Catching the train from Tupiza to Oruro was bliss - a real nice change from buses, although being in Executive class probably helped as we had more room, seats that reclined way back, videos with english subtitles (although the choice of films left something to be desired, have you ever seen Tom and Huck?) and we got dinner and a drink in the buffet car included in the price. Most people took blankets on with them, always a sign that its going to be really freezing, but until we stopped in Uyuni at midnight we had the opposite problem - we [View Full Entry]

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Well, Rach pretty much summed it all up, but I will add some of my own thoughts. Many new experienes for me the day we went mountain biking: first time mountain biking, first time being groomed by a monkey and first time throwing up in a vehicle. Yes, my stomach did not handle well the Altitude, cold, and driving through windy mountain roads :). Pepto has been a dear friend these past 2 days. Overall, it was worth it. Rach and I both agree though that being sick makes you miss home much much more. Other random observations in Bolivia: The [View Full Entry]

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-- "Hello. Where are you from?" - "England." -- "Do you like Peru?" - "Yes, it's very nice." -- "What do you think of the foreign policy of your government?" - "Um, I haven't lived there for a while, I don't know much about it." Meanwhile, some other bloke on the other side of me, was trying to pickpocket the contents of my jeans pockets, namely a torn photocopied map of Lima, and a flyer for some discoteca. Needless to say the last question gave him away. It's a novel one at least. I had another brief stopover in Lima before [View Full Entry]

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Wow its been a long time since I let the world know what ive been doing and its a lot! Well to start with I am just going to let you all know that this weekend, for the first time ever i got my phone stolen! But that will all come later...Well last weekend and this weekend I went to Oruro for Carnaval! last weekend was the dress rehearsal and this weekend was the real thing. Both weekends we left on friday evening and arrived early saturday morning, the reason for this is that you have to fight against several thousand [View Full Entry]

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Karneval in Oruro 2. - 3. Februar 2008 [View Full Entry]

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The Carnaval in Oruro is the biggest in the country. The procession goes on for two days, all day long. It was interesting. It´s a custom to throw water balloons (gringos are preferred targets) and spray ¨fake snow¨ at each other. For a while it was fun but carnaval isn´t over yet and I´m still getting wet, even here in Cochabamba, where I´ve been since yesteday. The carnaval bands sound surprisingly similar to our ¨Guggemusige¨ in Switzerland, if with a bit less variety in their songs. At one point a guy fell off the grand-stand right above us. It was scary, [View Full Entry]

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We bought direct bus tickets to La Paz from Uyuni (where we finished our 4 day tour). Normally, it should be 6-7 hours journey. But unfortunatelly, our bus got stucked in the mud after the 1st hour. Everybody tried to help. We spent there an hour trying to get bus back on the road. 3 other buses came and tried to help. But the bus did not want to continue anymore. So we were split to the other buses (with some difficulties because the buses were already full) and had to travel to Oruro which is the town on the way. [View Full Entry]

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Here we go again. . . it feels like every time I come to update this a months worth of events have taken place. I´ll do my best to catch the big events of the last week(ish). Oh, and today is a special day because you will have 3 new blogs to read/glance over. Matt is writing his own take on the journey so far. I am as curious as you to see what he has to say about the adventure! Last time I wrote I believe we were off to see Lake Titicaca for the first time! The Peruian side [View Full Entry]

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So, after the delights of Rio, we had to retrace our steps a wee bitty. This involved getting a very long bus back down to Foz de Iguazu (the big-daddy of waterfalls that we'd previously seen from the Argentinian side, for the benefit of those with short-term memory issues). Here we did not go to the waterfall, but to the ITAPU dam further upstream. It's a beast of a dam and we booked ourselves on the super-duper extreme tour of the dam. Here Spange started getting crazy excited about the prospect of wearing a yellow hard hat (which you didn't get [View Full Entry]

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We did an overnight bus trip to La Paz and then a 3 hour bus trip to Oruru in a really hot bus that sounded like it was going to konk out at any time. I found this town to be surrounded by rubbish, in particular plastic bags that blow and catch on any little plant. There is rubbish all around the town. We stayed in a Hotel across the road from the Train Station and bought train tickets for the following afternoon to Uyuni. Oruru is quite a big town, in the middle of nowhere. We went looking around the [View Full Entry]

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