Friday 13th May:

Another early start, a 5am pick up, and we're in plenty of time for our 13th flight, Santiago to São Paulo. Decided to watch the film " Los 33", the story of the Chilean mine disaster, and as a true story I found it quite moving. The location of the mine, Copiapo, is roughly half way between Calama and Santiago, still in the Atacama desert. The mine was a gold and copper mine, and all the 33 miners were saved after spending 69 days trapped underground.

Thursday 12th May:

And so we come to the end of our South American travels, it was a long time in the Genesis, over 15 months, and will have cost us nearly £30,000, fortunately a large part coming from our belated compensation from the Equitable Life debacle. In fact it has cost us more than we paid for the house we currently live in, albeit that's was over 37 years ago, just don't tell the children, it's their inheritance we're squandering.

For the first time it also feels a bit like it used to, the end of a holiday and having to face up to going back to work. Ahead of us lies the delight of twin granddaughters, two 90th birthday celebrations, the decline of brother Philip, the hosting of two Nepalese visitors, the organisation of the County Show, and getting back on the bike in readiness for another 100 mile Ride London, and if Lee gets his finger out, maybe a five day cycle in Ireland. I've omitted anything to do with rugby, because although Tigers are in the play-offs for the 12th successive year, they play away at Saracens next Saturday, and we don't plan on going; I think it is unlikely they will make the final, and even if they do we have no plans to go to Twickenham this year.

Hopefully this blog will get similar treatment to my Mongolia travelogue, and I will produce another. I'm excited because it seems extracts from the Mongolia travelogue are to be published in Rutland Living, courtesy of Amander Meade, who knows maybe I could become their travel writer, plenty of adventures could have similar treatment.

So what are the highlights after five weeks, so much seen and so much variety, and even causing a little consternation having not been in communication after the Ecuador earthquake. Ecuador was a delight, and I especially enjoyed the time at Hacienda Zuleta, and finding a horse I could ride.

After that the Galapagos, not at all as expected, where were the giant tortoises waiting to greet us as we clambered off the zodiac, where were all the colourful birds, but nonetheless a wonderful time with 14 other likeminded individuals on board the Sea Star Journey with Mira.

Peru had so much to offer, not least meeting up with Robert and Barbara in Lima during their world tour. The condors of the stunning Colca Canyon, flying around in front of us for an hour or so, eventually a flight over the Nasca Lines on the clearest of days, watching the sun rise over the citadel at Macchu Pichu, travelling through the Sacred Valley, the colonial cities of Arequipa and Cusco, and the unforgettable train journey from Cusco to Puno, even finding out that Leicester City had won the league before arriving at our destination.

Then Lake Titicaca, a combination of tacky commercialism and serenely traditional villages and scenery, before crossing into the poorest of countries visited, Bolivia. La Paz was chaotic, with neither pedestrians or traffic willing to give an inch, but where we learnt a lot through our very knowledgable and talkative guide Ivar. The Uyuni Salt Flats has to be up there as a highlight even if the blinding glare did give me the mother of all headaches on the second day. Difficult to describe the feeling of vastness and emptiness of the flats, the largest in the world, and the silliness it inspires in photographers, with our guide and driver taking control of the camera as we struck poses on the salt.

The twelve hour drive across the altiplano into Chile was also memorable not only for the spectacular scenery, but for the numbingly cold wind that blew most of the day, preventing more photography. The lonely Bolivian immigration outpost before the more civilised and expensive Chile. The Alto Atacama hotel, last of a long list of hotels, but for my money the best, the only downside being the dreadful coffee, come back Costa all is forgiven.

We need not forget all the lovely people we have met on the journey, a long list, and with a number of surprises included, Andy & Jill in a Lima hotel (Mongolia), David & Marion in a Cusco restaurant (Istanbul to Dubai cruise), John & Margaret in a Aguas Calientes hotel (friends of Graeme & Pam Boothman) set the challenge of finding us and succeeding, notwithstanding Fred from Perth. One of the joys of our travels is meeting other likeminded people and socialising with them. The 16 people on the Galapagos boat really gelled, Brits, Americans, Aussies and a Swiss couple. Orgi, the young architect from Macedonia, Wolf, Daniel & Susie, the three Germans spending years plus on the road; interestingly we definitely kept up with them, and had a few extras up our sleeves. All provided great company for the two of us travelling on our own itinerary.

Quite a few people we bumped into two or three times as itineraries crossed, even the Japanese mother and daughter on the Puno train who popped up in the Luna Salada, and said hello, they recognised up, rather than the other way round. Who could forget the evening in Huatajata, the only guests in the hotel, outnumbered by the band who did a few numbers and then buggered off. The ride into La Paz was a real eye opener, and I hope the road is eventually finished and some order can be restored to the folk that live along the way.

One observation, not just in South America, but in many less developed countries, is the volume of commerce conducted on the kerbside, on this trip more so in Bolivia, difficult to walk the street without falling over the ladies in their multiple skirts and bowler hats, selling everything from trinkets, to blankets, to llama foetuses. The train to Puno as it passed, literally, through the market in the contraband town of Juliaca.

Travel went fine today and the flight from Calamari arrived in Santiago in time. Our guide recommended a restaurant close to our hotel, where we ate virtually as soon as we arrived, Bocanariz, more a wine bar with food to compliment, as opposed to a restaurant with wine to compliment.

Wednesday 11th May:

Our last day of touring, tomorrow we start the long journey home, but today a couple of tours organised through the hotel. A morning jaunt to see some petroglyphs, or alternatively, ancient graffiti. The morning clears up and at last we can see the spectacular colours of the desert, even better at the second venue of the morning tour, Rainbow Valley. The strata and the range of colours are beautiful, from the green of copper and chlorides through to the deep reds. A very pleasant stroll snapping away. Our companions for the tour are Strat and Catherine from Sydney, Australia, inveterate travellers but who have never been to the UK, wow!

A lazy lunch at a very empty hotel, it is the low season here after all, and then an afternoon tour again with the Aussies but also with newlyweds from Lomdon, Susie and Daniel. A short stop in a relatively wealthy village named Tocanau, wealthy as many of the men work in mining, mainly lithium which is mined at the southern end of the Salar de Atacama. And then on to the Salar to see the flamingoes and the sunset. Both are great, there are a lot of flamingoes, but just too far away to get any really good shots, and the sunset is good, but not anywhere near last night's surreal experience.

On our way to the Salar we pass Alma, the international astronomical research station out in the Atacama due to the clear skies, low humidity and elevation, a great place to gaze at the stars with giant telescopes. Margarite told us yesterday that they are not allowed alcohol up there and do long stints there, some calling it Almatraz!

The Salar is very different to Uyuij's very flat surface, this one in the Atacama being just the opposite, a very rough, almost ploughed looking surface with a white salt crust covering the entire area. There are several lagoons where the flamingoes congregate, but the pathways provided don't reach near enough.

Back to hotel for one last Pisco Sour and dinner, very tasty, but I just wonder how much our bill is going to be here, getting in for £500 I suspect, a lovely but very expensive hotel.

Tuesday 10th May:

A great night's sleep in this wonderful hotel, the Alto Atacama, I think it may be the best one of the whole trip. Comfortably large room, large bed, crisp linen, great shower, beautiful views, good food and wonderful staff, and top Pisco Sours as well, what more is necessary.

A relaxed start, and Lily gets stuck into Travel Art, our agent in Chile in order to establish our itinerary, it comes eventually, but not after Lily staying in the phone saying, I'm staying on the phone until you send the email, and I receive it, bless her, wonderful.

And so we are being collected at 3pm for a trip to the Valley of the Moon, but beforehand we take the hotel shuttle into San Pedro de Atacama, the town about three kilometres away. We ask the driver, with some difficulty to collect us in "una hora", or one hour in English. The town is definitely backpacker land, and there is no one else that looks like us, I.e. old and grey. The town is comprised of hostels, bars and restaurants, and a thousand tour agencies all competing with one another to take  people into the desert.

After a pleasant coffee in the town square we wander back to our meeting point for the shuttle at 12.30pm. At 12.45pm we realise that he is not coming and has not understood the time we thought we had agreed. A taxi wants too much money so we start walking, which doesn't go down too well with Lorna. I am pretty sure about the directions, and we are strolling along, not quite sure what to do for the best, when the shuttle comes into view. I lay down in front of him and it's nearly 13.10pm, so even if he thought we meant 1pm, he would have been fifteen minutes late. Lorna is very unhappy, and lets him know, and also lets Pascal, the hotel Operations Manager know as well when we eventually get back. It's a misunderstanding I say.......

The afternoon gets off to an even worse start after Margarite, our Russian, English speaking guide in Chile takes us to the first stop of the tour. You need a torch, and the right clothing and footwear she explains, which goes down like a lead balloon with Lorna, and the shit really hits the fan when she explains that the walk into the salt cave is not suitable for "old" people. By the time we get back to the car, having foreshortened the cave walk, Lorna is hissing, and poor Margarite can't say right for saying wrong. In the end she says she said, "not suitable for ALL people", and I accept that that is what she could have said with her Russian pronounced English.

Lorna calls off a walk on sand and rock to the top of a large sand dune, saying that we have received no information about this tour, and although not the responsibility of the local agent, yes the tour had been sub-contracted by Travel Art, they should at least have provided torches.....

I scale the dune with Margarite and learn a little more about her. Unfortunately it's a cloudy day, and the stunning scenery is not at it's best, missing the light and shade that would accentuate it. Margarite is a geological and hydrological engineer from Rostov on the Don in Southern Russia, and gave up a desk job to travel, and is clearly fascinated by the geology of the Atacama.

Margarite asks me if I've been with Lorna all my life, no just the last 44 years I reply. She is amazed that people can stay together that long, her father disappeared when she was four, after five years of marriage. We chat quite a lot about this on our walk up the dune and also back in the car with Lorna, I hadn't realised we would be called on as marriage guidance counsellors on this trip. Margarite has a boyfriend, he's Chilean, but she isn't keen on marriage for obvious reasons, at 25 years old we wonder what she will do with her life after her travels.

We agree with Lorna that we will finish the tour, which is intended to end watching the sun set and the colours of the desert change as the sun goes down. Well the chances of a sunset with all the heavy cloud this afternoon seem slim to non-existent. We visit a couple more salty places and then drive up to the sunset view point. We'll probably the most fantastic sunset I've ever seen, starting in the west, even though we haven't seen the sun all afternoon, and then to everyone's amazement the volcanoes of the Andes in the east start to glow with an orange band, before lighting up completely in an orange aura, absolutely stunning. And then the sunset continues in the west as yellow turns to orange, turns to red, turns to violet, turns to purple......the afternoon is saved and we go back to the hotel happy bunnies. I had taken my tripod, and stood there snapping away.

Monday 9th May:

The joys of travelling with a quintessentially English lady. Whilst everyone else chooses brands such as Marmut, Rohan, Rab, The North Face, Mountain Equipment in which to travel the world, no one does it quite like Lorna. Kaleidoscope, and M&S are the preferred brands for this lady, and both locals and other travellers gaze in envy and shock respectively as Lorna breezes by. Out of over 2,000 people visiting Macchu Pichu, there was only one skirt to be seen, every other lady in trousers. When hiking a 5,000 meter volcano yesterday, the gasps were clearly audible when Lorna came into view, skirt rippling in the breeze, definitely one of a kind!

This was my post on Facebook as a tribute to my beautiful wife, after contemplating her achievements on this trip. Clad in her arresting skirts and armed with one or two trekking poles she has reached places where she didn't expect to reach, bravo.

Today has been one of the most scenic days drive I can remember, although with quite a lot of cloud cover and a bitingly cold wind across the Bolivian altiplano. The range of colours, the light and shade created by the clouds and the diversity of the terrain has been fantastic. Getting out and taking photographs has been challenging, as was having an alfresco lunch in the wind at 4,900 metres. Slightly disappointed we did not see more flamingoes and that the cold prevented us speanding more time photographing the ones we did see at Laguna Colorada.

The quick stroll through the geothermal area got some good images but could have got more with more time. We did set off later than planned to ensure that we got breakfast, 7.30am to be precise, and arrived at the fabulous Alto Atacama at 6.30pm, having added an hour back, now only four hours behind the UK.

We arrived at a very lonely Bolivian border post at 4.30pm to get our passports stamped, and to swap vehicles. Our pick up was clearly not our guide but just transport to the hotel in Chile via Chilean immigration. He spoke only "survivor" English by his own admission and left us with no details of further contacts.

It also meant that Eusebio and Cecilio had to do the return journey back to Uyuni, immediately after dropping us, probably a midnight arrival. Hopefully their good tips will be reward for a tough day's driving, mostly off-road. I gave Cecilio three of my last four 50B notes (£15), and Eusebio one 50B note plus $20, just a little bit more, but it was the driving that was the tough assignment today.

The first thing to note is that it is at least twice as expensive in Chile as in Bolivia, dinner costing around £55 for the two of us, could have had the all inclusive for £40 per head, all wine and drinks included if you want to drink that much that is.

Beautiful starry night and tried to get some night sky photographs, but too much light pollution to be successful.

Sunday 8th May:

A wholesome breakfast I decide, Lorna is not so sure. A 10am start means a leisurely start to the day and then off into the salt flats. But first a quick detour to visit the Mummies of Kaka. A number of mummified skeletons from circa 3,000 years ago, so very definitely pre-Inca. They are located in a cave and are visited mainly by tourists, but pre-tourist would have been visited by friends and relatives giving offerings of money, food, drink etc, on the basis that the dead could help the living get what they wished for.

And so we set off across the salt to visit  the Thunupa volcano, 90 minutes drive away. It's so small to start with that it seems it could be climbed in five to ten minutes. As we get closer Thunupa looks like a real volcano and Eusebio tells us it is over 5,000 metres, so 1,300 metres  and therefore more of a climb than Scafell Pike.

The plan is to drive up from the small village at the end he of the salt lake, dismount, and hike for 20 minutes or so to another cave containing more mummified remains. Lorna takes her pole and becomes a Trekker, and by the time we start our return she is at 2.3 blood sugar, but it's not a drama and we get back safely to the car before an injection, only the third of the trip so far, pretty good.

The cave has six mummies, and three are of royal descent, which is determined by the ceramic pottery beside them. Again this cave is more for tourists, but it's incredible to believe these bodies have lain here for over 3,000 years. They are a little worse for wear, but clothing and hair still exists, testament to the very low humidity here.

Lunch today is a picnic on the surface of the salt lake, but definitely nor haute cuisine. Stale bread, plastic ham and cheese, a tin of sweet corn, a tin of dice cold vegetables and some dry crackers. As well, by the end my head is thumping and it takes a few hours before it's clear again. We do manage a few more silly pictures before making it back to the hotel.

But it is clear enough to take the camera and tripod for another spectacular sunset, and I also find use for the time lapse feature on the brilliant little Panasonic camera.

Dinner is another international affair as we join three Germans, Wolf, Daniel and Susie.  Daniel and Susie have been travelling around the world for newly two years, and met Wolf in Patagonia, joined forces and have reached Uyuni. Wolf drives his own Land Rover Defender, and they wild camp as well as stay in hotels. Last night they had camped out on the salt, and taken a pretty mean picture of the stars above. Wolf has had his own internet businesses, and will return after finishing in Colombia and freighting his Defender home. Daniel and Susie a e also returning very soon, and I joke it will be time to get a job, Daniel does not look enthusiastic.

Saturday 7th May:

Just a week to go now, but hopefully finishing on a high as we head off to Uyuni. We leave from the highest international airport in the world, with the longest runway. The length is necessary to enable planes a higher take off speed in order to get the required lift in the thin air at 4,100 metres. Ivar gets us checked in at the airport and we're away early for the 50 minute flight. The great white expanse of the Salar de Uyuni dominates one side of the plane as we descend for landing.

We are collected by Eusebio our guide for the two days here, in fact he will accompany us to the Chilean border day after tomorrow. We leave straight away for our tour across the flats. I have trouble deciding which glasses to wear and settle on the polaroids in the car and my normal glasses outside. The whiteness is blinding, just like that experienced by skiers I'm sure.

We visit the house of one of many families who make a living from extracting and refining salt, each an individual concern, would have seemed more probable to have a cooperative. I buy a small bag of salt for B$1, not sure if it will make it home.

Then a tacky salt museum where there are a number of sculptures hewn from salt, which is much harder than I expected, rock hard in fact, not so difficult now to imagine a hotel built entirely from salt. Forty five minutes later we're at Incahausi Island, an island in the middle of the salt lake. It's covered with giant cactus and is like nothing I've ever seen before. I have the llama fillet, Lorna the llama burger, a much better choice, which I finish for her.

Eusebio is great fun and well used to taking the wacky photographs that everyone does our here on the salt flats. We complete a series and some are pretty good, especially after a little tweaking when we get back home.

We make for our hotel for the next two nights, the Luna Salada, the salt hotel, a large place made entirely from salt. It's fantastic with not only rooms and suites, which we somehow acquire, but with many beautifully decorated seating areas. It seems that our reservation did not make it to the hotel and Eusebio has to make a call to his office to confirm things. Anyway we end up with a double bed room suite, sadly the furthest room from the reception, and quite a trek to the dining room.

The hotel has definitely not been landscaped from the outside, but most definitely has on the inside, beautiful areas with very decorative soft furnishings, and loose salt on all the floors.

Eusebio and the driver have waited all afternoon for us for our sunset drive which is short, just back out on the salt, good job we left at 5.45pm and not 6pm or we would have missed it. The clouds makes for a memorable sunset with colours going from light yellow to crimson and so we take some more wacky pictures. I show Eusebio the 4K function on the camera and then get them to capture me leaping, and get some fun images, we must try this again in sunlight tomorrow.

After Lorna's prompt about sundowners, Eusebio has brought a bottle of Bolivian Merlot, and very tasty it is too. Complimenting this is a blanket and bag for us to keep, how thoughtful.

We join the rest of the guests, although the hotel is far from full, for a buffet dinner, one of the better ones I thought. We also invite Orgi to join us, we had passed him walking up the drive as we arrived earlier. Originally from Macedonia, and now working as an architect in Lubljana, Slovenia, he is between jobs and taking four weeks solo travel in South America, and by the sound of it having a great time.

We finish the evening in front of a large log fire, really cosy!