Un-Boliviable

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Just before I get going with this one, a couple of people have said they didn´t realize I had put up a blog about my time in the Canyon - I did - a reaaaallly long one, so check the previous entry if you want to read about that! (And you definitly should!).

After I arrived back in Arequipa from Colca, I went for a meal with some French people (standard), one of whom was a proffessional food taster. This, I think, is a pretty cool job. The next day I caught a night bus to Puno, on the shores of lake Titicaca. After haggling with the bus company, I bought a first class ticket for the price of a standard class one, and embarked at around 22 30. Now the downside of this was that the journewy was only 6 hours, so I arrived at Puno in the dark, where I waited for an hour or two until it was light. The Israeli´s I had bumped into on a few occassions before were doing a similar thing, and they reccomended a hostal so stayed there. Ice still coated everything in the fridged air, and we went for a wonder around for breakfast. I then bumped into the French people I had stayed with at my first foray into Arequipa, and they said that the lake was very touristy and they wouldn´t recommend staying there for long.

With this in mind, I never the less set off for a boat trip to the Uros Islands; floating islands made entierly of tortorta reeds, approximatly 20mx20m with around half a dozen ´houses´ on them. With perhaps 20-30 of these rafts, it was almost an entier floating town! The boat out there chugged along, at a pace not much faster than a stroll, and after half an hour the Uros came into view. At first I could not really understand what I was seeing, and then the bobbing islands came into focus and I was very much taken aback! Everything was made from these reeds, and the rikety boats ferried people between the rafts. It was very surreal, on a level Dali would have loved. But it was also very bitter sweet as these old people and their archaic way of life had been entierly corruptyed by tourism. Almost everything that they did was geared towards extracting the white doller, and it polluted the place as a film of oil does on water, causing the beautiful place to have a slightly nauseating quality. After that I decided to leave, as Puno itself was very uninspiring and the lake, whilst beautiful, held little more attraction for me.

That evening, with some more French people, I went to a resturant. As with most resturants in Peru, they offered a set menu, consisting of a soup and a main course. The weird thing was that most of the items on the main menu were around 14 soles (around 3 pounds 50), but the set menu was only 3 soles. The French ordered meat from the main menu, but after enquiring if the set menu was with meat, and having a posative affirmation, i decided to risk that. The soup was average, but the pisco sour (lime, brown sugar, white brandy - pisco, and egg whites) was great. My main course arrived. I could tell imidiatly it was slices of heart - the gaping arteries and valves gave it away. Now, not one to shy away from food, I dutifully ate it. heart is, actually very tasty. Slightly chewy, especially the arteries (which I soon established were best left alone), but not at all unpleasent. Unlike brain, I would happily eat heart again, as it could be described as lovely.... (pun intended).

The next day I set out at 6 30 to get the bus to either Copacabana or La Paz, depending on how I felt at the bus station. I decided to go to La Paz, and after a tedious border crossing, and a 7 hour journey, I arrived in the capital of Bolivia.

Now I am on my third day here, and I love it! It is definitly not a city for everyone, it is dirty, bustling, hectic and messy. It has a few qualaties which you see in cities like Mumbai and Bangkok, although on a much smaller and less intense level. But what I like abouyt it is it has charachter.

I am staying at a huge hostal called Wild Rover, a self titled party hostal. It is really fun, and the people are great, and it is still realativly cheap, at around 4 pounds a night - with amazing duvets! Yesterday, I roamed around the 3600m high city, home to no less than a million and a half inhabitants. I ended up on a tour of a San Fransiscon monastry, which my english guide (hired, with entrance fee for 15 Bolivianos, i.e. about 1 pound 50) informed me about. I wont go into too much detail on that, but its first building was erected in C16, and the attached church was one of the more impressive I have ever seen, with solid gold statues scatterred around, and a crypt which held not just religeous figures, but a surprisingly large amount of revolutionaries.

After this I went to a witches market, home to a variety of dessicated llama foetuses, and then found out the approximate area of a black market and wondered there. And who should I bump into? 4 UCL boys(Titus, Dmitri, Lawrence and Fred). Small world, but a very pleasent surprise! Will hopefully be going on an excursion with them on Monday. Tonight, another UCL-er, and more than that a UCL Hockey club member, Flip, is here too, so tonight will be a recreation of Hockey corner, and probably remeniscent of tour! Will be fun I think.

I will leave here on monday night, venturing down to the vast salt flats (weather permitting - the area has been struck with blizzards recently) and perhaps the silver mines that funded the spanish empire (time permitting). So will blog again sometime towards the end of next week!

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