Long overdue post....sorry...

Ok seeing as I have been rubbish and reasonably unwell through most of Bolivia we haven’t been blogging that much, but Horrah! I am now here to make amends! wooooooooooo! enjoy!


UYUNI


Uyuni was where we finished the salt flats tour, despite the whole acute mountain sickness thingy, the salt flats were amazing and we arrived in Uyuni in a nice hotel with the Kiwi couple Gav and Alanna. The place was really nice and we probably should have realised that we were going to have to pay far more than we thought, but hey ho you live and you learn and all that, on the plus side the hotel had an amazing pizza restaurant in the back run by a yank and we bumped into travel chum Sophs again. The town was pretty ordinary really and the highlight was Nick and my trip to a weird train cemetery, so yea we moved out pretty fast once myself and Alanna were no longer being weak and feeble.


POTOSI


Potosi is a small mining town where most travellers go down the mines, look at the incredibly poor conditions, and blow up some dynamite! being claustrophobic I didn’t really want to go down the mines (think nick still holds that against me slightly) but the town was a good place to stop between Uyuni and the town of Sucre. The hotel we stayed in in Potosi was weird to the extreme, run by an inordinately smiley hobbley old woman, our rooms looked like ex hospital wards, so again we kind of flew through this city pretty damn fast.


SUCRE


From Potosi Nick and I, along with Gav and Alana got a taxi to the de facto capital Sucre. What a lovely surprise Sucre was after Potosi where everything was cold and dark and the altitude made it hard to breath walking a foot. Sucre was sunny and beautiful with an amazing central park and courtyards galore, full of choccy shops and great restaurants, and what’s more we stayed in a lovely lovely place where there was a sunny "quadrangle" (Nick has been taking the piss ever since I used the word but I think it is perfectly reasonable!) We had a brilliant few days here, relaxing in the sun, drinking lots of beer and wine, and going on a brilliant dinosaur tour to "Cretatious Park" in no way affiliated with Jurassic Park of Course. We took this tiny truck to the dinosaur park which had a fake dino head on the front and Nick and I thought we were fucking hilarious humming and whistling the Jurassic Park tune ad nausea. The park actually has real dino foot prints that are still being excavated near a cement plant, and there are loads of to scale models of dinos around which were cool, but the best bit by far was when our South American guide told us, with no sense of irony that one of the dino´s was distantly related to the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland... BRILLIANT!


COCHABAMBA


In true retard Flo style I was sick again in Cochabamba, a town which was meant to be very interesting and has a huge Rio Style Jesus on a big mountain. Our first day here we arrived at 5 in the morning and had to wait out side a hotel for it to open, so a good start there! we then went to an all you can eat Indian restaurant (of course) which was weird and next to a sex shop and I think I might have got a bit of food poisoning, just to throw that into the mix. Anyway the next few days were spent with me ill in bed and Nick running around town using internet and buying food for us both, most of which I didn´t eat. Anyway as soon as I felt better we moved on to La Paz Horrah!!!


La Paz


Upon arriving in La Paz there is the most amazing view. The City is built in a valley and it just looks stunning, we arrived at our hostal called the Adventure Brew hostel, which has a brewery down stairs and an amazing bar upstairs with free beer for it’s visitors! We got chatting to another couple and went out for Turkish grub with them, as you do in Bolivia, but it was really nice. The next day Nick and I went for an adventure around the city, checking out all the beautiful monuments etc... unfortunately yup you guessed it I got altitude sickness and was in bed for the next three days, so Nick worked his way through most of the hostals DVD selection. As soon as I was being less retarded and unwell Nick and I saw a poster for Cholita wrestling in a nearby district, Cholita´s are traditional Bolivian women, so we thought this would be amazing, we went with a big group and the experience was amazing.



We were basically piled into a sports hall and watched about 6 wrestling matches. the crowd and the wrestlers go mental throwing anything into the ring, chairs, planks of wood, cans of beer, bones, orange peel, and all the time these women are in traditional dress, brilliant! When we got back to the hostel and were recovering from the days proceedings we drank a stupid amount with some Ausies that we met which probably wasn´t a great idea at altitude but it was sooo worth it. The same day we also went to a BBQ where we met some really nice people. Ben and Geordie had managed to get kidnapped two days before we met them and were held at gun point for a couple of days before being released in an alley, so they were understandably still fucking shaken up, and our bar man Ollie had brought Dynamite from Potosi into the capital after it hadn´t been used, and no body would take it off his hands, in la paz it was spotted in his bag and the police were called, he has now been in La Paz for 3 weeks whilst interpol clear his name as a terrorist!


La Paz is a really cool City, it has two completely apposing sides, the really poor district, which has a lot of stuff for tourists and a witches market filled with lama foetus’s, and the really businessy district where the embassy’s are and they are pretty swish with some really nice restaurants. There is also a kind of fake Trafalgar square which is filled with pigeons and the locals seem to love them. Nick and I spent quite a few days just exploring the city and buying you all stupid gifts.


When we fist arrived in La Paz Nick and I saw a poster advertising a mountain bike tour which is world renowned down the allegedly "most dangerous road," where an Israeli guy died a week ago. Anyway I said initially no way, I am shit on a bike and if anyone is going to spas out on a bike it is going to be yours truly, sure enough 5 days later I was there on the top of a mountain geared up to the max shitting myself, within 5 minutes I had fallen off and I managed about 2 hours on the bike before having to give up. Nick absolutely loved it of course, he fell off whilst going faster than he should have done, but I think he thinks the injury was worth it. I spent a good 2 hours in a bus alone with a south American called Marco who spoke no English, I was actually impressed with how much Spanish I knew and we actually got on really well despite his questionable taste in music, and I had to ask him to look at the road more times than I would have liked. Anyway I met up with Nick and the rest of the group at the end of the trip and Nick was a very happy bunny, he kind of had that 5 year old´s face that says "did you see me, did you see me!" we went to an animal sanctuary where we had lunch and were surrounded by parrots and monkeys and donkeys and much more, it was really cool, apart from the fact there are fuckers called sand flies around, whose bites I am still scratching today. We got back to la Paz late that night, ordered another pizza and headed off the next day to Cocacabana on Lake Titikaka!

Flo blogs from bed.

Bolovin' it (apologies)

OK, so we've got some catching up to do so this may be epic...

Flo had got us as far as Mendoza and we've come a fair way since then as some of you have pointed out (thanks bob - you suck).

At Mendoza we said goodbye to the majority of the big group of people that we had seemed to collect over the last week hanging onto only sophie the fake kiwi for our journey to Salta, another reasonably sized city in the north of Argentina nicknamed Salta la Linda (or Salta the Beautiful), somewhat of an overstatement in my opinion, it was pretty in parts but maybe im just being picky!

On our first day we took the cable car up to the top of Cerro San Bernardo for a fantastic view of the town and the lovely concrete waterfall which they are inordinately proud of.

Salta is also famous for its beautiful surroundings and so having wandered the town for a bit we decided that to build on our successful vehicle rental experience again (and to lower the A$200 per person cost of the tours) that a car might be a better option. So after an ENORMOUS asado the night before we woke up ready to receive our "VW Gol" (for some reason no 'f' on it out here - answers on a postcard) and soon we were off to explore the surrounding province of Salta.

This, I think, was our first view of what we actually had envisioned before we came out here - miles of red rock and cactus fields stretching for miles with small villages dotted along the dusty dirt roads, so this was what we were treated to for most of the first day of our 2 day moto-trek.

We spent the first night in the smallest little town which had two hospedajes (family run guest houses) and one restaurant which i cant figure out how it still survives since we were the only customers and the food was a wee bit shonky! anyway, day two saw us joining the famous Ruta 40, another rough, dusty/gravelly road along which Flo and Sophs went a bit nuts taking photos of rocks, which may or may not have looked like enormous genitals, whilst i sat patiently behind the wheel.

Our return to Salta lasted only one more night before we booked our passage out of there and towards the border town of La Quiaca where we would walk across the least official looking border crossing into Bolivia (apparently loads of people completely miss it only to find that they have to come back to get the official stamps when they try to book any transport). The town on the other side of the border is called Villazon and here we booked ourselves into a surprisingly nice hotel (we'd heard some shitty things about Bolivia) and then pretty much crashed. The next day was, well, a fucker.

At about 3500m about sea level this was the highest we'd been thus far and it hit me fucking hard! i spent most of this day alternating between restless sleep and a stonking headache. which was nice. i think flo was feeling rough as well but was playing nice and looking after me! So we both spent a couple of days in Villazon, both waiting for the train and trying to acclimatise.

The train from Villazon to a small town called Tupiza, saw us meeting a couple more kiwis (real ones this time). A couple called Gavin and Alana from Auckland were sat infront of us and we quickly got chatting, over the noise of the hideous Bolivian music - seriously, its shocking! On arrival in Tupiza we were quickly hustled and lead to a hotel by a child of about 10.

We decided the next day would be well spent pretending to be coyboys - we the 4 of us (still with the kiwis) bought the silly hats and everything (in fact ive kinda grown attached to mine and i know flo still has hers so who knows) We all felt very cool pretending to be in control of the horses who clearly had no time for the fucking idiots sat on their backs trying to
a) make them go the wrong way
b) make them go at any kind of speed!

But the scenery was amazing and despite the pain in my but cheeks for the next few days I really enjoyed it.

Tupiza was also to be our starting point for a 4 day/3 night 4wd tour taking us on a big circuit past all the beautiful country around Tupiza finishing up in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats. So at 9am on the following morning we waited outside the hotel to meet our driver for the next few days and to see our magnificent carriage (a beat up land cruiser).

We actually ended up with 2 drivers which, you would have thought would be a good and reassuring thing, until we quickly realisied that although Jose (the big boss man) was a experienced pro, Jose-Luis was most definitely a rookie and at times we all felt that we would do a better job driving than him, even flo and she doesnt even have a licence and apparently has "trouble with corners"!

This was at its most apparent when he took us up the narrow winding roads along what I believe is one of the worlds highest motorable roads, practically clipping the edges of the sharp drops as he went along despite leaving a couple of meters between the car and the nice safe safe wall on the other side of the road.


MAP:
This is a map of our route over the 4 days that we were travelling from Tupiza (in the middle on the right) down, along the Argentine and Chilean borders, and then up and towards Uyuni (in the middle) by way of the salt flats.

The first day was spent mainly just getting us into position for the spectacular sights of the next day, not to say that the scenery wasnt amazing nor, as mentioned above, that the ride wasnt interesting to say the least!

Day 2 started EARLY at 4:45 which was pretty rough but at least we go to see the sunrise over the hills. The highlight of this day was set to be the natural hot springs which we were meant to get to about midday so you can see how long we were driving for. The hot spring was lovely with a magnificent view over the nearby hills. The rough part of this experience came after we got out of the warm water again - this change in temperature, coupled with the altitude, caused flo to 'spaz out' (technical term meaning feel light headed and then cause her to faint as we struggled to get her out of the road and into the nearby building) This obviously caught peoples attention since later in our tour we were told by an aussie how "this girl fainted as she came out of the pools" and we had to explain that that was us! The rest of the day was spent admiring lakes and eggy smelling geysers! We spent the night at altitude - 4270m and damn it was cold!

The next morning we started at Laguna Colorada, home to thousands of Flamingos, which was a spectacular sight first thing in the morning. Beyond this this was mostly another day to get us from A to B, but this is not to say that the scenery wasnt amazing, which it was, its just that you get rather blase about beautiful hills when they are all that you can see for 10hrs a day from the back of a 4x4! However, what was exciting was that this would be the night that we were to spend in the Salt Hotel - yes, it is as the name would suggest. When we arrived we decided that it would be cool to make use of the luxury that was the free hot showers of which we had so far been deprived. I was waiting my turn and turned around to see Steve Vance (university friend) walking in to the Hotel! I think I freaked him out a bit. So Flo and I chatted to Steve and his girlfriend Avney for a bit which was cool but that was the last we saw of Flo for the evening for reasons I wont go into for the sake of decency save to say that in trying to demonstrate how she was feeling to our Bolivian driver Jose she utilised a particularly upsetting mime! (ask her about it sometime, preferably when I'm not around). She did miss out on watching me try to play 5-a-side at altitude and some tasty llama steaks though!

The next day we bundled a rough feeling Flo into the back of the car and set off for the highlight of the trip - the salt flats themselves. The salt flats are simply massive. The perfectly flat salt stretches for miles around and are spectacular. Any description would do them a disservice so just look at the pictures! They also allow for the classic comedy perspective shots which seem obligatory for all visiting tourists! enjoy!


After spending a bit too long trying to pefect these we then moved on to Uyuni for a few lazy days in slightly more luxurious surroundings which i will leave for a later, and hopefully more concise blog!

big love, word and peace out.

nick

Haircut

It was a couple of weeks ago now but some of you havent seen/dont believe that ive had my hair cut so here it is!

Sweet Mendoza.. wubwubwubwubwubwubwub (now with 100% more photos)

Just a brief note for parental units before reading this, a) we are fine, b) Nick and I didn't do anything too stupid so please don't stress, c) Dad you would have loved it...Party week!

As soon as we arrived in Mendoza over a week ago it looked pretty cool,we met a fake New Zealander (originally from England) and got a taxi together to our hostel, the hostel was great and had a pool surrounded by beautiful people so we were happy and got into the BBQ spirit instantly. We bumped into a bunch of "gap brats" 18 year old gap year students who had more money than sense, plums in their mouth, and zero charm, anyway they seemed to love Nick and I despite our best attemps to be rude to them whenever possible. After two nights at our hostel we moved on to another down the road and they followed us there!

When Nick and I arrived at the new hostel we bumped into our friends we met in Bariloche! the huge group of Californians, who seemed delighted to see us and vice versa, we instantly agreed to go on a wine tour of Mendoza and I ran down the road to let Sophs know we now had a party of 10 and that she was going to get a party over the next couple of days and quite possibly the sex that she was longing for, (by the way she is 32 looking 25!) So the huge group of us got a bus to where we rented bikes and began the wine tour, it was a brilliant day, really hot, lots of wine and cycling, bearing in mind how un coordinated i can be once pissed it was hillarious and i think we all managed to injure ourselves in one way or another be it going over the handle bars, wearing down our crotches with the bike seats, or falling off our bikes in odd ways.

We arrived home after the tour having got lost several times whilst on it, and drank a stupid amount at the hostel and did more zoidberg impressions than you thought were ever possible.

Another great thing about Mendoza was the fact that Emily was there (old house mate) and Dana the Canadian we had been stalking for a while. Emily bumped into us on a night out with Dana and made us feel loved and we went out twice them which was cool. Mendoza has a beautiful tree lined lake and glowing light display at night which looks like a magic mushroom and a cool night market just to show we did actually step out of the hostel despite our week of hangovers.

Various haircuts took place at the hostel, we got rid of Phil's hair and gave him a hawk and Sarah (skunk) cut nick's hair which was a bit of a disaster and I have just fixed it, he looks hot again now. The American's sure know how to do a BBQ and we had several whilst at the hostel each more impressive than the next with more alcohol than the last, and with a smeg head called Jessie providing members of the group with larger and larger quantities of coke, ending badly for some.

Oh and I fell off a bus... they don't fully stop so you get off whilst they are moving I missed judged it and am a bit bruised but I rolled quite a long way in an Indiana Jones esc fashion which was cool. There were several roberies at the hostel which we managed to avoid but quite a lot of people got hit.

The main event of the week has to be our road trip up into the mountains. We rented a van for ten of us which Nick and Seabass drove. We had the ipod blaring, good food, some wine, and Jeff had a fuck off jar of pot that people slowly made their way through. Unfortunately for us there were random police checks along the road and we got pulled over. Skunk speaks fantastic spanish and is very pretty and sweet which helped, he was furious that the van smelt of Alcohol (luckily this had been thrown out earlier) but also that we didn't have our passpots on us, photocopies apparently were not good enough. We had been swimming in a lake earlier and Lonnie, Skunk and Soph all had tribal style clay faces which he didn't seem impressed by at all. After making us stand outside the van he began to check through it, looking through bags, taking off pannels and generally scaring the shit out of us. Sarah did a great job of looking perplexed and when he asked to check the ipod speakers and Run DMC's "Tricky" came booming out he actually broke a smile and some how we got away without him finding the pot. For some stupid ass reason Jeff decided before we got to another police check to swollow the weed rather than chuck it away or anything, he was not a happy bunny later (nick: methinks he was telling porkies - he would have been even more of a mess had he actually eaten it!) Anyway we got to the mountains saw some beautiful views and had a great time, amazed by the fact we escaped a 2 year jail sentence, but apparently most Argentinians don't know what pot looks like, not that we really want to risk it.

Anyway our last few days were spent relaxing and having more BBQ's and more alcohol, we have some great pictures which we can't upload at the moment but I will do so when possible (nick - done!)

Soph has now come with us up north to Salta and we are basically bumming here until we can get to Bolivia in a few days wooohoooo! and there we will hopefully run into someold friends again.

Take care

Flossie

x

Chileno Dancing

Just a short video of some silly dancing in Santiago from a few days ago, keep an eye out for the guy that is:

a) too old
and,
b) waaaay too keen!

Pucon and Santiago

After a brilliant time in Bariloche we arrived in Pucon in Chile. Basically we went there just because they had a big volcano and we thought it would be cool. When we arrived in the town we got a bit lost as the "lonely liar" had an old address for the hostel we were in search of, the hostels owner then came up to us in a pick up van, baring in mind it was pitch black at night and we didnt know who he was, and offered to take us to the right hostel. I instantly said that he must be fucking joking and I wasnt going to get into his creepy van, it transpires that he and his funny looking wife were lovely and being full up for that night, booked us another hostel and took us to it agreeing that they would have room the following night. The other hostel we stayed in had three tiny kittens so i was sold and reasonably annoying as i gulped down my food so I could play with them whilst nick was eating his food in the evening and in the morning, and pined as we had to leave them.

The next day we returned to lovely Herman and Marias hostel, Herman owned an activity store in town so we set about organising our trip for the following day up the big fuck off volcano.

The volcano trip was hillarious for several reasons...

Luckily there were only 4 of us in our group as well as our guide which was great, and one girl had a bad ankle so had to go back down the volcano near the beggining so i was stuck with three boys, Rodrego our guide who loved the ladies lets put it that way, Daniel a yank, and Nick and myself, we each had our strengths and weaknesses and took our turns at being a bit shit at different things. Baring in mind that it took over 5 hours to get to the summit and only an hour to get down you can take a guess just how steep it was. We had to climb on ice using our ice picks to steady ourselves, it was bloody scary at times, and i am so greatful that i dont suffer from vertigo otherwise you would be screwed. Even with factor 60 on we caught the sun and climbing on the ice took ages and was very hard going and a bit demorilising as it took about 30 mins to cross what looked like 15 meters. Other groups were allowed to use crampons but oh no Rodrego would have non of it. I was nearly dead by the time we reached the top and I could have hit Rodrego the amount of times he said Vamos vamos vamos but the view from the summit was amazing and we were right over the clouds.

The smell of sulphur at the top was really strong and Nick did some good gagging and an Isreali girl from another group had a bit of an asthma attack slash panic attack whereby Rodrego leapt up and carried her to higher ground asap... loving the ladies. I got to see some lava though so thats all that mattered really and i threw some volcanic rocks over the side like a stupid big kid, oh and we bumped into Nicks god sisters ex boyfriend, my god that is tenuous, but he is lovely and let me have some ketchup so i recon she should probably ditch her current boyfriend and get back with tiny bearded lovely ketchup dude.

After we had been at the top for about 40 mins I asked Rodrego how the hell we were getting down to which he replied, we slide down, of course you do stupid flo. so we put on our crazy yellow jump suits that were sexy and were instructed how to slide down the volcano. Half of this was done on our asses literally sliding down, and the rest was basically sking without skiis. I loved the sliding but could not stay upright when we were meant to be, after me shouting back at Rodrego several times he just held my hand on the way down basically pulling me allong like a toboggan, a glowing yellow stupid toboggan, which was cool.

It was really good fun and a real achievement and when we got back home Rodrego cracked open a couple of beers for us and some fake non descript pringle things and we were happy chappies.

The next day was recovery day, the boots we had been made to wear the previous day were snow boots and looked and felt ridiculous and my legs felt like jelly. I managed to fall asleep and loose nick for a couple of hours this day but finding him again we agreed to relieve our weary limbs at the natural hot springs the next night.

We were picked up for the hot springs at 8pm and guess who should be in the van but mr lover lover himself Rodrego, who I had already bumped into earlier that day in search of nick and he had expressed his interest in all things ladies, British, and bikinis. Fearing a reasonably embarrassing night we met loads of really nice people whilst wearing next to nothing and had a really good time, to state the obvious the hot springs were really hot but really really nice kind of like really deep rock pools, there were 7 in total of varying heats, probably not at all naturally heated it was dark after all, but i like to believe they were.

After lots of lazing around enjoying the sun we decided to head for Santiago...

We are now at a really nice hostel called Chilli hostel. Our first night was a bit of a challenge as a BBQ was organised and no body there seemed to speak much English but we attempted to speak to them, got ourselves understood, and by way of reward an irish girl arrived at the end of the evening, yey, by the way I cant use any punctuation on this computer as the keys are fucked so image where I would have put things please. Any way Santiago is a bit weird, we have visited itçs beautiful parks and yesterday we went to the poet Pablo Nerudas house which was really really cool he collected anything and everything and his house his like an amzing flo dream world. But the city is covered in smog from polution and makes my eyes sting he he brilliant stuff huh. As it is easter weekend the whole city has shut down and hardly anything is open, crowds are accumilating round a huge statue of Mary in the middle of the city and there seems to be a big live baned rehearsing ready to play on easter sunday. No chocolate eggs for me this year booooo, the chocolate in Santiago is shite, any way we are heading to wine capital Mendoza back in Argentina on Monday and meeting up with Emily so that is something to look forward to, and we may be meeting up with a canadian we met a couple of weeks back to.

Love to all

flossy

xxx