Bolivia - salt, dust and pizza!

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So, onwards from the relative relaxation of Cusco for another brief 7 hour journey down to the town of Puno. Nestled on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, Puno stands 3855m above sea level, which is very surreal seeing a body of water you can only imagine is the sea and still being out of breath just walking around! After an entertaining night out on the town, we ended up in a local rock bar playing Jenga with a scary Aussie stalker with massive man hands who would just not leave us alone! Looking forward to a good nights sleep in the comfiest bed in some time, my dreams were somewhat rudely interrupted by Matt being explosively ill from both ends for the duration of the night, rendering him unable to trek out with us the following day but also allowing him to enter the competetion for the most poorly sounding human being ever! He has now set the bar very very high for pitiful sighing. Collected bright and early the following morning in our local limos (tricycles with 2 seats up front, pedalled by puffing chauffeurs!), we raced off down to the lake for a 3 hour ride our to visit a couple of the islands. Taquile was our first stop, where we got a fantatic overview of the lake with the Bolivian shoreline visible in the distance. After a lunch of trout (mmm) we took to the waves once more for a considerably bumpier crossing to Amanti, our home for the evening. Here we got to stay with local families, clobbering heads on the doorways in the process, playing footbal with the locals (or in my case drinking hot chocolate and cheering from the sidelines as many windows got broken!) and soak in the culture. The evening was supposed to culminate in a big barn dance in local attire, but rain stopped play for those of us who had to climb the steep hill (altitude again - exhausting!) in the thunderstorm, so I stayed in my room taking pictures of lightning instead.

The following day we headed back to Puno via the fantastic floating reed islands, getting the chance to float around on a reed boat and see how the locals live (they even have electricity provided by solar panels, although their rooves still leak!), before heading on back to Puno, buying the obligatory finger puppets (I got a devil - seems appropriate!) and twat hats (Col, one of the guys, bought one in the shape of a llama - looks very suspect), enjoying more very god hot chocolate and enjoying another rock bar in the evening (back to decent rum at last - yay!). Yet another early start the following morn saw us driving alongside the lakeside for several hours before crossing the border to Bolivia. Shortly afterwards, we got to the Tiwanaku ruins where we pottered around the largest pre-Inca monolith, saw some skulls, a sunken temple and got to take some funky pictures through the Sun Gate (very hard to describe but with the flat landscape and low clouds, the sky seemed appreciably lower!).

Some fantastic quiche later (do all my blog revolve around food?!) we set off once more for La Paz, stopping on the outskirts for once of the most impressive city vistas I have ever seen (it´s set in a valley surrounded by massive snow capped mountains and is just a very cool sight). Traffic bedlam redefined, La Paz drivers being clinically insane, we eventually managed to stop the truck (reversing it the wrong way up a one way street!) in the centre to unload at speed before embarking on a quest for alcohol for the leaving party of the first of our crew, Trudi. La Paz being how it is, everything can be bought as long as you know the right street, so we ended up with several 10L jerry cans of rum and wodka to complement the biggest pizzas in the world (diameter 75cm!!! - 2 managed to feed 36 of us!). At last being in relative civilisation, we were also able to style our beards for the conclusion of the Movember contest (sadly rigged as the girls cheered most for the 2 guys with no stylying involved!) and dance the night away at our green themed party with a very rubbish (yet quite amusing) DJ with a penchant for repeating certain songs (La Isla Bonita 5 times in a night - Kel eat your heart out babe!). Several sore heads later the next day (not I - altitude was still taking its toll on my dancing & drinking habits), a few of us tried to get into San Pedro prison to talk to a Dutch inmate about the lifestyle there, but were sadly (or thankfully - undecided!) turned away by a nice friendly guard with a shotgun. Anyone who has read the book Marching Powder will be familiar with this, the most notorious jail in South America. Somewhat akin to a hotel, they have different grades of lodgings ranging from 1 to 5 stars, the prison produces the best cocaine in South America, and houses many barons who can basically buy anything they desire. Prisoners families also live in with them but are free to come and go as they please. A very weird place all round. Afterwards, we took off on a city tour, wandering around the witches markets (dried llama foetus anyone - good luck to bury under a new house apparently!) where most things are for sale, seeing the shopping areas (one street per commodity for the most part) and then heading on out of town to the absolutely fantastic Valley of the Moon. Similar in appearance to Bryce Canyon in the States, it consists of a selection of clay buttresses formed though centuries of erosion and offers a view from afar of La Paz as well as its own plethora of fab photo opportunities. Heading back into town through the wealthier areas of town, more reminiscent of Beverly Hills than the poorest country in this continent, the gigantic divide between rich and poor was however painfully apparent.

Fresh faced the following day after an early(ish) night, the adrednaline junkies among us rose bright and early for the bike ride of a lifetime down the notorious Death Road, so named for its dubious claim of having the highest mortality rate in the world. Descending 11,800ft from the altitude of the Andes to the finish, 65km later in the Amazon basin, the Yungas road was once the only route linking northern Bolivia to its Capital. Appreciably better for the first 20km, it has been given an asphalt surface and made wide enough for 2 lanes of traffic, allowing us to rocket down in the environs of 40mph, overtaking each other and pedalling like lunatics with maniacal smiles all round. After a couple of nice uphill stretches to tire us out (we were still over 3.5km above sea level!), we forked off the main road to the real meat and veg of the ride,
a dirt track that at times is no more than 10ft wide. Making our way down in single file, brakes being worked overtime, we were at first enshrouded in fog that soon began to clear and show the sheer drops off to our left down the side of the mountain. Fantastic views were barely heeded due to hands gripping the bars like crazy, watching for treacherous rocks in the road and the occasional vehicle coming past. When we did get the chance to stop (thankfully often), we were rewarded with some amazing vistas, waterfalls cascading over the road and a sea of green as the landscape changed from grey and mountainous to lush and verdant forests. At times it became more of an ordeal than entertainment, with a cracking pair of blisters appearing in my palms from holding on to the bars and braking so hard! Half an hour from the end of the 4 hour ride, the blisters burst, rubbing my hands raw for the (thankfully light going) remainder of the ride, skidding through pools of water and into a bar serving very welcome ice cold litres of beer (A fortnight later and I still look like Jesus, but am thoroughly on the mend). Exhausted and aching, we got to enjoy the tropical climate for a couple of hours before taking the (new) road back to base, arriving after dark to see the beaconic lights of La Paz shimmering in the distance.

A new day, still exhilarated from the previous day of activity, we set off on another early start to the mining city of Potosi. At an elevation of 4090m above sea level, it is the highest city in the world and was in colonial times the wealthiest city in South America due to the wealth of minerals, predominantly silver, in the adjacent mountain, Cerro Rico (literally Rich Mountain). Today it is a shadow of its former self, with no corporate mining interest and only cooperatives of miners heading down daily to salvage ever less valuable mineral deposits. In the shadow of a guide, we were kitted out in sexy yellow outfits and plastic bags for socks before heading on up to the mining community. Here we bought gifts for the miners, ranging from 96% alcohol (burns the lips a bit!) to cocoa leaves, soft drinks and dynamite! Crawling around the mines for a couple of hours was more than enough to get a feel for how much work goes into getting enough material for a ring (guilty as charged - I wear silver), with guys as young as 14 pushing carts up to 2 tonnes in weight through very narrow corridors. Pachamama (Mother Earth) is worshipped via Tio, the god the underworld, to whom are dedicated numerous shrines within the mines, and there are many accidents, arising primarily from consumption of aforementioned alcohol and the use of dynamite. Upon surfacing, a few of us were able to rig up watermelons we had bought earlier for detonation, plugging them with dynamite then running to take cover before the fruits were well and truly decimated! Very very good fun and highly recommended to anyone who likes making a big bang!

On from Potosi, we embarked upon a very windy and bumpy (Bolivia favours dirt tracks with hairpin bends every couple of hundred metres) road through yet more fantastic scenery to the town of Uyuni. Here we celebrated tour leader Jo's birthday with some fantastic pizza (with altitude - 3670m) from Minuteman, the adjoining restaurant to our hotel, where we danced the night away with another tour group. The next day we set off to the local train graveyard, which was great for poses on ancient trains and general tomfoolery. Onwards, we drove on out in 4x4s to the salt flats, a massive exspanse of varying shades of white covering a greater area than Lake Titicaca. My favourite day on tour to date, there was a neverending supply of photo opportunities, along with the obligatory false perspective shots made availailable by the stark landscape. To top it off, we experienced one of the most fantastic sunsets over a salt lake and then finished up with a bottle of wine and yet more top notch pizza.

Via more fantastic scenery past Tupiza (where Butch Cassidy & the Sundace Kid were caught by the Bolivian Army), we had the joy of a 14 hour truck ride over the border to Argentina. A substantial amount of tiem milling around the border, we finally crossed on over into what immediately seemed to be western Europe, worlds apart from the abject poverty and lack of infrastructure so prevalent in Bolivia. Staying in a campsite on the outskirts of Salta, we were able to enjoy copious amounts of red meat on the barbecue, interspersed with basketball and good (cheap!) red wine. Having a couple of days to enjoy the environs, we ascended the surrounding hills to parapent off the top of them (strapped to an instructor and a parachute, you run off the top of the hill and get lifted by the thermals to enjoy a fantastic view of the whole area). For most of us this proved uneventful, but as it is very wind dependent, one of the girls ended up landing in a tree (how we laughed!) and one of the guys had to have another go, having impersonated a dodo on his maiden flight. Fanstastic fun, sitting around on top of everything and just taking it easy. The next day, a number of us opted to go horse riding at a nearby tobacco ranch called Sayta. Upon arrival we were treated to high tea and cake, before having a trot/canter around the groups for a couple of hours and then heading on back for a neverending supply of meat and wine. Half a cow (at least) on the barbecue, we were treated to a fantastic red, mix of of Merlot, Malbec and Cab Sav, made by monks and supposedly hangover free. This was tested to the max with a couple of us devouring possibly more than our fair share of steak (best I have ever had - unbelieveable!), ribs (immense, delicious), roasted pumpkin and the aforementioned wine, before heading back home and collapsing into a very deep sleep.

After such a brief stop in Argentina it seems wrong to be moving on already, but we will be returning in due course. Yet another 14 hour travel day (they're getting more common!) over yet more ridiculously windy roads (who put the Andes there in the first place?!), we are currently housed up in Chile in San Pedro de Atacama (after a very slow and officious border crossing - they don't play very well with the Argentines) which offers more salt plains, geysers and the like. Having been sitting in the only functioning internet cafe in town for the last 4 hours I am now on a mission to upload some pictures and get out of here before I melt completely. We out for now.

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