'Muchas llamas!', the salt flats and the last bits of Bolivia: 28th March - 4th April

The next stop after La Paz was the vast salt flats in the southwest of Bolivia named Salar de Uyuni. For the uninitiated, this used to be a huge saltwater lake until it dried up millions of years ago, leaving what is essentially a big white desert, over ten thousand kilometres in area.

First of all, and arguably more excitingly, the rare treat to a train ride to the town of Uyuni from Oruro, 4 hours south of La Paz. We took our waiting ticket from a machine which must have been made around the start of the 20th century (in Liverpool!), booked our executive first class seats and settled in for 7 hours of luxury.

This, though, is Bolivia, and such terms as 'executive' should be taken with a pinch of salt (see what I did there?). What we were presented with was a grand old diesel car with fairly cramped seats, 80s Italian music videos on a loop, and a strict rule against taking your shoes off. In defence of that rule, I'd been tramping around in my walking boots and the same socks for the past few days so my feet did proper stink.

The journey itself featured an incredible long passage through the middle of a large expanse of water with birds fleeing from the reeds, followed by an executive standard sunset over the water. We arrived in the chilly outpost of Uyuni at around 11, batted away some persistent tour touts and resolved to get out on the salt the next day.

Most tour companies offer 1, 3 or 4 day tours onto the salt, but we wanted 2 days. Therefore we had to go with a more profit-orientated organisation, bought enough supplies to keep us going in case of abandonment in the salty wasteland and set off with northern-to-the-core and their 'southern fairy' in the back of a Nissan 4x4 with our charming guide Roberto.

Roberto speaks zero English despite having been leading unsuspecting foreigners out into the white for a good twenty years. So he would explain each location in painfully slow Spanish, occasionally giving me time to relay what I could to the others. These would be given in the car on the way to each site, where we were allowed out for five minutes to take photos before Roberto got moody and insisted we set off again.

This meant that sites such as the graveyard of trains (an eery deserted old and rusty train depot) and a hotel made entirely of salt were kind of skipped through, presumably to give us more time at the souvenir stands shopping for little salt ashtrays and, of course, packets of salt.

We stopped for a surprisingly tasty beef lunch on a little salt table and chairs near the main attraction of the day - Incahuasi island. This is an 'island' in the salt covered with giant cacti. I kid you not (see pictures below if you don't believe me). I have truly no idea how that kind of thing is possible, but peering through the cacti at the top to a sea of pure white below is a view that will stick with me for a long time.

With a bit of time left before Roberto would round us up, we tried, fairly unsuccessfully, to get some hilarious perspective-assisted photos done on the endless mass of salt. A couple of our attempts are at the bottom, the true potential was realised by these guys: http://mashable.com/2013/10/22/salar-de-uyuni-instagram/

Before long Roberto was on our case again and we were off to where we would spend the night, in a salt hotel on a small island formed by a volcano. It was here that the catchphrase of the tour was coined. Roberto was an odd character, and my attempts to get conversation going in Spanish normally failed at the first hurdle as he didn't understand even the most basic thing I said. Hence when I asked how many people lived in the little salt community he replied 'muchas llamas!'

He was clearly a fan of the llamas, as when we came to eat our chicken dinner he would come into the room as if about to start a conversation, and instead declare 'muchas llamas!' and walk out again. We would have been cheesed off about such a lame guide if it hadn't been for the good old northern pisstaking (and Yorkshire tea talk) of our tour mates, and we enjoyed the wine that Roberto had tried to bribe us into a tip with until deep into a very starry night.

The next day we drove up to a trail where we were shown by a local guide to a cave containing the mummified (due to the salty air) remains of an ancient family finished off by a deadly illness. From there we headed up the side of the volcano to try and get to a viewpoint near the crater. At that altitude it was a struggle, but I hardly have to tell you that the view from the top was stunning.

Luckily we made it back before Roberto drove off and deserted us, and we headed back with a bonus Russian in the back who'd been getting a bit desperate stuck on the island without having seen a car for two days. Roberto took a lot of persuading on that matter, finally changing his tune quite dramatically when money was mentioned.

I guess Roberto is typical of Uyuni - one of those end-of-the-road towns that only exist to support tours, with very few people staying more than one night in itself. Why should people make an effort when there's a new set of people in their rooms every day? Our HI hostel was so miserable that they'd taken all the plug sockets out of our rooms and limited us to an hour of charge in the reception.

Therefore we were relieved to leave on the freeeezing night bus to Sucre (the true capital of Bolivia). We had around 10 hours in that place to enjoy its classic white colonial town, its English breakfasts and a happy atmosphere of a happening place which Loja could be given a few licks of paint and a change in attitude. You should definitely go for at least a night if you're heading to Bolivia.

We couldn't afford such luxuries and instead hopped onto our second night bus in a row that evening, to Mareike's final destination of Santa Cruz. Much hotter and more tropical than the rest of Bolivia, Sucre it ain't but it was a lot more pleasant than Uyuni. We spent our days gorging on a huge barbecue at the hostel, buying cheap sunglasses, visiting tropical butterfly reserves and um... catching up on The Voice UK.

When that was all done the Friday arrived and it was time for Mareike's flight. 52 days had passed in barely believably quick time, and once she'd passed through those doors I knew I was going to have to be very savvy, as well as unnaturally sociable, to survive a further ten weeks on my own.

As in my worry and confusion I stumbled into the ladies toilets at the airport, I was really not sure if I could.

The big one - Inca jungle trail to Machu Picchu: 18th - 21st March

With the original Inca trail walk being long since booked up, prohibitively expensive and obviously waaaay too mainstream for us, we instead embarked on the Inca jungle trail with Lorenzo Expeditions, which included a first day mountain biking instead of walking, nights in hotels, incredible food three times a day and the trail almost all to ourselves, all for half the price of the classic trail. It's fair to say that going on that trip was one of the best decisions we made.

It didn't seem like that on the first day as we biked down a mountain road from way up in the pissing wet clouds at over 4000m, only emerging out a good two hours and 2500m of descent later just before the end of the ride, only redeemed by beers down by the river with our fellow trekkers and of course excellent food and pisco sours in the village bar.

However, the remaining two days of trekking had it all.

On the first day we visited local families and learned of the farming and way of life of the people whose land we walked through, walked along an incredible remaining section of another Inca trail, sweated a lot on the 20km hike (and endured crossing the 100m deep valley in a little box dangling from a wire and hoiked across by a burly man on the other side) to be repaid with hot springs at the end of it, and almost witnessed a bus load of moronic American gap year travellers tumble down a cliff after trying to drive through a mudslide. I guess many trips leave you with some form of regret...

An interesting talking point was the many fields of coca leaves that we walked past. In the last decade the president of Peru had tried to outlaw the cultivation of coca in order to move the country away from cocaine production. This was met by strong opposition amongst the indigenous community, who have been producing coca for many centuries and believe strongly in the properties of coca as a reliever of altitude sickness. It makes a darn tasty cup of tea too.

In the end the ban was reversed with the agreement that coca growers would have to register their intent if they wanted to conduct large-scale operations (it takes roughly 100g of coca leaves to produce one gram of cocaine). The fact also remains that cocaine is big business and Peru produces the most coca leaves of any country in the world, so it's in the government's best interests to leave people to it.

The next day (after we'd recovered from the spectacle of a young Brazilian girl keeping us awake with some excessive ass-shaking outside our hotel the night before) we headed off to zipline at speeds of 60mph between four mountains, some of us (me) even managing to hang upside down above the valley below. After an hour we finally had our first sight of the big MP far up above, and spent the rest of the day walking around the mountain (also called Machu Picchu - no one knows the original name of the city) on which it stands by the way of the train line from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes.

Aguas Calientes has only existed for ten years as a tourist town to make the trip to Machu Picchu more comfortable, and the unrealistic way that the train line cuts through the city like those little 'cities' you encounter by the entrance to Disneyland certainly feels pretty false. It served us very well as a place to have a five star meal as a group sendoff (I never wanted each mouthful to end) and get an early night before the 4am alarm the next day.

We met at 4.20, trudged down to the over the river to the Machu Picchu side for its 5am opening, and then set off with the hundreds of other pilgrims on the race up the 1772 steps to the entrance in the muggy dawn before sunset at roughly 6.20am.

The hour it took us to this would not rank as one of the most purely enjoyable of my life, nor was the feeling of getting there drenched in sweat to find we'd been beaten there by hoardes of freshly showered tourists who took the bus up there. However Wilbert, our excellent and knowledgeable local guide, took us up to a less-trodden vantage spot from where we saw the clouds slowly part at 6.20 to reveal one of the most eerily beautiful sights I've ever seen.

At Machu Picchu you're prepared for the look of the place, that big, improbably steep mountain behind it, and the llamas, of which there are many. What you're not prepared for is the truly stunning scenery, with steep drops over every side that you look and lush forested vegetation surrounding the site. The feel of the place demands a real reverence and as such even the large numbers of visitors can't spoil that feeling that you're somewhere very special.

We were taken on a tour around to learn of how the citizens probably lived and the sacrificial ceremonies to the gods of the sky, before our guide left us to our own devices.

I had booked a ticket to hike up the Machu Picchu mountain (everything is ticketed), and almost didn't make it after leaving it with Mareike and racing around the site for half an hour to find her. Ticket procured, I had to race up to the summit, another 500m and countless steps above the ancient city, to catch up with the group. The views (not that I was hanging around to look at them) on the way up were stunning, but the summit at 3000m above sea level meant we were in the clouds and unable to see the tiny-looking city below.

Nevertheless, we were so enthused by the experience that on the train back to Cuzco that evening we hatched a plan to get tattoos inspired by the trip. 24 hours later I had an Inca sun surrounded by an Ecuadorian design on my inner bicep, and Mareike had an Inca cross on the back of her neck. A guarantee, as if that was needed, that we'll never forget that trip.