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Published: November 13th 2007
Dinner in La Paz with the Aussies
Looks like Jenny's with Anthony, she wishesA lot has transpired since the last time we wrote. If i remember correctly, and the pisco sours may mean that i don't, last we told you all that we were headed to Bolivia from Cusco in order to go on an Amazon tour. Well some of that is correct. We did leave Peru. We spent our last few hours in Cusco, having checked out of our hostel and needing a place to wait for our 1030pm bus, in this amazing little bar called Uptown. They have this massive selection of English DVD's and all you have to do is buy a drink and you can request any movie you want to play on their big-screen projector. We stayed there for almost eight hours watching Pulp Fiction, Die Hard, and The Simpsons movie.
Speaking of Homer, we had quite the Odyssey getting ourselves to Bolivia. Upon the advice of our new Aussie friends Anthony and Katrina, who are extremely experienced travelers and have acted as veritable Obi Wan on the Barbie for us in teaching great ways to save money and have fun, we've moved into the realm of the overnight bus. It saves having to pay for accommodations and
La Paz Market
From our bus tour that we learned nothing from you don't waste any daylight you could be using having fun. All you need is some earplugs, an eye mask and my new favorite candy: sleeping pills (I just draw little S´s on them and they're just like stale skittles). In South America you can get the powerful stuff, the one's i have fall somewhere between Rufie and Rhino tranquilizer. So we set off in the evening on what was supposed to be an easy ten hours putting us into La Paz in the early morning. We've come to learn that travel in these parts is stamped with the phrase Mas or Menos, more or less for the gringos out there, meaning things will leave, arrive and take a given number of hours times, mas or menos. Our journey to La Paz definitely fell within the menos category. We were having a totally inauspicious time (not sure what that means but makes me sound cool) save bumpy roads and the smelly guy in front of me who apparently mistook my crotch for a pillow he was reclining so far. All was going well until we awoke about 5am and realized that we were stopped in the middle of the road.
Later in the Dinner
Did I mention we're entering wine country? Not only our bus, but a line of buses a mile long. Another lesson we've learned is that when everyone else gets off the bus, get off the bus. So we gathered our things, my backpack weighs 50 pounds, and began walking down the road. Finally we found an English speaker who explained what was going on. We had the unfortunate luck of traveling during a national transportation workers strike. As we moved forward, we were able to safely cross the picket line. Protest in Peru involves drinking a fifth of Pisco, making the road impassible by filling it with line of boulders, and slashing the tires of any vehicle that tries to drive through the line. We were never in an ounce of danger, but it was still a giant pain in the culo. After Jenny and I walked a mile or so through the labyrinth of boulders and cat-calling bus drivers (I like to tell myself it's for me) we caught a little tuk-tuk, like the one's in Asia, to the next town to finally get a cab to the Bolivian border.
So the four of us, the Aussies too, took a far too expensive cab to
Witch Market
Llama fetuses, or is it Feti? the Peru/Bolivia border without incident. Save the fact that our cab driver actually started crying when we refused to pay the hiked up price he created when we arrived. We got through customs and then got into yet another cab across the border. We picked up a little Japanese girl along the way who had to sit in the trunk cuz there was no room in the car, no worries though, i hear they sleep in mailboxes in a pinch. Jenny and I had intended to leave our Aussie friends in Copa Cobana on the banks of Lake Titicaca. However, when we got there and saw a serious dearth of titties and a preponderance of caca, we decided to continue on to La Paz.
Travel went fine all the way to the outskirts of La Paz until the protest struck again. They had blocked off one side of the freeway which is the only artery in and out of the city. The result was the worst traffic in the history of Christiandom. It took us 4 hours to travel a handful of miles which included having to drive the wrong way down an offramp, drive over a ditch, make a
Lake Titicaca
It's too easy, no boob/poop joke for you u turn onto the freeway and dodge oncoming traffic as there were cars going both ways on one side of the freeway. Nevertheless, we finally made it to La Paz, in almost triple the time it was supposed to take.
La Paz is an odd city, at first glance it seems like an ugly, smog-filled, dangerous metropolitan hell hole. It is in a lot of respects, but there are little pockets of incredible beauty. The city is like Silent Bob, fat, sweaty and altogether useless until once a film he opens his mouth and says something incredibly prophetic that changes the main characters lives. (I apologize to those who are too old to get that reference, and if you aren't old and still don't, you´re pathetic, get your life together and see Dogma. Thank me later). So we hobnobbed around La Paz for a few days, mostly hanging in bars and restaurants that the Aussies knew of from a previous visit. Our hotel was right next to this witches market where there is store after store of mystical items used in the worship of the Earth Gods. Super cool but incredibly creepy because many of the items are hallucination,
Crashing at the salt flats
The table we're at is made of salt, i know it was boring for us too crazy totems and dead animal fetuses. We had quite a but of fun in La Paz and got logistics done like buying hammocks for home and sending home Christmas presents (I hope mom likes her Llama fetus), but La Paz is a little hectic for my small town little soul so we were just fine with heading out of town.
We had previously sacked our rain forest plans because getting there required an 18 hour bus ride on the world's most dangerous road. That's not a nickname like deadman's curve, it's a statistic. The tourist office tried to convince us by saying "They only call it that because so many people die there" Touche, but no thanks,so we´re off to the salt flats. We took another over-nighter to Uyuni in the south of Bolivia. This place is in a desert so barren that you wonder how the sand survives. We got there at 7 am and decided to be out by that evening. The reason to go to such crap hole is because it's the doorstep to the Uyuni salt flats. We booked a tour not knowing what to expect, and we should have had a better picture going
Train Ride
Smiles were few and far between in. The salt flats are flat and salty that's it. Taken as a whole, it's pretty remarkable to observe. Miles and miles of white as far as the eye can see. It's like God was making a mountain, screwed up and just used whiteout to cover the mistake. Our tour lasted 8 hours, most of which was driving across this endless desert of salt. At places the salt is over 10 meters deep (which i think is somewhere around 2.5 miles). The landscape is so boring we would all fall asleep, wake up, and not even notice that we'd been moving for an hour. This included our driver, who passed out multiple times and would vear wildly off course, but when you're driving to nowhere that doesn't really matter.
So we finished our tour and booked a 230am train out of Uyuni to the Argentine border and then to catch a bus to Salta. If i were able to use the words i would like to describe that journey, i would offend every reader we have not named Baby Jon or Buttercup and probably be banned by the FCC. So I'll say this in the interest of propriety, the
Salt Flats
Being stupid trip ride was not fun. The train was overcrowded, with some random smelly Asian guy sleeping on Katrina's lap (why he didn't get into the overhead bin I'll never know.) It was also freezing, like sweatshirt, beanie, gloves, jacket, long underwear, sleeping bag, snuggling for body heat still shivering. We survived though and ended up at the border. After 2 hours waiting to pass through customs, we went to the bus station trying to get tickets for Salta only to find out that no one would accept our Bolivian currency and all the currency exchanges were back over the border in Bolivia. So Anthony and i had to cross back over to Bolivia, change our cash at some shady place that tried to screw me like a prom date, and scurry back into Argentina in order to scramble onto a bus to Salta. We barely made it and let out a 5 hour long sigh of releif until we found out that our bus didn't go to Salta, but we had to catch a connecting bus in Jujuy that we actually missed because we had to stop for an hour to change a flat tire. Mas or menos i guess.
So we had to kill a couple hours in the train station before finally catching another bus that got us into Salta by 2 am tired, smelly and miserable.
You may ask, "Why would you put yourself through all that. Endless hours in transit (54 in 5 days to be exact), shotty buses, lying cab drivers and all such other miseries." You may also ask "Why am I asking the computer questions" I can answer both. The latter is because you need some friends. The former, the reason we've put ourselves through so much is simple, places like Salta. This is the most incredible place I've ever been (sorry Fresno). The people are freakishly nice ( a random stranger just handed me a cup of matea in our hostel, it's a social togetherness thing, the Argentinian equivalent to passing a joint... i heard, from a guy... who know's a guy... who's in jail). They have steak, honest to goodness steak. The city is clean, warm and modern. Also our hostel is next to an ice cream shop that has the best ice cream I've ever had. Not so impressive? It's the best ice cream that Jenny's ever had!!! That's
Asserting my dominance
in real proportion Anthony would totally wollop me an accomplishment. So today we're just enjoying the sights, soaking some sun and recovering from our travels. Tomorrow we're white water rafting in the Andes and maybe catching a 24 hour bus to Santiago Chile in the evening. Sadly it means we'll have to part with Anthony and Katrina, but we're invited them to Thanksgiving in Buenos Aires, hopefully they'll be able to join. If you thought you were jealous of us before, wait for the next couple of blogs. In the meantime go rent Dogma.
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Crazy!
"They only call it that because so many people die there"! HAHHA your blog cracks me up all the time. And countless hours travelling in order to see salt? Such a...unique trip. But Argentina sounds amazing, I've always wanted to go there! Hope the rest of S.A. goes smoother than your bus strike misadventures (altho it always makes for a good story).