No news...good news!

Dear All,

We are now in Sucre Bolivia and have not had access to internet for a while! To be honest it was quite tough...So what have we done while you were at work apart from drinking a very nice Quilmes (argentinian beer)?

Our last day in Salta was very nice, we followed the trail of the "tren de las nuves" which goes from Salta at 2500 meters and ends with a breathtaking (dans tous les sens du terme) bridge at 4200 meters!

On Thursday we traveled 12 hours to get into Tupiza, Bolivia. We had to wait standing for 2 hours at the customs to get out of Argentina... one of the charms of this country is that you always have to queue for everything. People are actually VERY disciplined about it (even more than in Switzerland! Can you believe this?) and queues can be more than 200 m long: Argentinians will not be discouraged!

From Tupiza we started a 4 day tour on a private car with a chauffeur named Coco and a guide named Herlan. The made us discover the South-West tip of their amazing country. We had long discussions over our picnic lunches at more than 4000m about the history, politics and sociology of Bolivia. The evenings were alot of fun playing pool and ocho loco! (cards)

The downside was that there was alot of "camino" - at least 5 hours a day and up to 12 hours and that:

1. the tracks turn alot and they are not paved
2. Claire is carsick as you all know
3. Claire discovered she is also mountainsick above 3500 meters... and we went up to 5000 m several times

However we made the best out of it and visited the most amazing places in Bolivia as you can see in the pictures!:

- La laguna colorada and its pink falmingos
- La laguna verde and its volcano which is the border with Chile (and made us think of the Caribbean!)
- The Sol de Mañana geysers on one of the volcanoes at 5000 m where we were freezing although the bubbles behind us were at more than 200º C
- The Salar de Uyuni (biggest & highest salt desert in the world) where we played with the perspectives as you can see on the pics! And where the temperature reached 37.5 º C on that day which is quite exceptional for this altitude. This is definately the bit we prefered of our trip in Bolivia until now.

One thing that you will all recognize is important on a honeymoon: hotelsJ

These are amazing in Bolivia: they are in the middle of nowhere, built directly on the Andes and with a rustic feel, although very clean. We are always welcomed with a mate de coca (coca leaves tea) and a nice, warm dinner. We also had the most amazing experience, sleeping in the Palacio de Sal, which is a luxury hotel only built with salt from the Salar!

We'll be staying in Sucre for 3 days and then will head to La Paz and Lake Titicaca.

Sending you alot of honeymoon love ;-)

PS: the pictures are upside-down so start with last one and go up if you want them to match the text...sorry ;-)

Claire and Alex