8th - 9th July 2007 We left La Paz the day after the bike ride and headed down south to a place called Tupiza. This involved another long 16 hour bus journey over night. This one was really CRAP. The bus was smelly, dusty, and overcrowded. Sal´s chair didnt work so she had to sit bolt upright all night. There was also a drunk local on the bus who took on the task of being the bus dickhead and spent the whole night keeping everybody up rustling around the bus trying to sleep in the ailse right next to us, banging into Glen constantly. He seemed to give us special attention and spent most of the time looking at us and our bags. Four hours outside of La Paz the smooth tarmac road turned into a dusty corrugated road, throwing us around the bus for the rest of the journey. Tupiza is like a wild west town straight out of a cowboy film. Dusty streets and red mountains in the background. The town was small and consisted of a few poor italian restaurants where they deep fat fried everything, no ATM and a bank that was never open to foreigners, when it was the robo cop security guard took pleasure asserting his authority over us and making us wait for ages to get in. Apart from the slight backwardness it was a pleasant little place with a good atmosphere and the locals were very friendly. The main reason for being here was to book a tour around the salt plains, which we managed to book for the 10th.