The Great South American Adventure

I´ve been up to a lot recently, hence the long wait between entries, both due to the increased demand on my time and to having a lot more stuff to write about, making the prospect of doing so even more daunting. However, I have summoned up the inspiration and have managed to free up some spare time to devote to my beloved readers, if they haven´t given up on checking already. One of the things that has happened is I have had my camera, iPod and PSP stolen out of my locked bag, from between my feet on a bus from Nazca to Ica, so to see the photo´s that go with this section of the blog you will have to check out hutchi´s flicker,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8075577@N02/sets/72157600767324997/

monkey´s blog

http://randomphotomonkey.blogspot.com/

and this site which has photos of us riding down the worlds most dangerous road, the password is "photos"

http://www.shutterfly.com/progal/sign_in.jsp?aid=768a5498cf40ad58caed

and for some photos of Lima taken with my new camera, check out my flickr at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/

Anyway, after Cusco, Hutch, James and I headed to Copocaban to check out lake titikaka. From Copocabana most people take tours on the Island of the Sun, which they reached by ferry. However, we figured we didn´t need any fancy, motor powered ferry to get to the Island of the Sun, so we hired a wonderful little sail boat for the very economical rate of 30 bolivianos (about AU$5) per hour. We later named the vessel crapsack, soon after we had given up on ever reaching the island. When we left port, the wind was heading more or less straight back into port, making it very dificult for us to leave, to the great ammusement of those watching from the shore. However, after a while the wind started to turn around and we started to make a bit of ground. We ended up making it around a point, which we had taken as our new goal after conceding that the island of the sun was out of reach, so we decided to turn around and head back in, only to find that the wind was then blowing into our faces again coming from the direction of Copacabana, our intended resting place for the night. With my sailing savy, I reasured the guys that we should be able to zig zag back in without any problem. However, poor old crapsack was not the best boat at pointing upwind, not actually having a centerboard, and we were finding it dificult to make ground. In fact we were getting blown back around the point we were so proud to reach. We decided to row back around the point, then hopefully the wind would somehow be different and we could sail back in. Rowing proved to be more dificult than expected, until we moved the oars from the front to the middle of the boat and took the sails down. It was good to finally put all those rowing trainings to good use. All the five ergos I did were not done in vain. Pretty soon we were back around the point, and with the sight of Copacaban so far away we decided to try the sails again. We broke the paddle off the end of one of the oars while moving them back to the front of the boat, so we had no other choice but to sail in, or so we thought. As soon as we put the sails back up we were getting blown backwards and the waves were washing us into the rocky shore, so we "decided" to beach the boat just as it crashed sideways into one of the bigger river rocks, as if we had any other choice. So we took the sails down, pulled the rudder in, jumped out and started trying to pull the boat up onto shore. Luckily for us, a much more sea savy kid came along and started to help us out, first advising us to stop trying to pull the boat sideways over big rocks and push it around them instead, and showing us a good trick using the broken oar handle to slide the boat on up the beach. After we got it far enough out of water he asked for money then left and we started our long walk back into town. I was worried and thought we would be thrown in gaol for destruction of private property or something, but as we were about to get into town, the guy who had sent us on our journey came out to meet us on his push bike. He asked us where the boat was, we pointed and tried to explain, then he said we owed him 70 bolivianos for the extra time we had the boat. We paid and asked how he was going to get it back. He was going to ride out and row it back in. We explained that an oar was broken so he turned his bike around and started to ride back to his storage shead. I could not believe our luck and felt bad that this guy was going to row back by himself in the dark. He didn´t even charge us extra for the time it would take for him to do it. We figured that 70 bs would be going straight to his pocket, which is a fair bit for locals, but we still felt bad but helpless and lucky at the same time. Anyway, it´s a funny story. That´s all for now folks. Signing out, Marc/Plummers.

After Uyuni, I went to Potosi, the highest city of it´s size at an altitude of about 4 and a half thousand meters. On the bus I met a nice canadian/english couple and a cool family of four, who were travelling around the world together, who I stayed with in an awesome hostel called the Koala Den, the first Bolivian hostel with 24h, real hot water (pre heated, not electric) and comfy beds at the very economical price of 30 bolivianos per night, about AU$5. During the Spanish rule of Bolivia, Potosi was the richest city in all of the America´s, comparing to cities like London and Paris in population. All because next to the city is a large mountain that was once filled with pure silver, Cerro Rico. However, nowadays there is hardly any pure silver found and government mining operations have ceased. But cooperations, ranging from 5 to 40 miners, still mine there of their own accord, providing all there own equipment, including dynomite, which is sold freely in markets in town, and they just split the money they get from the minerals they extract, mostly a mixture of zinc, lead and a little bit of silver. These mines are also the main tourist attraction in Potosi, apart from the excellent colonial architecture from more prosperous times. We did a tour of one of the mines, which included buying gifts for the miners, soft drink, coca leaves and dynomite, and taking a stroll/crawl/climb around the interior of one of the mines to see the miners at work. We didn´t really get to see them actually digging but we saw them coming past with carts full of the material they had removed. Our guide was very insiteful about the mining and other aspects of bolivian culture and history, which made up for not really seeing that much. To put it nicely, the working conditions in the mines are very uncomfortable. Hardly any miners live past sixty, if that, because of the harmful fumes they are always inhailing, not to mention the accidents that often happen. At the end of the tour we were all very happy to be out of there, and to make us feel better we got to blow up two sticks of dynomite, which the guide lit, pretended to smoke like a cigar, then passed around for people to take photos, before his assistent took it off to a clearing on the side of the road, where it made more noise than I expected, causing me to jump and take a crap picture. That´s pretty much all I did of interest in Potosi, then I headed to Sucre, where I parted ways with my friends to find cheaper accomodation, but more about that later. Over and Out.

Sorry about the long wait again. There are new photos at

www.flickr.com/photos/12875483@N00/

check them out in all their Bolivian glory.

To make it to Bolivia before my Argentinian Visa ran out, I undertook a mamoth bus journey from Puerto Iguazu to Pocitos, on the Bolivian border, via Tucuman. This meant that I missed out on seeing Salta, which was a shame, but I saved getting fined 50 pesos. Anyway, from Pocitos, I was escorted over the boarder by this great guy who carried my bag for me while I went through Argentinian immigration, gave it to a friend of his on the Bolivian side of the boarder, then told me he needed 50 pesos to pay the immigration officials, which they must have forgot to ask for on my way through their office, plus a tip for carrying the bag. I had just been on a bus for 30 hours and wasn´t thinking very clearly or particularly in the mood to argue, so there went the 50 pesos I didn´t get fined. Anyway, Yacuiba, the town on the Bolivian side of the boarder wasn´t very pleasant so I got the first bus I could to Tarija, the capital of the region. So the mamoth bus journey became even more mamoth after an hour longer than expected wait in extreme cold at the Yacuiba bus terminal cause Bolivia is an hour behind Argentina.

Tarija was a nice place. I chose a place to stay out of footprints due to it´s description as having hot water and my need to shower after travelling by bus for two straight days. Unfortunately this description was unaccurate and my room had an ellectric shower, which only has on water handle, for cold water which is supposedly heated by an electric device on is way through. Basically your passing water through some kind of insulated toaster (safe), which barely warms it before it gets to you anyway. However, my need to clean out wayed my discomfort of having a cold shower, and in the end I felt better for having it. I had a bit of a walk around town and while I was there there was a sort of demonstration and a march through the city, comemorating the Chaco War, where Bolivia lost a fair bit of it´s territory to Praguay a while back, so that was interesting. I also got some decent food which was nice after the long journey. Tarija was a really pleasant place, especially after Yacuiba, but there didn´t seem there was that much to do there, so I decided to move on to Villazon, another town on the boarder of Argentina, where I would take a train to Uyuni, the first place I had previously planned to go to in Bolivia, from where I would take a tour to the famous Uyuni salt flats.

My bus from Tarija arrived around 1:30am, friday morning, despite the bus drivers best effort to get there quicker, despite the treachorous, cliff sided, one and a half lane, windy road which we took to get there. After finding a place to stay, I went to the train station the morning after to find out there was no train on friday. I had already known this, but in my rush to keep moving forgot before I left Tarija, and I shouldn´t have, given the immense supperiority of Tarija over Villazon in general niceness, things to see and places to eat. Villazon is a hole and the only thing I managed to do there was get the shits from eating in a dodgy restaurant. I don´t like Boliva/Argentina boarder towns. So I got the train on Saturday afternoon, which had a toilet, thank god (bolivian buses don´t), and got to Uyuni about midnight. The first place I tried to stay at wouldn´t answer the doorbell. The second place I looked at cost US$20 a night, a far cry from the 35 bolivianos I had been paying. So I ended up staying at the third place I came across, which only cost 15 bols per night, but exagerated my bad neck from the train and only had electric showers, which I gave a second chance, to no avail. In Uyuni itself there wasn´t much to see, but I was able to get my clothes cleaned, which was desperately needed by that stage, I organized to go on a salt flat tour and I changed to a hostel with hot, not electric, showers (between 8:30 and 9am).

The Salt lake tour was awesome. We headed out to the Salt lake first, which was amazing, check out the photos. On the salt flats we went to the Hotel de Sal, which has walls, furniture and beds made out of salt. Then we stopped for lunch on this island of dirt, rocks and cacti, called Isla Pescado, which just sticks out in the middle of the huge salt flats, surrounded by a sea of white. From there we left the comfort of driving on the flat salt and hit the markedly less smooth dirt roads, heading towards volcanos and lakes coloured strangely by the different minerals they are full of. We stayed the first night in San Juan de Rosario, a bizzarly lage town, given its location in the middle of nowhere. The second day we hit up a few of the lakes and volcanos and stopped a few times to change a couple of tyres and then we stayed inside the national park in extremely basic conditions. I slept in all my clothes and a beany, in a hired sleeping bag, under the blankets of the bed, and struggled to stay warm. On the third day we went to a hot spring, which was wonderful to get the warmth back into the extremeties. We had breakfst there, then went to Laguna verde, the most spectacular of all the lakes, a rich green lake in the forground of a conical volcano. After that we headed back to Uyuni, with a stop at a river to have lunch with some Llamas and at a small town with an old stone church.

That´s probably enough for now, but I´ll update soon with tales from Potosi, Sucre and La Paz.