Tupiza, the Bolivian Wild West

We left Sucre on Monday morning and headed back 4 hours to Potosi where we spent 2 days, getting to see more of the town this time, instead of just the bus station the last time we passed through. I´m not sure why exactly, but we chose this occasion to walk from the bus station to the town centre (instead of trying to catch a local bus or a taxi) to look for accomodation, and looking back it really was a rather masochistic thing to do, because as mentioned before, Potosi is at 4060m altitude (and pretty chilly), and the town centre is up a huge hill from the bus station. We must have looked a sorry sight, trundling alond uphill out of breath, like we were doing the Inca trail all over again.

Potosi´s streets and buildings look quite similar to the old buildings of La Paz, old buildings from a richer time, with small wrought iron balconies that are painted blues and yellows and pinks, but the town is less busy. We skipped the tour of the silver mine (altough now the silver is depleted and is it mined cooperatively for minerals) that is on offer, and visited a museum, the Casa Real de la Moneda, which is in a restored building that was constructed in 1753 to control the minting of colonial coins, and now houses religious art, ancient coins, and wooden minting machines. Our guide who spoke belly good english, would launch into a well-practised speech about each of rooms we went into, and afterwards would ask "¿Questions?" and not wait even a millisecond for a response before saying "good, follow me plees". After a few rooms we were starting to see a trend, and a few people in the group (including us, museum-loving south africans) were starting to find this rather amusing. Besides this, the tour was pretty interesting, especially the huge wooden cogs, steam engines and minting machines, as well as the stories of pirates, sunken ships of silver, and treasure hunting that followed, and the fact that in the 1700´s Potosi was making money for the whole world, and now, the world is making Bolivia´s money (the various notes and coins come from a few different countries currently, something like Chile, Cuba and Spain...). "Cést la vie" said our belly good english (and apparently French) speaking guide.

We caught an overnight bus on Tuesday to Tupiza...and we now have a new record for worst bus ride of the trip. The 8 hour trip there was all on dirt road, my chair was broken and the back rest could not stay in one position, and therefore alternated between tilting right back and caterpaulting me forward over each bump in the road (and on this road, there were many, many, many), the base of the seat was also coming away from the back and tilted to the side, which meant that I kept sliding down, and onto Steven. The broken window next to us rattled at deafening volumes and let in large amounts of freezing air. And there were 2 crying kids sleeping (not nearly enough of the time) on the bus floor behind us. Traumatising. We were dropped off in Tupiza at 3:45 am, and the bus station was not a building we could go into to wait out sunrise, but merely a strip of ticket offices, and we wandered the streets for a while before finding the hostel we had in mind, well and truly locked up, we knocked anyway, and a friendly man let us in to the most welcome room and set of beds, this trip.

We´ve spent this week relaxing in this tiny, dusty town, surrounded by red, silver and rusty mountains, and went for a fantastic horse ride yesterday (¡we even got cowboy hats!)through spectacular scenery and cactus´s, even having a bit of a race (yiiiiihiiii).

Sucre doesn´t mean Sweet, but it should

After saying a sad and rushed goodbye to Nats and Daryll as they ran off (well as fast as you can run with a backpack on) to the bus station on Wednesday night, we were off to Sucre the next morning, via Oruro. After just missing the afternoon bus to Sucre (including a run outside the station and up the surrounding roads to try catch the bus as most passengers seem to do: just after it has left the station), and deciding we were not that excited about waiting there until 9:30pm for the night bus, we caught a bus to Potosi instead, and spent the night there before heading to Sucre the following morning. Potosi is on the way to Sucre, and is the world´s highest city at just over 4000m altitude. It is also the city where african slaves worked in horrific conditions in silver mines, there is a film about this called The Devil´s Miner.

On the way to Sucre the next day we passed through valleys where the rivers have bled deep canyons like veins into the dry red sand. We were entertained by some (usual) unusual events. At one stop, an old lady with a walking stick as thin and shaky as her two legs, loaded her sacks into the baggage hold, the hold closed, and she disappeared. She was not on the bus, nor on the road behind us as we took off again. Without a great deal of certainty, I commented to Steven that unless she´d snuck off without me noticing, she must be having a ride in the baggage hold. Sure enough, at the next stop 20 minutes later, the baggage hold was opened, and the old lady and walking stick, reappeared, one dark, but free, bus ride later.

I had a little bout of bus nausea, and Steven had frantically managed to get my very sticky window open. This window turned out to be the only open one on the bus, and at the next stop I was soon playing the middle man, collecting road side eats and paying for them through the window, for everyone on the bus, even stretching out to get the last few packets of 1 boiled egg and 3 boiled and peeled potatoes (plus a separate little packet of chilli sauce) from the running seller lady as the bus took off again.

Just before arriving in Sucre, we were treated to our very own onboard infomercial, with live studio audience. A lady hopped onto the bus, stood in the aisle, and after wishing all the senors and senoras a good day, launched into a 15 minute description of a new wonderful cream for the treatment of arthritis, complete with a description of the disease, instructions on how to apply the cream, how soon results would be seen (5-8 days apparently), a list of other health problems the cream would also improve, and even a free sample squirt of cream for everyone on the bus to try.

On Friday afternoon, after finding ourselves a hostel, we met up with Mark and Dave again, who are here in Sucre for 3 weeks learning Spanish, and went for a walk up to the Mirrador, a view point over the beautiful capital, a city with an almost mediterranean feel with all the grand white buildings that line the streets.

This weekend we´ve been exploring the city, having coffee with all milk (Reamy Roffee as named by Ang and Jo) in the market, walking to the stately cemetary in shady grounds with tall trees and manicured bushes, where families build fancy burial houses for the family members to be buried in...very odd...and today taking a 2 hour ride in a ´collectivo´ to a craft market outside of town, getting a very flat tyre along the way, thanks to the driver who was still unsure of the cause of the swaying combi, even once we´d stopped, and then were trying to go again, when a loud grinding sound (plus the distinctly rocky, bumpy feel one experiences when driving on a rim) was filling the combi´s interior.

Tonight, amazingly, the South African production, Tsotsi, is being screened at a cafe on the main plaza, and we´re all going to watch it for a little taste of home...

Lazy in La Paz

Since we got here on Friday we´ve been doing not much else besides walking and exploring the town and its crazy markets, characterful people, busy squares, steep cobbled streets, and various local restuarants for almeurzo´s (set lunches).

After spending our first night in Hostal Republica (converted house of some 1904 Bolivian president), we moved to somewhere better budget fitting...and found such a cute and cosy hospedajie (a family home/hostal) called Hospedajie Millenio, in a quiter street (3rd pic), with a big sunny room (2nd pic is view from our window), for a really great price, and its been the perfect place to soak up some sun in some seriously chilly air, reading etc while waiting for our UK Visa interview yesterday.

Nats and Daryll return from their Pampas tour tonight, and then we have only a few hours left with them before they catch an overnight bus to Santa Cruz, then heading into Brazil, while we leave tomorrow for Sucre :( Back to being lone travellers! It has been so much fun having them around...

How cute are these buses!

These La Paz buses win the prize for favourite public bus ride so far... Think we could bring them to S.A?

La Paz - City crowded into a basin

We realised just how huge Lake Titicaca is after somehow still driving next to it for most of the bus trip to La Paz on the 14th, it feels as if you just can´t get away from it! Soon after leaving Copacabana, our bus stopped at a ferry, we piled off, had to buy a ticket for a boat ride across the lake, while our bus boarded a ferry and beat us across.

After a few too many nights of cold/none showers we booked a little $20-for-the-room luxury at Hostal Republica, and upon arrival in La Paz took a taxi straight there (the privelage of having 4 travellers to share the cost!). We had an absolutely huge almuerzo for 15 Bolivian Bolivianos (otherwise known as BOB´s) and so for dinner we just hung around the hostal´s cafeteria drinking hot chocolate, when we had a surprise visit from Mark Crandon and Dave Collett, who are cycling through South America, and up until now, have been always just ahead of us... It was such a cool surprise, and so fantastic to see more fellow travellers from home and share stories...a good deal of time was spent comparing beard length too... :)

This morning, Nats and Daryll flew to Rurrenabaque to do a 3 day tour in the Pampas, and we had a relaxed Sunday morning sitting in the sunny Plaza Murillo listening to a brilliant bolivian brass band...what fun!

La Paz has a bit more of a busy, crowded feel to other South American cities we´ve visited so far, and has some fascinating newer scruffy market areas, as well as lovely older, derelect colonial areas, and it is surrounded by steep sides and mountains, so that it feels like it is uphill in any direction that you walk. The ladies wear layered and tiered puffy skirts (you can buy any colour you can think of in the markets here), tiny bowler hats that somehow manage to perch on top of their heads, and wear their hair in 2 long plaits down their backs, decorated on the ends with pompoms.

Bolivia´s Big Blue Sky and Copacabana

On the 13th we caught a tourist bus for a change across the border and into Bolivia, getting our first views of the beautiful Cordillera Real mountain range...and this bus was amazing because it came with the usual ticket guy, who also doubled as a border-crossing tour guide...he explained each step of the way before it happened, giving detailed instructions at the border, even getting off the bus and checking everyone got through ok, showing us where to walk...making it the easiest border crossing we´ve had so far, compared to the normal necessary sheep technique - just follow the locals... Ironically it was also the longest border crossing queue ever, because all us tourists arrived together in one big group. All went smoothly though, and we were soon searching for a hostal in the little town of Copacabana, settling for the first place we walked into because a room cost a new bargain record low of $6 (even with hot showers, unlike our hostel in Puno, when there is water at all of course :D)

The next day we caught a boat to Isla del Sol to walk the length of the island...it felt like we were again in a bit of much sought after wilderness when all we could see from the trail along the crest of the island was the lake and mountains and a big blue sky.

While visiting the floating islands on the Peru side we got a hint of the Peru-Bolivia competition when we were told that Peru owns 60% of the lake and Bolivia 40%, and that Bolivia would say exactly the opposite. Although we didn´t get to hear this from a Bolivian in Copacabana, we were taken to see Bolivia´s floating islands on the boat trip back... it was rather amusing to see two small square, and completely fake, reed-covered platforms, with 3 little round houses built on each, with an erected welcome sign. Nice try Bolivia, but no. But to keep both sides happy, we vote Bolivia´s slice of the lake as prettier anyway.

Puno and Peru´s Lake Titicaca

On the 10th August it was off to Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the scenery en route was fantastic, the high ´altiplano´ grasslands of Peru, with the occasional scattering of sheep, and local women looking after them. Nats and Daryll had their first taste of the ´hostal hunt´ process while we walked between 4 or 5 hostals before settling for something only satisfactory...

Our hostal was right opposite the Bolivian embassy and the following day we knocked on the consulate´s door, (the only person, apart from the cleaner, in the whole embassy), all necessary papers in hand (yellow fever vaccinations, flight bookings, hostal booking, bank statement, anything else we could think of, except the actual application forms which were impossible to find on the spanish website, and we presumed would be available at the consulate). After sitting down opposite him at his desk, and a very stilted, limited discussion about how South Africa´s World Cup Preparations were going (oh very very well, we assured him, even though we haven´t been home for 5 months and don´t really have a clue!), he informed us that all was in order, except we needed the application forms, and had to go print them ourselves off the internet...he showed us another application form as an example (it happened to be Sipho someone´s from S.A too!). We dashed off, returned forms in hand, and were then told to return to fetch the visa in an hour, no fee! What a change... Had a last chuckle at the one-man band embassy without a computer or internet, or clearly a photostat machine, because when we returned to fetch them, we were told to go make a copy of our new visa, and bring it back ´rapido rapido´ for him.

That afternoon we took a boat trip to see the floating islands on Lake Titicaca, and despite the fact that they have become a tourist trap, with all sorts of tourist ready crafts on sale, it was very interesting to see these strange villages where everything is made of reeds...the houses as well as the island itself (which is made by crossing many layers of reeds over a reed root base, and anchored to the lake bottom with sticks and rope, with new reeds being continually placed on top, 2 or 3 times a month, to replenish those at the bottom that are rotting away). The boat trip involved a visit to 2 islands, but after the 1st, we were offered a ride to the 2nd island in a traditional reed boat (to experience the natural, traditional mode of transport) for a price of 15 soles each. We declined as we´d already paid for the motorised boat, even when told this would mean we´d have to wait 25 minutes before leaving for the 2nd island, to allow the reed boat to get there. As the reed boat slowly filled with other tourists who had decided they were willing to pay for the peaceful row across the lake, the price for us came down to 10 soles, and then 5 soles, and then what do you know? 2.50 soles each... We didn´t change our mind, prefering to relax on the sunny boat, watched the reed boat being rowed peacefully away. It hadn´t got more than 10 oar-strokes away though, when a little rowing boat with a motor on the back popped out of the reeds, choked up to the reeed boat, and started pushing it from behind, ruining any chance of a peaceful, traditional row across the lake. It was hilarious to see...

Puno was lovely otherwise, sunny squares in the cold 3600m altitude air for people watching, and a new kind of transport for us, that basically looks like a bench on the front of a bicycle...

As previously seen in Chiclayo, Puno seems to have the same system of traffic flow regulation at the intersections of the narrow pavemented roads where the buildings obstruct all view of approaching traffic... Hoot as you approach the intersection, listen for other hoots, and he who has the smaller hoot yields...

We have friends! Cusco, and the Inca Trail

Nats doing a very real enactment of ´Dead Women´s Pass´at 4200m...

We´ve had an eventful week! Nathalie and Daryll arrived in Cusco last Monday morning in freezing cold overcast weather, and we met them at the airport with a homemade welcome sign...using an old joke from our Israel trip together...and they obviously had the same thing in mind as the first thing they did when we saw them (before we even got a hello) was offer us a wet wipe... It was fantastic to see them and we went through the usual travel regulars, like checking into a hostel, finding a place to eat, exploring the town...this time with friends which made it a whole lot more exciting again...

Wednesday was the big day, Steven´s birthday and the start of the Inca trail we´d booked 3 months ago. We had a very early present opening ceremony for him and a sing along to the singing card from mom (delivered, among many other things, by nats and daryll) before we were picked up and driven to the start of the Inca trail, aclimatised or not. A friendly family of 6 Aussies made up our group. The trail was fantastic, beautiful scenery, and very rewarding with Machu Picchu at sunrise on the 4th day, hidden in amongst the most amazing limestone formed, green covered mountains. What made it even more rewarding however was the effort to get there!: 45km´s, 1200m breathless tortoise-paced climbing up (I really did feel rather tortoise-like with backpack on back, bent over, staring at the ground) on day 2 (as well as climbing on other days too) to an altitude of 4200m, and waking up at 5, 6 and 4 each respective morning, minus 8 degrees at night, plus a bit of hail...brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

We carried our clothes (lots of them for maximum warmth!), sleeping bags and mattreses. Our group had porters which carried the tents and all the food for 3 deliscious meals a day (which an accompanying chef prepared), plus tea/coffee and snacks!! What luxury, and it was WELL appreciated when we arrived (jelly-legged) at a pre-set up camp every day !!!

We got back yesterday evening after a scenic train ride (with a bit of a mess up from the tour company regarding our train tickets...long story) took us from Machu Picchu back to the start of the trail , and have spent today recovering in Cusco, walking around like 4 geriatrics, hobbling down steps and not being able to get up once we´ve sat down...(suddenly the booming ´massaje?´industry in this town makes a whole lot of sense). Had a fantastic day today celebrating Steven´s birthday properly with 2 birthday parties in one day...one over breakfast in a sunny restuarant balcony overlooking the festive town square, and then a second over a huuuuuuuge lunch...what a treat :)

Tomorrow we´re off to Puno and then Lake Titicaca...yay!