Sucre

There's a few treks, bike tours and quad biking to do around Sucre but we did nothing like that. We went to two different pubs in Sucre the Saturday we were there and then used Sunday to recover before moving to La Paz on Monday. The pubs we went to were Joyride and Florin (a Dutch bar). Both pubs were great with Florin seeming more up market but probably having the cheaper beer. Joyride is probably more of a pub/club and also great fun. When in Sucre we stayed at Popayan hostel paying 40bolivianos a night but because we had booked there from our hostel in Potosi we paid 35 for the first two nights.

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Potosi

It took 7 and a half hours to get to Potosi from Uyuni costing 35bolivianos.  The bus was something we hadn't experienced yet, full of locals most standing and by the end of the trip it was so cold.  When we arrived in Potosi at 1am we got a taxi to the Kola den hostel which was full so we had to take the taxi to La Casona hostel which was 35bolivianos for the dorm.
We stayed one night in Potosi where my 2 friends went on the mine tour costing 80bolivianos which was booked through the hostel.  The guys said that the mine tour was not as bad as it had been made out to be in Lonely Planet. They got to work a bit down the mine and also got to drink whiskey and a spirit of 90% alcohol. They also got to play with dynamite "smoking it like a cigar". While the guys were down the mine I walked around Potosi. I walked to one place where there was an observation tower overlooking the entire town and valley but the tower was closed but the views from the hill were still great. Potosi itself is a nice town but the streets seemed to be a maze. We decided to get a taxi from Potosi to Sucre which cost us 40bolivianos each just 10 more than the bus. Ask a taxi driver in Potosi to take you to the xterminal that will cost between 20 and 30bolivianos. Once there you will be swarmed by people trying to sell you the taxi ride to Sucre, be careful of your belongings here. The drive is around 2 and a half hours long compared to 4 hours on the bus, you also get a chance to take a trip on a great drivers road that has great views.

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San Pedro de Atacama to Uyuni

On the first day of the tour we crossed the border into Bolivia which was the easiest crossing we had.  At the border we met our driver Pedro who spoke no English but we were lucky as a Swiss guy who was in the 4 wheel drive with us had good Spanish.  There were 6 of us in total in the car in total, us 3 Irish a girl from Poland and two other guys one from Switzerland and the other from Holland.  On the first day we saw some lagoons and got to stop off at a hot bath which was a pool outside on the side of the road (this was the highlight of the day).  We also passed the highest point on the tour the first day nearly 5000 metres above sea level.  I experienced some altitude sickness but was not badly affected (just some tightness around my forehead).  The scenery was ok but once you've been in a desert for a while its the same thing over and over.  On our first night we stayed a a place up in the mountains where there was just a few buildings, no hot water and it was very cold at night even with my sleeping bag and blankets over me.  On the second day the highlight was the geo thermal vents, we also stopped at a bolder formation and some more lagoons, the second day quickly got boring.  We also got to stop at a train graveyard where old steam locomotives where just left to rust.  The most interesting thing about the second day was that we got to see it snow in the desert.  We arrived in Uyuni that evening where we were staying at a hotel where we were collected for our third day of our tour to the salt flats.  The salt flats were out of this world, they had been recently flooded so we couldn't go the the island on the flats.  It was amazing how even with so much water on the salt how it stayed rock hard.  We had lunch on the salt flats and also got to see an old abandoned hotel on the flats.  The food we got on the tour was good with breakfast, lunch and dinner included.  The area around the flats and Uyuni is basically a garbage dump with trash everywhere.

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San Pedro de Atacama

This place seems like something from a western until you notice all the tourists.  We stayed at hosteling international hostel for 2 nights costing 8000chilleanpesos a night. We probably should have stayed longer in San Pedro because there were a lot of tours to do. We booked our trip to the Bolivian salt flats here costing 60000chileanpesos.  The trip is for 3 days and 2 nights and we will end up in Uyuni.  We also booked a trip to go sand boarding which was brilliant, this cost 15000chileanpesos.  The sand boarding tour was at a dune at death valley and we also got to see the sunset at moon valley.  We also had a short tour at a small salt cave.  We had booked a star gazing tour but that was cancelled because of cloud cover, despite the fact there was minimal clouds in the sky. 

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Repelling in Mendoza

Santiago

Nice city but just used as a stop over before heading north in Chile.  We stayed at the Casa Roja hostel for 8000chileanpesos a night.  The hostel was nice, very big and spacious dorms.  The only bad thing about our stay was that my friend left his bag at the bar out back our first night but he eventually got it back from a cleaning lady.  Our first real day in Santiago we did nothing just booking our bus to San Pedro de Atacama and going to the cinema.  The bus cost us 30300chileanpesos which was kind of cheap for a 20 hour trip.

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Mendoza

Got into Mendoza early in the morning and at the bus station there were the usual guys offering hostels, so we took one that was 40pesos, Ruca Potu.  On first appearance the owner was very friendly but my opinion changed after reading some of the reviews of the hostel on tripadvisor.com.  These reviews were not nice to say the least.  We had no trouble there meeting other people from Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea and England.  I could well believe some of the reviews as even though the owner (Ariel) was friendly he came across as a creep.  His two sons were annoying and food had been taken from the fridge that belonged to the guests.  While in Mendoza we booked a half day wine biking tour for 120pesos and a hike, repel and hot spring trip for the next day costing 180pesos.  The wine tour was good we visited 3 vineyards and sampled 2 wines at each vineyard.  If I was to do it again I would do it cheaper getting public transport and then hiring the bike, I think you'd get to visit more vineyards.  The trek, repel and spa tour was very fun.  The hike was challenging enough, the repel was from 3 different heights (12m, 7m and 40m).  The lunch we got that was included was a sandwich with the worst meat ever but the spa (more of a water park than a spa) was great.  Different pools with varying degrees of warm water and a water slide which was great fun.  We had a good group with us meeting people from Holland, Belgium and Norway plus some of the women were fantastic looking.  We spent 3 good days in Mendoza and are going from there to Santiago de Chile.

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