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Published: February 20th 2009
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Greetings everyone, from the highest city in the World: Potosi; Bolivia.
We arrived in South America two weeks ago and have had quite an adventure since. Our flight from New Zealand brought us into Santiago which we enjoyed: the centre of the city was nice and we made some good friends at our hostel. We ended up staying at our Éco Hostel´for 2 more nights than we planned and went out for drinks until 4am, which is early for Santiago apparently, but it did nothing to help our confused body clocks. We met a Danish guy who had cycled all around South America and I liked listening to his stories of adventure: he managed to get mugged and then had to buy another bike over here after the Brazilian port authorities wanted over a 1000 dollars to release all his equipment. In fact the story of getting mugged here seems quite common, so we have had to be careful. Gem ´lost´30 pounds worth of Pesos from her pocket in Valparaiso, Chile, but we think it was probably taken by some light-fingered hand.
Chile is a strange place. Originally our plan was to head south to Patagonia; however, a combination
of time and money meant that we had to go north straight away to Bolivia to start our volunteering in Sucre. I have to say that northern Chile was a bit of a let down. We made our way up through La Serena, Calama and San Pedro stopping a night or two in each. In San Pedro we visited the valley of the Moon and booked a tour into Bolivia. It just seems that Northern Chile could have been anywhere in the World; I´ll reserve judgement on the whole country until I get the chance to visit Patagonia - maybe on the next trip!
I was really looking forward to our Bolivia tour; I wasn´t disappointed either. Our driver was great and we made 4 good friends who shared the vehicle with us. We had 3 days in a 4x4, taking us across the Alti-plano, seeing incredible sights: Laguna Verde, Geysers, Volcanoes, Hot springs, Laguna Colorada, flamingoes, Cacti and the Salar de Uyuni (Salt flats). At an altitude of 4000-5000m it was amazing (see pics!)
We did have a bit of an adventure as well when our Toyota landcruiser - I should say dilapitated landcruiser - broke down
in the middle of the desert. The driver spent the next 4 hours attempting to fix it: with me trying to help. Unfortunately the words for engine, spark plugs, distributor, live, and earth are not in the Lonely Planet essential Spanish phrasebook and so it was difficult to communicate. The driver asked us to push for a while as he tried to jump-start, but at over 4000m altitude we were soon out of breath! Eventually we located the problem to the bit that sent the power to the Rotar - a transformer I guess - but we couldn´t fix it. It then got dark and in 6 hours not one vehicle had come past. The driver decided he would walk to the nearest village and set off across the desert! I have to admit I thought all this was great; I even had my Ray Mears survival book with me that I bought at a book exchange in New Zealand. It is full of useful tips: stay with the vehicle being one - er driver...come back!´ ´Leave the bonnet up at all times so that passing aircraft know you are in distress´ - except it was now dark. I really
wanted to try and light a fire but nobody else in the group was very keen on that idea. :-(
We occupied ourselves with a bit of stargazing until eventually the driver returned about 10pm, with another guy from the local village. We loaded all our stuff into his pickup and made our way to there. It turned out to be a small but nice place and we were given a bed each and a late evening meal: Llama and rice - delicious!
The following day we were reunited with our landcruiser - now mended - and headed to Uyuni and the salt flats. After a night in Uyuni we took a 7 hour bus ride to Potosi, unbelievably it cost 3 pounds each and we got a free Coca-Cola in an old style bottle.
Potosi is very nice, and made a lot of money out of silver mining. It doesn´t feel like it is 4000m up, but we do occasionally get headaches first thing in the morning. I have found coffee or Coca Cola usually help sort it out.
It is Carnaval time at the moment and all the children are armed with super-soakers and
Santiago
Friends at the hostel shaving foam: they seem to like attacking tourists so we have to keep taking detours down side streets to avoid them! There is lots of music and processions. Despite the obvious poverty most people seem happy. The older people seem to have a very hard life though, selling whatever they can on the streets trying to make money.
We head to Sucre tomorrow and start our teaching volunteering on Monday.
Allan
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