After 7 crazy and emotional weeks in
Brazil, learning Portuguese, falling in love, having my heart broken,
and having several various adventures, and meeting old and new friends, a new
random friend named Ashu and myself spent one final night in a pretty
hilarious hostel in the small town of Corumba, near the Bolivian
border. Upon arrival in Corumba, after having waited on the side of
the highway for an hour and a half or so for a bus that would take us
there (sweating our asses off due to the high humidity and intense
heat, while being told the bus would come soon...3 or 4 buses did
pass us by, but eventually the right one did show up...and it was
like a damn refrigerator....brrr...so cold! We arrived in Corumba
about an hour and a half later, and at the bus station we decided to
go walk around towards an area where there were apparently a few
hostels, according to our guide from the Pantenal....before leaving
the station in that direction, a small rusted out car with 3 English
speaking Brazilians came flying up to the parking lot and started
asking us and the other two tourists if we spoke English and were
looking for a place.
We mentioned that yes, we were in fact
looking for a place, and the one younger man mentioned that we should
go to his hostel, where he had just checked in 3 Australian women,
and where there would be internet and breakfast for 35 reais a
night....sounded like a fair enough deal, and he mentioned the girls
were going to Bolivia the next day as well.... perfect. So we made
the walk in the general direction where he mentioned the place was,
and looked for “Corumba Hostel”....we approached a block where
there were a few young children sitting on the sidewalk, and they
immediately started whistling at us, and mentioned we should go in
through this nearby gate into what appeared to be a large courtyard
and house.....there was a small marking on the wall saying Pousada 4,
but nothing saying Corumba Hostel...hmmm okay...but the people were
quite encouraging for us to go inside, and since it was kind of late
and really hot, we ventured in. The lady working there didn't speak
any English and had no helpful information on buses or trains for
Bolivia the next day, but did mention that there was a guy coming by
later on who could be of some help and spoke English. We were shown
the room which was pretty simple, but seemed alright enough, as we
were tired and just wanted to grab a place without looking around any
further. We settled in, dropped our bags, and began to wonder, where
are the Australian girls? Of course, there weren't any Australian
girls ha ha! Then when we went downstairs to sign in the guest log,
the last entry date for guests was over 2 weeks earlier...apparently
the place wasn't all the popular, and we were starting to wonder if
we maybe had gone to the wrong hostel...but we had already paid, so
no worries.
After hanging around a little bit
longer and watching the two young children playing in the courtyard
with nothing more than a few pieces of cardboard, and contemplating
how simple life could be with the simplest of toys if you didn't
know any better, we decided to venture out for a bite to eat. There
was one Brazilian woman in the room, and I asked her if she knew any
decent places to go, but then she mentioned she was too scared to
leave the hostel alone and walk around, and also mentioned that she
would like to go to Bolivia like we were, but again that she was too
scared....strange! We went for our wander to find a restaurant
nearby, and found a spot that appeared to have been an old event hall
or something, and was now converted into a restaurant....it wasn't
busy at the moment, but soon it picked up...we had obviously made the
right choice! They didn't have any chicken plates even though the
menu said so, but at the same time they had a large selection of
dishes of fish, including one called Pintado that our guide in the
Pantanal had recommended I try, as he said it was the best fish from
the Paraguay River in the Pantanal....I don't eat a lot of fish,
other than sushi, and especially after an incident in Northern
Brazil, where the last time I ate fish, there was a big bone that got
jammed up in my gums and made me bleed profusely....I swore that was
the last time I'd eat fish! But nevertheless, I ordered a dish called
Pintado Arucum, which was a grilled fish, with a red sauce and
cheese...it was delicious! While sitting around the restaurant,
enjoying the food, more and more locals showed up to eat.....I don't
think the place even had a name, just a simple address number above
the door....1540.....the best restaurant in Corumba!
The restaurant really started to pick
up around 9 pm, and some random old man came over to our table asking
if we spoke English and if we knew the two other travellers that we
had come on the bus with. We hadn't spoken with them, but I thought I
saw the girl inside the restaurant, as she had bright blonde hair,
and thought that it was a strange coincidence that they happened to
be at the restaurant and this old man was looking for them. In the
end, it wasn't actually her, so he came back outside and sat at our
table, drinking our juice and chatting for awhile about how he was
going to Bolivia the next day and could take us in a taxi or show us
how the buses would get us to the border....and that he would be at
our guest house the next morning for breakfast....and with that he
ran off into the night..strange fellow. We arrived back at the
hostel, and it was still quiet there, with no people there...fun
times. We were both pretty tired so we just called it an early night
in the funny dorm room. You could tell that the place hadn't really
any history of being a hostel, as the two bunk beds in the room were
put in a manner where their ladders were actually pushed against the
wall, so there wasn't really an easy way to climb up the beds if one
needed to...hilarious. On top of that, Ashu's bed ended up being
filled with bed bugs and various other bugs, so he had to sleep on
the floor...damn. I woke up a little later than him the next morning,
finding the scared Brazilian woman to be gone and Ashu to be
downstairs eating our complimentary breakfast, which was basically
one small bun with some butter and jam, and a bit of coffee...fresh
fruit? No way! Toast? Hell no! By far the worst “Cafe da manha”
of all the Brazilian hostels ha ha! Plus the old guy who claimed he
would be there in the morning and show us where to go? Nowhere to be
found!
We quickly grabbed our stuff and were
on our way out the door to head to the border, walking several blocks
to find the local bus station. When we finally arrived, some security
man just pointed towards a bus stand behind the building and told us
to go there...okay. We arrived there and waited, and waited. A few
buses did show up, but none of them had “Frontera” written on
them. After about 15 minutes of waiting, we finally asked some people
who happened to be also waiting there if they knew where the buses to
the border were going. They pointed back into the bus terminal behind
us....apparently there was a main gate entrance that we had to go
through where we paid our fares...thanks for clarifying that old and
lazy security dude at the other side! We arrived inside, and
fortunately didn't have to wait too long for the bus to show up, as
they only come every 30 minutes or so, and we figured we might have
missed one already. We hopped aboard the dirty and rusty old bus,
which reminded me a lot of one of the local buses in Paraguay, and
were on our way, making the short trip to the border crossing point.
We got out there, followed several people to Brazilian customs, where
the man actually spoke some English...wow! After a quick exit
stamping, we made our short walk over to the Bolivian side...Hello
country numbed 74!! Of course, in true Bolivian style, it was a
fairly chaotic and unorganized mess.
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| The simple life of a Brazilian child |
We lined up at the immigration point,
and Ashu went first....Being Indian, he had to apply for his visa at
the embassy beforehand, which was a rather strange turn of events in
itself, as they required his photo to have a red background (!!). He
went to a photography shop to have his photo taken, and told the guy
they needed a red background...the guy gave a confused look, then put
him up against a white wall, and then used said photo with photoshop
to put on a lovely blood red background! No idea exactly what shade
of red Bolivia wanted, he was on his way to the embassy with said
picture, and apparently it passed without issue and he received his
visa which was “libre” or free. When asking exactly what libre
was, the staff seemed to have no idea....he asked if he could work?
“No senor, libre!” (No sir, free!). He then asked if he could
stay for as long as he wanted. “No senor, 30 dias, pero libre!”
(No sir, 30 days, but free!). Okay, thanks for clarifying that all
up. So he arrives the window and hands over his passport with
completed visa....and apparently the staff has really no idea what to
do with this strange passport. I'm pretty sure the immigration guy
helping us couldn't have been more than 17 years old....but a great
judge of character no doubt! He took the passport into another nearby
office, where they inquired around inside and finally told Ashu to go
and take a photocopy of his visa and give it to them...okay??
Meanwhile, I'm sitting around wondering why it's so difficult, and
the young boy or maybe man returns to me and looks at my passport,
looks at some writing on the wall, and then again takes me over to
the next office where the more senior officials seem to be
working...after more discussion, he comes back with a small and
simple form to fill out for me....so I receive this form, and there's
more and more people piling up at this tiny and unorganized
immigration office...welcome to Bolivia! I finally complete my
paperwork, am stamped in, and then have to wait another 15 minutes or
so until Ashu finally gets his paperwork done. We cross into Bolivia
legally (the border crossing was pretty relaxed and one could quite
easily just wander in and not have any worries about being stopped).
After chatting with the money exchange
guy at the crossing about trains and buses to Santa Cruz, and
starting to brush up on Spanish a bit, we witnessed a Menonite Family
pull up, with one daughter having signs of Down Syndrome, and I
thought back to a documentary I had seen from Vice about the Menonite
communities in Bolivia, where they had problems with rapes within the
communities...sad and strange World of closed communities. In an
extra twist of oddness, Ashu said they actually all had Canadian
passports, so they must have been some of the breakaway Menonites who
left Bolivia where it's even more hardcore traditional, and made
their way to Canada, but were back for a visit. After watching the
strangeness of seeing this tall and traditional German farmers finish
their immigration procedures and drive off in their tiny old van, we
made our way over to grab a mototaxi to the train station, but some
regular taxi driver pulled up and offered us a decent enough price.
We said train station, and of course he just took us straight to the
bus station, where we were immediately surrounded by several people,
quickly pushing the option of taking the bus that would be leaving in
an hour and a half, would have us arriving in Santa Cruz by 8 pm, and
that had air conditioning. On top of that, the people said there was
no trains running that day, only on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
In the whole sense of overwhelmant and the relatively cheap price of
the bus, plus the insistence of everyone that there were no trains
that day, we decided to cave and buy the bus tickets.
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| Ate logo Brasil, bom dia Bolivia! |
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| Back to the Spanish speaking World |
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| the exciting streets of Puerto Quijarra, Bolivia |
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| amazing Bolivian taxis |
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| Where the hell are the judicial services! This is a parking lot hahaha |
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| Some amazing things for sale in Bolivian supermarkets |
Meanwhile, there was a bewildered
looking English guy that we had seen the day before on the bus into
Corumba, who spoke no Spanish and had no idea what was going on, so I
offered to help them out a bit, and get their tickets all sorted out.
They were the stereotypical first time Latin America travellers,
armed with their Lonely Planet book, no Spanish, and a strict
itinerary of following every guide and recommendation of said
book...sigh. Since we had some time to kill, and I was curious, we
made the walk over to the train station, where we found that there
was in fact a train leaving that day, at 6 pm, and that it would have
us arriving at 8 am the next day. The price was around 220
Bolivianos, compared to the 70 Bolivianos for the bus. The exchange
rate is roughly 6 Bolivianos to 1 Dollar US. After chatting with the
guy at the station a little bit about how everyone at the station
told us there were no trains, and him laughing and saying it was all
the politics involved with the taxis and getting some commision if
they put people on the buses, we went off to decide whether to ask
for our money back and take the train instead. The train to Santa
Cruz had been formerly nicknamed the “Death Train”, and sounded
like a novel idea, however, the actual “Death Train” was the more
slow moving train that wouldn't leave until the next afternoon, while
we had the option of taking the new and modern speed train to arrive
in Santa Cruz. Not quite the experience we were looking for, so we
opted to continue on with the bus instead. After making some stops at
some shops, and seeing some strange items for sale, and just
witnessing the general atmosphere of poverty and lack of development,
compared to the nearby country of Brazil, it was back to the bus
station to kill a bit of time before the bus left.
I couldn't help but laugh at one street
sign we came past when walking towards the bus station, as it was a
“Judicial Service” sign posted in a parking lot in front of a
cheap hotel. There were no markings of a Lawyer's office, a Law
office, or even any sort of Municipal Law office. We began making
jokes that perhaps once a day a bus would show up at this point, and
people would pile onto it, joining fellow criminals, plaintiffs, and
judicial characters, and be taken off to the nearby court. Or that
there was perhaps a small table, similar to a lemonade stand, that
would be put up on weekends, where people could wander up and have
their consultation period. Strange times! We waited a bit longer at
the bus station, before piling on to the bus, where I found my seat
to not have a seatbelt, and Ashu found his seat to be broken in a
manner that he was stuck in fully laid back mode, no matter what he
tried to do. The bus ride was told to be about 10 hours, and as we
were on the bus and the hour of departure arrived, the bus did in
fact start up and pull out of the bus station, moving about 3 m
before stopping and remaining there for another 5 minutes. I guess
they could say they left on time?! Then we pulled around the side of
the bus station, and stopped there for another 5 to 10
minutes.....before finally pulling away....a sort of timely manner, I
guess. We left Puerto Quijarra, and at the entrance to the highway,
we saw a distance marker showing 560 kms to Santa Cruz. This would be
the only distance marker the entire way.... We didn't make it 10
minutes down the road, before we were stopped by the police, who came
in to check on our passports and a few bags...I guess it might
actually be a bit harder to illegally immigrate than expected. After
the stop, we were on our way, with the bus hitting top speeds of
possibly 60 km/hr....oh this was going to be a long ride!
The next 10 hours passed by, with a few
hours spent sleeping, and a few hours of witnessing general
strangeness such as: A Bolivian lady sitting across from a sleeping
Ashu, and myself, with an upset child that must have been at least 3
to 4 years old. Said lady's manner of dealing with her upset child
was to force breast feed the child! At what age does one stop breast
feeding?? 1 year maybe?? I was in complete shock, and wanted to wake
up Ashu but he looked so peaceful sleeping. Fortunately, he did wake
up on his own and witness this event, and turn over with a look of
surprise and shock.... After the old breastfeeding lady finished her
business, she went back up towards the front of the bus, not entirely
sure why she needed to come back towards our area to do this work.
When we first took off, it appeared our tv screen would be showing
the Mel Gibson action pack of 4 different movies, but after about 2
hours of Braveheart, the tv screens appeared to break, and we were
saved the pain of watching the other terrible movies, in Spanish.
Then we had two young boys sitting in front of us who had a nice
looking smart phone, and were watching some creepy videos of women
dancing Brazilian Funk at a dance class. It appeared that their
friend had set up his camera phone on a table near these girls
dancing, to secretely record them dancing, much to the boys delight!
We continued travelling along, at slow speeds, with no idea of how
much more distance to cover, since they must purposely keep the
distance markers non present so that one couldn't get their hopes up
that they might actually be arriving somewhere soon! Of the 10 hours
of driving, there were no stops for food or drinks or bathroom
breaks, only one very short stop for the driver to run off the bus to
a small road side stand, grab 2 L of Coca Cola, and quickly run back
on to the bus to continue on. At one point, I woke up from a sleep,
and found that there was water pooling below my seat, starting to
soak my bag, so I had to quickly move it to another dry spot, but it
appeared the water was only on my side of the seat, and I didn't
bother waking Ashu to move his bag...well, of course an hour later or
so, he woke up and found that the water had moved over to his side,
soaking his bag as well! Where this water was coming from, I have no
idea! There must have been an air conditioning pipe leaking or
something.
We arrived in busy and surprisingly
well developed Santa Cruz de La Sierra relatively on time, and with
all of our stuff intact, although Ashu's bag was a little bit soaked
still. Fortunately, he was a bit better prepared and had a hostel
written down, but rather than fight with the taxi drivers waiting
right outside the bus, we wandered into the nearby train station, to
look for a toilet, as it had been 10 hours, and to avoid the marked
up gringo taxis. Inside was a complete chaotic mess of people, with
colourful traditional Bolivian clothing, dirty children, salespeople
spread out along the middle of the walk ways, people with large bags
of fruits and vegetables, and more Mennonite families! After finaly
finding the toilet, and managing to sneak in a Brazilian Real coin
that looks similar to the Bolivian coin (at the time I thought it was
clever but then did the conversion and realized that I had in fact
paid triple what I had to oops), we went outside into the front of
the train station, and began a somewhat stupid battle to find a taxi.
Apparently, we were asking taxis that were dropping people off at the
station to take us somewhere, and after a few weeks of Portuguese, my
Spanish was pretty rusty and I couldn't understand why none of them
could take us to the address given, and why they kept pointing out
towards another area of the station. Eventually we figured it out
that we were in the passenger drop off zone and had to go to the
designated passenger pickup zone....Bolivia disorganization at it's
finest.
I showed a large and burly taxi driver
the address of the hostel we wanted to go to, and he grumbled that he
knew the place and told us the price of 20 Bolivianos, or about $3
USD. We were tired and ready to go, so I didn't even put up a fight
on the price. We were on our way and arrived in the neighbourhood we
were looking for, but the driver seemed to have no idea of where the
street was located. This seems to be quite typical in many parts of
the World, where you have to give them a direct landmark, as none of
them know their cities well enough to take you to a spot! I'm sure in
10 years everyone will have a GPS, and hopefully by that point taxis
will get one from point A to point B in not only a timely manner, but
without the hardcore screwing of fare payers. Anyway, the driver
started driving down all these side streets, looking for the name of
our street, and had to keep resorting to asking people on the streets
if they knew where the street or the hostel was. A friendly group of
2 older men knew the hostel, and gave him pretty clear directions,
but old Burly couldn't seem to figure out, driving around in circle
and circles, getting lost and grumbling that he didn't know where
this place was. After about 20 some minutes of driving around lost,
Ashu managed to actually spot a sign directing us towards the place
and was able to get Burly to turn into the road. The sign gave clear
directions, yet he still couldn't seem to figure out how to follow
said directions, and finally made it to the front door of the place.
We found they had rooms available and checked in.
The place was an absolute palace, when
considering hostel standards, with a large and well kept pool, nice
bar area, huge common areas, very modern kitchen, rooms, bathrooms,
etc. The price of a dorm room was about 60 Bolivianos or $10....yes
Bolivia, I think my bank account is going to like you! We checked in
and dropped off our bags and then asked for any restaurant
recommendations, but the girl working the desk just gave us a map and
couldn't really provide any somewhat useful information, so we went
on our way for a little walk to find a place to eat. We ended up
settling on a huge and brightly coloured chicken restaurant, after
contemplating a nearby burger shop, and settled in for a huge platter
of freshly deboned and fried chicken with rice and salad. After the
hearty meal, we were both feeling pretty tired, and rather than
venture out into the crazy streets of Santa Cruz for the night, we
ended up just calling it an early night. After catching up on a bit
of sleep and venturing out for the decent free breakfast, we sat down
near a table full of younger looking travellers, who seemed to be
alternating speaking German and Spanish.....I put them on to be
German students, and remarked at how dedicated they all were to
learning Spanish....impressive German efficiency. There did happen to
be one girl who didn't seem to partake in much of the German
conversation, but I didn't think much of it.
We ended up being joined by two
friendly Israeli guys and had a nice breakfast with them and one cute
German girl who seemed to be part of the big group. After that was
all wrapped up, I wandered back to the room and found Ashu had begun
doing Yoga, and even though I wanted to join, he was already several
minutes in, and his instructional video was in German, so I didn't
bother. After hanging out in the common room for awhile, and finding
out that all of the others were Germans except for one French girl,
and having a nice chat in French, she invited me to join them on a
trip to the nearby wildlife park that afternoon, which seemed like a
splendid idea. It was probably only 2 hours after I had finished
breakfast that they informed me they were all going out to lunch and
then to the park afterwards, so if I was going to go, it would be
best to tag along now. Since Ashu was still busy, I figured he
wouldn't mind that I left, and left a message at the desk to be
courteous and we were on our way. We stopped in the main plaza and
searched around for a spot for lunch, settling into an open air ice
cream shop/restaurant and pulled up a table. It was kind of
interesting for me, as everyone insisted on speaking Spanish to
practice, which was the first time I'd been around a foreign group
and English wasn't the preferred means of communication. We had a
nice lunch together, and I got to know the young ones a little bit
better, finding out they were all working in Puerto Quijarra, the
small and dirty border town that we caught our bus from. They were
mostly all working as Red Cross volunteers, which seemed like a
rather amazing thing to be doing at such a young age. We made our way
back to the hostel, as we apparently had to pick up a few more people
or something.
At that point, I checked in on Ashu
again, but he was sleeping, and someone else in the dorm room was
showering, so after changing into some swim wear for the nature park,
and meeting a few new people including a sort of dodgy Swiss/Bolivian
guy, we piled back into a taxi and were on our way. Unfortunately we
had way too many people, and it was a rather uncomfortable taxi ride,
as the park was located quite a distance away, and with 4 seats and 7
people, there was a lot of uncomfortable moments. We arrived at the
park and the taxi took off, when the Swiss guy realized he had left
his bag in the car, so he had to grab another cab and race off to try
and track him down. He was lucky and did manage to grab his bag and
get back not too long after. We paid the entrance and wandered
inside, spending a few hours checking out some nice spots such as:
The Butterfly Dome, complete with guided tour by some Argentine guy,
and then a massive exotic bird park, filled with colourful parrots
and other tropical birds. After some nice photos with several of the
Macaus, I lost everyone, so I just wandered around a few other parts
of the park by myself before finding everyone and ended up checking
out the large pool area for the next few hours.
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| Santa Cruz |
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| Central Square |
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| A nice and pleasant surprise |
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| Visiting the nature park outside of Santa Cruz |
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| Some of the butterflies in the butterfly sanctuary |
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| Now on to the bird park |
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| Paulie want a cracker? |
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| A friend in need is a friend indeed |
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| Always peacocking |
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| A box of Fruit Loops were nowhere to be found |
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| View from above the bird park of the surrounding area.....pretty flat |
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| Emus! |
The place was shutting down eventually,
so we piled back into a few more taxis and were on our way back to
the hostel, making plans to all head out later on that night. After
lounging around the hostel for a few hours, chatting with people, and
having a few beers, a large group of us decided to head out for
dinner in the town, and ended up meeting another huge group of 10
more German students, and found a nearby Mexican restaurant that had
no people inside, and were quite surprised to see this massive group
of 20 show up for dinner. The food ended up being pretty good, as
were the margaritas, and somehow with that massive group of people,
the bill came out to exactly 1000 Bolvianos...random indeed...it's
these small random things in life that one starts to appreciate more
and more. After the huge dinner, several of us decided to go check
out some lounge/bar nearby, but with a big group it was hard to find
one spot and please everyone. The first place was too small and not
busy enough, so we found another place that was located in a
courtyard and somewhat nice, but it was completely dead. Apparently
it became the after party spot later in the evenings, but we decided
to start our night out there, having a few drinks but losing a few
more people who went home early. After a few pricy drinks there, we
decided to head out and try and find a better spot somewhere else,
and wandered around rather aimlessly once again, before finding a
decent spot with a live band and a DJ. We spent the next 2 hours
there, enjoying the pretty good music, and I couldn't help but notice
that there were in fact some good looking Bolivian women, as pretty
much all travellers have said that Bolivia has the worst selection
for women in the World! Unfortunately I didn't get to meet any of
them, and we were on our way back to the hostel for the night around
3:30 am.
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| A Mexican restaurant called Jalapenos...I think their logo looks more like a banana and had a huge argument about it :) |
The next day I made it up for
breakfast, as I've suddenly started getting up a decent hours for
breakfasts in my hostels for the first time in my trip. After the
nice breakfast, and meeting two nice Swiss girls, including one that
I told I would marry later in the day before she went back to
Switzerland the next morning, a few of us decided to go head into the
city centre for awhile and check out the local markets and grab
lunch. We ended up in some cafe that sort of reminded me of a place
in Cuba, with the wall colours, and paintings and pictures on the
wall. The food wasn't really all that good, but the coffee was decent
enough! After our dinner date there, we wandered around the main
plaza a little bit, before heading over to the market, where there
were lots of artisanal crafts, but nothing that interested me so
greatly. After joking around with the Swiss girl a bit more about
buying her a ring and a dress for the wedding later that afternoon,
myself, Ashu, and the strange Swiss/Bolivian guy decided to walk back
to the hostel and enjoy the nice day. He was a bit of an odd
character, as we asked him what he did when he worked in Switzerland,
and he said he was a swindler and would go around asking for
donations for the Red Cross and keep them for himself.....I have no
idea if he was for real or not, but then he said it works out for
everyone fine, the Red Cross gets needed attention, and I get
money....what the hell?!!
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| A lunch break in the Cuban Cafe |
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| A lot of cotton candy salespeople in Bolivia for some reason |
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| Tourist bus..."you are in movement, you are living"...not a lot of movement from this bus! |
We arrived back at the hostel, and I
was happy to see that the TV had the NFL games on so I settled in
there with a beer and watched the afternoon games. It was about this
moment that I realized the plug in points in the common areas of the
hostel weren't properly grounded, and I proceeded to electrocute
myself 3 times over the next few hours, touching metal points on my
computer! Not a nice experience. I had to avoid plugging in the
computer and just enjoy the beer and football. Eventually after the
few hours of watching was done, and saying goodbye to the nice German
students who were on their way back to Puerto Quijarra, I joined the
two Israelis and the Dutch girl for a few beers, and some pizza. That
lasted until about 11:00 pm, as everyone was pretty tired and called
it another early night. I had thought about leaving the next day, but
it was a nice day and it was a comfortable hostel, so I decided to
stick around for one more day and wander around the city a bit. After
heading out to a Vegetarian restaurant with Ashu and the Dutch girl,
and meeting a nice Bolivian girl there, Ashu and I went for a little
man date to find a barber shop to get our beards shaved. I've only
had a shave done once, but it was a nice experience, and he already
had a huge beard so we decided to go find a spot. Before we could
find a barber shop, I had to first mail some postcards for the Swiss
girl, which was quite a funny event.
It took awhile to find the post office,
and once we finally did, it was such a chaotic mess, as one would
expect from a Bolivian post office. There was no actual post box to
just drop the cards in, and there were countless boxes and parcels
that were likely meant to be delivered, but could simply be picked up
by anyone who wanted to walk into the office and steal packages, at
this point Ashu couldn't help but laugh about how much Bolivia seemed
like India to him, and this would only continue over the next few
days as we travelled more through the country. After finding the
hectic post office and waiting in the huge lineup just to hand over
the two postcards, we found a barber shop where a full shave was $4!
Unfortunately, the guy didn't use a hot towel to open up the pores on
the face, so it was a little bit painful at times, but still kind of
an interesting experience. It was rather funny as we both finished
our shaves and looked into the mirror at each other and exclaimed how
we didn't recognize each other at the exact same time. Such a change.
After our shaves, we wanted to go try and find a cigar to buy for the
Ruta del Che, which we were going to go in in the next few days, and
after searching in vain for quite sometime, and not finding a tobacco
shop, we ended up on some random market street and saw a shop with
cigar holders, and figured they must sell cigars there too....well,
it turned out it was a perfume shop, and what appeared to be cigar
holders and even had Cuba written on them, was in fact some sort of
perfume! Damnit!
After that unsuccessful stop, I
happened to see a shop with a large selection of foreign alcohols and
figured it might be worth a shot, as it appeared to be a black market
type of store...and success! They had a decent selection of good
quality Cuban cigars, but unfortunately they weren't selling them as
singles only by the case. When I inquired about the price for a case,
and found out they were $70 a case, I couldn't resist buying one, as
the same cigars usually sell for about $30 each, and the case is
usually around $400-$500...win! Ashu decided he would go half on the
case, and as such, we had our big case of cigars and went back to the
hostel filled with happiness. After arriving back at the place, it
was another lazy day just hanging out around the pool, chatting with
new people until happy hour started, then the drinks and cigars came
out, and we had a rather nice evening together, but of course around
midnight everyone was rather tired and it was time to hit the sack
again.
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| Pizza and Beer night |
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| Amazing moustache fingernail tattoo |
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| Nice day for a shave :) |
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| They have these themed pay phones everywhere |
The next day Ashu and I decided to go
and grab a shared taxi to a nearby city of Samaipata, where we could
start the Ruta del Che from, and after saying goodbyes to a few
people, we were on our way in the taxi to the spot where we could
then grab our shared taxi to Samaipata, instead of taking the long
bus ride that was only 5 Bolivanos cheaper. Our taxi driver had some
strange lisp/stutter thing, and I couldn't help but think of a Curb
Your Enthusiasm episode where a man parks in a handicap spot and
Larry David gets upset with him because he doesn't have a real
handicap. We piled into this tiny and uncomfortable car and made our
way to Samaipata. On my left was a younger Bolivian guy who was a
pretty nice guy and spoke a tiny bit of English, was married with a
woman in Samaipata, but they weren't living together yet, as it was
complicated, or so he said. The man on the right of me was a larger
Bolivian man who slept most of the way, taking up his seat and half
of mine, leading to a sore ass for me, since I was sitting on half of
my ass...on top of that he kept falling asleep and into me...a great
drive! I had to laugh at one of the road check stops, which consisted
of a bungee cord strung across the roadway and a small house on the
shoulder where the driver would have to go in and pay their toll or
show their toll ticket. The people in these little check stops are
typically so lazy that they don't even go outside to untie the bungee
cord, they have a little lever inside their shack that they pull
causing the cord to fall down. We continued on our way to Samaipata,
with my Spanish slowly coming back as I conversed for the next hour
and a half with the Bolivian guy about life in Bolivia, the culture,
the upcoming Day of the Dead festivals, etc. It's one thing I love so
much about travelling in South America is that the people are so open
and talkative and friendly...it's so refreshingly genuine when you
come from Western Countries where people would rather sit on their
iPhone than talk to the people beside them on the bus, and even give
you a strange and awkward reaction if you try to strike up a
conversation with them.
We arrived in Samaipata, and were
dropped off at the Central Square which was a beautiful and tree
filled spot surrounded by several classical colonial style buildings
and then one brand new building with bright red siding and large
glass windows....Ashu claimed it was such an ugly sightsore, but my
love of colours made me think that it was actually quite trendy
looking. After finding a nearby cheap hostel, we settled in there and
went for a wander around the small town, checking out some of the few
sights and sounds...it really was a village and there wasn't a whole
lot to do, so we ended up down at some really great vegetarian
restaurant for a bite to eat, and were so stuffed and tired from
eating that we ended up going back to the hostel to relax, and for
Ashu to have a nap. I met some American and Aussie girls for awhile,
played some interesting Monopoly card game and a word association
game where two people would say one word at the same time, and then
the next two people would have to say a word that could connect the
previous two words...it was a rather interesting game and quite fun
actually. Around 5 pm there was a bar with a rooftop terrace that had
Happy Hour and Shisha pipes, so all of us went down there, hoping to
enjoy a nice sunset or something, but unfortunately it was cloudy and
the view wasn't so great. After a few drinks and shisha, we stopped
at one more restaurant on the square for a bit to eat, before calling
it a night, as we had a full day planned for the next day.
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| Quiet and quaint Samaipata |
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| A simple little town, with not a lot happening |
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| The city centre |
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| an Eggscellent delivery man |
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| The amazing disco of Samaipata |
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| Guard Pig |
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| Super Cola! |
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| Prohibited to throw your trash and "do your necessities" here |
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| the amazing rooftop view ha |
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| an amazing find at the black market in Bolivia..$75 for this case! |
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| Our nice little hostel |
It was a bit of a battle trying to
sleep in the room, as it was a bit cold, and I was actually starting
to feel a bit of altitude sickness, even though Samaipata isn't
particularly high up either, and there was a shit ton of mosquitos in
the room as well, constantly buzzing near my ears and biting me all
over...great...then on top of that, the neighbours happened to have a
rooster who seemed to enjoy waking up and screaming around 2 am every
night...thanks! Just makes me want to eat chicken that much more! We
were up early the next day and tried to find a spot to rent
motorbikes to drive the Ruta del Che and go to a town called La
Higuera, where Che was killed. It appeared to not actually be all
that far away from Samaipata, and we figured we could rent bikes and
head there without issues, and set off to find one spot that was
apparently located very close to the main square, on the road to San
Juan....well we asked the local taxi drivers where that road was and
they pointed us in one direction, and we began walking and walking,
which then lead to a dead end. Then we asked some old local man, who
apparently had no idea where San Juan was, even though it was located
about 10 minutes from Samaipata...thanks for your help old man with
the cotton candy! We continued to walk up another road and asked
another person who pointed us in another completely different
direction, and then stopped yet another person who again pointed us
in another direction...apparently no one knows where San Juan is! Two
funny sights on this pointless walk were: a car driving around making
loud cow noises repeatedly, apparently they were selling milk to the
village and thought a loud speaker with cow moos was an effective
notification; and a large sign notifying people that they couldn't
dump trash or “do their business here”....who would crap or piss
in this rather open area in front of a huge market is beyond me.
We eventually found a road that did in
fact lead to San Juan, but since our flyer had no direction listed
for the place we were looking for, and we didn't see any signs posted
for motorcycle rent, we came across a small camp ground that also had
a flyer advertising bikes for rent. We stopped in there, found the
owners to be French, and that we could rent bikes from there, but
were told that La Higuera was way too far away and the road was way
too bad to rent a bike and go towards. Ashu checked out the bikes,
and they weren't in great condition either, plus I've never driven a
bike other than an automatic scooter, and he hadn't driven a bike in
8 years ago, so imagining us sharing a bike and driving up some
mountain roads, would be just like something out of the movie The
Motorcycle Diaries where the two protagonists keeps falling off their
bike at random moments. The girl talked us out of trying to go there,
and we decided to just go tour around Samaipata for the day, so we
found a taxi driver named Freddie to take us to Las Cuevas (The
Caves) and to a huge carved monolith nearby called El Fuerte, which
is a World Heritage Site and the largest man carved rock in the
World. Old Freddie was a rather interesting character, as he had 12
kids!! Ranging from the age of 18 to 6 months with 4 different
women...condom and family planning were not part of his vocabulary
apparently. On top of that, he was a bit of a crazy taxi driver, but
nevertheless a pretty cool guy.
We arrived at Las Cuevas, and he told
us he would wait there for us for an hour and a half or two hours, as
that would be enough time he figured. We entered the gate, where the
lady who was supposed to be charging entrance was nowhere to be
found, and had to wait until she finally showed up to charge our
entry fees. I think she was off sleeping somewhere, I love the lazy
Bolivian way. We made our way along the trails, first finding a
rather nice waterfall and I was completely shocked to find a hawk on
the ground staring up at me and sort of blocking the pathway. I have
no idea if it was aggressive enough to bite or scratch, so I didn't
bother to touch it, but was curious as to why it was barely moving,
until we saw that it had a badly damaged shoulder or wing and
couldn't fly. I felt bad for the animal, and later told the lady
working at the gate about it and if she could call a Veterinarian or
the animal refuge to come and see if they could do anything about it,
but she didn't seem too concerned. After the first waterfall, we
found two more, but no sign of any types of caves, which lead to a
lot of confusion.....why the hell was this place called the Caves in
the first place? There was no signage posted or anything and there
appeared to maybe be one small trail past the top waterfall, but
nothing concrete, so we just returned to the bottom and got into the
taxi and old Freddie was surprised we were back so soon and asked how
the caves were....ha ha what the hell! Apparently they were way up
above the final waterfall and without markings of any sort, we
weren't able to find our way.
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| The first of 3 Watefalls in Las Cuevas park |
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| What I thought was just a friendly bird, was in fact an injured one |
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| More waterfalls..yay |
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| A clean shaved Indian Photographer |
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| The third waterfall...nowhere to be seen, markings for the trail that leads to the caves for which this park is named after! |
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| "The start"...of what?? bad stomachs? |
We hopped in the cab and chatted with
old Freddie some more about life in Bolivia, his ridiculously huge
family, and the growth and development over the past few years of
Samaipata before arriving at El Fuerte. We started the small hike up
to the archaeological ruins and were rather impressed with the
stunning views of the surrounding areas, with mountains, valleys,
vineyards, orchards, rock faces, and flat lands littering the
landscape...quite a stunning place indeed. After spending an hour and
a bit wandering around the huge Monolith, and trying to understand
some of the customs and cultures of the Incas and the previous tribes
that contributed to the carving and structure of the rock, we made
our way back to the taxi, as we were starving and headed down the
long 7 km dirt road that was undergoing a large construction project
to pave it, as it was a fairly harrowing journey to the site, and
when it rains, the road becomes undrivable, so the government had
decided to invest some money into constructing a proper road. I asked
Freddie how long it would take to complete the work, and he figured
about a year, and the workers actually seemed to be working quite
diligently, I think the same work in Brazil would probably take 2 to
3 years!
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| A nice view of the surrounding wine country |
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| Largest carved rock apparently |
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| Old Incan houses |
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| Deserted ancient ruins...a big difference from Macchu Pichu |
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| The "Punishment Hole" |
We arrived back in Samaipata, went back
to the vegetarian restaurant for another tasty and huge lunch buffet,
and were so stuffed and tired from all the walking that day that we
ended up going back and sleeping for several hours and missing the
happy hour at the terrace bar. We went out for a wander to find some
dinner and sort out some plans to go do the Ruta del Che the next day
and visit La Higuera where Che Guevara's last stand occurred, and
where he was killed. As luck would have it, as we were approaching
the main square, we ran into the Dutch girl who had fallen in love
with in Brazil, and had broken my heart....I was trying to be ahead
of her and not see her again to get over her, but of course she ended
up in small town Samaipata!! They decided they were interested in
coming along to La Higuera the next day, and we set about finding a
taxi that would take us there, and found a nice guy with a huge van
that could take us all there for 800 Bolivianos. We figured we would
do the trip early the next day and try and catch the night bus to
Sucre which left around 7 pm. We ended up having dinner together at
some Dutch owned restaurant, where the food wasn't that great, but
the owner was nice enough, and he mentioned that there were no night
buses going from Valle Grande, a city along the Ruta del Che, which
kind of threw a wrench into our plans, as we had arranged the big van
to take us on the route, with the intent of keeping our bags in the
vehicle all day. We were told that we could catch a bus from another
nearby town around 8 pm if we waited along the highway, but might
have a hard time doing so, as the upcoming weekend was a holiday and
the buses could have been full, so we settled on that.
We went back to our rooms for the
night, as we were to be picked up at 6 am the next day, but then
about 15 minutes later there was a buzzing at our hostel door, and I
assumed someone was locked out, so I went to let them in, but found
the two Dutch people who said that the Dutch restaurant owner had
offered to take us all to Sucre in the morning of the day after we
did our tour, for 25 Bolivianos....wow, that seemed like a great
deal, as we wouldn't have to take the really long ride with the bus,
and would have a bit more freedom and room, so we agreed to that, and
called it a night. We were up super early the next day, and again I
hadn't slept very well due to the rooster and the mosquitos, and we
were out the door and on our way. Since it was Halloween, I decided
to add a little festivity to the day, and put on a Mexican wrestling
mask. I had hoped to wear my Communist T-shirt to go to the Che
Memorials, and of course it was missing from my bag! I knew that last
time I had worn it was at my friend Nick's house in Brazil, and that
his step brother was a big communist party fan, and had complimented
me on the shirt before. I was nearly certain that he had stolen the
shirt from me, and sure enough, a few weeks later I messaged Nick and
found that he did in fact have the T-shirt in his possession, although
it was apparently found in the clean laundry pile, which seemed a bit
odd considering that I had done my own laundry at their place
recently and had hung up all my clothing and taken it down....it
seemed very odd that one shirt that I had washed and someone else
liked would go missing...some sort of conspiracy!
We hopped in the vehicle and stopped at
the next nearest city to try and take out some money, as I hadn't
taken out enough before leaving Santa Cruz and there was no bank in
Samaipata, but of course none of the banks worked for either me or
the one Dutch guy. So we continued on our way to Valle Grande, where
we started our Ruta del Che tour, stopping for what was supposed to
be a quick breakfast, but we found that Bolivians don't really have
restaurants open for breakfast, and we wandered around aimlessly
looking for a place to eat before settling on some sausage and
sandwich place. After the crappy breakfast, we wandered over to the
Museum del Che, where they had several photographs and artifacts from
his brief time in Valle Grande. Ashu and I had started a trend of
writing down ridiculous professions when places asked us for all our
information, including profession, so he wrote down Osama bin Laden,
and I wrote down George W. Bush, which caused the lady working there
to give a strange and confused look. The museum was tiny, and
subsequently quite cheap, but then our taxi driver showed up and said
we should get going soon, as it was still a long way's to La Higuera.
We figured he was a bit silly, as it was about 52 kms away, but we
tried to hurry up a bit. Edwin took us to the hospital where Che's
body was flown to after being killed, and cleaned up and put on
display, but it was a pretty simple little room and not really a lot
to see, other than lots of graffiti and messages that people had left
on the walls. The day was already becoming quite tough for me, as the
Dutch girl was acting like I was a ghost, avoiding eye contact and
not talking to me or responding to any of my attempts to at least
have a conversation. To make matters worse, her friend she was
travelling with was also shutting me out, which started to make me
feel quite terrible really. Even Ashu noticed the way they were
treating me, and said it was pretty terrible.
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| Valle Grande....on our way to La Higuera |
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| Aimlessly searching for breakfast in the local market...unable to find anything |
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| One of many Che Guevara museums |
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| Laundry room where his body was flown to after death and cleaned |
So we embarked on our 52 km ride along
what could be called a Mini Death Road, as Bolivia is known for
having a death road near La Paz where many vehicles have gone off the
edges resulting in certain death. Well this road was a pretty rough
go, and took about 3.5 hours to travel the 50 Kms, taking small
winding curves, skirting along the mountain side and passing
villagers walking along the road, donkeys, and even large buses! The
road was so terrible, that we saw people with flat tires, and were
impressed that our driver was managing to drive his vehicle on this
road. We later heard that they had only recently improved the road
enough that taxis would drive along it, previously there was no way
any vehicle other than a 4 wheel drive would take people along the
road. The views were quite stunning I must admit, but I was also
stuck in the middle of a large Dutch conversation, not knowing what
the hell they were talking about, and feeling very left out. We
arrived in La Higuera and found a very, very tiny village with
another small museum that was 10 Bolivianos to enter, and had next to
nothing inside. I was shocked to see that people had left their
government ids, student ids, and many different forms of mementos for
the room of Che. Ashu left his amazing red background Bolivian
passport photo, and it fit right in with everything. After the lame
museum, we stopped for some quick photos at some of the statues, and
chatted with one of the women actually living in this tiny village.
Apparently there was more than just the
monuments to see there, as she mentioned that her bf had a tour
company for extreme sports and hiking in the area, but the place was
still quite dead. After snapping a few photos, it was already a bit
later in the afternoon and with the ridiculous road ahead of us, we
were on our way back to Samaipata. Again, it was myself stuck in the
middle of the van unable to really chat with Ashu because of the
noise, and the Dutch in the back seat speaking only in Dutch and not
including me in their conversations. I continued to try and engage
them in any type of conversation, but apparently I was not included
in the group. We made it through the really bad part of the road, but
then as soon as we got into Valle Grande, our tire blew out, but
fortunately Edwin, our taxi driver, was prepared for that, and was
quick to change the tire. I offered him help, but he didn't want any,
and I had to laugh a little bit at the Bolivian tire changing system,
as his jack didn't lift the vehicle high enough, so the alternative
was to stack it on top of rocks! We got the tire changed relatively
quickly though, and were back on our way, stopping again for some
money since none of the banks worked for myself or Enzo, and Elina
was also running out of money, and Ashu was our only money
option...great to travel in groups!
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| Another Che museum, where people apparently decide to leave their government ID as an offering to Che... |
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| Ashu's hilarious Bolivian visa photo |
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| Paying homage to the Guerrilla fighter Che |
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| Halloween with Che |
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| The Three Little Pigs...the Big Bad Wolf not to be seen |
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| The road to La Higuera provided some fantastic views |
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| A flat tire from the amazing roads..no surprise! |
We arrived back in Samaipata late, and
went for dinner at the guesthouse where the Dutch were staying,
before heading back to the hostel and calling it a night, since we
had another early day to Sucre. We were up at 6:30 am, and off to
meet the owner of a tour company who was driving to pick up people
from Sucre, and offered us a ride with him for the same price as a
bus, or 30 Bolivianos as the other Dutch told us. We also were
sharing the ride with another Dutch guy and his Estonian gf, and they
were quite nice, much nicer than the other two Dutchies. We hopped in
the Toyota Landcruiser, and hadn't even made it 20 minutes when the
battery started acting up....great luck with transportation in
Bolivia so far! Fortunately, there was a battery shop nearby, and
after a quick battery change (some sort of cheap Chinese knock off
battery of course) we were back on the road. The road to Sucre could
be described as interesting, scary, poorly maintained, and generally
very low quality considering it is a major route to a major city. The
majority of the way was rough and winding gravel roads, passing
through the mountains, and the Dutch guy shared some stories of the
trials and tribulations of driving on that road over the previous few
years, including a flash flood that wiped out the entire shell of a
bridge that the Bolivians were building (they learned to built safety
measures in place for the second bridge building attempt), as well as
stories of truck drivers getting drunk and driving off the cliffs,
and another flash flood that nearly swept away a vehicle that was
approaching the Dutch guy.
He also happened to take people on bird
watching tours, and knew some of the birds of the area quite well,
and we were able to spot a red breasted Macau, which is apparently
only located in Bolivia, and quite difficult to spot...lucky us. We
made several other breaks throughout the day to stretch out the legs,
which was certainly much nicer than the breaks that don't exist when
travelling with Bolivian buses. After the 9 hour ride, we arrived in
Sucre, and I immediately thought of Kathmandu, with the way some of
the neighbourhoods were constructed, and the shops along the roads.
We also were able to see Bolivia's biggest cement factory, which had
come across a large rock structure containing dinosaur footprints
right in the middle of its operation, which lead to a rather funny
isolation of said area, and creation of a park, much to the company's
chagrin I'm sure. Imagine having your big operation, and then the
very middle of it is now designated as a tourist attraction and you
have to fence off both sides and tourists come to see these dinosaur
prints in the middle of your property....kind of funny Bolivian
style. Sucre appeared to be very clean and very beautiful upon
arrival, with the city staggered about in the mountains and the
valley, and we were soon in the city centre being dropped off at our
respective hostels. It came a bit of a shock when the guy asked us
for the money for the trip, and he told us it was 120 Bolivianos
each! I didn't have any money and Ashu had just enough to cover both
of us. What happened to the 30 Bolivianos that the Dutch told us it
would cost!?
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| On the way to Sucre |
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| Simple life outside of the big city |
We paid the fare, and as the van was
driving off, I had to laugh when Ashu yelled “f you” and waved
the middle finger at the Dutch in the back seat....Indian temper
apparently! We found the 7 Patas hostel and stopped in there to check
out the prices, which were decent enough. We soon found that a Puerto
Rican woman from Santa Cruz was also there, and after getting settled
in, we decided to go take a walk and look for something to eat, and
ended up in this tiny little French restaurant that had llama to eat.
Well, being a carnivore and willing to try anything, I couldn't pass
up that opportunity, and had the llama stew, which ended up being
alright, but nothing special. The plates did come with large salads
and glasses of red wine that were really great, so that was fine.
After the nice dinner, and a quick walk around, we returned to the
hostel, and ended up meeting our new roommate, who was a cute
English/American girl, and we hit it off right away, which was a nice
thing as I was still coming down from the heartbreak in Brazil. After
getting ready to head out for the Halloween party that night, which
unfortunately was at the same hostel where the ex Dutch girl was
staying, we had a few beers in the rooms, showered up, and were on
our way to Cafe Berlin. We arrived just in time for Happy Hour, and
found the place to not be terribly busy, but it soon picked up. Of
course the Dutch girl showed up and was with this Aussie guy and
flirting right in front of me, stupid jealous games. The night picked
up, and I ended up showing a big group of English people how to play
flip cup, meanwhile the Dutch girl was now making out with the guy
right next to me, trying to prove some stupid point. I find comfort
in the group I was playing with, as they immediately froze her out
when she tried to come play with us, and she soon left with her new
boy and some others.
I continued having a good time with the
others, when the English girl from my room suggested we go check out
the next place, and by this point I was chasing after her even though
she said she didn't get with guys from her dorm room, so we arrived
at the next club and she kept running away from me, which was fine,
as there were lots of other people there. I was shocked to see two
South African girls that I had met in Buenos Aires several months
earlier, and the reaction was even more hilarious, as they would make
me smoke with them all the time, and before even saying hello, the
one girl just put a cigarette in my mouth and lit it without saying a
word! Crazy South Africans! We caught up a little bit but they were
kind of off busy with some guys they met, so I just kept chasing the
English girl, and eventually we decided to head back to the hostel,
and crawled into bed for the night, which was nice to have some
company in bed again for a change. The next day ended up being quite
bad weather, with rain all day, and all three of us were kind of
battling fatigue and hangovers, but we first went down to the local
market to find something to eat, which ended up being pretty bad food
for most except for myself, as the Chorizo was actually quite decent,
while the fish and other meat was tasteless and poor quality. After
the wander around the market, myself, Ashu and Lauren made it down to
the giant cemetery where there were Day of the Dead celebrations and
festivities. Some of the random sights included: blind women praying
in Indigenous tongues along the walk ways, people taking flowers from
graves to resell them, and little memorials that included such items
as packages of cigarettes, little bottles of booze, etc. (they died
doing what they loved apparently). Unfortunately, the skies opened up
not too long afterwards, so the rush was on to find shelter, and with
no sign of it letting up, it was off to the exits and into a taxi.
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| First time trying Llama |
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| Halloween party in Sucre |
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| Why not plank on the tables |
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| Randomly ran into two girls I met in Buenos Aires 3 months earlier! |
One great thing about the taxis is the
super cheap rates you can get in Bolivia, as a typical ride costs
about $1-2. Easy to get around! We hopped in there, stopped for a
bite to eat and a coffee to warm up, and then were back to the
hostel, and just spent the next few hours laying in bed, cuddling,
and sleeping a bit. After a little late night food run, and seeing
how dead the city was, it was a very quiet Saturday night in. The
next day Ashu was up a bit earlier than myself and wandered off on
his own through the city, and the English girl wasn't feeling too
great, so she just stuck around the hostel for most of the day, so I
was on my own again. I ran into the Puerto Rican girl who wanted to
go wander the town, as well as go find a bite to eat, so we set out
to find this vegetarian restaurant that had been recommended by the
hostel and by a girl who was staying in the hostel, and worked there,
so we set out to find the place but got quite turned around and
nearly gave up on finding it, until afer asking several people we
were finally directed in the right direction...again, asking 4
different Bolivians gets 4 different answers...too funny. We stopped
at the Condor Cafe and enjoyed a nice meal before heading off to do a
little tour of the city, checking out the Recoleta which provided a
nice view of the entire city, as well as some of the Government
buildings, as Sucre is the official capital city of Bolivia, but the
admistration is in La Paz....one of those strange countries. We
eventually ended up in this huge children's play park, that used to
be owned by a wealthy French family, and as such, they even had an
Eiffel Tower replica.....it wasn't that big though, and not nearly as
exciting as it looked on the map. Another interesting thing to see
was this huge slide that we saw in the park, which was made of cement
and was at least 10 m tall....seeing these cement slides would become
a common occurrence throughout Bolivia and Peru, and they really
don't appear to be all that safe, with the hard landing and smashing
of the heads....definitely wouldn't pass safety standards in some
countries, but great for a laugh!
After wandering around there for
awhile, and checking out some Go-Kart racing, I wanted to go try and
find the American football games, but the one restaurant with lots of
sports TVs was completely full so it was back to the hostel, where
the TV also didn't have any of the games on, so it was just a chilled
out early evening there, until Ashu got back a few hours later, and
we wandered back to the same restaurant we had gone to on Saturday. I
ordered a huge pizza, and then found out they had Buffalo Wings on
the menu as well, and they had the late night football game on the tv
as well, so I had a fairly American style evening, but was way too
stuffed from all the food...gluttony at its finest! We arrived back
around 11 pm and I just crawled into bed with the English girl for
the night.
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| Day of the Dead, checking out the cemetary |
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| Blind women along the sides singing prayers in Quechua |
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| The little mausoleums that most people use for their dead |
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| This person didn't like the sun apparently |
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| lovely power lines effecting the view of the church |
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| A view of Sucre from La Recoleta |
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| disgusting pigeon infested city square :) |
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| Centre of the Arts |
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| The official capital of Bolivia, Sucre |
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| France Park |
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| Complete with a terrible Eiffel Tower replica |
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| Amazing Bolivian traffic control devices |
She thought she had Spanish classes early the next morning, so she was up early and off to class, and I just continued to take over her bed and stay there until around 11 am before finally getting up and wandering off to find something to eat. Sucre had changed immensely since the weekend, as there were suddenly people everywhere....it went from being a dead town during Day of the Dead, to being full of life and people everywhere, which was a nice change from the previous days. I had to laugh when we came across these people dressed up as Zebras who were showing Bolivians how to properly use “zebra crossings” and stop traffic and make sure people safely crossed. Here's a clip to the hilarious education system.
Since our hostel didn't have the
greatest internet, Ashu and I went to Joyride Cafe for an internet
day, as well as breakfast, coffee, and a few beers, and spent several
hours there catching up on a few things. We ran into the Dutch and
Estonian couple that we had came to Sucre with, and they said they
were going to Potosi the next day, which was also in my plans, so I
said we could share a taxi together in the morning, as the cost
wasn't much more than the bus, and we agreed to meet and take off
around 10 am. After the lunch and coffee, I had to run back to the
hostel to grab a few things, and that's when the altitude really
started to suddenly affect me! I arrived back to the hostel and could
barely breath and was dizzy. It was almost like the air had changed
from the previous few days and was so much lighter and harder to
breath. I did recall that in Nepal our sherpa had told us to not eat
meat in the altitude, as it made it more difficult for the body to
acclimatize and after the huge feast of meat the previous night, I
was starting to think that might be the cause. I arrived back at the
cafe and was huffing and puffing, and ordered a coca tea to help with
the symptoms, and Ashu mentioned that he was also struggling that day
unlike the others, so I definitely wasn't the only one...the staff at
the bar couldn't help but laugh at us huffing and puffing....damn
Bolivians and their ability to breath well at high altitude! We spent
another 2 or 3 hours there, having some more of the amazing Pacena
Black beers, that I had come to enjoy so much, and since Ashu was
leaving that evening for La Paz with the Dutch people, it was our
going away beer.
We wandered back to the hostel and he
packed up and left, which was too bad as I had come to enjoy his
company and hearing stories from someone who came from a country that
I had never really heard too many stories about. Soon after he left,
I ended up meeting a nice young German guy, some brash American who
was giving everyone coca leaves, and a beautiful South African girl.
There was a movie night on at Joyride, dealing with the mines of
Potosi, and pretty much everyone from the hostel was goign there, but
I had tentatively made plans to go out for dinner with the English
girl from my room since it was my last night and wanted to hang out
with her, but she was off studying and then ended up not feeling too
well and cancelling. At the same time, I figured we would finally
have the room to ourselves, but that didn't quite work out either, as
someone checked into the room around 8 pm, damn! So I decided to head
out with the group from the hostel to check out the movie, and it was
a pretty deep and moving film, that made several of the girls cry.
The movie or documentary was about a
young boy who started working in the mines at the age of 10, as his
father was dead, and he had to help support his family. It followed
him and then his younger brother who joined him in the mines, and
touched on some of the rituals and dangers of the mines, such as the
fact that each mine had a spirit in the form of the devil inside of
it that the miners had to pray to and ask for safe passage every time
they went in. The indigenous people misunderstood the Spanish word
“Dios” meaning God, which is what the Spaniards put at the mines
to scare the miners, and began calling it “Tio” which actually
means Uncle in Spanish. The Tio were quite graphic and scary looking
in the film, and the boys were quite terrified of it. I think the
movie was called The Mining Devil or Devil's Miner... something along
those lines. After the film ended, it left most people wanting to
drink or cry, so we went downstairs for the happy hour and spent the
next few hours there. It was nice to cozy up next to the lovely South
African and chat with her, as she was a very intelligent and driven
woman, and had plans to go to Australia in the next year or two to
find work, so hopefully we can meet up again somewhere, and she
provided some nice information on Peru for me. After the few hours of
cocktails, it was back to the hostel for the night.
With the relatively early next morning,
I was all packed up and waiting for the couple to show up, but when
the Dutch guy finally showed up, he mentioned his gf was sick and
they wouldn't be going that day, so I was off on my own again, said a
few goodbyes, and was on my way to the bus station. I had a nice chat
with the Bolivian taxi driver, and after our ride together, he even
gave me his phone number in case I wanted to hang out sometime or
needed a safe ride when I was back in Sucre, crazy kind people! I
still decided to take the shared taxi to Potosi, and ended up being
cramped into the back seat, between two older ladies who took turns
falling asleep on my shoulders throughout the passage. The guy in the
front seat was a pretty nice guy and we had a nice chat most of the
way, as he pointed out some of the nearby villages where some of his
family members were from, and we talked a fair bit about life in
Bolivia until arrival in Potosi several hours later. It was kind of
strange when we arrived, as there were people blocking several of the
streets, with rocks, barricades, banners, etc......it was strike time
in Potosi! The taxi couldn't drop us off at the new bus terminal
station, only the old one, which I thought would be a pain in the ass
at first, as I wanted to catch a bus to Uyuni as soon as I arrived,
but found out the buses for that place actually left from the old
terminal. I had about 4 hours to kill before the bus would leave, and
still was a bit skeptical that there was going to be a bus, due to
this strange strike. I wandered around to try and find a place to eat
and a place with some internet to pass the time, but there was nearly
nothing open, as every shop was shutting down due to this strike. I
did manage to find one chicken place to eat at, but as soon as I
finished my meal they were kicking everyone out and shutting down
too.
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| small car to Potosi, with old women falling asleep on me |
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| The barren landscape of Southern Bolivia |
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| Arrival in Potosi, which was apparently being shut down by a strike |
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| Strike methods of disruption include rocks on the roads |
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| and hanging up strings of flags across intersections |
After wandering the crowded streets for
quite some time, searching for a coffeeshop or even a bar to pass a
bit of time, and finding everything shut, I ran into the taxi driver
that I had come with and asked him what exactly was going on with
the town. He told me that the people were striking, as the city had
decided to raise the bus fares by .20 Boliviano cents, which is the
equivalent of a price raise of 4 cents American....wow! Socialism at
it's finest...they were blocking nearly every street, turned off all
the street lights, and everything...it was such a strange thing, and
I really had nothing else to do but sit around near the bus station
and chat with the taxi drivers. Surprisingly enough, about 30 minutes
before my bus was scheduled to leave, the strike ended, as people
only would strike for a few hours at a time, and the streets were
back open, and we were on our way to Uyuni. I met two nice Norwegian
girls and an American guy, and rode with them on the crowded bus
through some beautiful passageways, taking in some amazing scenery
that had mountains, canyons, lakes, and a quite amazing sunset.
We arrived in Uyuni around 9:30 pm, and
I had written down one location of a hostel, and they hadn't written
anything down, so they decided to follow me along and we arrived at
the hostel, but for the price of a room, which was 60 Bolivianos or
$9, they didn't want to pay that much, so we went and found another
place that was only 35 Bolivianos per night and dropped our bags off
there and went out to search for a place to have dinner. It was 9:55
and every single restaurant we went to said they were closed, even
the bar/pub around the corner. Another funny Bolivian moment, as they
really could care less about staying open 15 or 20 minutes later to
make some money off several hungry people! We managed to find one
place that would still serve sandwiches at least, so we had those and
then called it an early night, as we wanted to arrange a tour the
next morning, and most of the agencies were open around 8 am.
We began the wander around, and were
hounded by several people in the streets offering tours for several
days and different prices. I wanted to only do a 2 day tour, as the 3
day one took people to the Southern part of Bolivia, which kind of
appeared like the Northern part of Chile, where I had already been
and I wanted to also try to make it to La Paz for a weekend of
partying, as well. I found a 2 day tour for a nice price of 400
Bolivianos, which was cheap compared to most people who paid 600 or
so, and was told there would be a guide, food, accommodations, etc. I
signed up for that one, and the others found a different group to go
with, so we parted ways, and I found a nice little breakfast spot to
enjoy a bit of internet and eggs and toast. The others joined me
shortly after, as they also needed some internet, but we were a bit
surprised when we had to actually pay for the WiFi, but shared it
anyway. After breakfast they wandered off, and a cute Swedish girl
with an English accent came in, and I told her about the tour I was
going on, and she said she would be interested, as she had just
arrived and figured she would spend the day in Uyuni, but I
recommended against it, as it's just a city with nothing to do, so we
went over to the agency to see if she could join, but they were
closed, so she agreed to come back at the hour I was supposed to show
up there and see if she could join. And thus began the first big
fiasco of the tour.
I arrived and inquired with the woman
running the agency if there was room for the girl, and she said yes
there was, so then the girl came by, I told her it was okay, so she
went back to cancel her hostel and pack her bags, then 15 minutes
later the agency told me that they had already filled the spot, as
they had two people selling tours simultaneously, so I had to run
back and tell the girl that it was cancelled, but then the woman at
the agency said that we might be able to squeeze her in, so then we
were in limbo until the vehicle arrived and we saw how much room
there actually was inside. Meanwhile, some German girl came over, and
their tour agency had cancelled their tour at the last minute, so
they were looking for someone to join them and try and get another
tour going, so the Swedish girl was caught in between that tour and
the one I was on, as she had already paid for the one I was going on.
Then she decided she would go with the others, but we couldn't find
the owner of the agency anywhere to get her money back, and my
vehicle had showed up and was ready to go, but I felt bad about
convincing the Swedish girl to come with me and her not receiving her
money back yet, plus she didn't really speak any Spanish. Meanwhile,
the German girl and their group wanted to go asap, but the Swede had
to wait for the lady to come back...what a mess! I had no choice but
to leave her and hop into my vehicle, which was already quite small
and packed, and there was no way that we would have been able to fit
the extra person in. As soon as I got in with my bag, some old man
sitting nearby already started to get mad about me bringing in my bag
and saying I should keep it up top with the other bags, but I had
breakable and important things that I didn't want to risk to the roof
rack, so he was already getting on my nerves.
We took off eventually, at least 45
minutes later than we were supposed to of course, and ended up
stopping at the train graveyard where we wandered around for some
photos for quite some time, although the Australian girl from our
group took much longer than we had, much to the old guy's anger....he
was just some grumpy old Algerian man who was 73 years old, and was
quite fiery. We eventually were all back in the cramped jeep and on
our way again, stopping at a herd of llamas to chase them around for
awhile, and then again at a small village with a museum that had the
World's largest llama, or so they claimed. It ended up just being a
big huge salt carving of a llama, but outside there was a llama that
was 4 days old and pretty cute. The woman who owned it was feeding it
with a bottle and it was full of energy jumping up on my lap and on
the table trying to get some food, nearly spilling her entire plate
of lunch. After 15 minutse there we stopped at one of the salt mining
spots for some photos before stopping at our lunch spot, where we had
an hour to take some cool photos using the flat landscape to create
some scenic shots.
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| Railroad Graveyard near Uyuni, Bolivia |
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| Where trains go to die |
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| First encounter with the Llamas |
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| 3 day old Llama...a little cutie |
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| Apparently the World's largest Llama....a salt one |
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| The highlight of the museum stop...an old Chevy |
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| Salt mining in the Salt Flats |
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| A nice combination for someone learning Portuguese :) |
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| A pretty random flag collection |
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| having fun with the salt flats |
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| not what I was expecting to find in the Pringles can! |
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| a mini presenter of a cigar box |
We weren't actually given our allotted
time period there, as the driver/guide (who by this point we realized
wasn't a guide at all, as he didn't provide any single bit of
information about any of our stops) hurried us along to the next
stop. We stopped again in the middle of the massive salt flats, which
really have to be visited to be appreciated, as they are spacious and
go on for Kms on end, until you can see way off in the distance some
mountains....it's truly an unbelievable landscape, and one that I'm
glad I went to see and will always remember. We eventually made it to
our hotel for the next and final stop, which was a hotel made out of
salt bricks...not too sure how it holds up in rain! We had a lot of
time to kill before dinner, so we wandered around the area a bit,
which had several flocks of flamingos and some nearby ruins. I was
feeling the altitude a bit again, so I stopped in some hotel bar
nearby that had coca tea and randomly enough, satellite television
with a soccer game on....the reach of technology these days is
endless...we had a nice chat for awhile, while I hung out enjoying
the tea before going for a bit more of a walk, and laughing at the
two Brazilians from our group, one of whom had walked off into the
salt flats to try and get close to the flamingos, and found that the
ground was very soft and sunk into the mud that looked a lot like
oil. He claimed that he had found oil, and was going to become rich
from it, but it was just some basaltic rock sand....I confirmed this
for him, but he still didn't believe me.
Eventually we caught a pretty
spectacular sunset, before heading in for our late dinner. The
“guide” brought out the soup and food about an hour and a half
later than he said it would be, and claimed it was flamingo
soup....it was a decent enough joke anyway. We sat down over the
large dinner, and finished up around 9 pm. At this point, the “guide”
told us we could start hiking the next morning at 6 am, or take the
jeep up to a certain point on the hill around that time, but have to
pay a fee for entrance. Several people wanted to hike all the way, so
he said we should get up at 5 and eat at 5:30. Well, being Bolivia, I
knew these times were a farce, but everyone went to bed early (well
some people tried to shower, paid for the hot showers and then the
hot water wasn't actually there). I tried to fall asleep but was
having problems, maybe because of the altitude, maybe because I had a
few late nights the previous days..... I probably slept about 4 hours
maybe less when people started to arise at 5 am...well I figured the
“guide” wouldn't be up, so I stayed in bed until 5:30 and sure
enough, people were getting irritated because he was nowhere to be
seen and neither was any food for breakfast. Food finally showed up,
but it was brought by someone else, so we sat down to eat around 5:45
am, and the “guide” finally showed up around 6:20 am, eyes
bloodshot, appearing to have been drunk the previous evening....for
the win! People bitched at him a bit, but I didn't care, I thought it
was kind of funny. After our bread, we were in the Jeep, well some of
us, and we drove on up. I kept yelling “Jeep, Jeep, Jeep!” to try
to encourage anyone to get inside rather than walk. We had to stop at
some tourist information booth, where we had to pay a fee since we
weren't hiking up from the hotel, and then some guide hopped in the
vehicle with us....yes, a real guide!
 |
| the rugged landscape near the salt flats of Uyuni |
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| Flamingos in the mud |
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| Lovely sunset in the salt flat |
 |
| The amazing tourist info centre where we found a real guide |
Then we were taken to the Mummy Caves,
and left there with the actual guide, who unlocked the cave for us
and gave us some information (only in Spanish, no English here) about
the mummies in the cave, who they were, what age they were when they
died, showed us skull fracture marks on the father of the family, and
a few other little bits of information. I was already feeling the
altitude and had to sit down for a good portion of the time..damn!
After the cave, we were given the
option to start hiking up the nearby volcano, so we set about on our
way up the steep hill. I didn't have the best of shoes, but neither
did one of the others. We continued slowly making our way up...very
slowly...damn it was hard work. We hiked up with several long breaks,
and embarrassingly enough, the old man and several others caught up to
us and even passed us...man I'm in bad shape! They continued on in a
group of 3, while the rest of us had a group of 4 making our way up.
Well this continued on for awhile, until I really started to feel bad
about the effects of the altitude, and sat behind a little ways,
until I met up with an Argentine guy, who's gf had already turned
back. He had some coca leaves, so I tried chewing on those a little
bit, as they are supposed to help a bit with the altitude, and I was
able to make up a bit further, but by this time the Brazilians and
the one Aussie decided to continue going up, and I wasn't really
feeling pushing it any further. The Argentine guy was feeling the
same, and hilariously enough, the old Algerian man kind of showed up
out of nowhere, from down below where we were, and said he had
stopped for an hour or so because of exhaustion and was ready to down
as well. The views were quite spectacular from where we already had
made it to, and it was getting close to mid day, so we decided to
turn back.
The three of us made the long walk
down, which was becoming a bit painful by this point, due to less
than adequate footwear, and we made it back into the hotel around
12:20 pm. We were all starving but the “guide” said we had to
wait, and that there were no snacks or anything he could give
us...great! So we just sat around waiting and waiting...the Aussie
girl was the first to arrive back around 1:15 pm, and I figured with
three people, the “guide” might be able to give us some food
now....but no, we had to wait until 2 pm he said, and if no one
showed up by then, we could eat and we would leave. At this point I
was so starving, and the Argentine guy's gf was good enough to give
us some snacks to hold us over, while all the other groups around us,
including a massive group of 13 Lithuanians (who didn't know a
single person from their group when they arrived and just randomly
ended up together), were able to eat these huge meals in front of
us...damn! I asked around if someone could boil some water so we
could have some tea, and again, no one would even boil any water for
us, and our “guide” had just disappeared....ahhh sometimes you
get what you pay for!
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| Bolivian mummies |
 |
| Volcano that we were supposed to hike to, only a few of us made it, not me! |
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| Trying coca leaves to combat the altitude |
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| Llama crossing |
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| We were told to watch for Pumas...apparently they only eat Flamingos though :) |
2 pm rolled around, and no one was
back, the old Algerian was getting grumpy, and we were still
hungry...well, nope, still we couldn't eat! Other groups had arrived
back and were getting their food, but not us. Then it was about 3 pm,
when finally “guide” said okay, you can eat...thanks dude! At
least the food was pretty good, but we were all just tired and hungry
and wolfed everything down. Around 4 pm we were starting to get
worried, as only one Brazilian had returned, looking quite ill and
without water. He went all the way to the top, but hadn't seen anyone
else for quite sometime, and struggled to get back, meanwhile we were
still missing two other Brazilians and the French girl, so the guide
went off in the jeep to see if they were anywhere on the road,
walking back. Well, he did manage to find them, and they were all
looking in pretty dire straits, as they were all dehydrated, the one
Brazilians guy's shoes had completely fallen apart, and they were all
starving....well the “guide” said we were already late to go to
the next point, and wouldn't even let them eat, and rushed us into
getting into the jeep and continuing on...hilarious! The Brazilian
guy looked so haggard and reminded me so much of Doug from The
Hangover, after they find him on the roof. With an angry driver
because we were late, we made a very quick drive over to the Isla del
Lago, which had a bunch of cactuses and one of the crazier sights
I've seen, people paragliding while being pulled around by a truck!
We didn't have very much time there, as we had to get back to town by
8 pm so I could catch my bus, so the Brazilians and the French girl
were able to get a bite to eat finally...the poor starving people. We
made our switch to a different vehicle with a much kinder and
friendly driver, who had some kick ass music mix for us to listen to.
The whole Salar Uyuni trip was filled with these great and crazy
Bolivian music mixes where they would sample about 25 to 30 seconds
of famous songs from the 80s, then the 90s, then the 2000s and loop
them together for an hour...sick.....after stopping for a sunset and
dropping the crazy Brazilians off at their salt hotel, we arrived
back in Uyuni with about 15 minutes to spare until my bus left, so I
quickly grabbed my stuff and made my way down to catch the bus just
in time, but without time to get dinner...so a box of Pringles it
was!
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| One of the lost Brazilians, whose shoes literally blew apart while trekking |
 |
| Island of the Lake...not much there other than cacti |
 |
| Parasailing with a vehicle?? Why not! |
I sat beside a guy from La Paz who had
been working in the mines in Uyuni for the past 4 years, and would
travel Monday to Uyuni, work 4 days, and then go back to La Paz every
weekend...for the past 4 years! He told me that the bus line I was
travelling with was actually the better one in Bolivia, with less
breakdowns and less crazy drivers and accidents...good news! We
chatted for quite awhile about the economy and life in Bolivia,
before managing some somehow fall asleep on the terribly bumpy
highway, arriving in La Paz around 7 am the next day. I was pretty
groggy and after waking up a bit, found a taxi to take me to my
hostel, where I couldn't actually check in until mid day, but there
was a tv room to sleep in for a few hours so I did that. After
grabbing breakfast, I saw Ashu, who had just gotten out of the
hospital after going on the Death Road, and falling off his bike.
Apparently they booked their tour with a cheap company, and the bikes
weren't so good, and they were racing pretty quickly down the road
and he fell quite hard, and was unable to breathe well, so he ended
up in the hospital for observation for the night, crazy guy! We had
breakfast together, and of course the Dutch ex happened to be there
too and was being super awkward and cold again....ridiculous how we
kept running into each other. There was a walking tour later on that
afternoon, so after hanging out for awhile in the cozy hostel bar and
meeting some of the staff, it was time to head off and find the
meeting point.
Unfortunately I wasn't given the best
directions, and of course ended up lost, and after asking several
people and having to run a bit, I managed to arrive at the square
where the tour started, just in time. A thing you quickly notice
about La Paz is that the elevation mixed with the pollution in the
air makes for some very miserable times! I arrived already huffing
and puffing and out of air, and began the tour, right next to the
infamous San Pedro Prison, where it's actually a small community
living within the prison walls, with stores, businesses, children
living with their family, restaurants, etc....and also,
apparently, cocaine production. Our tour guide was telling us about
one of his tours he was giving, and there were some inmates who threw
over a few bags of cocaine onto the nearby street to be picked up by
drug runners, but that they overthrew their targets and the packages
landed near the tour group, so of course everyone was over taking
photos of the event, and the drug runners had to abandon their
pickup, as the police soon showed up and confiscated the product.
Some of the stories about the prison are quite crazy, and there was
an English man who lived within the walls and wrote a book about it
called Marching Powder, which is supposed to be a fascinating read as
well. Here's a link so San Pedro prison with more information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro_prison
 |
| San Pedro prison, famous locale known for the book Marching Powder |
From there we moved on to check out
some of the local markets, including one called the Witches Market,
where you can buy various things such as potions, remedies, and
llamas fetuses. There's a Bolivian tradition that says that a
building will have bad luck if a llama fetus isn't buried beneath it
when they break ground on it, and workers will refuse to work until
it's done....strange tradition. Our guide even mentioned that for the
really big buildings there's rumours that people will actually use
humans, typically a homeless person, and someone will feed them some
poor quality liquor so they pass out and then they will bury them
beneath the concrete...I don't know if it's true or not, but another
very ridiculous and crazy superstition! After the markets, we made a
few more stops along the way before ending up in a high end hotel,
where we had a nice view of the surrounding city and where one could
do abseiling off the roof. After a few more pics there, a few of us,
including evil Dutch woman, a nice Canadian girl, Ashu, and another
Dutch girl, decided to head off to one of the miradors of the city
for a potential sunset, and ended up at one that had some okay views
but nothing too special, and then we found out there was a second
one. After enjoying and laughing at some Bolivians on another one of
the huge concrete slides, we made our way to the second mirador for
an amazing view of the city.
There was an Indian restaurant that
everyone wanted to go check out after our little tour, so we made our
way there for some pretty tasty food, including one ridiculously hot
vindaloo that even Ashu couldn't handle and finish.....with all the
food we ordered, we couldn't even come close to finishing it all, and
ended up giving it away to some poor lady in the streets.....but we
didn't give the ridiculously hot dish, as that would have just been
cruel! We arrived back at the hostel, just having missed happy hour,
and the group all went to sleep since they were leaving early the
next morning, but I wasn't going to be going to bed that early so I
ventured into the bar, and found it to be absolutely packed. I had
been told Wild Rover was a pretty fun place and a good party hostel,
and there was no doubt about it. Pretty much as soon as I arrived,
there was one of the bartenders, a guy from Holland, walking along
the bar with a bottle of shot mix, and spotted my Holland jersey and
came over and without really asking, just stuck the damn bottle in my
mouth and kept pouring....one way to get an evening going I guess!
After meeting a pretty cute Dutch girl and spending the next few
hours flirting and talking closely, and thinking it would maybe go
somewhere, we all ended up going out to the gringo club called
Mythology, which ended up being kind of expensive and not so great.
Before I was about to leave, I happened to run into a cool English
girl from La Paz who I was playing beer pong with there, and she
wanted me to come with her to another bar, and I was about to leave
with them, when a Spanish girl who was friends with the Dutch girl
came and yanked me away and put me into their cab....well now I was
confused, and we were on our way with them instead. The club was
alright, but not too busy and met a few interesting people, including
running into one of the crazy Irish guys from La Paz who was very
very drunk and had been on some pub crawl. I tried for the Dutch
girl, but she wasn't interested apparently, so I just spent the rest
of the night hanging out with the Spanish chick who ended up being
pretty cool, until it was time to close the place down and head back
for the night.
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| A cute and lovely name for a butcher shop |
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| City Tour |
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| Llama fetuses in the Witch's Market |
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| Main square protests of some sort |
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| Bolivian shoe shiners wear masks to cover their faces due to embarrassment |
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| La Paz from a walking bridge |
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| view from one of the tallest buildings in La Paz and location of abseiling |
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| one of the view points of La Paz |
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| La Paz at dawn |
And thus began the first La Paz
hangover, but not that bad yet. My Swedish friend that I met in Salar
Uyuni arrived that day and wanted to go see the city a bit and check
out some coffee shop near the Witches Market that her friend had
recommended, so we went on a little city tour ourselves and wow, the
pollution and altitude was really starting to kick in, it was tough
to walk up a simple two or 3 streets! After finding the coffee shop,
and having the mediocre coffee, we continued our wander around until
I figured I should try and find a can of the best beer in Bolivia,
the Pacena Black. After wandering around several shops and markets
and asking if anyone knew where we could find it, we finally managed
to finda spot that had some of them, and met a very drunk pilot who
was there visiting his brother and absolutely hilarious. He was
apparently going flying that evening too! He had also flown some
airplane that he had gotten from Canada so he wanted to talk about
Canada a little while, and even had a Canada hat to boot...after a
funny chat and photo we were on our way back towards the hostel,
stopping off at a nearby massage parlour for a haircut and massage
for the low price of $8! After the nice and relaxing massage and
haircut, the Swedish girl told me she would meet me for happy hour
and to order her a beer...well I figured I'd order 2 happy hours for
us both, but then she took forever to show up! I had nearly finished
the 4 beers, and made some new friends since I was sitting at a large
table by myself in the corner, before she finally showed up. The
night ended up being pretty awesome, as people from several different
hostels showed up, and the place was absolutely packed, and we had a
pretty great party before it shut down and we ended up at the
Mythology club yet once again.
It was much more busy and packed
compared to the previous night, and I ended up running into another
one of the crazy Irish guys who was face painted with fluoro paint
that the nightclub apparently provided. Tim, my German friend,
figured it would be a funny idea to paint a moustache on me, so I
joined the masses with wild face painting and ended up meeting some
cute Irish girl and spreading my face paint all over her. She had
some aggressive friend who kept trying to steal her away and she kept
coming back to me, but I wasn't too concerned and let it be. By the
closing time, Tim wanted to go check out La Paz's famous secret bar,
so we were in a cab and on our way to this crazy bar that stayed open
until about 12 pm on a typical night. We spent probably 4 hours there
before meeting some crazy group of Aussies and the Bolivian guy who
was our tour guide the previous day, and I had run out of money but
they kind of just kidnapped me and Tim, and made us come with them in
taxis to their hostel for some more beers, before heading to some
English bar at 8:30 am to watch some soccer games and continue the
party....I had to borrow money from Tim, since I didn't have any nor
my bank card, but I could only last until about 10:30 am before I had
to sneak out and head back to the hostel, grab breakfast, have a
pretty deep conversation with an Irishman about oil and gas
activities and fracking, before finally crawling into bed around mid
day....damn! After maybe 4.5 hours of sleep, I was up and feeling
like death...La Paz was starting to win this battle. After grabbing a
delicious dinner and nearly passing out several times from
exhaustion/altitude sickness/dehydration, it was time to begin Quiz
Night, which helped a fair bit with the hangover and ability to
function properly. Our team was kicking ass on the quiz night, but
unfortunately bad part about the crazy bartenders at Wild Rover is
that they often get way too drunk while working, and tend to lose
track of things, including the continuation and finish of the quiz
night....by about 12:30 am...no one was playing the quiz any more, as
they staff was too inebriated to continue asking questions. I ended
up running into one of the crazy Aussie guys at the bar, and after a
few shots and bar closing time, he wanted me to go along with him to
one of the clubs, but I still hadn't taken any money out and didn't
want to borrow anymore, so I called it a night, but could barely
sleep due to the dehydration and hard time breathing.
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| Amazing masks for sale |
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| extremely well designed flags lol |
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| Market dog was enjoying his clothing |
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| random drunk old man who flew in Canada before |
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| Shoe shiner, complete with face mask |
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| My trivia team....one New Brunswick girl, and one Belgian |
The next day was another horrible day,
with terrible breathing patterns, dehydration, throat soreness
etc....another great day! A few of us, including the Swedish girl and
I decided to go out and book a tour along the Death Road for the
following day. We had been recommended a tour group called Vertigo by
Tim, the German, so we all trekked down there, and upon arrival I
could barely breath at all, it was so difficult that I contemplated
going to the hospital at that point, but held off. We booked our tour
for the next day, and after struggling to make it back to the hostel
and attempt to take a nap without success, due to difficulty
breathing, I had no other choice but to just hang around the bar with
a few friends and try to wait until I was tired enough to pass out
since we had an early morning the next day. At this point the one
Irish girl from two nights before had started working behind the bar,
but I wasn't quite sure if it was in fact her or not, and was talking
about it with Tim to see if he remembered what she looked like
exactly, but he didn't recall seeing her at the club either so it
remained a mystery until the following evening. I spent the next
several hours getting cozy with a nice Swedish girl who I had met 2
nights earlier, which was a nice thing since the Dutch girl showed up
and kept looking on while this happened, which was a nice boost to
the self confidence after she had crushed me. Unfortunately it never
really went much further, but at least I kept the appearance up that
it did. Since I had an early morning, it was off to bed at a decent
hour, and I was able to sleep slightly but not very well.
We were picked up at 7:30 am the next
morning, and were on our way to mountain bike down the infamous Death
Road. For a rough idea of what exactly this Death Road is all about,
read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road.
We started off with an hour and a half van ride with one quick stop
for snacks and water if needed, before arriving at our starting
point, where we were given our gear and bikes at 4650 m and thus
began an epic ride! The first 20 some Kms was paved road, and was a
fun stretch to get used to the bike and built some comfort with the
road itself. I was one of the slower people of the group as my biking
skills weren't so great and I'm pretty out of shape, plus was having
a hard time breathing at times due to the altitude, but we all
managed to make it to the first checkpoint all intact, with only the
one Israeli girl arriving later than myself, as she wasn't a mountain
biker and wasn't so excited about the danger of the road, although
the first section was quite easy going. After our first stop for some
food and loading the bikes onto the van for the 8 km section that was
actually somewhat uphill, and thus they told us we could ride in the
van in place of biking it. The one Israeli biking enthusiast wanted
to bike it, so we followed in the van behind him, with the driver
sort of forcing him to bike faster by following him extremely closely
from behind, quite a way to encourage someone...meanwhile the rest of
us in the van enjoyed our easy going ride until we arrived at the
real portion of the Death Road, the gravel area.
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| On our way to start the death road |
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| Gearing up and getting pumped! |
 |
| Starting the easy part of the road...all paved and downhill :) |
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| Tunnel or gravel road off to the side? Gravel road it is! |
At the start of the road there is
already a marker for the 7 Israelis who died in 1995 and drove off
the cliff in their Jeep...ominous start to the road that according to
our guide has killed about 90,000 people since it's construction in
1943! We started the long ride down slowly and with a bit of timidity
but eventually several of us started to push the pace more and more
and by the end of the 40 some km journey down the massive road, which
nearly resulted in a few crashes for myself. The first one I was
going around a corner a bit too quickly and hit the front brake a bit
too hard, ending up on my front wheel for a brief period of time but
was able to gain control and not fall on my face, lucky! The second
time I was coming around a corner passing a vehicle with a bit too
much speed and there happened to be a vehicle coming from the other
side! I happened to be able to just turn back in front of the vehicle
I was passing and avoid striking the car, but only because the other
guy slammed on the brakes! Finally the third time I was coming around
another corner that happened to be a bit wet and full of rocks, and
again lost control and was only able to keep myself upright by
putting down the right foot to prevent myself from falling....far too
many close calls! The day had numerous great photo ops and just an
amazing experience that I would consider taking up mountain biking as
a sport when I arrive back home....such a blast. After about 6 hours
of riding, we ended up at our final stop, celebrated surviving the
World's Most Dangerous road with a beer, and then were on our way to
our stop for dinner and some swimming pool time, although I didn't
end up using the pool, as Tim had been electrocuted the previous week
when he went swimming there and touched the roof!
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| The start of the real death road...all gravel from here on! |
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| The dodgiest part of the road...meeting big vehicles along the way |
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| View of what we're about to embark on! |
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| Don't get too close to the edge...that's about 600 m down! |
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| One of the many memorials to all the dead along the road |
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| Where am I going?? Down there! |
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| Long winding and narrow road most of the way down....not much room for buses and big commercial vehicles that travel along! |
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| Saving my friend from falling off the cliff...or maybe pushing her ;) |
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| yup that's a save! |
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| more of the amazing scenery of our Death Road trip |
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| gives a rough idea of the road we would spend a few hours on |
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| some of the vehicles we would have to pass while travelling downhill....glad the brakes worked on the bike! |
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| thought about pushing it off the edge...don't think the insurance would cover it though! |
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| Getting wet'n'wild |
 |
| watch out! |
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| Life on the edge |
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| good spot for some planking |
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| water for women...apparently...more estrogen?? |
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| we played a game of chicken on the road....this chicken won |
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| awaiting us after the death road |
The day was just an incredibly awesome
experience, and even though we were all worn down and tired, we all
had a blast and it was definitely one of the highlights of South
America! After picking up some road celebration beers, and making the
1.5 hour journey back to La Paz, we arrived a bit tired, but ready to
have another fun night. A few of us were going to Copacabana the next
day, so some of the group wanted to go to bed a bit early, but since
it was the last night in La Paz there were still a few of us wanting
to go out. After meeting a couple of crazy people at the bar, and
playing the dice game for several rounds of shots (everyone rolls two
dice in a cup, low score buys the round), I finally asked the Irish
bartender if it had in fact been her that I had met in a club a few
days earlier, and she responded by saying yes, and pulling me over
the bar and starting to make out with me while customers around me,
and myself, were in shock....what a wild place. This continued on for
a fairly long portion of the evening, until the place was closing
down, and someone said we should all go to another pub called Mongos,
so a few of us piled into a cab and headed down there, which was a
pretty nice spot, and I met a pretty cool Bolivian girl who was there
with her friend who had just broken up with his gf and was being
quite a drunk and emotional mess as most Latins are...poor guy, but
he was pretty nice anyway, and it was fun to meet some local people
while out and about for a change. The girl seemed pretty interested
and wanted to hang out over the next few days, but didn't have a
phone or anything, and I was meant to be leaving the next day, so we
didn't bother to exchange any details in the end, and I ended up just
heading back with two random people that happened to be staying at
the hostel as well.
I was up in the middle of the night,
badly dehydrated, and having to scramble around the room trying to
find some water to rehydrate a bit, and of course the next morning
was just as bad, and I was really feeling ill, so I figured it would
be a good idea to go for a checkup to a doctor....first time on my
trip! I told Tim to wait around for me, as it would only take an hour
or two to go for a checkup, and that we could head to Copacabana
together, but unfortunately the trip took a bit longer than expected!
I ended up at some clinic, where no one spoke English, other than the
Doctor (apparently), so I waited around the waiting area for a good
hour, wondering if they were actually going to get me into see him or
not!
After asking the women after a 45
minute wait, they assured me that I would in fact be able to see him
shortly, and sure enough a younger Doctor showed up, and showed me
into his little office, where I soon found out that he in fact spoke
very very little English...I would say that my Spanish was likely
more prevalent than his English, but we were able to get through the
checkup, and he said everything seemed fine, so he sent me on my way
with a prescription for some sort of antibiotic and antihistamine to
try and clear up my throat...great! So after the dirt cheap
prescription (about $3 for what would probably cost $25 or $30 back
home, and the $7 consultation fee for the checkup, I was in a cab and
on my way. Of course, the taxi broke down several minutes later, in
the middle of a busy street, and I offered to pay for my existing
fare and help the driver out, but he just sent me on my way...oh
those Bolivians, so kind and funny! I was also craving some comfort
food, so with the new taxi I grabbed, I had him take me to the Burger
King for a bite to eat there, before heading back to the hostel,
where I found that everyone had already left for Copacabana, shoot!
So after saying a few quick goodbyes, I was in the taxi off to the
Cemetery, which was where all the buses left for Copacabana
apparently. After arriving there, and being bombarded by several
salespeople offering buses and rides to Copacabana, and selecting the
soonest leaving one, I had a quick wait, met some Irish guys that had
also been staying at the same hostel, and we were on the bus.
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| Traditional Bolivian Woman |
 |
| My taxi dead in traffic...he didn't even make me pay :) |
Well in true Bolivian style, rather
than leave at the designated time, we waited until the bus was full,
and then some. A few older and very smelly women showed up and had
apparently been giving the seats where two of the Irish guys were,
and the break down in communication began, but I was able to
translate for everyone, and tell them that they could go sit up front
where the Irish guys were supposed to be sitting. I ended up next to
a fellow who spoke Quechua as a first language, Spanish as a second,
so some of his slang and expressions were hard to understand, but we
had a nice chat about Lake Titicaca and Bolivia in general, before we
arrived at the ferry crossing town. All of us foreigners, with the
exception of a few locals were taken off the bus, and went over to
another boat crossing point, where we had to pay a small fee to take
an overcrowded and rickity boat across to the other side of the Lake.
Meanwhile, our bus was put on a flat deck boat, and brought across.
Upon arrival at the other side, it was surprising to see Bolivian
immigration checking all of our passports, and a French couple
appeared to have overstayed their visa and were taken in for
questioning, while the rest of us made our way to the bus and
boarded. Well, the couple still hadn't emerged from the police
office, and the bus driver just decided that he had waited enough and
left without them! I had no idea if they still had bags on the bus or
anything!
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| Smelly Bolivians all asleep on the bus next to me |
 |
| The lake crossing |
 |
| Put all the gringos on a small and crowded boat for the trip across :) |
 |
| Ferry system...I wonder how many vehicles are sunk in the lake? |
 |
| the great Lake Titicaca |
We made our way on the scenic and
beautiful drive to Copacabana, arriving an hour and a half later, and
surprisingly weren't bombarded at the arrival point by people trying
to sell things or accommodations, which was a nice break! We all kind
of went our separate ways, and after wandering around for awhile, I
managed to find a hostel that a Dutch guy had recommended to me, and
where I hoped the others would be staying, but after checking in
there, I found that no one was there that I knew, so I settled into
the room, and then went out to find a place to eat the Lake Trout
that the old man on the bus had recommended. As I was on my way out,
I met two girls who randomly ended up being from Malaysia, and we all
went together and found a spot to hang out. The trout was delicious,
and after a nice meal we just retreated back to the hostel (which was
more of a hotel but with hostel prices), and had a quiet night...or
at least it was sort of quiet until immense stomach pains and gas
pains took over! Apparently the water in Lake Titicaca is quite
dirty, and a lot of restaurants don't use clean water for cooking, so
of course I came down with something not so nice, to go with my
respiratory problems from the pollution of La Paz..great! It was just
a chore to walk up 3 flights of stairs even in the hotel, and now to
add stomach pains to the whole mix, real fun!
The night wasn't a very comfortable one
to say the least, but I eventually caught some sleep and crawled out
of bed around mid day the next day, and went for a little wander
around the city to try and find something to eat. I had hoped to join
the Malaysian girls to go try and sort out a trip for the next day to
the Isla del Sol, an Island about an hour and a bit by boat, away
from Copacabana, but I didn't manage to see them, so I went on my way
wandering around for awhile. I stopped by a restaurant for a lunch, and had pretty bad service and wasn't even able to get a coffee, let alone nearly anything on the menu except some terrible sandwich, but I just had to laugh, and accept that it was Bolivia after all. At one point the guy working there just kind of left for about 15 minutes, while I was sitting there alone, and some other customers came to the restaurant but of course couldn't get served....it reminded me so much of Laos ha ha! After my terrible sandwich, I went for a walk down to the lake for a bit and then ended up finding the Malaysian girls at a small restaurant, and joined them for some juice to combat the heat, while chatting a bit more about life and culture in Malaysia, until they were off to rest a bit, and I just checked out the town a little bit. I had received a message from Johanna, saying that they were staying at another hostel, so I popped by there, but found that they had in fact checked out, gone to Isla del Sol for the day, and that they were already leaving that night, bummer! After checking out some of the prices of places, I found out that I could take the train from the nearby Peruvian town of Puno to Cuzco, and that there was even a special offer, so I sorted out my paperwork for that, and arranged for a bus the next evening to Puno for the night. The whole arrangement for the train was a bit weird, as I had to email copies of my credit card, passport, etc....all things that could be used to steal money I suppose, and I had to find some internet cafe to scan all of said items, which were then possibly saved on the shop's computer...but in the end, nothing was stolen, the company received my info, and I was booked for an incredible train ride to Cuzco!
After sorting all that out, I happened to run into Tim, Gaia, Yohel, and Johanna, my friends I was searching for, and we arranged to have dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant before they headed off to Cuzco that night. We met up an hour later, and even though they asked for a rush on the food, it came at the very last minute, so we couldn't even sit down to eat together, and they had to run off, so I finished off my meal alone, but did meet a nice couple from Canada and chatted with them for awhile, before heading back to the hotel for the night, as I still wasn't feeling the great from that damn Lake Trout! After another gaseous evening, I was up early the next day to head off to Isla del Sol, as taking a boat last minute over there was cheaper than arranging a trip the day before. Unfortunately I took the wrong boat, that dropped me off on the Southern part of the Island, as I had heard that it was nice to first stop on the Northern part, and then walk along the Island down to the Southern tip to catch a boat back, but oh well! Upon arrival at the daunting step climb awaiting us, but a rather scenic area with colourful hostels and hotels, I was now on Isla del Sol. All of the people from my boat seemed to be staying at least a night or two, so I was kind of off on my own, and just started wandering, figuring I could just go for a few hours of walking around the Island to pass the time, as my boat wasn't meant to leave for 8 hours. So off I went, solo, and battled up the ridiculous hill to the first village of the Island, which was pretty quiet and empty. I set on my way with a near full bottle of water and a bit of sunscreen, applied liberally to my face and neck and arms.....well apparently I missed a spot as I would find out later the next day! After making my way down one trail, I wanted to get up to a viewpoint that afforded a spectacular view of Lake Titicaca, however, I apparently missed the path somehow, and ended up on a long alternate path, where I met a gatekeeper whom I had to pay to continue on....always little fees creeping up everywhere. We chatted for awhile, about how I could get up to the viewpoint, and he mentioned it was easier to actually go back to where I had come from, as I had missed the path upwards...but I really didn't want to back track and he assured me that I could get up to the view point by going along another path...so off I went.
After a few hours of the hot beating sun, and wandering aimlessly along the non marked paths, and finding myself not really knowing where I was, I finally stopped to ask for some directions from one of the men working in one of the fields on how to go about getting up to the Mirador or Viewpoint, and the old man pointed in a direction and in poor Bolivian/Spanish that I could cut through the fields and make my way past a house with a blue roof, so I set about, wandering through the cow shit covered field, receiving strange looks along the way from other farm workers, and finding my way over to the point where a small path lead upwards...must have been it! So I started on my way up, being followed by an overly energetic dog, that easily passed by me while I was struggling with the altitude and hard breathing to make my way up the hill. I arrived at a point with two different paths, and rather than ask the nearby man which path to go on, I just waved a friendly wave and said Ola as I passed by him, hoping I took the right path. There were two other younger guys hiking behind me, and I continued on, hoping that they would also be on the same path, validating my selection....well after about 15 minutes or so they were nowhere to be seen, and I arrived at somewhat of a dead end, with a locked house and small field....at this point, I just didn't really want to admit defeat and go back so I figured I would just try wandering up through fields and yards, using any route possible to arrive up top. If someone who was actually on top could have watched me from above, I am sure they would have a great laugh, watching this lost gringo, zig zagging back and forth, climbing crudely built stone walls, nearly falling off of them several times, and being sworn at and heckled by farmers for crossing through their coca fields!
After a rather adventurous 40 minutes of this very off the beaten path, I finally arrived at the main walking path, which was well laid out, neat, and very easy to follow...how the hell I managed to end up so far away from this perfect path is a testament to my terrible stubbornness! I finally made it up to this Mirador and was treated to an amazing view of Lake Titicaca...wow it was fantastic! I also made a young couple at the top, one from France and one from Spain, and after chatting a bit with them, and catching my breath, it was time to head on back to the village to grab a lunch and wait until my boat ride left at 4 pm. Unfortunately I lost my memory card with all my photos from Isla del Sol, so I can't show how beautiful the view points were of my trip there, but if anyone is actually curious, they can just look at some pictures here :)
http://www.tripadvisor.ca/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g297316-d554191-i72377097-Isla_del_Sol-Copacabana_La_Paz_Department.html
I was quite shocked at how easy it was to get back to the small village using the designated walking path, as it took about 10 minutes or so! I realized my mistake had been continuing along the left side of the walking path as I was leaving the village, and missing the fork in the road, and thus detouring for well over 2.5 hours! I arrived back in the village and saw one somewhat busy pizza restaurant, but had read several recommendations about an amazing restaurant a bit further into the village, and had seen a sign for it earlier in the day, so I set about getting there. I had even mentioned the restaurant to an American couple I had run into earlier in the day, and when I finally arrived there, I found it was actually closed! Damn, apparently they were either only open for dinner or else they had shut down recently....a real bummer! So with a hungry belly, I proceeded to wander around to every nearby restaurant with no luck finding an open place, must have been siesta time or something! After some freshly squeezed orange juice to hold me over, I decided to just head back to the port and find a spot there to grab a bite and wait for the next few hours until my boat left. I found some cheap pizza restaurant with a decent view of the harbour, and ended up sitting down with a Canadian and American couple for 30 minutes before they set off on an earlier boat. After killing some time and not seeing the same boat I came to the island on (with no company markings matching my ticket on any of the other boats) I wandered around for some time, kind of worried as it was about 5 minute before departure time, and I just had to go with a gut feeling and ask a few boats that were about to leave, and sure enough, one of them was the company that I was meant to be on....so I hopped aboard at the last minute, phew!
I met two pretty cool Dutch guys there and we spent most of the ride making fun of some of the other tourists who had run up to see some old crappy buildings that were near the port that we had just left from. After a stop there it was back to Copacabana, where I had just enough time to grab my things, and run back down and catch my bus to the nearby Peruvian city of Puno, where I would be taking the Andean Explorer train the next morning. After randomly meeting the crazy Aussie guys that sort of kidnapped me the one night for the all night party in La Paz, and having some laughs, we were on the relatively luxurious bus and on our way to the border. The border crossing was so unbelievably simple, as it probably took about 5 minutes in total to get stamps in and out...much more organized and efficient than Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, etc. We were back on the bus and having a laugh at the little tuk tuks that were everywhere, all decked out in flashing lights, signage, one even was designed like the Batmobile! I arrived in Puno not too much later, and the city was kind of a dump, but nevertheless, it was my stop for the night, and I was the only foreigner getting off in the city. After finding a guy in the bus station with a hostel that was close to the train station where I had an early morning train the next day, I hopped in with him, arrived at the small and relatively empty hostel/hotel, and after finding some delicious Chaufa (A Peruvian rice dish that I had eaten near the border earlier in the year when I was in Colombia), I was back to the hotel and early to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night a few times in a fair bit of pain on my neck and head, but had no idea what it was from. It wasn't until later on the next day that I realized that I had burned the scalp of my head...wow, the sun in Isla del Sol (Sun Island) really gave true meaning to the place, considering my hair is dark and thick!
With that last impression of Bolivia, I was on my way on a luxurious train ride to Cuzco, Peru, which was an awesome experience. Unfortunately, all the photos and videos of the ride were lost in Cuzco, but it was definitely an awesome experience going there, and I would recommend the Andean Explorer to anyone who could shell out a bit more money for the trip to Cuzco from Lake Titica.
http://www.perurail.com/andean-explorer
I arrived in Cuzco later that night, and thus ends the random and crazy adventures of Bolivia!
I fell behind on my writing, and unfortunately haven't kept up with updating my adventures, including the shenanigans that happened in Peru, so maybe I will write an express post to sum up things, or maybe not. I have returned to a somewhat normal life, well as normal as a few weeks on the beach in Mexico can be, and have changed immensely from my World Wide Tour, especially my time spend in Latin America. Thanks for following, for the few who have continued to do so, and maybe I'll start back up again sometime, when the next new adventures starts up :)
Hasta Luego, Ate Logo, A Bientot, See you soon!
Reilly
