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In case you were wondering, I'm not still down that mine. The trip has finally ended, it's just taken a while for us to wrap this up. We left Bolivia in early April taking in one last tourist attraction - real life dinosaur footprints! Then we headed back to Sao Paulo where it was still raining. Very hard. From Sao Paulo it was only a 12-hour flight back to Heathrow's shiny new Terminal 5. Here we saw the bleary eyes and frayed nerves (can you see frayed nerves?) of staff who had probably spent the past week dealing with angry travellers. We heard one German man confronting a Heathrow operative with the warning, 'I can get a little spicy'. He had just taken a picture of something and they wanted him to delete it. Terminal 5 still had some problems but they didn't hold us up and we got back to Manchester where we kicked back and relaxed by unpacking lots and lots of boxes.
Considering that this blog could have been called 'Look at us and our fantastic year-long holiday', I'm surprised so many people have taken the time to look at it and send us comments. So thanks very much for that, it was much appreciated.

A long, long time ago when we were somewhere in Africa, my friend Tom sent this comment:

'Didn't realise we could ask questions! Apologies if this has gone before.
So - toilets - describe them and (any) available bog roll and experiences of reactions of your different stools with different paper types. Also, how many sheets do you get in public lavs where you have to pay to use them (an average will do).
A top five would be useful.'

Well, a wise American called Dean once said to me, 'it always comes down to toilet stories'. So it felt appropriate to end with these thoughts. Most of the toilets weren't too bad. I was a bit worried about spiders and scorpions in the corrugated iron shack-style latrines found in deserty places, but we never saw any. The public lavs were even quite generous with the paper, giving out about 20 sheets on average. The revelation was South America where all paper goes in a bin, not down the toilet. This is quite odd at first but you get used to it, aided by signs that say things like, 'please use the wipe and fold method'.
However, the toilet experience wasn't always a walk in the park so we've listed some of the unpleasant/memorable experiences below.

(Lord of the Rings fans may be interested to note that this picture shows a toilet at the foot of Mount Doom in New Zealand.)

We were on a mini bus with some well-to-do Ethiopians. When we stopped at a hotel in dingy town a trendy young girl rolled up her trousers up before going in. When I went in I realised why.

Stopped at a bar on a dusty road in Ethiopia (again). It was really hot, we were standing in the shade drinking coke and attracting the interest of some really poor kids. The owner had good English and spoke proudly about his love for the BBC World Service. But he looked embarrassed when Amanda asked to use the toilet. He said, 'You cannot go, it's not fit for a lady'. Amanda wasn't taking no for an answer and we walked down a long dark corridor lined with windowless mudbrick rooms. Right at the end there was a tiny door a bit like the one in Alice in Wonderland, but this was no wonderland. It opened into a tiny dark smelly room that simply had a hole. 'It was a bit forbidding’, said Amanda.

What’s the old adage? It’s better to be inside pissing out than outside pissing in? One Ethiopian (again!!) clearly disagreed. I spotted him standing at a toilet doorway pissing straight into the room rather than walking to the urinal.

While squatting behind a bush on the banks of the Zambezi I check for dangerous animals. I look up and see a gaggle of curious baboons watching me from about 20 metres away. They were staring, perhaps thinking; ‘what on earth is he doing?’

When we stayed with Seble’s mum in Axum her two toddler grandsons Adu and Musi were always causing trouble. I recorded one incident in my diary. ‘Musi does a dump in the front yard and Adu carries it into the house in a sheaf of paper. Amanda genuinely thinks it is a generous helping of chocolate cake. Adu hits Musi (who stinks) then points at me and tries to hit me! He thinks I did it too!’

On the way to the Serengeti we stopped for a drink in a dusty Tanzanian town. The toilets were somewhere around the back of the bar. Amanda gave me the directions but I went to the wrong place and breezed confidently through someone’s back yard, smiling at a group of women doing their washing before using the family's toilet. They didn't seem to mind.

Ethiopia comes out badly on this list. I think their toilets just made the biggest impression because it was the first place we went to. Sadly, the world is full of shabby toilets. But please don't take that as my Jerry Springer-style summing up of the world trip. I'm still working on that one.

The Bolivian silver mines of Potosi are a popular tourist destination. I found this hard to believe. They´re dangerous, working mines where 16th century techniques are still used. There are explosions, cave-ins and poisonous gases. The tour group disclaimer states: "Even taking all precautions there is a chance an accident can occur… in the case of a cave-in you will be in as much danger as the workers in the mine (more miners die from cave-ins than any other cause)". The mines are buried inside a mountain at about 4,500m. In dusty, cramped conditions the altitude can make it even harder to breath. I reassured myself with the thought of our friend Bec going down the same mines a year ago, and she returned unscathed. When I got on the bus I saw 11 of the 16 tourists were women, many of them sturdy looking young Danes.

We were taken to the miners´ market and encouraged to buy gifts, you know the kind of things - sticks of dynamite, ammonium nitrate, detonators as well as fizzy pop and coca leaves. So 16 of us got back on the bus dressed as miners (complete with hat and lamp), each carrying one of these goodie bags. I was just thinking about the 16 sticks of dynamite when the driver shouted at us not to leave them on the floor in case they got too hot.
There are hundreds of different mines here, all in Cerro Rico, which means rich mountain. Its conical, red peak overshadows Potosí, apparently the highest city in the world. Silver has been mined here for about 450 years and most of it was taken away to enrich the Spaniards who used forced labour to get hold of the booty. It´s estimated that as many as eight million people died in the mines by 1800. The majority were indians, but there were also thousands of African slaves. They often worked 48-hour shifts sustained only by coca leaves. Initially the Spanish took a dim view of this habit and the Catholic church pushed for an outright ban. But they soon noticed how much more productive it made the workers. It was legalised and taxed so they could squeeze even more out of the slaves who were now working to pay for the thing that sustained them.
We walked into one of the older, more secure mines. The tunnel was about 5ft high and lined with hissing airpipes, carrying oxygen deep into the mountain. After about 50m we stopped at a small museum, basically a cave with a few exhibits. There was a statue of the devil - every mine has one. El Tio, or the uncle, is considered to be the spirit of the mountain and these Catholic miners worship him when they enter the mines. Their attitude is: we´re now in the underworld where God has no influence. They give the Tio offerings like cigarettes (see pic) and coca leaves. Once a year a llama is sacrificed and its blood is thrown across the entrance to the mine. This ties in with traditional Andean beliefs where sacrifices were supposed to keep the gods happy. “The more llama blood, the less miners´ blood,” explained our guide.

We headed further down the tunnel following trolley tracks and reached a very low passageway leading to a hole that took us down two levels. Clambering down here was more like potholing. It was getting hotter and dustier and I kept banging my head. A few people turned back. We reached a more open tunnel but here men were straining behind lurching two-tonne trolleys laden with ore. We pinned ourselves to the walls listening to the ominous rumble getting closer. Then the men´s headlamps appeared and they passed by, two at the front, two at the back, all diagonal in their exertions. All the faces I saw were those of teenagers.
We followed them to a cave where men shovel the ore into baskets which are pulled up to higher levels. We didn´t get to see the work at the rock face and didn´t hear any explosions inside the mountain, apparently because it was a Saturday. So we started to head back up, back up through the narrow, steep passageway. This was the hardest part, scrabbling upwards on all fours, feeling the roof of the tunnel on my back. It was hot and dusty and I couldn´t get enough air. I was gagging on the scarf I was wearing around my face to keep the dust out and my legs turned to jelly. When we stopped to rest I still couldn´t breath properly. I was reassured by the fact everyone seemed to be in a bad way, and we`d only been down there about an hour. Once on the exit tunnel I could feel the cooler air and started to relax, then the guide behind me said, ´hurry up now please´, in one of those self-consciously calm voices that betray panic. A trolley was coming, I didn´t know which way, but started to run, lolloping through the tunnel and banging my hat on overhead rocks and beams. Outside I felt ridiculously exhausted and we watched as the guides let off some dynamite – just for a laugh.
Kids as young as 10 work in some of these antiquated mines and most miners only last 15 to 20 years before they´re coughing up blood with silicosis.
“About 40 miners die from accidents every year,” said the guide, “but many more die outside the mines from lung diseases.”
He explained how about 15,000 miners work in the mountain, all in different co-operatives. Silver is now scarce but zinc and lead make it worthwhile. On average these men make about 135 quid a month, about the same as a teacher.
“We know of the dangers, but in Potosi there is no alternative,” he said.

These are pictures of the Uyuni salt flats, the largest in the world at 4,000 square miles, apparently the size of Switzerland. About 40,000 years ago the whole area was part of a giant lake part of which evaporated, leaving these flats. (Some 60 million years ago the South Atlantic came inland to this point, forming a massive gulf from the coast of present day Argentina. The lake was created when the Andes were formed). A few metres down there is still water but the salty crust is tough enough to support people and vehicles. Men mine the salt, scraping it into small pyramids which are later shovelled into trucks (pic above). They take out about 25,000 tonnes a year. We travelled across the flats to an island where ancient cacti sprout from this rare patch of soil. One is thought to be 1,200 years old.

The surface of the island is covered in fossilised coral (once on the sea bed) which sits on top of volcanic rock. The flats are surrounded by extinct volcanoes and we spent the night in the shadow of one of them, its reddish caldera illuminated by the setting sun. Our accommodation was a salt hotel, so called because it was completely made of salt, apart from the roof. The walls were built with bricks cut from the flats which looked like breeze blocks and the floors were covered in loose salt. In the dining room the tables and chairs were also cut from salt (pic below). It was all quite rudimentary and a bit nippy but quite a strange experience, especially when you´re looking around for some salt to have on your dinner.

The next day we rose at dawn to catch the sun bursting across the flats.
Later we walked up to the volcano. Looking back the wide band of white looked more like a low strip of cloud rather than a permanent feature below the horizon. The landscape was hard to comprehend. On the way up we stopped at a tomb where there were eight mummies. This is all that´s left of a small village dating back to around 600AD. It´s thought that the village died out following a long drought. Some hair and skin were visible on the remains and locals still come up here to give offerings like coca leaves. We didn´t hang about.

Forgot to add this to the Machu Picchu entry. We`d got up before 5am to get the train and I went to brush my teeth. Luckily I'd had a shower the night before.

We continued south to Iquique for the sole reason of visiting an old sodium nitrate mine, now a decrepit ghost town. It`s called Humberstone after James Humberstone, a man of Kent who managed this site for some time in the early 20th century. Production stopped in 1960 and everyone left, so now it`s possible to walk the empty streets, peer into empty houses, prance around on the theatre`s stage, walk through the spooky hospital, sit in the schoolrooms, hang about in the hotel`s ballroom and stare at the rusty, iron-bottomed swimming pool. Humberstone, like Iquique is in the Atacama desert. It never rains. The buildings are decaying but well-preserved.
Before the Germans invented synthetic nitrate during the first world war there was huge demand for this mineral, known as white gold. A lot of British entrepreneurs got in on it, including one man from Leeds called John T North, who was known as the Nitrate King. Conditions were terrible for workers and at Humberstone they were paid in tokens, redeemable only at company shops, until 1929. All the fancy amenities like the pool and the theatre were built in the late 1930s when the management appeared to have softened up a bit. Even the medical care was free. They must have lost their marbles.
This place is now a Unesco World Heritage Site - just like Machu Picchu. There are other mines dotted about the desert. One was used as a concentration camp during Pinochet`s regime and is apparently still surrounded by land mines.

Iquique is also completely rain free. "It never rains", said an ice cream man who had spent 20 years living in Swindon. When we told him where we were from he said, "Liverpool... Manchester... grey... grey..." I thought he was saying "great! great!" then I noticed how he was wistfully shaking his head as if taken back to a regrettable or traumatic experience. You see, in Iquique the sky is brilliantly blue everyday, the light is clear and it`s not even too hot.
There`s always a nice cool breeze because of the sea. He said the city`s water comes from the distant mountains through underground rivers. But he thinks they`re being poisoned by the multinational copper mining companies that use millions of litres of desert water then dump contaminated waste back into the water table. The world`s biggest open cast copper mine is a few hours from here. It`s part-owned by Xstrata - listed on the London Stock Exchange. I`m going to have to buy some shares and represent the ice cream man at the next annual meeting.
On Iquique`s streets the weatherboard buildings are well-preserved by the weather. The paint is blistered and peeling but they still look graceful and stylish - like they might belong in New Orleans or a Western. We walked the length of the town to a great seafood restaurant (see soup picture) and were surprised to see hundreds of storks a group of sealions lounging by a stinky dock. We had gone to great lengths in New Zealand and Argentina to see wildlife like this and here they were sunbathing on empty water bottles and plastic bags. There were about 13 of them, some very large males with very lion-like roars. They stay here because the fish sellers dump all the leftovers for them. We watched as one man threw fish heads into one of the big male´s waiting mouth. Another just stretched out on a freshly dumped pile of fish. More like pigs in shit than graceful sea life.

It´s 4am and we´re stumbling off a Peruvian bus. A man is shouting, "Arica, Arica". This is where we´re heading, just over the Chilean border. He offers to take us, but the border doesn´t open until 6am. We go anyway and see what happens. He leads us in the darkness to his 1980s American car. It´s a Pontiac with a bench seat across the front and a gear lever sticking out of the dashboard. There are two others in the car also heading for Arica. At least I hope they are. I hope they´re not part of a kidnapping gang preying on sleepy tourists. I try and stay awake just in case. It takes five minutes to get out of town, the driver has some kind of Classic Spanish Gold pop station on the radio. As a Spanish Nancy Sinatra croons and what looks like the Atacama passes by I feel like I´m in a Quentin Tarantino film.
At the border the driver switches off the engine (he leaves the radio on) and we sit in the darkness waiting for 6am. Amanda´s asleep, I watch as the yellow moon goes down and the sky brightens to the east. At 6am the driver leads us in a rush through customs. This is our 17th overland border crossing but his guidance confuses us. We stand there looking like we don´t know what a passport is for. Amanda leaves a bag in the car and has to go through again. They tell her off and confiscate some peaches. We´re through and it´s 8am in Chile. One of the other passengers is detained so we leave without him. It´s a short drive to Arica. The sun is bright and the Pacific hoves into view, there´s a disco instrumental on the radio, it sounds like Barry White´s going to break into song.

We left Cusco heading south and aiming for Chile. But before we re-entered that country we wanted to visit the Colca Canyon, one of the biggest in the world. Apparently it´s just over 1,000m down, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and is famous for the condors that circle in the morning. But it´s a tricky place to get to. First, a three-hour bus journey on the highest road I´ve ever been on. It took us up to 4,800m, that´s three miles and only about 700m lower than Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa´s highest mountain! We both felt a bit light headed and were glad to descend. We were lucky to go on the old road and pass by Peru´s most active volcano, Ubinas, which was smoking for us.

From the town of Chivay there´s a two-and-a-half hour journey on an unmade road. But the bus is in demand and we stood in an orderly queue that convulsed everytime a bus pulled in.

The men and women, mostly in stetsons (the men) and delicately embroidered hats, skirts and waistcoats (the women) grabbed everything and threw themselves at the coach door. This happened about three times before we got on one. As it stopped in villages further down the road some men clambered on the roof (and this is a typical National Express-style coach). That night we stayed in a small town at the top of the canyon, sleeping in a converted barn and eating by candlelight in a small bar. We were up at 5.30am to walk to the canyon and hopefully see some condors. We saw a few but the canyon was the star, its steep sides home to impossibly isolated villages. We sat and looked upon the distant river as villagers passed us, leading their donkeys along ancient trails.

So we slogged our way over the high plains to Cusco, an ancient Inca city. It´s also considered to be the gateway to Machu Picchu another anicent Inca city which has become Peru´s most famous tourist attraction. Lots of people do the Inca Trail, a four-day trek over the mountains, but we decided to get the train (we did walk up the mountain - see pic below of zigzag road). I never knew you could catch a train. I imagined Machu Picchu to be completely isolated and that´s why everyone walked there. Although it´s perched on a ridge between two steep mountains, in a steep valley full of big mountains, a train snakes along by the river and buses run between a small town and the site. There´s even a luxury hotel up there. It may not be as isolated as I expected but it´s still very special. The site is stunning as you can see from the pictures and lived up to the hype.

It didn´t even feel like there were too many people there and we roamed around looking at the houses and temples and climbed Wayna Picchu, that impossibly steep peak that looms behind us in the pictures. Even this mountain is covered in terracing, they terraced everything. It took us two hours return, up very steep narrow steps(see pic below) and we had to crawl through a small tunnel at the top. From Wayna Picchu you can look down on the city and see that it was built in the shape of a condor. The current thinking is that it was a summer retreat for one of the Inca kings. Although it feels very high up, it´s 1,000m lower than Cusco and has a better climate. It also had religious significance and there are many temples here as well as a very rare stone sun dial. It´s not really a sun dial, it´s more of an astronomical tool, but that´s what the guides call it. The Incas used the stars for their agricultural planning and they used this tool, which is in the shape of the southern cross, to read the stars. It´s rare because the Spanish found many like this and, appreciating their significance, smashed them up.


Fortunately the Spanish never found out about Machu Picchu. But while they didn't get the chance to take it for what they could, a British company is making the most of its opportunity today.
Orient Express Hotels, based in London, listed on the New York Stock Exchange and registered to a tax haven in Bermuda, runs the rail monopoly between Cusco and Machu Picchu. It´s a four-hour journey and a return fare for the most luxurious seat costs about $140. We caught it from the closest station an hour-and-a-half from the site and paid $62 each. This was the "backpacker/economico" ticket. And this is in a valley where you can get a three course lunch for about 50p. Although the pricing is cynical I can understand the Peruvians making the most of this asset. I just don´t understand why the government has signed away the 30-year rights to a foreign company. I think it´s a joint venture so some money will end up in Peru´s coffers (or its politicans´ pockets). But it seems crazy in a poor country for any of this revenue to benefit the shareholders of a foreign company and its tax-avoiding directors.

Back in Cusco we roamed around the ancient streets and looked at the fine churches and buildings the Spanish built on top of fine Inca temples and buildings. It was Holy Week so we saw a large procession of people following a gory but well-dressed statue of Christ. We also looked at the hotel where John Peel had his fatal heart attack (is that weird? It´s the white building, bottom right).

The day we arrived in La Paz I had my 1st real experience of squits from a 100% organic soup and sandwich. Jim was really poorly the next day, when we visited Tiwanaku 50 miles out of the city.In fact he was completely projectile and sometimes absent from our tour. Tiwanaku was an ancient civilisation, before the Inkas and seemingly more advanced than the Incas, around between 1,500 BC-1,200 AD and situated at a mammoth 4,100 metres. The stone work and ceramics made me realise how little we have advanced in such a long time. The site's considered to be the most important archeologically in South America. There are two large pyramids both are still almost completely covered with soil. They were aligned with the mountains and Lake Titikaka and were used as important political and religious places. Tiwanaku's elite also studied astronomy from the top of the pyramids to help them plan their crops. There is a small church in an adjacent modern village which archeologists (who are still excavating)think could cover a very important site, as Spanish conquerers often built churches on top of the most significant sites of previous civilisations, to obliterate the past as much as possible. One of the archeologists tried to have a look under the church whilst the priest was away, but was stopped by villagers. The Spanish also defaced the most symbolic statues, believing them to be `false` idols.

Some of the stone carvings depicted different faces, showing the diversity of the Tiwanaku civilisation, including one alien face...