I've just returned from a trip to make work across landlocked Bolivia travelling across the border to Chile. 10+ years ago I visited my father in his homeland of Bolivia, with him as my tour guide. This was the origin of my project The Bitter Sea. Since then, this work has sat unresolved on the shelf waiting for the right time to be picked up again, and as things aligned and more space and time put between me and the project, it felt like the right time to go back, this time accompanied by good friend and author Laurence Blair. This body of work started as an exploration of Bolivia's loss of its coastline, researching and investigating their maritime history and national relationship to the coastline taken through conquest by Chile in The War of The Pacific. Since my father's death, it has consequently enveloped my personal loss and connection to Bolivia becoming as much an exploration of self as it is that of the national mood. This trip was heavily research based, we visited countless archives, libraries and institutions, following the trail left by the war of two neighbouring countries now focused on diplomacy, peace and prosperity.