The next part of our trip threw up a few logistical issues, from a transport perspective.

As I have said before the roads in Bolivia aren't great and although you may not be travelling huge distances, say 200km, the route often involves steep climbs and decents.

For example driving between Edinburgh and Glasgow is a pretty straight forward affair.  It takes about an hour and is approximately 80km.  Imagine though you were driving the same route, however you were going up, down and over 10 Ben Nevis along the way.

We are heading to a place called Uyuni where the world's largest salt lake is located. 

It is a bit of hassle to get there but at 2000 Sq km in size, 9 metres thick, shadowed by volcanos, weird hexagonal shaped evaporation marks on the surface and once in a lifetime photo opportunities, we decided to go for it.

Uyuni is 360km away from Sucre, 6hrs in a car or 10hrs in a bus.

This is a bit much for one trip, so we decided to break up the journey and stop half way in the city of Potosi.

At 13,420 ft (4090 mtrs), Potosi is one of the highest cities in the world. 

Coincidently the accolade of the highest goes to Wenquan in China who at 15,955 ft (4870 mtrs) is incredibly only just over 918 ft (280 mtrs) or one Arthur's Seat short of the height of Mount Everest base camp.

Someone once told me that Everest should actually be pronounced Eve erest, as in Adam and Eve.  I have no idea whether this is correct and have no intention of checking as I feel spent more than enough time googling mountains and converting feet into metres and bloody metres into feet.

Back on topic.

Having experienced the effects of altitude in Sucre, there was no real desire to experience this at a far higher height, however needs must so here we are.

Understandably it didn't take more than one warning to avoid the bus at all costs and the trip to Potosi is via taxi.

So come Monday morning at 10am our pre booked taxi arrived, right on time and we were off.

We managed to agree a set fare of £20 and the car looked in reasonable condition and comfortable enough.

Pretty much from the off we were climbing up a very steep road, hairpin bends, ears popping,  mild car sickness and dizziness all seemed to come along, hand in hand.

It wasn't long before a very pale looking Axel started declaring that he felt sick. 

A few sips of water though and he seemed better, not for long though.

Our driver seemed aware of the commotion in the back and was alert and ready when the call came in to stop the car. "mi hijo necesita vomito"

He nearly made it.

Jessica, who was sitting in the middle, opened  the door and lifted him over Edith towards the curbside.

If he had got his mother, then this could have been hilarious.  He didn't get his mother though, he got his sister.

Square in the face.

He was so accurate that he didn't even get any  puke on the upholstery.

So there we were, standing at the side of road, in disbelief, Edith crying, puke pouring down her face onto her t-shirt and trackie bottoms.

There was a point, the driver, who had obviously seen how clean Axel looked, popped  round, assuming all was good. The look on his face when he saw Edith, told a thousand words.

It takes more than some puked up frosties to to ruin our day though, so following a full wardrobe change for Edith and a quick scrape of Axel's trainers, we were off again.

It really is astonishing that the car was clean and didn't smell and the rest of the journey pretty uneventful. 

We arrived in Potosi about lunchtime and following a bit of emergency laundry, we headed off for lunch.

Thankfully the hotel had a restaurant, so we didn't need to go far.

Potosi is quite a remarkable city, it was founded in 1545 as a mining town and a one point was producing 60% of the world's silver.

The Spanish exploited the place for everything they could get with forced labour, death from mercury poisoning, poisonous gases, premature death's etc all the norm.

Cerro de Potosi, the huge mountain that guards over the city has been mined so extensively that it is allegedly now a few hundred metres shorter than it was, back in the day.

We didn't see any of this though, we didn't leave the hotel.  We were all completely floored by the altitude.

How can, in excess of 240k people function at this height? 

We can barely breath.

We were staying 400 mtrs from the main plaza, where I have read there is a great museum that details the history of the mine and has many silver artifacts.

That is 400 mtrs up hill though so we didn't go, even the thought of walking was making us breathless.

The following morning when we woke up we all felt terrible, sort of like a hangover, however we hadn't been drinking.

We were getting picked at 1 for the next leg to Uyuni.  The puking incident obviously didn't cause any animosity with the previous days driver as he had agreed to come and get us and drive another 3hrs into the middle of nowhere.

The plan was a relaxed morning sitting about doing nothing, we were all packed, had shitty Bolivian tele on and it all started as a nice chilled morning.

Not for long.

Bolivia is in the grip of carnival season, it is everywhere and today carnival came to us.

For a couple hours the carnival march passed by the front of our hotel. There must have been at least 10 thousand people.

Incredible colours, music, flags and the like.  Even sticks of mini dynamite were being let off, left, right and centre.

Potosi is one of the few places in the world where you can buy sticks of dynamite down the local market. 

What could go wrong there?   

It is nice having a carnival pass by your hotel, however if I am honest, after a while it does become a bit of a racket.

One of clock came and right on time we headed off.

Other than a couple of stops along the way for false alarms, the journey was fine.

We saw a lot of wild llamas along the way and the route was very much like the previous day with all the twists and turns.

Around about 4 or clock we finally began our decent towards the vast flat expanses of Uyuni and the surrounding dessert landscape.

First impressions was that it isn't the bonniest of places, we are here for the salt planes though and you can't help but be excited. Lorne