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Published: January 22nd 2009
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Orchids and Mountains
What more do you need? A very merry morning to you all, how might you be? We are currently in the wonderfully sexy city of Salta, Argentina which is a bit fortunate really given the hillarious shambles of a boarder crossing, but we'll come to that in due time. I believe when we last left you we had just left the scorching hot Chacao in Paraguay and rolled our way into Bolivia. Our first point of call was the city of Santa Cruz where we spent a very interesting New Years. The night started as any should, drinking bottles of cider and beer in our little hostel room, listening to the sounds of families out side, who were probably doing what they could to avoid listening to us. From there we jumped in a cab and asked the 'taxista'where the party was. He recommened a street so we went and checked it out. Not ideal seeing as it was more formal than a night at the Albert Hall, tuxedo table service, live bands and more families, we decided this wasnt the place to see in the new year, so moved on to another area of town, and found ourselves in a queue for what looked like
Samaipata
Sexy valleys and rivers, the view from the top of the mountain a rich kids party. The bouncer kindly denied us entry cos we didnt have tickets and didnt want to pay the 75 US Dollar entry fee, and so with an hour left til midnight we ended up in the only place left...a small, fairly empty bar with a live band who stopped playing just before midnight - the main perk being a free bar. New Years came and went and was celebrated by a little dance, but nothing too exciting, and so it came to be that after drinking too much vodka, we had to head back to the hostel where I promptly passed out. Good times.
From Santa Cruz we headed East and did a 5 day tour of some Jessuit Missions. Unlike the ones in Paraguay, these were all in fairly good condition, and we still functioning as churches. We turned down the option of paying close to US$1,000 for the tour through an agency and thought we'd wing it on our own backs. This was good n all as it meant we saved a lot of cash...but it did mean we had a lot of time hanging around the various towns as there was only one
Orange 'Ongus'
Incidently, check out 2009 Footprints book, a photo idendical to this one. bus a day to the next town, which invaraibly lead to drinking rather a lot of booze. There was one day in particular where after visiting the church and partaking in a Sunday Servive, we thought it would be appropriate to drink a litre bottle of rum in just over half n hour. This may seem like a bad idea, but its what happens when you play ridiculous drinking games incluiding 'translate the foriegn footballers name' (Frederick Towers - Fernando Torres, Richard Oak - Ricardo Carvalho, Peter Lewis Hill - Pierre Luigi Collina etc).
From Santa Cruz we moseyed our way down to a small town called Samaipata, but not before helping a couple of locals load up 2 doors and a door frame onto the roof of our bus. Samaipata was amazing...for a starters it allowed us to go walking to waterfalls, roaming up rivers, fighting our way through thick forest and trekking along the ridge of a mountain, before being engulfed by cloud and getting rained on. We also checked out Amboro forest, a nature reserve in the heart of Bolivia, where we camped, went off the beaten track and fought our way through overgrown forest with
machettes. This was another place where after scaling a small mountain, we saw and hear the rain approaching. No problem we thought, until the cloud washed over us, and it started hammering it down with ice cold rain...we ran. I also got a chance to drive a 1987 Jeep off road which was fun, seeing as i've been out of car action for several months now. Samaipata was also home to a fairly large ex-pat community, and we befriended a brilliantly eccentric German guy called Frank, who told us everything we wanted to know about near on every country in South America, before forgetting he was looking after his son and went to go find him.
Next up in Bolivia was the Ruta del Che, in which we traced the last movements of revolutionary Erntesto 'Che'Guevara. We started the route in La Higuera, the place where the battle took place between Che's guerillas and the American trained army, with the result being the capture and imprisonment of Che. He was held captive in the small school, which has now been converted into a musuem, before the call came through, and he was killed by a single shot to the
Taits Prodigy
Killed time at the bus stop, Taits finds himself a friend chest. The village now has 3 statues of Che, and also a huge monument of his head which stands at 6/7ft tall. The place where he was captured now has a large stone star in the ground, and next door is a potato farm run by a wonderfully small Bolivian guy whose seems to spend most of his time chewing Coca leaves...but then who doesnt round here? In Valle Grande, we went and checked out the Laundry Room where Che's body was revealed to the public, and also the airport where, after 30 years in a common grave, his body was discovered along with 6 of this comrades. Quite cool now that we can put a story behind the face that adorns so many tshirts and posters around the world, despite the wearer having no idea what he actually did, other than 'something to do with cuba'.
Our last point of call on this half of the Bolivian trip (we'll be back in a couple of months to do the West of the country) was one of the countries two Capital cities, Sucre. Here we went mountain biking the the world largest collection of dinosaur footprints, located in the
Punch and Judy?
Another method for passing time at the bus stop tranquil setting of a cement factory, checked out an Andean market where we bought sexy bags and hats, and went to the cinema to see Perfume: The story of a killer - quite a good film, don't think Tait was too impressed by the directing, but as a result of going we did get to spend the evening with a very cool (and attractive) English couple from Bristol. We miss them...
And so, after having spent near on a month here, we had the task of getting across the boarder. The first problem arose when our bus to the boarder stopped at the road side, to the smell of burning rubber. I opened the window and saw that the tyre below our seats was smoking, looked like the brake pads were shot, and when the drivers poured water onto the wheels and axel, steam came billowing off it...it was hot. And so we had a couple of hours wait whilst the drivers used a sledgehammer to repair the wheel, the only real excitedment coming when we were sitting on the bus, the bus fell off the jack that was supporting it and fell down onto the exposed axel. That
woke people up! the next problem arose at the boarder itself...apparently we were given a little bit of paper that we needed to hang on to in order to leave the country...Tait had his, I didnt have mine. So...after trying to convince the guard that as Tait had his I surely would have had mine tc etc, the guard called me into the office. He said that we have a l problem, I tried to convince him we didnt have a problem by offering him some money for it to go away. This was duely accepted, and so he took my passport and money, and got me an exit stamp. No more problems, that was until we walked across no-mans land, and tried to get into Argentina. There was one hell of a queue, we had only 1 1/2 hours to get our next bus, and it was tight. I explained our situation to one of the guards, and after a few moments waved us through, much to the annoyance of the people patiently queing up. As we were wisely told in Venezuela all those months ago...If your white and have the gift of the gab, you can do pretty
Laundry Room
The place where Che's body was revealed to the public, now home to years worth of graffitti much anything on this continent.
Which brings us nicely to our present city...Salta, with a very European feel and an incredibly sexy population. Here we have bought ourselves our second home/tent, and arranged to hire a car for 5 days to do a little tour of the area and check out some bodegas to sample the wine. That does mean i'll be driving a left hand car along busy roads...but that can only end well....right?
Until next time....Adios x
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Amy
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j.e.a.l.o.u.s
Im sooo jealous of you guys! the photos are wicked, keep adding! But i would like no more pictures of spiders, and Tait to learn punctuation :D miss you guys!