Arno and Sian with their bikes and a stick of dynamite! Bolivia has been quite explosive actually. I met this German-English couple on their motorbikes at Uyuni, next to the world’s biggest salt lake the Salar de Uyuni in the SW of the country. Arno is into dynamite. With a twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face he produced two sticks with fuses and asked, “Shall we?” “Wow yes where?”, I answered excitedly already laughing. We decided on the train graveyard south of town, out in the desert. Dusk would be best, when tourists were safely back in town. Off we went with his girlfriend Sian and Yuki, a Japanese girl who is riding a 250cc around the world. We advised two locals, stripping metal for a car repair, to take cover. We planted the explosive, lit the metre long fuse, and legged it to join the girls behind a mud wall. With fingers in our ears and mouth open to absorb the pressure wave (Arno’s tips were learnt in the army he said, he knew all about making different sorts of bombs, more like a terrorist I thought), it went boooooom. We rushed out to inspect the damage amid the dust cloud, quite impressive on the 1cm thick steel, and ran off in a circular route back to town. The army barracks are the closest part of town to the train graveyard, and we laughed at the prospect a diplomatic incident involving Japanese, German and English launching an attack on a Bolivian outpost. But the explosion didn’t perk the interest of the army nor police. Anyway, it was an interesting pre-dinner diversion, and quite legal since anything goes in Bolivia.