Where we stayed: Peru

Lima: Most visitors to Lima stay in either upmarket Miraflores or slightly bohemian Barranco.  The old town is reportedly not very safe for tourists at night, although there are hostels and hotels there too.

Trying to escape from San Pedro de Atacama! (And why you need patience if travelling through Argentina and Chile in winter)

  

Now don’t get me wrong, we liked San Pedro de Atacama. We really did. But we also very thankful to get away! Some of our bad luck from the salt flats tour lingered

Hanging out in San Pedro de Atacama

Sunset from Valle de Luna with the Licanbur volcano

San Pedro de Atacama is really cute and chilled out little town in the middle of the driest desert in the world. It is now largely centred on tourism, but this hasn’t ruined its small town outpost feel. 

Being vegetarian in Bolivia

We’d been told in Peru from travellers coming north that Bolivian food was rather underwhelming and that there was little choice for vegetarians. I’d had quite an easy time in Peru and so was bracing myself for a month or so of nothing but rice and omelettes.

However, while it was true that Bolivia is less foodie than Peru, there were some good veggie options and I only ate about two omelettes in almost two months. (And they were nice omelettes.)

We did have more time to cook for ourselves, so that helped, but even in our homestay, the family didn’t seem to have too much trouble cooking vegetarian.

And there were some great veggie options both at the street stands street and in the restaurants, particularly in Sucre.

So what did we eat and where?

The highs (and lows) of our visit to the Bolivian salt flats

Our trip to Bolivia’s salt flats and other worldly landscapes of the country’s southwest was somewhat cursed from the start. First off we missed the bus that we had intended to take to Uyuni (where most tours to the salt flats start), as we struggled to find a taxi and then the police decided to check our taxi drivers papers. We arrived at the bus station, just as the very full bus was leaving. This was not too much of a problem as there was another bus in an hour, but if only we’d known it was a sign of things to come!

Siete Cascadas and the road to nowhere

One Sunday in Sucre, we decided to go for a relaxing afternoon to the Siete Cascadas (seven waterfalls). We’d been told it was a beautiful spot, with pools to bathe in and areas where you could jump in. And it was only a short ride outside of Sucre.

By the time we’d got ourselves ready, it was getting a little bit late and so we decided to “splash out” and get a taxi rather than work out where to catch the bus from. But the taxi drivers we stopped didn’t seem to want to take us there. Some of them genuinely didn’t seem to know where it was. Others just said they wouldn’t go there and suggested we ask someone else. 

Highlights of Sucre

The main square in Sucre

We spent 3 and a half weeks in Bolivia’s constitutional capital, Sucre. Independence was officially declared in the town and while most of the administrative functions of Bolivia have moved to La Paz (with the exception of the Supreme Court), Sucre is still officially the capital, according to the constitution. It is considerably smaller than La Paz though and you can get to know it, or at least the central area in a matter of just a few days.