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Published: April 13th 2010
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Well, we´ve posted lots of photos here for a number of reasons:
- we think Bolivia is stunning
- we spent loads of time here
- and we found a fast internet connection
There are so many photos, stories and stuff that we did in Bolivia that we want to bang on about so I´ll get going....
The "Death" Train: Quijarro To Santa Cruz
Well, we´d heard tales of this so called Death Train so chose the nicer of the two trains that were running on the day that we crossed the border. The result: a surprisingly pleasant (if a little cold because of some over-zealous air conditioning) overnight journey. We were not expecting much - we assumed that the ¨tourist train¨, although more comfortable in terms of seating and space arrangements, would be twice as bumpy because it travels at twice the speed on the same dodgy rail track as the ¨Death Train¨ itself. We shall never know (although we have seen photos on ´some other blogs and it looks, er, interesting - memories of India......). We had fairly comfy reclining seats and they showed two movies before lights off so overall we thought it was pretty ok.
I can´t say it was great as it was nowhere near as good as the Russian, Chinese, Indian or Thai sleeper trains, but then they had actual beds! Strangely, one of the films they showed was about a train hijacking (The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3) which was a bit weird to watch on a train at night.
Santa Cruz de la Sierra
Big shout out to Ben & Dan (random couple of tourists that we taxi shared with to the Santa Cruz hostel) who kindly shared their room with us when we found that there were none left for us - top fellas! Not much to do here apart from walk around town practicing our amazing sapanish and eat cake, see photo. And buy semi-luxurious goods from a random organic food shop that we stumbled across. Had a bit of a panic here when we thought the chorizo cost $15 each but the women kept saying pesos which confused us further as the currency is Bolivianos. Finally worked out at the checkout that she´d written the weight down (weight = peso in Sp.), not price and it actually cost about $1. Phew!
Sampaipata
A hill village
between Santa Cruz and Sucre. We heard that this place was good for trakking and generally hanging out for a few days, so were planning to stay for two or three nights at the max. However, we were both itching to get onto a spanish course (our 24hr stint in Santa Cruz had convinced us that our amazing sapanish wasn´t so amazing after all) and so we ended up staying a week and taking 16hrs (over 4 days with a day off in between) of spanish lessons with Chary from Hostel del Sol.
Midway through the course we went trekking for 6 hours to nearby Bella Vista in the hills with a spanish speaking guide, taking in some amazing views and a random inca face carved into the side of a mountain on the way.
We also stumbled across the best (Latin American) breakfasts and coffee EVER. The local mercado (market) served amazing fare in the mornings and we made a point of stocking up on fried cheese empanadas and super strength black coffee whenever possible (total cost = 70p for two people).
Also, met up with a couple of super cool Dutch guys, Dion and Weeeeee
Mariposa
(Spanish for Butterfly) (not his real name, blame the difficult Dutch pronunciation) with whom we spent many evenings playing darts, getting drunk and generally not practising the spanish that we should have been practising. Graham managed to have a random conversation in spanish with an equally random (and, frankly, equally drunk) Argentinian guy about impending World Cup. We didn´t agree on much (mainly because my spanish was as dodgy as his english) but one thing we DID agree on is that Maradonna is ¨loco¨.
Interestingly the one night we did practice some Spanish was by trying to read a local paper where one of the articles was talking about a current bus driver strike. We worked out that the drivers were striking to object to a recent decision to introduce a law against drink driving. They thought this terribly unfair. To our amazement and slight horror. We reasoned that the roads are pretty bad so perhaps drivers, especially at night, needed to have a little drink to give them courage!
Sucre
Kerry considers this the most beautiful city she has ever seen - lots of colonial white buildings, churches, museums (including a very intesting federal museum of Bolivia charting the history
of the country and, in particular, their mid 19th century war with Chile, who are considered the Darth Vadar/pantomime villain of South American politics in this particular part of the world) backpacker bars and cheap restaurants.
Did we see and do a lot? No.
Did we eat and drink a lot? Yes.
Potosi
.....is really, really, really high up. Like, 4,090 metres high up and the ¨highest city in the world¨ (though maybe not highest town..?). It´s also the home to a great many silver mines. During the 17th century it was one of the richest cities in South America and the silver mined here basically bankrolled the then dominent Spanish Empire. We herd something about enough silver to build a bridge to Paris!
A trip down the still working silver mines is a must do here, although it comes with a health warning: the mines are not for the faint hearted and are in no way adapted for the visiting tourist. I think the mine that we visited was relatively tame (although still very much a working mine without the modern engineering and working conditions that modern mines and miners benefit from, at least
not without them hiring them out at cost!) but it was still an eye opening experience.
One aspect of the mines that we didn´t expect was the willingness with which a lot of the miners work there. A lot is made of the poor working conditions, the miners´reduced life spans (because of particle inhilation and subsequent health problems, cave-ins, accidents etc etc) and the fact that there are many relatively young children working in terrible conditions because it is the only way that they can make a living (see high profile documentaries such as ¨The Devil´s Miner¨).
However, our guide and many of the miners that we met told us that for the vast majority of people that worked there the benefits outweighed the drawbacks - they were working there not because they had to but because the pay was approx 30-50% higher than they would get through other employment and they were willing to accept the very high and very real risks that go along with it. There are horror stories to be heard about the mines, no doubt about it, and the working conditions are extremely tough but I came away with a feeling of great
Bella vista
view at the end of our hike respect, rather than pity, for those that work so hard for a living.
They also seem to spend a fair bit of time smoking cigarretes and drinking 97%!p(MISSING)roof spirit, of curse offering a little of all of the above to Pacha Mama (mother earth) for good luck. This offering of food & drink is common practice for a lot of Bolivians, we even saw a tour guide in La Paz spill some of his fanta on the restaurant floor in this same manner of offering!
4 day Jeep Tour: Tupiza to Uyuni & Surrounds
The salt flats around Uyuni are a must see in Bolivia and usually come packaged as part of a 3-4 day tour of the surrounding area.
We´d heard that Tupiza was pretty nice and so decided to head there & do a tour to Uyuni rather than do a round trip from Uyuni which is slightly more common. An even nicer alternative which Tori & Paul did was the tour to Uyuni from San Pedro in Chile.
We hooked up with 2 other Brits, a driver and a cook (the drivers wife) and bombed around the Tupiza/Uyuni area for 3 days,
seeing strangely coloured lakes, llamas, mountains, geysers, rocky, high altitude deserts and finally the amazing salt flats themselves (all 12,000 square kilometres of them) - see photos for an idea of some of the stuff we got up to.
Ended in Uyuni where we had arranged to meet up with Tori and Paul (arriving from their tour the day after us). Unfortunately, Uyuni turned out to be one of the most one horsed of one horse towns on the planet. Just about found enough things / bars / resaurants to keep us occupied for 48 hrs (including the magnificently titled "Extreme Fun Pub") before we all jumped on an overnight bus to La Paz.
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