... at the top of the world

I had been craving the chance to see a different culture since leaving Asia.
Fantastic though Chile and Argentina were, they did very much feel like they could be in Southern Europe.
But the minute you set foot in Bolivia, it really is a different world.
Like Asia, vendors line the streets selling everything from soups and hot snacks to toilet rolls and bras.
Go to the right places and you can see street butchers hacking chops from a joint, or even whole sheep - minus the head but with fleece intact - being sold from metal framed tarpaulin stalls.
And you can´t walk more than a few paces without hearing the repetitive "chi-chi bom" of rumba or reggaeton rhythms from a home, cafe or one of the many DVD stalls.
It´s also a culture full of colour as indigenous women sport thick woollen stockings, wide-arched skirts and woollen cardigans. Almost invariably, their hair is in two long plaits and topped with a straw hat or a large bowler that I can only describe as being like something a Mister Man would wear.
Around their necks, shawls of bright pink, orange, blue or red hold either the goods they are carrying to or from market or, more often than not, a tiny child.
It´s a wonder any of the people selling freshly fried crisps, popcorn, salteña pasties or fresh beans make any money, given they seem to spend all day eating their own stocks.

Sadly, poverty is clearly evident in Bolivia.
You see it in the form of little boys shining shoes for your change and elderly people begging, or enduring back-breaking jobs like road sweeing.
So it´s hard to imagine that Potosi was once just about the richest city in the world, as well as its highest at nearly 4,500 above sea-level.
If you´ve never heard of it, that´s because the once abundant stock of silver in the Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) that dominates the town has severely depleted since its heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The mine, which is said to have claimed the lives of some eight million men and boys who toiled underground in search of its rich minerals, it still in operation.
And it has become one of Bolivia´s odder tourist attractions in recent years, with dozens of people flocking each day to gawk at the grim conditions in which the miners work.
Some fellow travellers looked at us as though we had two heads when we said we weren´t going to join the tours.
But the One With The Common Sense pointed out that she has no desire to rush down a mine in Barnsley (if there are any still operating there), so why should she do so in any other country.
I´m sure it´s an interesting experience but frankly there are other things I´d rather spend my hard-earned on, particularly as there are suggestions that it´s operating more as a working museum.
If that´s true, it´s one with poor conditions for the miners, many of whom are children, according to a documentary we saw in the hostel.
Instead, we visisted a less clausterophobia-inducing museum in the building where the mine´s silver was once minted into coins for the Spanish - and eventually independent Bolivian - state.

Street food is back on the menu, in a country where people pass their time supping leisurely on fruit juice or munching on bowls of soup from metal dishes.
In Uyuni we had revelled in this fare, starting with something totally new. Think of Scotch egg but with the hard-boiler smothered in mashed potato rather than sausagemeat and then deep-fried and served with salad and spicy picante relish.
Delicious.
We enthusiasticaly went in search of more and were delighted with how both how cheap and tasty was the fare.
Only afterwards did we realise that our day´s diet had consisted of the potato egg for breakfast, a lunch of fried chicken and chips and a tea of kebab skewers, burger and chips and hotdogs - sold by teenagers raising cash for a school trip who treated us as celebrities.
Our photo has probably made the school magazine by now.
I can also report that Bolivia serves the best chips in the world and I challenge any Belgians to prove otherwise.
Thick cut, they taste like the ones my mum in the chip pan before she started doing the healthier oven-cooked alternatives.

We´ve taken it pretty easy over the last week or so and the white-washed streets and elegant squares and parks of Sucre were the perfect places to relax.
It´s Bolivia´s consitutional capital, a fact which scuppers La Paz´s claim to being the highest capital in the world - it´s only the seat of government, apparently - and Sucre retains the confident air of a first city.
Staying there for a few days allowed us to do something we´d neglected for a while... having a good drink.
Affected by the altitude, I´d been a bit worried about my dwindling capacity to put away beer but I´m happy to report I´ve regained my touch.
The minute I shunned a second civilised cup of tea in one of Sucre´s nicer bars, there was only one way the evening was going.
It ended with the One With The Common Sense and I watching a Bolivian heavy rock band at a table about a yard from the stage.
I thought they were pretty good but I´m not sure their parents shared my opinion.
Sitting at the next table, they politely applauded each song while their faces were etched with horror that their offspring could produce the sort of noise associated with The Offspring.

Staying put also gave me the chance to do some one-to-one Spanish classes.
I had been a bit worried about the four-hour marathons but I really enjoyed them.
My tutor, Fernando, listened patiently as I rattled on in stuttering Spanish about everything from the British transport system and the sad fate of the original Cavern club to political corruption and Cornish pasties.
As we chatted about the weird things I´d been eating on my travels, he told me about some local delicacies including roasted sheep´s face (which might explain the headless lambs on sale) and a soup made with a certain part of a bull.
Nicknamed Bolivian viagra, it apparently works wonders for your virility.
Though I´ve not had the chance to try that - which is probably for the best when I could be sharing a dorm with eight strangers - I did taste another local speciality.
Queso de Chancho, or pig cheese, is not made by milking the nearest sow but by boiling up a hog´s head and compressing it into a hard round, like a good cheddar.
Laced with mustard and shredded pickled onion, it made for a pretty tasty sandwich, although the texture was enough to turn the One With The Common Sense a funny colour.
More conventional fare could be found in the town´s central market, where we ate breakfast each day, along with some wholesome lunchtime soups and a rich and spicy pork stew called mondongo.

Sucre is also the location of the world´s largest collection of dinosaur footprints.
Discovered about 20 years ago by cement works employees, you can see about tracks of dozens of beasts traced across the 80 metre-high quarry wall.
Apparently the 5,000 footprints would all have been left on the same day before rain covered them in sediment.
Tectonic movements which created the Andes pushed the flat landscape upwards, meaning it looks like the huge beasts were wandering uphill.
Unfortunately, there is nothing they can do to stop the limescale eroding away but each landslip unveils a fresh set of prints underneath.
You could see casts of the footprints in the information office and the guide explained how they corresponded to different species.
The experience was topped off by cheesy lifesize models of the beasts being situated around the viewing point as dinosaur roars were piped over the PA system. Brilliant.