Dangerous Roads, Dangerous Prisons, Safe lakes

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And so we continue to try to catch up on our blogging and the South American leg of our year of travels and adventures! Carol covered the fun that was the Inca trail and the infamous 'Inca Trail Carol'. Again a lot of this is from memory, some 6 weeks ago now, so bear with us!

We left Cusco after a great 8 days of trekking and fun, and left early to make the run to Puno, and Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world, and South Americas largest. It also forms part of the border between Peru and Bolivia. We arrived late afternoon and sorted out our trip out onto the lake and we opted to go for a homestay on the largest island. We left early next morning, jumping on tuk tuks down to the local port and onto our (very slow) boat across the lake to the first island. As we slowly chugged away from the main port the horizon stretched almost limitlessly with high altitude altiplano behind us and small islands dotting the view. The first island we headed to was Isle Amantani. We jumped off the boat and walked up the main hill to vist a small village to meet some islanders, have lunch and have a look at thier weaving. The quechua speaking islanders maintain lives mainly unchanged by modern standards and have a long tradition of weaving. Tourism and homestays bolster their income. We had a surprisingly good lunch of steamed trout and potatoes (of which Peru has over 4000 varieties!) before hiking back down to the boat and onto the next island Isle Taquile. We arrived at the pier and was met by the family who was hosting us. Embaressingly enough I cannot remember thier names! It was a while ago so don't judge me too badly! We had a sheet with a number of Quechua words on and had been trying to remember them on the boat so we wouldn't appear to be too ignorant in using the long held english belief that everyone knows English, and if they don't, shout louder and more clearly at them! The house was only just above the port and we was introduced to the Mum, Dad, and daughter. The women dress in multi layered and multi coloured dresses, and are certainly eye catching. We were shown around the house, most of which was still being built by the Dad. We were shown to our room just off the courtyard which was comfy enough with 2 beds and some 60's looking wooden furniture, and went to the Kitchen to give them our gifts of Rice, Pasta, jam and candles. We looked at her. She looked at us. We looked at our sheet of words. We looked at her. We looked at our sheet of words......hmmmmmm......what word to use?? Conversation using 20 words is surprisingly difficult, but we soon got hold of it, and left (run away) for a game of football up the hill! The problem with this is that over 3000m running around makes surpringly hard work, and the locals are aclimitised so run rings around you. It was a good way to pass the time anyway and soon enough the family collected us and took us back down the hill to the home, whereupon it.....snowed, great!

We were fed a hearty meal of vegetables, and were led to the main room of the house to be given our clothes for the night, traditional local dress. I basically got away with this as I had a poncho and hat. Carol however had the big dress, blouse, and shawl. Haha, unlucky! The nights entertainment was a local band, dancing and a few beers. It was a bit like a barn dance in the community centre, and we all had to dance with the locals and have a few drinks, but again because of the altitude a few dances which went on for ages soon took it out of you! We slept well that night, got up ealry and had breakfast with the family, helped clean up and made our way back to the port to be waved of by the family. On the way back we stopped at the floating islands, made from layers and layers of totara reeds that grow in the lake. The origins can be traced back hundreds of years when it is believed the local people took to living on the islands to get away from the warlike Incas. The small islands are anchored down but can be moved very easily if you don't like your neigbour! Indeed it has been known for people living together on islands to fall out so simply cut the islands in half and float off in another direction! The ground was soft and springy and we wandered the island having a look at the houses and some instruction on how the build the islands, replenishing the top cover constantly due to the fact the reeds rot away and then took a ride on a reed boat to the next island over.

From Puno the next hit was Bolivia, the southern hemisphers highest, most isolated and most rugged nation. It is one of earths coldest, warmest, windiest and steamiest places, it has the saltiest, driest, and swampiest natural landscapes. It is one of the poorest nations, but richest in natural resources, superlatives abound here!!

We crossed the land border as normal, taking a bit of time and headed towards La Paz, at 3660m the highest capital in the world, crossing the vast plains that make up El Alto (the plains) and towards the valley that house La Paz, one of the quirkiest cities we've ever been to. Buildings literally cling from the canyon walls, nearly every street is on a hill, and it teems with life. Our first afternoon there we spent a bit of time wandering the streets, going down through markets, wandered the witches market, where they sell potions and remedis for just about every ailment you can have. Some of the weirder pieces include dried Llama Foetesus. Apparantly nearly 90% of the buildings here have one in the foundations for good luck, how, why, i really don't know!

The next day for me was a highlight, the worlds most dangerous road. The title was bestowed on it by the Inter-American Development Bank and every year literally dozens of vehicles go off the road. Unfortunately the side of the road is vertical drops of over 1000m and annual fatalities run into the hundreds. The road is the main link road between the altiplano and the amazon, Brazil and the pacific. So.....how should i attack this road, a single track chisled into the side of the mountains, wide enough for one vehicle?? On a mountain bike. Thats how. A 46 km stretch of road, descending over 3500m on a bike, no peddling required, my type of biking!

After a hours bus ride from La Paz we got to the starting point high in the mountains, cold as, and suited up, trousers, jacket, goggles, scarfs, crash helmets (for when we fall of the side of the road) and had the safety talk from our swedish guide for the day. The first 17km was on sealed roads to get comfortable on the bikes and we kicked off. The road literally starts plummeting down and we soon got a good speed up, peddling was out of the question even in the high gears as the speed was too high. WE stopped every so often to allow people to catch up, check the bikes, brakes and have a photo stop. We soon hit the point where we needed to go off road and had a further chat. Mike (our guide) explained that due to traffic we needed to hit the left hand tyre track to give us enough room when we got to a vehicle, this meant the drop was often 1-2m on the left hand side of the bike erm........erm........ok.......erm......was this really such a good idea, a rocky mountain road, 3m wide and big drops?? I have to admit as we pulled away it was slihtly nerve racking, especially pulling round the corner and seeing the drop, of course you can't actually look due to the fact that you naturally pull in the direction you look. Probably a good thing really! The whole ride down took 4 hours, plunging through the cloud line into the humid valley below winding through deep, narrow gorges in dense cloudforest with 9 stops on the way, checking bikes brakes and so on, going underneath waterfalls, through fords, buses passing along the way. It is probabaly one of the most spectacular roads in the world. Finishing off in Corocio we lunched and basked in the glory of the ride. However just as bad was the journey back, as we had to drive back up the road. I sat on the right hand side of the bus where it feels like the bus is leaning over the edge , Awesome! You could see the wrecks of cars, buses and trucks down in the valley below, indications of the justification of the title of the road!

Another highlight in La Paz is the unofficial tour of San Pedro Prision. We had heard the possibility of getting a tour of the prison on the way to La Paz and decided that we would go for it. The prison was made famous some years back with the release of the book 'Marching Powder'. The book was the story of an English prisoner jailed for trafficking in the mid 90's and his life in this strange priosn. We caught a cab to the prison and began to consider how to go about getting in when a middle aged lady came over and asked if we wanted a tour of the prison. Hell Yeah. So in we went, wrote down our names and was given our rules, no photos in areas until we had permission from our guide, the cost, and how we had protection. 3 bodygaurds (all priosners) whom we paid to basically ensure we kept out of trouble. We met our guide a portugese guy called Phillippe, also jailed for traffiking (innocent of course) and got our first view of the prison. It looked normal enough until a child walked past....then a women, all amongst these prisoners. Ok, this wasn't normal! We spent the next 3 hours cruising around the strangest place in the world, a prison that was a basically a town, community, with restaurants, shops, and football pitchs. The story is that once you are incarcerated you are put inside the prison and fed once a day, and that is as far as the prison system supports you. If you want somewhere to sleep you have to buy a cell. Yup, buy. There are agents within the prison who deal with the money side of things, pricing etc and those priosners with some money can have a good lifestyle, 2 storey apartment with satellite TV, cellphones, dvd players and all. The prisoners with no money struggle to survive...and often, don´t.

The families normally can't survive outside the prison without the earning power of the man, so sell the property outside the prison and move the family in. It was very surreal, not official by any means by an experience none the less!

Leaving La Paz we spent the day travelling to Potosi, once the laregst city in the americas due to it's Silver mines which supported Spains economy during the 17th and 18th century. It was 10 times the size of New York! Now it's pretty run down and definately not the size of NY! We chilled there for a few days for the rest of the group to visit the mines and explode some dynamite, we wasn't all that fussed so stayed in town and had a look around the main plaza and cathedral.

Following Potosi we went down to Uyuni, home to the massive salt flats and one of the most stunning locations i think i have been to on Earth, just because it was so surreal! At a rather high 3700m it is the largest (not sure about highest!) salt flats in the world, formed by the remains of a large prehistoric lake. We left Uyuni quite early in the morning and headed out stopping at (surprisingly) a salt factory on the way. From here we got out into the flats proper. You couldn´t really be out there without sunglasses as the glare was worse than any snow capped mountains!

We spent the day using the horizon and vista as the location for taking weird photo shots as you can see from our photos, and had great fun in doing it. We visitied an island in the middle of the flats home to hundreds of cactus over 4m high and some are dated at three thousand years old!!

Going at a high speed (we have a lot to catch up) we hit Sucre, the other major bolivian town to do a bit of christmas shopping. It was a pleasent city, but nothing to write home about!

And that concludes our time in Bolivia, an awesome country with bad roads (tracks really) a corrupt country, a brilliant place to visit!!

Love loads

Rich and Carol

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Photos

On a Tuk Tuk
On the way to the port

Local Men
Weaving. It´s not a natural mans job

Me
dancing with a local.
Not my finest moment

Football
With the locals at this height is hard work

Us
As locals

The road
Up in the clouds. That was this wide all the way down