Lake Titicaca - ha ha, that sounds like breasts

After a few epic blogs this should be a quicky!

From La Paz we caught a bus to the town of Copacabana as flo said (and were a bit weirded out by being told to get off our bus and then watching it floating away over the lake!). This is NOT the Copacabana in Brazil (which was apparently named after this town) nor the brain-rapingly horrific Barry Manilow song.

This was meant to be a short stop over in order to allow us to see the beautiful Isla del Sol however on arrival all went wrong. We soon realised that this was a town completely lacking a cash machine. Now this would not normally be a problem since in situations like this there is always at least one bank or suchlike ready and willing to give a cash advance on a credit card which would have been great had:

a) i not maxed out my credit card
and
b) flo not been travelling on her debit card - not good enough for the lovely folks at Prodem FFP.

So there we were, at about 7pm in a new town with literally no money (we had wisely delayed getting out money when we could have in La Paz until we got to our next stop). So it was about 7pm and we were getting hungry and yet with no way of securing any foodage. It shames me to say it but we resorted to begging - I found myself knocking on the door of the owner of our hotel (feeling very small especially since the hotel we were staying in was only costing us 10Bolivianos per person per night which is about £1.20 for the 2 of us) asking him to borrow some money to eat until we sorted out our finances the following day. Despite my offers of leaving my iPod as collateral he was having none of it and was quite happy to hand over 100Bs - more than we were likely to need for the evening!

The following day we realised that we were going to need some help and so bit the bullet and called home. Dad, who for those of you who dont know is currently disabled by a torn cruciate ligament (or so i believe) was amazing (thanks dad!) and drove down to town and hobbled both to his bank and my bank to sort out our financial woes.

Alas despite all his hard work we were undone by the ineptitude of the people at the Halifax (fucking Howard) and unfortunately were forced to make the trip back to La Paz (a 3.5hr bus journey) for the sole purpose of finding a cash point. While we were waiting for the bus to leave Copacabana there was a pretty horrific smell emanating from the old cholita sat in front of us but whilst we were gasping for air out of the small bus window we spotted flo's coursemate Jack and his girlfriend Claire, out on a brief stint in Peru and Bolivia! Whilst doing anything then was pretty impossible, we did manage to go out for a meal with them on our return to Copacabana 7hrs later!

With money came the ability to actually do the things that we had come here to do, namely visit the Isla del Sol, an island off the coast and a site of significance for the indigenous people as being the birthplace of both the sun and the moon! We made our way out on the boat (flo travels like a 7 year old, so this was guaranteed to be good!) We spent the night on the island and in the morning we began the walk across it and whilst we didnt really feel the significance afforded to some of the sacred rocks (looked just like rocks to us!) the scenery was staggering.



After we'd done this we had pretty much exhausted Copacabana and so moved on to Peru and the town of Puno!

At the bus station we heard someone touting the hostel that we'd planned on going to anyway and thinking that this could be our route to a free taxi ride we decided to show some interest. Somehow in the mix he managed to persuade us that this hostel (the one that he had been advertising) was too expensive and so had us sold on a different one instead, not really sure how this happened, but we found ourselves being ferried to this new hotel, and then subjected to a long and very persistent sales pitch from the same man who quickly moved from hotel tout to travel agent within seconds!

We eventually got away from him and into the safety of our room where we could decide what it was that WE wanted to do before getting back to him with our decision to do a 1 day tour and not the 2 day one he was pushing for (we´d heard scary things about having to dress up in traditional dress!)


So the following day we had an early start and were ferried to the port where we were put onto a boat headed for the reed islands of the Uros people of Lake Titicaca. These are a large group of artificial floating island manufactured by their inhabitants out of the enormous reeds native to the lake. We were greeted very warmly (more to do with our touristy cash than anything i think, maybe too cynically) but the islands themselves were very impressive and all squishy underfoot! Flo got a bit happy taking photos of all the kids in their brightly coloured clothes, and a bit too happy stalking one particular innocent little girl around the island which you will see if you check my flickr! After a brief talk about the people and their islands we were allowed to wander and see if we wanted to buy any of their wares (all of which completely authentically made on the islands and in no way available in the rest of peru, its just a coincidence that they have similar stuff)

After this we moved on to the next island Taquile which was, well, an island. Yes, it was pretty, and yes, the men did wear silly hats (always a highlight) but after the novelty of the reed islands and the 3hr boat trip it was a bit of a let down really!


So that was about it for Lake Titicaca and on to Arequipa (a journey we booked ourselves and NOT through our new stalker) !

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!