an afternoon tour of the Incan ruins around the city. We visited 4 sites which were interesting when explained by the guide but unspectacular compared to another sites in the region. I was appalled to learn that when the Spanish arrived at Cusco, the "navel" of the Incan empire they systematically set about destroying the Incan temples by using the stone to build their houses and then building Catholic churches on top. Our first stop on the tour was to visit one such place - an unusual fusion of the pragmatic solid granite tessellating block walls of the Incan temple with the colonial cathedral on top. Two days later I took a tour to the sacred valley and ... read more

I arrived in Piura in the North of Peru early in the morning and was startled just how different it was to Ecuador. Asian style moto taxis (Tuk Tuks in Thailand) swarmed everywhere weaving through hoards of people, stray dogs, and rubbish. The town was dusty, dirty, with half finished concrete box houses with reinforcing rods sprouting from the top. My travelling companion Filippe and I jumped straight on the next bus to Mancora. Mancora was slightly better but nowhere near the paradise I'd been led to believe. Mancora is Peru's most popular beach resort boasting the warmest water and best beaches in Peru, which isn't saying much. Maybe I'm just spoilt by the beautiful beaches of Central America, but I thought it was OK here but nothing special. My mood wasn't improved by a violent ... read more

After my tour around South West Colombia I returned to Bogota to visit Angela and to do some more Salsa classes. As I had found a good Salsa teacher I thought it a good opportunity to learn more and I wanted to get to the point where I had mastered it to a usable standard. My teacher recommended that I make regular videos as feedback of my progress. This is the last video I made, about two weeks in to the lessons. My partner is another student at the school with a similar ability level to me. By this point my posture and the fluidity of movement had improved greatly and I'm quite happy with the progress. Unfortunately, for various reasons I wasn't able to shoot another video before finishing the classes. I had improved my ... read more