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Firsty just some random thought that i feel we have missed out of previous blogs.
If anyone is thinking about travelling themeselves ever, a couple of things that we could absolutley not live without. Firstly the fact that our bags open sideways like a suitcase is brilliant. I didn´t realise until i saw that Flo and Chrissy had to empty there bags out everytime they got to a hostel and re pack because theres only loaded from the top! Secondly the boots we got from Viv are the best things ever. Throughout the entire traumatic experience of the Lares Trek our feet never hurt once. We didn´t even notice as we trapsed through mud and through waterfalls! At one point I miss judged a a bog and my foot was fully submerged! My sock never even got a tiny bit wet! Thankyou! And Thirdly the sleeping bags. Later you´ll read about a night we were forced to spend in a hostel of death and lets just say there was no chance i was going under those filth ridden covers at all!
Also now we´ve been away from home for a little bit, there are some daily things i want to remind you all of not to take for granted like fresh milk. Over here non of it is refridgerated as its all that horrible long life stuff. Eugh. Or the fact that you can flush toilet paper down the toilet and not put it in some horrible over filled bin in the heat. Well if im talking about toilets then, perhaps the fack that you have toilet seats at all, or toilets that have water in and are therefore able to flush, not just a cermatic bowl slowly filling up with other peoples feaces. And Soap! God i miss soap and water from the tap that you know wont make your tummy ill!! Is it so much to ask!!
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Anyways back to the blog. When we last worte we were in Puno Peru! It was another early start for us as we had to catch our bus at 7am! This meant getting up at six, packing, getting some lovely breakfast and getting a cab down to the bus station. However as lovely as Jenny was she wasn´t the best at time keeping. Even though Chrissy was down there at 6:10 to order some pancakes and some scrambled egg for us we didnt actually see the food until about 6:45!! eeek! We had a mad rush out of there getting taxi´s and running down the bus station. All this to then be told that the bus wasn´t actually coming until 9am. Brilliant. So We waited and waited, until Eventually the bus came!! YAY! It was about 10am by this point and didnt leave until 10:20!! so we´d waited 3 hours in the stinking cold bus terminal after missing our breakfasts!!
We on the bus for about 3 hours until we hit the border crossing into Bolivia. This was a new and interesting experience for us! Nobody on the bus really spoke any English so we had no idea where to go. The border was literally just a piece of string but we had to follow the others around like sheep having no clue where we were going! The bus assistant just pointed 1...2...3.... and all he was pointing at was each side of the road then over the border...too helpful. What he actauly meant was we went to a building on one side of the road where someone looked at our documents? Still not really sure what he was doing! Secondly followed people into another building where we got our Peru Exit stamps, the we had to walk across the border as we werent allowed on this bus. Over the border we followed another lady into another room where we had to fill out our immigration forms (no pens obviously) and finally got our Bolivia stamps! Then the worst happened. Turlough was dying to go to the toilet (its Solo Urinario on all the buses over here!) so i thought i´d go with him to a public toilet. Big mistake. It was the worst toilet i have ever been to. Picture the toilet in Trainspotting and it´ll give you some idea. The worst part being that we actually PAID to get in there! I was run by a couple of 5 year olds (reminded me of Slumdog) and was a dark windowless room at the bottom of some building. By now we were pretty used to not having a toilet roll and not being able to flush it down, but this place had no toilet seats, no doors, the toilet itself wasn´t even connected to a system, and hadn´t been emptied in a while. The bin had also been sitting there in the baking heat for what must have been days. The place was covered in filth and was wet for some reason (probably just urine thinking back) There were obviously flies absolutley everywhere and they had sinks but obviously no water coming out or soap. i must have been in there all of about 3 seconds before i ran with fear back to the bus leaving Turlough way behind. I couldn´t even think about it!! Thank god when we got back to the bus Flo had some antibactierial soap!!
So that was our first vision of Boliva, not the best. It was already obviously alot poorer than Peru and the roads (if you can call them that) were a downright health hazard! All the building were like empty shells just plain red brick and cement showing. However at the border crossing at least it didn´t seem to smell to bad. Once we arrived in La Paz however this was a completley different story, the place reaked.
We didn´t arrive at exactly the best time, it was about 4 o´clock in the afternoon when we arrived and right in the middle of Carnaval. (On a side note for Viv and Py, this is was the end of the road for the hat, just to answer your email father. It had seen the top of the Andes, Lake Titikaka, even Machu Picchu, but im afraid it became overwhelmed in Bolvia. We like to think its shading some poor Bolivian childs head.) So we left the bus Terminal with no idea where our hostel was (we found it in Chrissys guidebook) So we got into a taxi and got ripped off more than you could ever imagine. The taxi literally drove 100m down the road until it had to stop as the parade was passing on the road at the end of the bus terminal. He charged us 15 Bolvianos!!! 15!! (Most journeys that last about 20 minutes cost around 6-8 Bolivianos, just to give you an idea!)
So then we were dumped right by the main parade, with all our bags and everything, having no idea where to go next. Rubbing salt into the wound, as it was carnaval all the kids have water pistols, water bombs and some kind of white foam that they constantly sprayed you with. The situation had obviously got too much for flo, who at this point was losing her mind. it was the last squirt from some little kid that pushed her over the edge. When she looked down to see that it was some kind of dirty green water on her, She threw her guide book at the kid, on the verge of tears, screaming I FU*KING HATE CARNAVAL!!!!! It was one of the funniest breakdowns i´d ever seen and cheered the rest of us up no doubt. After trapsing up and down the crowds of millions of Bolivians asking to be robbed we managed to find the Hostel! Thank god! I already had a burnt face, the sun was beating down and our hat had left us!
It wasn´t the best news when we heard we were going to be split up! Flo and Chrissy were the lucky ones as Turl and I ended up in a horrible drug den full of idiots. Turlough then decided it was his turn to have a nervous breakdown as some northen guy came up (off his face) shouting IS EVERYBODY HAPPY?! This was the final straw for Turl. Luckily though an angel appeared at the door and said that she got our room wrong! YES! We then found out that the only reason we weren´t in a room with Flo and Chrissy was that the beds were dirty! So They took the dirty beds and we all got back together!
Luckily things picked up from here! The hostel was actually really nice and clean. It had the highest Micro Brewery in the world and its own bar, where you got a free pint a night! This was great for meeting new people, as everyone (apart from the first room people) were really nice!
We stayed Monday - Friday in La Paz in the end (longer than we´d planned, but were waiting for the American boys from our Lares Trek to catch up with us) The first couple of days were spent around the area our hostel was in. This wasn´t the best part of La Paz and we thought we´d made our minds up that it was a dump. I was really excited about going to a Witches market that we´d heard about there, only to find that it was covered in dead baby LLamas and dired our Llama foetuses. Nice. I dont normally feel sick but this was pretty horrific. The babies were just stacked up and there were hundereds of them. These were acompanied by strung up dog skin. Our idea of La Paz just got better and better.
On the second day we´d met up with our American chumbs and lukily they got a room with us too. We all planend to illegally get into la Paz Prison. This is a really weird place where it is practically run by the inmates. Who have to rent their cells and their families go in to live with them. Apparently they also have their own Cocaine factory in there too! Madness. Its pretty rougue going in there as you just have to go to the plaza outside and wait for someone to approach you and ask if you want a tour. We weren´t going to take passorts or anything in case they tried to take them! Living life on the edge. However when we got there we found out that some stupid Argentinian news reporter had reported loads of stuff on tourists getting in, so the police were everywere. Also apparently one of the inmates had killed another inmates daughter so the news was all over the place! nice.
After this we were being led by some idiot who thought he owned La Paz and he took us to the street market to get some food. Yeah right. As if we were going poison our already fragile stomachs with that. Turlough and i made our excuses and made a sharp exit. However we were still in the horrible part of town where the hostal was, and ended up trapsing round and round for somewhere to eat, only finding street food or these horrible fast food chicken places.We found what looked like cafe type place ¿all we wanted was a sandwhich!!) We thought it might be ok as it was full of locals, but wen we sat down at the greasy table and asked for a menu the waitor came over and just brought us this salad thing. For a moment we thought its probably just a little thing that they give with all the meals, looked around and checked, and everyone else was getting it too, so we thought this must be normal. We didn´t really eat any of it and just pushed it to one side. It was then however that the waitor just brought over some soup. We hadnçt ordered it or anything and that meant, uh oh, Set menu. I pushed my spoon around this lumpy thick greeny brown thing with giant lumps of some questionable meat in and Turlough and I looked at each other. No way we thought. We immidiatley paid there and then not caring wat for and made a sharp exit. The hunt continued.
We were getting pretty hungry at this point and you know what Turlough and I are like when we´re hungry so things were going down hill. Rapidly. We thought our best bet was to climb back up to the hostal (great another hill, when we´re hungry too!) This turned out to be a good idea though as we found a brochure for a nice cafe and immediatly got a taxi there. Hurrah! a NICE CLEAN non stinking part of La Paz! It was lovely. We stuck around here for the rest of the afternoon as it was so nice!
We had heard about an Argentinian Steak house and so we all decided as Bolivia was so cheap we´d splash out! It was also in the nice end of La Paz the end that didnt stink and you could actually get a decent meal. Óbviously Turlough was in his element here and we looked down at the menu and the first steak was enough for "4 hungry chefs" as they put it, a whopping 1.2kg! At first he was being a baby saying he wasn´t that hungry but when we saw that it was only 1.50 more than a regular sized steak we had to get it! The table was so excited that some one was brave enough to try it! When all the meat arrived it came together on one big hot plate thing and we all looked around anxiously for the beast. We couldn´t see it until all the other steaks were removed from the pile and there it was, acting like a plate, the biggest lump of meat you could ever see, making my half a chicken look like a wing! All Tim, one of the Americans, said was "You might die." It was so big that it couldn´t fit on Turloughs already huge plate and they had to give it to him in 3 pieces. The Steak was, by all accounts, the nicest steak EVER and to everyones amazment polished off before some of the others had finished their meals (stomach ulcer on the horizon)... Ridiculous! We were hoping that this amazing feat would get some discount on the meal or even a T shirt but nothing... Just respect and honour!
On another night we stayed in the hostal bar as we had had a huge lunch and took part in a film quiz! Too my absolute pride... my Team WON!! I´ve never been part of a winning quiz team before! We threashed the competition especially in the European cinema round! So i got to rub it in the faces of the Americans who thought that they were the best at everything!! This turned out to be a rather drunken night especially on flo´s part as she ended up hysterically crying adn throwing up in a club we all went to! Hahahahahah! She really let herself down.
The rest of Bolivia was mainly market shopping as the place was so cheap! I´ve turned into an absolute cliche looking traveller with my stripey pyjama looking trousers and alpaca jumper! Turloughs still trying to be cool and hasn´t given in to the comfy clothes yet, but he will!
Sorry that the blog has been SO long again! we keep meaning to make it short. Hope everything is good with everyone back home! Missing you all and thanks for reading!
Love Fran and Turlough xxxxx
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