The next day I rode 700km along this dead straight road to Formosa near the Paraguay border as I am heading to Iguazu Falls. It was really hot and then about an hour away from Formosa it started to rain. At first it got overcast, then a heavy wind blew with the smell of rain and then it started chucking down. The side of the road was too muddy to stop to put on my wet weather gear. The next morning I had to put on my wet boots and clothes and head to the border.

The next day I crossed into Argentina and my bike also has done enough miles to have gone around the world (24,900miles or 40,075kms). I was going to celebrate that officially I could finish now having made it to Argentina (though it is still another 5,000km as the crow flies to the bottom) but the hotels are more expensive in Argentina it used up all my money as I haven’t been able to use my debit card for the last few weeks.

Arriving in Tarija I asked for directions to the hotel and this guy took me to someone that he knew could speak English and I got them to phone up Jorge and Ana who’s contact details I had been given. Jorge and Ana, who have also ridden around South America, put me up, washed my bike, fixed my brake light and helped me plan out my route to the bottom which I had been trying to figure out. Thank you heaps.

Everyone has been so friendly that I was going to be sad to leave Bolivia the next day.

The next day I rode through the most beautiful scenery. All the rocks were either purple, pink, blue or red. It is hard to tell from the photos but it was like riding through one of those sand pictures where they pour different coloured sands between glass. Then I managed to ride into a awning and scratch my nose, get lost and almost fall going up a hill around a tunnel they were building and finished off with a gravel road so high it gave me vertigo so it wasn’t all rose coloured.

I was going to head for Chile and ride the long way around rather than ride through Bolivia but I found out that petrol was $6/gallon as opposed to $2 in Bolivia so I decided to ride across Bolivia as even with cheaper petrol I still was getting through $20US dollars of petrol a day. Leaving La Paz I was caught speeding coming into a town (they post the 35km sign long before the towns and I hadn’t slowed down yet) but the nice police officer let me off with a warning for my first ever speeding stop. You can’t ride too fast in Bolivia anyway as the roads are covered in llamas.

The next day it was off to pick up my bike from Oscar and Elizabeth who had kindly arranged for my bike to be serviced and a centre stand fitted while I was away. A huge thank you to them. They convinced me to stay another day and I got to hang out at Elizabeth’s brothers place for a while.

For our last day in La Paz Gaylene wanted to go to a beauty salon as she was meeting up with her husband the next day. I was only meeting my motorbike who doesn’t care what I look like but how can you say no when you can get a hair cut, facials and nails done for $10US! We also made the most of being in the capital to have Thai, German and Swiss food. Also well our last chance at some of the brilliant Bolivian beer.

We had a great tour of the Salar de Uyuni but we were pretty disappointed with our tour provided by Ripley Tours. Our driver could barely keep his eyes open on the first day driving and had to put his head out the window to stay awake, our group was told our driver would speak english and he couldn’t, we stayed in the horrible place the second night after being told we would stay in the park accommodation and the food was horrible – I don’t know how you can ruin spaghetti and tomato salsa but he did. But Salar de Uyuni is so beautiful it didn’t really matter.

When we got back to Uyuni they were having a blockade of the town so we ended up hiring a jeep and doing a midnight run past the blockade because Gaylene had to catch a plane in two days.

When we got to La Paz we tried to get a refund on our bus ticket and the women from Panosur was giving us all this stuff about how they were just an agent but my sister Gaylene wasn’t giving up and got the tourist police and they got the real police involved and we finally got our refund. Go Gaylene.

Pretty cool eh!

The first night of our Salar de Uyuni tour was spent it in a salt hotel which was pretty cool to do on my birthday.