Blogs from La Paz Department, Bolivia, South America - page 8

La Paz, ça aura été notre base arrière pendant un bon mois, grâce à l’accueil chaleureux d’Alizée et de tout ses collocs d’Achumani, Cosi quartier du sud, où l’on oubliera pas de pousser les décibels jusqu’aux petites heures du matin. Tout d'abord il fallait y arriver... Premier bus de nuit en Bolivie pour nous, depuis Sucre. La gare routière est un vrai folklore, ou les "Voceadores" crient jusqu'à deux rue a coté les prochaines destinations. Ca semble fait, on embarque dans la compagnie qui nous semble la plus fiable (ou la moins douteuse...). Le bus est plein, on embarque également deux cercueil (ici c'est précaire et les bus servent parfois de corbillard, "Bolivian solution"). On pense que c'est bon, mais le bus a l'air d'avoir du mal, il s'arrête toute les deux heures jusqu'à lâcher au ... read more

THE CULT OF PACHAMAMA...Catholicism Unplugged. Cusco in Peru was a stopover to kill some time. Some say "When in Peru, Cusco is the place to be". But when winging it, it was to us, only a maybe. So locked our gear at the bus station and to the Plaza de Armas for a look around. Spanish cathedrals boasting of colonial excesses of the past...smiling like powerful masters built to last. Catholicism in all its splendour. Yet that first look hid a spiritual under-belly that was there for all to see...but only if one is awake enough to reflect...and if like us...in amazement...to so see. An under-belly that threw our perceptions of Catholicism into disarray. And so I present our findings. But please...we beseech the faithful...I do NOT shine light on this to cause you to stray. ... read more

On the 20 hour trek to Bolivia I met two girls. Before I get into that, why was the trek 20 hours? Well, after the eight hour bus ride to what I thought was to Copacabana, it actually was to Puno, the other side of Lake Titicaca -- the Peru side. I scrambled, half awake, to find out my next move. I was in a bus station full of non-english speakers. Body language goes a long way, I find. After an hour and a half layover, I finally was on the bus — rather van— to Copacabana. That’s where I met the two girls. Ferdanine (Fer) was from Mexico, she has long wavy brown hair and black eyes. She is just 19. Mikaela is from Sweeden, quite the opposite look: dirty blonde with blue eyes. They ... read more

Give yourselves a well-deserved pat on the back, folks, for enduring our incoherent ramblings that could lately best be characterized as a how-not-to-do-it guide for bike touring in South America. As a reward for your perseverance in following us on our circuitous, often directionless route (literally) that one fellow long-haul cyclist kindly described as "complicated", this will be our last journal entry that you'll have to suffer through. After having completed a 4,100 mile (6,600 km) bike trek that included over 200,000 vertical feet of total ascent, the loss of every ounce of body fat that either of us had (and one trip to a hospital in Salta that looked like a stage scene from 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'), we've decided to end our ride in Bolivia and carry on our travels in South ... read more

The overnight bus ride from Sucre to La Paz was long and winding. Peering out the window at one of our stops, I noticed that we had gone all the way back to Potosi again! It wasn't the most comfortable ride - the on-board toilet was out of action and the bus was freezing until about 3am, when the driver finally remembered to switch on the heating. So I didn't have the best night's sleep. We had bought camas for the ride but they weren't really the 180° incline seats we were promised - they were more like a wider semi-cama - so more like something between a cama and a semi-cama. Arriving at the bus station in La Paz, we made sure that we caught an officially licenced "bubble" taxi - lucky there was a ... read more