Bolivia

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Part two of the big blog day. All of Bolivia. You might want a cup of tea and a digestive for this one as it will probably be quite long. I feel Bolivia is proof of Gods existence, because only a drunken drugged up deity could conjur up a country as topologically retarted as Bolivia. Humans shouldn´t live there. One third of it is in horribly high altitude, the other third is desert and the last third is rainforest. This said Bolivia is probably the best country in South America for backpackers and will definitely be visited by me again. It chews you up and spits you out but all you want to do is go back for seconds as this is a mad crazy and exhilirating country. Also it bare cheap.

We arrived in Bolivia at about 7 in the morning, dazed by a terrible bus journey from Salta to the border town La Quiaca. We got off the bus in shorts t shirts and sandals to realise that La Quiaca is at about 3000 metres so it was a lot colder then we thought especially at 6 in the morning. We wondered around for a bit trying to find the border, we though we would follow the crowds, only to realise that they were leading us to what I thought was a slum (it turned out to be the town La Quiaca). From here we managed to get directions to the Argentinian border. We looked over and saw Villazon, Bolivia. This is when we knew we were in Bolivia. Firstly we noted that they don´t have roads, just mud paths and secondly we realised how much we stuck out. We were the only gringos around and we looked considerably different from the Villazon Bolivians. We were bombared by people who wanted to give them our pesos in exchange for bolivianos but we had been warned by a veteran traveller that most of the notes they give you would be fake so we should go to a particular exchange place. We got our Bolivianos (a lot of Bolivianos) and began walking to try and find the train station in what was now blazing sunshine (when the sun rises from behind the mountains you get hot!). There is one passenger train in Bolivia which goes from Villazon to Oruro it leaves every two days and travels at an absolute snails pace. We opted for the train over the bus as it was cheaper and apparently more comfortable. We were heading to Uyuni and bought our tickets for about 5 pounds and then had 8 hours to kill in Villazon. We managed to find an arcade which had no games more recent than 1991 and was packed full of bright eyes Villazonian kids. Spent about half an hour there playing some of the worst games ever and then went in search of food. We found a pizza place which clearly had a different take on pizza then we did. Now before I continue I need to highlight the Bolivian food issues. Everything in Bolivia tastes like absolute dog shit, it is the WORST food, even the friendly snack empanadas are disgusting, they make the worst pizza, they undercook chips so much that you are basically eating raw potatoes. The only culinary skills they have is in cooking plain rice and llama. Good lord the food is bad, I mean really quite terrible. Probably explains why we all got ill in Bolivia. Anyways back to the story. We had our god awful pizza which had a cake like base and then went to get our train to Uyuni.

The train journey was probably the best train journey I will ever take in my life. Not because of the Bolivian rock panpipe music that was on a loop for 2 hours or because we had to shut the windows or we would be chocked by dust (pretty annoying in 30 plus degree heat) but because we got weave through the andes for 8 hours seeing some breathtaking mountains and canyons. It was pretty amazing, like all of Bolivia you get the stark realisation that everything man made here is pretty shit but everything natural is damn amazing! We arrived in Uyuni at about 11 o clock pm extremely tired as we had not stopped travelling since we left salta at 8 o clock the previous day. We grabbed our bags from the train and looked for a taxi to get us to the hostel we had booked (at this point we had not realised how tiny Uyuni ws). We got our first experience of Bolivian taxi bumpage in the first taxi we got. He took us to our hostel after a 15 minute drive (so it felt like we had got all of our moneys worth) only to realise he had just driven around Uyuni 3 times before dropping us off. You could almost see the train station from where we were staying. We booked into our hostel and immediately got offered a tour to the Uyuni salt flats (the reason we had descended upon this godforsaken place). Before I talk about the salt flats I will tell you a little about Uyuni. The place has a rather sad history, it was built in the late 1800s as a hub for train transport across Bolivia. The Bolivian government had the hope of linking Uyuni to Potosi, Cochabamba and La Paz. Unfortunately corruption and later war with Paraguay (which drained Bolivia of a lot of its capital) meant that Uyuni became a pretty much abandoned place. It now links with no other city apart from Oruro. It is in the middle of no where and it a desterted town, the only thing keeping it alive is the incredible Salar de Uyuni which are the largest salt flats in the world. You will find in Uyuni pretty much no other businesses apart from those directly linked with the salt flats.

We booked a two day tour to visit the Salar de Uyuni and were met by a man in a jeep at 10 am called Tito. Tito was a pretty cool guy who had been doing tours to the salt flats for 5 years and liked his reggaeton. We met up with four Isrealis who were on our tour who were alright (for Isrealis) but still tremendously annoying (I will not start my Isrealis rants, it will take up too much time). Our first stop was the "train cemetary". It was basically the remnants of the old train lines that would have transported salt and other minerals from around Uyuni to the rest of Bolivia and to Argentina. It was quite sad to see the history of Bolivia decaying in front of you, the train cemetary obviously was never maintained by anyone despite its importance to the history of Bolivia. Despite this, the old trains were bloody good fun to climb on! I liked pretending to be the train conductor. We then continued on our journey and visited a small village outside the salt flats. Here Dom bought the first of his ridiculous hats and we saw the unofficial biggest salt Llama in the world which was unsuprisingly unimpressive. We then drove into the salt flats and were confronted with miles of nothingness. It was like a desert of salt, endless wet salt, for miles salt. To conclude there was lots of salt and we all got to take funny photos of us and the salt. Although in all seriousness it was quite amazing, it looked like untouched snow and we all know how cool untouched snow looks. After about and hour playing with salt and the like we moved on to "fish island" it is a small patch of land in the middle of the salt flats which looks widly out of place. It was inhabited solely by cactus and when you climbed to the top you got some pretty incredible views of the salt flats and the mountains that line the horizon. We moved swiftly on to where we would be staying for the night, a small building made entirely out of salt, with salt tables and salt chairs. This was not just a novelty for tourists, all the buildings around the salt flats are made out of salt as it is a cheap easily sourced building material. After our nights stay in the salt shack we moved on at about 6am to go visit the surrounding mountains and volcanoes. Day two of the tour was a bit drab and not nearly as fun as the first. We saw a few volcanoes from a far, we saw flamingos (which was pretty cool despite the Isrealis insistence on throwing rocks at them to make for a better photo) and drove through some pretty trecherous terrain. On our way back we got quite a shock. We were driving back to Uyuni on classic shitty Bolivian roads when we saw a jeep similar to ours overturned on the side of the road. They had been pushed of the road by an on coming lorry. It was pretty harrowing as the people in jeep were just the same us, gringos on tour. We actually knew two of the girls in the jeep, we had briefly met them in B.A. It was a sour end to otherwise brilliant tour. We arrived back in Uyuni safe an sound, I ate some fried llama and we drank the worst beer of all time then made our way by bus to Potosi.

Bus rides in Bolivia have achieved somewhat celebrity status amongst backpackers in South America. Everyone has a horror story such as our friend who was going from Cuzco to La Paz and 5 hours from La Paz was told to get off and hitchhike, or another friend who had to get off in the middle of the night and push his bus before being told to hitchhike. Luckily we didn´t have many troubles on the buses, this is probably because we didn´t do any journeys longer then 12 hours in Bolivia so we didn´t have much time for our buses to fuck up. Our journey from Uyuni from Potosi was nevertheless pretty horrible. It was like having your back beaten up by a broken massage chair as we weaved around the mountains on a single lane road. It was rather disconcerting to see our bus driver air a cross when he turned corners, I personally did not share hit faith that our bus would make it if we prayed. The spirituality of Bolivians in particular is pretty intense, they seem a lot happier to rely on pachamama and God then science. We arrived in Potosi after a pretty terrifying bus journey at about 4 in the afternoon and made our way to the only hostel in the city. We booked our mine tour which turned out to be one of the best in South America. In eager anticipation of our tour the next day we had a walk around the smallish town that used to be the most important city in the world. At its height in the 1600s its population exceeded that of Paris and was almost as large as London (London by the 1620s was the biggest population in Western Europe, only Istanbul the jewel of the Byzantium empire was bigger). The cities oppulence is entirely because of Cerro Rico (Rich Hill). The town was the brainchild of the Spanish conquistadors, the native population laughed at the Spanish thinking them crazy for wanting to build a city at 4,200 metres altitude (Potosi is the highest city in the world). After its construction around 80,000 slaves from Africa were brought to Bolivia, the only country in South America to have more slaves was Brazil, thousands died quickly from exhaustion finding the altitude and the hours unbearably. The height of the Spanish cruelty saw some people forced to work 48 hours none stop only with coca leaves as a break. This is even more shocking when you see the conditions of the mines, they are shocking and you will find no man more spiritual in Bolivia then the miners of Potosi who put their lifes in the hands of the miners guardian angel who they feed 96% alcohol and cigarrettes to keep him appeased. You would have no idea that Potosi of the modern day was ever important, it is a dilapidated town with glimpses of its past. Its city centre has a pretty interesting church but it is hard to imagine how this town housed hundreds of thousands of people and how it became the economic engine of the Spanish empire. After our little mosey around Potosi we tried some "tradition Bolivian food" which was again a culinary abortion. We then went to a Bolivian bar were we had some more awful beer and listen to Pink Floyd which was rather surreal before going to bed which proved to be a mighty task as I couldn´t really breath because the air was so thin.

We got up bright an early to visit Cerro Rico, I was pretty damn excited and at this point it was my highlight of the trip simply because I am a history neek so I found it fascinating to see the mines which are pretty much unchanged since they were first mined in the 16th century. We were taken by our guide to a market near the mines, he told us we should buy presents for the miners who were in turn very grateful. I bought them coca leafs, the fuel of the mines, Dom bought apples for the miners children and Hal bought dynamite so they could blow some shit up. We clambered to the top of the mountain, out of breath no doubt, to visit one of the many mines. We saw the miners whose cheeks were bloated by the amount of coca leafs shoved in there. They were happy to receive us and grateful for the coca leafs. The life of a miner is rough, the life expectancy dwindles around 40 and most miners have about 10 years in the mines approximentaly before they die of miners lung. It cannot be stressed how terrible the conditions of the mines are. We stepped into the pitch black abyss which had wet walls and gave us a bad back as we had to crouch for most of the tour. Our guide explained to us that the main cause of death in the mines is from poisnous gas or from misjudged dynamite explosions. We wondered down the mine and stopped our tour guide instructed us to give us to give him the dynamite. He set up the fuse which Dom lit and we ran like fuckers. The bang was pretty crazy, it sent a wave through our bones and the noise was deafening. It was bloody cool, kinda crazy. The tour guide instructed me to lead us back to the entrance of the mine, reminding me that one wrong turning we could all be dead. The mines have lots of different routes so I was pretty scared but he reminded us that he wasnt going to let us die. We got out of the mine and were blinded by the sun, an hour in the mine and I had never been happier to see daylight. I am truly shocked how people work there for 18 hour shifts. We started making our way back to the local bus to get home. We were stopped by a few Bolivians who were drinking beer, they held up a can and invited me Dom Hal and our guide for a drink. Being true Brits we never would refuse free beer, even if it was Potosinia the worst of the Bolivian beers. They were having drinks to celebrate one of the girls birthdays who was 28 that day. They seemed amused by our British awkwardness and kept asking us the standard questions like "Do you have a girlfriend?" and "What football team do you support?". After a morning beer we headed back down to Potosi after a pretty incredible tour. We had some more awful food, probably the worst of South America, Dom was particularly dissapointed by the pizza. I had a undercooked hot dog in stale bread it was god damn disgraceful. We then headed to La Paz to meet our Aussie friends who we were not going to see again as Ash was going back to Aus and Mary was going to B.A. for a month.

The bus journey to La Paz again was eventful. We arrived at Potosi bus station and all laughed. It was an incredibly well built bus station, it was a giant glass dome and I have never seen a building more out of place. Next to this futuristic bus station was slum housing made out of breeze blocks and tin roofs. Yet the bus station was the best in South America. This just confirms how crazy Bolivia is, it never ceases to suprise you. I couldn´t help but ask the question why does Potosi have such a nice station yet none of Bolivia have any real roads? Inside the station we heard the calls of the local women who shout the destinations of the bus companies they work for. In a giant glass domed building it just sounded like ghosts talking to you. We jumped on the bus and I quickly succomed to altitude sickness. Dom grabbed a bag, I threw up, the Bolivian lady next to me laughed reminding me that we were very high. We arrived in La Paz 5 in the morning and made our way to Loki...the first Loki we would see. Let me tell you about Loki. Loki is the devil, you love it but you know you shouldn´t. If you have seen the "Gap Yah" on youtube then Loki is just all those people, getting lashed, enjoying cheap Bolivian coke and going Route 36. Loki is the most effectively run business in South America, they know exactly what they are doing. They have happy hours, the have late check outs, they have cheap food and they have damn good beds. Everything the South American wasteman wants, Loki has. We arrived in La Paz, slept and were totally clueless to how messed up this city would be. After 8 days, me, Hal and Dom will all leave seriously ill. When you walk down La Paz streets you notice three things, firstly the women, the majority of the women in La Paz walk with bowler hats on, it looks pretty out of place in a city of abject poverty, secondly is the shoe shine boys, every 10 metres (not an exagerration) you will see a man who offers to shine your shoes. They wear balaclavers and a blue uniform and it is one of the strangest elements of La Paz how many of them there are (a reflection of the poverty in Bolivia) the last notably element of La Paz is the amount of street business and the extent of the unofficial economy. Bolivia is pretty close to a failed state, everyone seems to employ themselves. You can buy anything from the streets of La Paz, batteries, suits, headphones, guitairs. If you walk around long enough you will find what you want. The city is just a giant market place. You can gauge the city from 10 minutes of walking around, it is certainly the most unique capital city I have ever seen. We started our tour at San Francisco church this is the largest church in La Paz. In South America standards it is pretty average, Cuenca, Arequipa, Cuzco all have far more impressive catredrals, nevertheless it still pretty bad ass. We then wondered up the witches market. I learned to love this place, you can just wonder around look at the colourful nik naks. We headed back to Loki to check in and I don´t really remember the rest of La Paz...jokes.

We arrived in La Paz with the intention of seeing two of our friends which we had first met in Sao Paolo, coincidently we bumped into two other people who we were going to meet in Cuzco who had enjoyed La Paz so much they had stayed an extra couple of days. We all were on a big night out and there is no better place to do it then Loki La Paz. We started the night pretty chilled, a few bad Bolivian beers, then moved onto the gin, then onto the jagerbombs and then we wondered off to some bolivian club. La Paz clubs are hilarious, they tend to be like house parties in some dingy place with terrible music. Black Eyed Peas, David Guetta pump out their soundsystems on repeat while dodgy Bolivian 4ft men come on to your friends. We then moved on to Route 36 probably the wierdest place I have been and definitely a "gap yah" must. It is infamous amongst travellers so I had to see it for myself. Route 36 is a Bolivian coke bar reserved entirely for gringos. Its where the Eton boys can get overpriced terrible coke but still look cool to their friends. So we arrived at route 36 all 7 of us crammed into one taxi (La Paz taxi drivers are the dodgiest people in South America). When you arrive you have to bang on a metal shutter and then some dazed probably coked up Bolivian guy opens the door and ushers you in. Before you get offered a drink, you get offered coke, it isn´t quite like Holland where they have menus for the draw you want but there are different strains and varieties. Personally I opted out that night, rather messed up from the earlier antics, I choose to just bun draws and then fell asleep before being woken up by this coked up Australian chatting shit. 8 o clock in the morning I think we were on calling it quits we saw two of our friends we had met some time before I think B.A. and had a quick chat. They were staying at Loki too. 3 o clock pm we saw them stumble in...they had been in Route 36 racking up lines since 5am, only leaving to get money out. This is the grim world of the La Paz traveller, it is a messy city but damn fun none the less.

Taking it easy after a monster night we stumbled into Loki bar ready to get on it. We got talking to these two northern girls who shared our hate for "gappers". At this point Loki was in a particularly bad position, 30 privately educated 18 year girls had just arrived in a big group on their gap yah. We had the displeasure of meeting 10 of them in Florianopolis. Most people were pissed off with their antics and Loki got a whole lot better when they left but we bonded with our northern friends over our love for England and hate for gappers despite being gappers. Nevertheless we were going to try the La Paz club scene again, all five of us jumped into a taxi and tried to go to a place called Club Dos. Taxi driver was like sure gringos I got yo back, he didn´t he dropped us off in the middle of nowhere pointing saying yer just there. We realised our bumpage but were still determined to get a drink. We saw a bar called "Love City" and went in trying to get a beer. Love City was a Bolivian kareoke bar, in Bolivia they take kareoke really seriously I remember in Potosi all you could do in the night was kareoke but we opted out. Love city was hilarious, it was Bolivians really trying quite hard and then us Brits getting up laughing and singing like foxs howling. We had a jokes time however this was the start of the end of La Paz for me, my stomach by this point was absolutely destroyed. For the next 6 days I was bed bound, and I didn´t fully recover for another 3 weeks until after the Inca Trail. After five days of being in bed we called in the doctor, I knew things were bad when I had to miss the second half of the Arsenal game because I couldn´t sit in a chair for more then 45 minutes without being in agonising pain.

While I was ill we had a lovely little suprise. Word on street that some next neeks from London were in La Paz town. Eliana, Chiara, Esther, Sean, Ben, Matthew and Ruby descended on Loki and for two nights we had a jokes time. Unfortunately at this point I was still ill so I couldn´t enjoy the nights out but still by that point I could sit in a bar and drink water so I was there for pre-lash. It was nice to see our London friends, especially as in La Paz I was feeling particularly homesick, missing good cheese, bacon, ale and Call of Duty.

From La Paz me Dom Hal as well as Esther and Chiara headed to Copacabana near the border of Bolivia. We were to have a little day trip to Lake Titicaca before going our seperate ways, the girls were off to Cuzco while we were off to Arequipa in the South of Peru. Again the bus journey was slightly eventful, we arrived at a big lake (not Titicaca) and were told to get off the bus. Here we saw our giant coach with all our stuff be floated across the lake on large planks of wood while we got a boat to the other side. Again Bolivia never fails to suprise you. Lake Titicaca was interesting but not as impressive as I thought it would be, it is after all just a large body of water. We got our boat to the North part of Isla del Sol with the intention of walking to the south side (if memory serves Chiara found this walk particularly taxing). After a pleasant walk we arrived at the south side of the island and hopped back on the boat to Copacabana. All I remember of the town of Copacabana is how awful the food was, no doubt the worst yet in Bolivia (apart from maybe Potosi). The first night we went to this restaurant which had a sloping floor, after an average meal I remember Dom throwing up no suprise really. Our second night in Copacabana we had the worst food ever and the worst ice tea ever. I don´t know why we thought getting a jug of ice tea was a good idea in Bolivia but we thought what the heck. It turned out to be tepid massively oversugared tea which tasted terrible. I thought it was a fitting way to end Bolivia, you couldn´t help but laugh. We left Bolivia on an overbooked coach to head to Puno in Peru before getting on another coach to Arequipa.

Bolivia was no doubt one of the most interesting, hilarious and at times fucking annoying country. Maybe its something in the altitude which has made the people so funny, welcoming and a bit crazy. I found there was something in the hardship of travelling around this place so much fun, it wasn´t like Argetina where everything was easy, you actually had to try here. This is why up until now Bolivia has been my favourite country (Peru would have been if it wasn´t for the hoards of American tourists and shit people) Ecuador is at the moment briskly overtaking just because it has a coast (stupid Bolivia). Hope that wasn´t too long, I actually had a lot more to say!


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Us repping it on the Bolivia/Argentina border

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Chiara being a fassy and making us take another break

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Having fun on the salt flats

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Big night out!

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