Bolivia Uncovered

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Well I finally started on my "real" adventure - solo travelling. Needless to say I was a little bit nervous to be finally out on my own, but thankfully I had the safety of two of the other volunteers at first, Kieryn and Kathi who were also off to La Paz first. Thankfully it was an uneventful but long border crossing - nothing is easy in Peru and Bolivia. You have to visit about four offices before you can finally get out of one country and into another!

First stop was La Paz which is a mad city, and the hostel I stayed in, The Wild Rover, even madder! It lives up to its name! You didn't even need to leave the hostel to be kept entertained! Pool competitions, quiz/limbo dancing competitions, fancy dress nights and general craziness, followed by nights/mornings out on the town, meant that opportunities to sleep were few and far between.

There was of course more to La Paz than just the hostel! I did a cool tour of Moon Valley, which was the remains of an old river bed which really does look like the moon. I also went to the highest I have ever been - 5,400m above sea level. The views were amazing and I loved it despite the cold and the fact that it took me 5 minutes to walk 100 metres. I had to sit down every 30 seconds to breath! And I had thought that the city itself at 3,600m was tough going. Every step is an effort!

The coolest thing I did in La Paz was go to prison. I went a bit crazy one night and was thrown in there for drunk and disorderly.....well really I actually had to pay 35 Eur for the pleasure. Its mad that you can actually go into San Pedro prison and do a tour. It is such an amazing place - like a world of its own in there. There are shops, restaurants, woman and children, and a property market! Prisoners actually have to buy a cell and they even get the title deeds to it. Prices rise and fall depending on whether the prison is busy at the time - a more reliably property market than the Irish one thats for sure! It seemed so normal and I never felt unsafe in there that you almost forget that you are surrounded by murderers and drug dealers. Was glad to leave though and not having to stay there for more than a few hours. If you ever get a chance to read the book about the prison, Marching Powder, do. Its an amazing read.

One way to get out of La Paz, which can be a bit of a black hole as you are having so much fun, is via "The Worlds Most Dangerous Road" - by bike! Yes, it sound crazy but it was actually great fun! The road is a dirt track that is very narrow in points and has massive drops over the cliff. Until 2 years ago there were trucks, buses and tourists on bikes, hence the death toll was extremely high. However, they finally built a new road and now its just nutters like myself on bikes. Though I was hardling a nutter that day! I was like driving Miss Daisy on my bike and by the end my hands were killing me from clinging onto the brakes. Was great fun though and a real adrenalin kick. It ends in Coroico, a beautiful town in the mountains, where I stayed for a few days and just took in the view. A lot of R&R was required after La Paz!

The rest of Bolivia is beautiful. However, it has a huge amount of political and economic problems which means that the people are extremely poor. Its so sad to see the way some people have to live. Its unbelievably cheap and it feels crazy to be only paying 1.50 Eur for a 3 course meal, even though it wasn't exactly a culinary delight much of the time! The roads and buses are also pretty rough, so travelling long distances isn't for the faint hearted! You just close the curtains, throw in your headphones and pray!

Myself, Kathi and Kieryn went to Oruro, Potossi and Sucre, the most interesting of which was Potossi. They have old silver mines there which have been handed over by the government to the people to forage for what is left - which is very little. However, they are so poor that they put their life in their hands to find what silver they can just to feed their families. We took a trip into the mines which is another thing that is not for the faint hearted. Thankfully the day we went there were no miners working which meant no dynamite was going off! Also, it meant that we were only brought to the first level which was fine by me! After lots of scrambling in the muck on my hands and knees through small, dark spaces I was happy to see the sunlight. An amazing experience to see what people will suffer every day but its not an experience I will be looking to repeat any time soon.

And last but not least - Salar de Uyuni or The Salt Flats. The most amazing part of Bolivia. I have never seen anything so spectacular (but have since seen the Glaciers in Patagonia so its a toss up). There is just white, shimmering salt as far as the eye can see, with the clouds reflecting in the water. Myself and Laura, a great London girl I met, had fun taking funny photos of us standing on each others heads etc given that there was no point at which you could see where the salt stopped and the sky began. We spent the next three days spinning around in a jeep seeing desert, volcanoes, mountains, geezers, bubbling black lava, swimming in hot springs, staying in hotels made of salt.....an amazing few days. It was topped off with us driving back in the biggest lightening storm I have ever seen. Lightening was hitting the ground and you would see the black mark on the ground and the smoke coming out of it. Was a spectacular sight.

Despite the lightening and much problems with punctures we finally made it back to Uyuni only to be told that we would be going nowhere for two days due to Carnival. No buses or trains anywhere. And Uyuni is definitely not the place to be stuck! I was very lucky to have Laura for company and we entertained ourselves with food, wine and watching the locals get drunk and dance around the street like crazy people at two in the afternoon. I was glad to finally get out of there though! So much so that I spent the next two nights on a bus (without an ipod as it had been stolen!) to try and get back on schedule. Finally on the third night I was on a train and en route to my next stop - Brazil.

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