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Published: January 22nd 2008
Happy New Year to everyone! Sorry this is little belated and that our blogs are backdated, we've been doing some speedy travel through the north of South America for the past couple of months so we're a little behind...
To keep you updated, we've just arrived in Panama after spending a fun few weeks on Colombia's carribbean coast for Christmas and New Year. Our boat journey to Panama via the San Blas islands didn't go quite to plan after our incompetent captain shipwrecked us in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure we'll tell you more about it in emails before we get to writing our blog but thought we should keep you in the picture. Anyway after a lot of good luck we've arrived safe and sound, glad to be back on dry land!
Our original plan from leaving Iguaçu was to head north to Brazil's Pantanal to see some amazing animals and wildlife. After sampling the expense of Brazil in Rio we knew that this trip was going to be stupidly expensive. By luck, just a few hours before we left we got talking to someone who told us that you can do a very similar
trip in the North of Bolivia for a fraction of the price ($50 instead of $500), so change of plan, we´re going to Bolivia early...
After a seemingly never-ending three day bus ride, stopping off for 10 hours in the most boring town in Argentina (never ever go to Resistencia) and a surprisingly easy south Bolivia border crossing, we reached the town of Tupiza, made famous by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid making their last stand there. What we hadn't realised was this super touristy town didn't have an ATM, I guess we weren't in Argentina anymore, and so we had to join the other 200 or so locals to queue to get a cash advance so we could pay for somewhere to stay for the night and live off something other than rationed rice and bananas like our friends did who arrived on a Friday, when the bank is shut and doesn't open again until Monday!
Bolivia turned out to be our adventure country; which began with a one day triathalon. I know this sounds a little active for me but is actually a day spent trekking around the gorgeous Bolivian countryside on bike, jeep and
horseback. The backdrop was far more spectacular than we'd imagined with looming red mountain faces, reminiscent of the wildwest movies. I hadn't ridden since I went pony trekking as a kid and Paul not at all so it was great to be allowed to jump on the back and just go for it, (safety isn't a big thing here, you won't be surprised to hear!) Unfortunately Paul's horse was a little lazy and would only do exactly what the one in front was doing, strictly no over-taking, so he was given a stick to hurry things along! Mine, amusingly called Cynthia, loved to go as fast as possible, helped a long by a little wind problem she had! By the end of the trek we both agreed to prefer galloping which was a little kinder on our reers than trotting, if a little scary- at this stage I would have happily toddled off bow legged to our hotel to recover but we still had a long, very steep down hill bike ride to finish on!
We´d heard that the road from Tupiza to Uyuni in the South West made for a really bad trip and although we might have
been used to this in Asia, we'd since become accustomed to luxury travel Argentina-style; with fully reclining seats, trolley dolly service etc. So we took the alternative, slightly longer and much smoother train journey, which we were told held spectacular views- all very well but all the services run at night! Arriving at 1am we checked in to a dive of a hotel, possibly the worst yet and hit the sack.
Uyuni itself is a sad little town, crammed with over eighty tour agencies, visited daily by hundreds of Gringos for the sole purpose of taking the Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats) trip. We decided against the three day option as much of which is spent crammed into a jeep, opting instead for a one day tour of the world's largest salt flats. At over 4,000 square miles they were something quite special and a highlight of the trip so far, blindingly white and so flat, leaving the perfect opportunity to take some fun perspective photos; balancing on hands, riding llama finger puppets etc! A quick stop off to Fish Island, so called due to its apparent fish shape, to see some stupidly huge cactuses (they grow around 1cm
per year so the one in the photo is about 1200 years old!) With time to kill back in Uyuni before our night train to La Paz we did the only other thing tourists visit Uyuni for- MinuteMan Pizza, a gringo haunt due to the Lonley Planet's rave about this place, run by an American and Bolivian couple and I've got to admitt it was pretty damn good!
We had our first experience of altitude, feeling a little sick on the train up to La Paz climbing 3600m above sea level - a bit higher than Leeds! The city itself is unique, a giant canyon basin, walls licked by countless red brick houses precariously clinging to the sides. We ended up staying here for quite a while and grew quite fond of the city by the end, maybe something to do with our hostel having a microbrewery and giving out a free beer every night, oh and a nintendo 64 games system for Paul!
The city itself is pretty loco, it feels a little like an over flowing market with numerous street sellers, washed out hippy travellers lining the streets and a little worryingly, loads of shoeshine kids
with black ski masks (to protect them from the smog) who grab your feet to try to polish your flip flops! On our first night in La Paz we were convinced to go and see the traditional Cholita women's wrestling, well that's how they sell it. It turned out to be a series of bad amateur staged grapples with such figures as Raphael (of Teenage Mutant Heroes Turtle fame) but it's actually a real family event which all the locals really get into, shouting at the referee and throwing rotten fruit, most of which went over us gringos sat in the 'VIP' seats next to the ring!
We managed to book ourselves onto a three day pampas trip for the next day (like the Pantanal that I mentioned before) and I took the executive decision that with the money we'd saved we should definitely take the 50 minute plane over the 20 hour rickety bus journey north to Rurrenebaque. The plane itself was new and a little smaller than I was used to with just 19 seats, a little turbulence made it fun and the runway (well, strip of grass is what it really is) that you land
on seems to come out of nowhere out of the jungle canopy at the last minute. The small town of Rurrenebaque was a breath of fresh air after La Paz, literally, tropical, clean and we even found a swimming pool to hangout at the day before the trek with a cool blue and yellow macaw parrot pet that we could hold (appart from paul, he didn't like Paul).
The next morning we set off on a numbing three hour jeep trip down a dirt track with Angie and Dave, our good friends from Oz who were still travelling with now, and a Spanish guy who despite rubbing his body in garlic and onions (traditional remedy apparently) still got bitten by mozzies more than Paul- which is some achievement, Daz from England who just couldn't stay awake and a German girl whose name escapes me. The second and much more enjoyable part of the trip was the canoe ride down a river where we stopped off to take snaps of Caymens, turtles who liked to spoon on the rocks, crazy capybaras who look like huge guinea pigs, numerous birds including the incredibly ditsy birds of paradise and even two Tucans
in the far distance. The next three days were spent pirhana fishing, swimming with pink dolphins and inadvertantly pirhanas and crocodiles as Pedro, the 'friendly crocodile', guards the waters and hunting anacondas in the pamapas wetland (I wasn't too bothered about finding one) but apparently we were lucky to see a baby one as they're really hard to spot and normally slither away before you get to see them.
We were lucky to be able to take our scheduled plane back to La Paz after bad weather meant a backlog of flights (they stop when it rains as they cant take off or land on the grass strip!)
Next adventure, the biggy, the World's most dangerous road. Got to admit I was a little apprehensive about this after the last step downhill ride in Tupiza, where Paul nicknamed me Steady Eddy. The difference with this one was we were provided with really good bikes, with gears and suspension that worked and everything, oh and really good instructors. This road is dangerous, at times no more than a metre or so across with a huge sheer drop down the other side, one lapse in concentratin and you can fall
to your death. Luckily, since they built a new road, the Death road isn't used so much by lorries- for them it's a lot more dangerous than if you're on a more manouverable bike and over the years hundreds have gone over the side, the proof being the remains of cargo sprawled across the bottom of the mountain, giving it the title The World's most dangerous road. But just in case you do meet one coming your way we had to ride on the left hand side, the side with the sheer drop!
To give us a chance to find our wheels, the first 35 Km is on a smooth paved wide road that snakes down the mountain, although this still was not without casualties. A girl from another group was a little shakey and somehow managed to plow her bike into an oncoming truck, luckily for her they can only travel up the hill at a snails pace so she knocked herself out cold for a few minutes but had no long standing damage, unlike the lorries headlights! With the only uphill part of the trip over we got onto the rocky death road and after a few
minutes, adrenaline got the better of me and the confidence of riding a bike that worked I decided to join the men in the fast group and whilst I didn't keep up with the guide and Paul at the very front, I wasn't the last!
One quirky thing that is recommended to go and see in La Paz is San Pedro jail, in past years you could have a tour and even stay over night in some of the fancy quarters that drugs money can buy! One guy who likes to have visitors is Sebastian, a dutch guy who was caught trying to smuggle 7 kg of cocaine out of La Paz airport. It turns out the hostels advice that he just likes the company and a few snacks that you can bring him isn't too true and whilst Paul and I weren't allowed in, the other guy we were with was and came out saying Sebastian was keen to sell him 10 grammes of the finest coke, that he propsed to smuggle there and then in a bread bun, obviously he declined and made a sharp exit- his court case is apparently coming up soon but I
cant see him leaving that place for a very long time.
I think we might have been two of the few lucky travellers to miss any road blocks whilst we were in Bolivia, although we did see plenty of demonstrations in La Paz, awaking to one marching past our hostel- the crazy guy working there clung to me and said in despair of the countries constant unrest, "Where do you live, can I come home with you?" going on to say, "half of them don't even know what they're prostesting about!" Our journey to Peru was smooth and via Copocobana, the World's highest lake, Titkaka, that I can't help thinking we didn't see in its best light, literally, the weather was miserable, preventing us from visiting the floating islands and Isle del Sol but I guess it also didn't help that we watched England get knocked out of the Euro 2008 qualifiers there, so I thought some retail therapy might cheer me up at least so we took our last chance to buy some traditional Bolivina wooley gear; a smashing llama jumper and cardi that Im sure youll never see us wear back in the UK!
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