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South East Asia Adventure
Saturday 030606 Santa Cruz to Sucre
This is the capital of Bolivia, although it is not the home of parliament or the commercial centre. It is still the home of the justice system. This is also the highest Capital City in the world at 2700 plus mtrs. Fee felt the effects immediately of this altitude and suffered headaches for a good couple of days. This is also when the nose bleeds started.......
Our first meal was a lovely lunch at the joy ride café, we had forgotten what flavours were like. Bolivia really likes spices, almost all the food we ate here was tasty no matter how cheap. Bolivia is really cheap there are 15 Bolivianas to the GBP. We ate lunch in the market for 5 Bolivanos about 30p!
This was also our first city were we heard marching bands almost all of the time. The people are very short, and most of the women wear a traditional dress which consists of pleated skirts - the larger your bum appears the better and a Bowler hat! The hat started when the English workers bringing in the railway didn't have enough money to pay everyone and the used the Bowlers as part payment. The men did not like the hats but the women did and now it is part of the traditional dress and most people seem to wear it. We stayed here for a couple of days just to get used to the altitude, on our first day we had an afternoon tour of the city. With the altitude I was forced to wear loads more clothes in the evening -fleece etc, but also during the day to stop ourselves from getting burnt. Lots of beggars, including women with children, and old ladies too, very troubling to see. Education is free for 6 years, but it is taught in Spanish which is not a first language. Schools are available for communities over 2000 people so remote areas the children find it hard to get an education.
Sunday 040606 Sucre
We had an included excursion to the Tarabuco Market which is about 1.5 hours from Sucre, and about 400 mtrs higher. We had a great time here shopping here, fortunately we had the space previously occupied by our winter clothes. But the packs are no longer big enough! It was nice being able to buy things.
Monday 050606 Sucre
We strolled around town trying to visit various museums & churches but they were all closed!
Tuesday 060606 Sucre to Potosi
Jude popped out early to catch some of the churches open. We had a 9am pick up by the local bus from our hotel. Most of the vehicles in Bolivia appear to be old Japanese buses and cars, and they were designed for shorter people so it was an uncomfortable ride - especially as it was 4 hours long and it had people standing & sitting in the aisles.
We arrived in time for lunch in the square. This is the highest city in the world 4100 mtrs, Fee was feeling ok here & Jude didn't seem to suffer from altitude sickness here, so she planned to visit the Silver mines and visit the hot pools.
Wednesday 010606 Potosi
However, on the morning of the Silver mines trip, she was too ill with a bad tummy to go. When she was feeling a little better in the afternoon she went off to the local hot pool. The tiny pool was being renovated so they all had to bathe in the lake. The guide book had advised against this as it had killed several people as the centre is very hot.
Thursday 080606 Potosi to Uyuni
We were picked up by the local small bus again, and it was packed again with people sitting in the aisles. The road was unsealed and so very bumpy. Uyuni is about 3800 mtrs and we arrived in time to visit the local market, we avoided spending much as the bags were getting heavy. We had dinner in a local bar that did the greatest homemade cheeseburgers and was home to a very cute puppy called Biscot.. We also had the most enormous room with 5 beds and one even had a big fur blanket on it - good job too as it was freezing here the temperature went down to -7 C.
Friday 090606 Salar de Uyuni (salt lakes) 3700 mtrs.
We started our trip with a visit to the train cemetery. Uyuni was where they repaired the trains, unfortunately the ones that couldn't be fixed got left to rust. The army uses it as a training ground. We then went to a local salt factory were the process of drying and bagging the salt was demonstrated. We were invited to have a go. Then we drove onto the Salt Lake, it is the remains of a long dried up lake, said to be the largest in the world. The water dried up and left salt that is upto 135 mtrs deep in some section.
We stopped at a site were the salt had been scrapped into pyramids to allow some drying to take place before it is transferred by truck to the local factory. We drove on to the first of the Salt Hotels were we had lunch. The guides wife was our cook for the trip. After lunch we drove west for a few hours to find the salt hotel we were staying in. This one was slightly newer than the one we had lunch at, the walls and all the furniture were made from salt blocks, even the bed base was made from salt! (with a nice mattress). We were told the temperature could go as low as -25 C but I do not think it got that low. We played football between ourselves and were slowly joined by the local kids, it was fun but exhausting at 3800 mtrs. As the electricity was only on for a few hours in the evening we ended up in bed at about 9pm.
Saturday 100606 Salar de Uyuni (Salt Lakes)
Early start with no hot shower - so we had a baby wet wipe shower and a promise for later. First stop was a local museum and cave. Then onto Fish island, Jude climbed to the top all you could see was white and more white. Fish island is covered in huge Cacti that is up to 1200 years old!
We had bbq llama for lunch and a long drive back to Uyuni. That night we took the overnight train to Ouro.
Sunday 110606 Ouro to La Paz
We didn't sleep well on the train and Jude was ill again with her stomach. We woke at about 6am it looked desolate outside and very frosty. We took cabs to the bus station arriving about 1 hour before our bus. Where we transferred to a local bus to take us the last 4 hours to La Paz. La Paz is 4000 mtrs and considered to be the political capital of Bolivia.
Monday 120606 La Paz
We had a city tour, main centre, moon valley - which is really like I imagine the surface of the moon. The witches market which is called thus because it if full of women selling good luck charms and horrible things like Lama foetuses to be used for offerings to the gods. While everyone is Catholic they have managed to hold on to the older Inca beliefs. We spent the afternoon shopping.
Tuesday 130606 La Paz
Tiahuanaco is a pre-Inca archaeological site approx 72km from La Paz. We had a great guide here and we really enjoyed it. Lots of monoliths, huge gateways and stone carvings. Also found a great coffee shop called Alexanders near the main square that made really good coffee - at last. You would think that as this is the home of coffee it would be all good. It hasn't most of it has been dreadful.
Wednesday 140606 La Paz to Puno
We had a tourist bus which we had to get off of at Copacabana and change to a different bus about 30 mins later which left little time to eat lunch. We also bumped into some of the guys who had left our tour at La Paz. They really liked Copacabana. We crossed Lake Titicaca at Tiquina. We also passed through border control to enter Peru which took about an hour.
Sorry it has taken so long to update website. Some areas do not have fast Internet
Fee & jude XXXX
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