Koalas in Bolivia?
What do you do when you get off a night bus in a chilly Bolivian city at 5am when there are no couchsurfers in town? You rely on your guidebook and book into the only place that it says isn’t freezing...
View ArticleDown with the prisoners in La Paz
Bolivia’s San Pedro Prison is back in business. In the tourist business, that is. It’s never really been out of every other sort of business. Behind the heavy concrete exterior, it operates its own...
View ArticleWhere are Uruguay and Paraguay? Don’t ask Brazil
Everybody needs good neighbours, right? Perhaps someone ought to mention this to Brazil; they seem to have forgotten theirs. On a map released to primary school children in Sao Paulo, they’ve committed...
View ArticleSan Pedro prison closes to tourism
News from Bolivia: San Pedro Prison has closed its doors to tourism. It was only a matter of time. As I reported in the Guardian in January, the prison was allowing up to 50 backpackers enter through...
View ArticleLatin America at the Oscars 2011
It’s been a year since Argentina walked away – to many people’s surprise – with the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for El Secreto de Sus Ojos, staring the country’s biggest sex symbol (in my...
View ArticleBolivia’s Death Road is no joke
All across Bolivia you see backpackers wearing their “I survived the Death Road” T-shirts. It refers to a mountain biking trip you can take down the terrifying Yungas Road, nicknamed El Camino de la...
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