Last Tango in Buenos Aires

BOLIVIA - Not All That

What a tough trip it is! But I can't say I wasn't warned. My friends all said 'Why?' when I told them I was going to Bolivia. My partner refused to go saying the people are 'raro'. I put it down to Argentine xenophobia, similar to what we feel for Germans, Americans for Mexicans or the French feel for everybody - when it comes to nations, it's rarely a case of 'love thy neighbour'.

But I had wanted to go for so long, especially to the Salar de Uyuni deep into the south west, surely the last wild place in South America and I needed a border run before November.

Oh how wrong! The people are strange and very unattractive and stare at you as though you have just landed from Mars. On the chicken bus ride from Villazon to Tupiza, I was struck down with some agonizing stomach pain which brought me out in cold sweats and I thought may be appendicitis. I imagined all the chickens and the women in their tea cosy skirts and bowler hats staring at me as I ruptured and carrying on blindly with their knitting as though nothing had happened. I thought I was going to die on a hideous filthy bus at the end of the world.

And then another bus ride from Tupiza to Uyuni - an amazing landscape, a rickety bus swaying up the side of a mountain over 45oometres- but no photos - the windows were too filthy to see through let alone focus a zoom.

And then Uyuni - an ugly cement block town, cold and windy full of cynical people ripping off tourists. They lie! They will tell you anything, even if it could kill you (feeding wheat to a coeliac) they don't care. When our old jalopy of a landcruiser broke down in the desert and after five hours of exposure, we walked back to the 'salt hostel' we had stayed in the night before, the woman told us to get lost, she had to get back to her washing.

Uyuni is very touristed. At every stop, there are another thirty landcruisers containing six or seven squashed underfed foreigners. We called it 'The Uyuni Salt Flat Diet' - it's going to be this year's christmas bestseller, you are guaranteed to lose ten pounds in three days.

Pachamama Festival

Blessings to the Mother Earth. Today marks the start of Pachamama Festival, an Incan rite lasting the month of August, celebrating the gifts from the land and making sacrifice for a good harvest.

Pachamama is celebrated in pueblos all over the

North West where the indigenous rituals are still rigorously observed. Sahumerios are on sale all over Salta City – small packages of sulphur, herbs and incense burned to rid the home of negative spirits, purify and invite in love, money and abundance. By nightfall the city is covered with a smoke thick enough to stir memories of the burning of the soja in the campo last year. It’s a serious occasion though – the Jujuyena woman who explained the tradition to me had tears of emotion in her eyes.

The ritual begins with prayers and offerings but always ends raucously with folkloric music and dancing. There is an all-day celebration on Balcarce, that is mostly geared to tourists but is still fun, as is the one next Saturday on the Plaza. To really appreciate the profound spirituality of this sacred rite, an extended journey must be made (as is customary) into the Calchaqui Valley or to the tiny pueblo at Tolar Grande high in the Altiplano.