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We're back... hope you didn't miss us too much!
We last wrote to you back in Peru, when we had seen the floating islands and were about to cross into Bolivia. The crossing was, well, interesting. Our 10 hour "direct" journey began with a coach to the border. We got off the coach at the Peruvian border control to have our exit visa stamped, and then walked across the border (which was pretty exciting) into Bolivia, to have our Bolivian entry visa stamped. It was here that we discovered that our coach was no longer continuing the journey with us, and so we got our big rucksacks off, walked to a nearby rickety minibus, our rucksacks were literally thrown on top of the bus and tied down, before we continued on our way. Our minibus drove for about half an hour, before dropping us off in the Bolivian town of Copacabana, where we apparently had an hour for lunch. Of course, this meant first tracking down an ATM to get some Bolivian currency! After lunch, we walked for half an hour with rucksacks on our back (mel did not appreciate this) to our next coach. We boarded, only to be hauled off and told some volunteers were needed to switch to another coach (no explanation given!) In the naive hope that the second coach would have seatbelts (little did we know that NO bus/car/moving vehicle in bolivia has seatbelts), we found ourselves changing buses. This, we thought, would be the final leg of the journey...
...but we were wrong. We arrived at a lake, whereupon we were again rudely hauled off the bus, told to pay a fee to cross the lake by boat, whilst our coach (once again, luggage tied to the roof), made its way across the lake on what appeared to be a wooden raft (although we later found out that said raft did indeed have an engine). At the other end, we met our coach and FINALLY continued en route to La Paz (the fake capital of Bolivia).
As you can imagine, all we wanted at the end of that impressive coach-walk-minibus-break-walk-coach-new coach-boat-coach journey, was to collapse in our pre-booked hostel, but no such luck. Our coach dropped us off in the middle of La Paz (not at the bus terminal, as expected!) and we found a cab to take us to our hostel... but when we arrived no-one answered! We rang the bell many many times, shouted lots of 'hola's, banged the gate, and the only answer we got was from a mean old man who lived above the hostel who wouldnt let us through the gate. So with rucksacks on our backs we schlepped to a nearby hostel which had a spare room and there we crashed for the night.
La Paz is, at best, a bit of a dump. Our original intention of staying there 3 nights quickly became a case of "the sooner we're outta here, the better", so we spent about 24 hours there. We spent a day wandering around the city centre and caught a 7hr nightbus to Cochabamba later that day. This nightbus was similar to our last nightbus from Nazca to Cusco, in that it had big leather fully reclining seats...very comfortable. However it continued the theme of no seatbelts on anything remotely Bolivian! We were treated to Rush Hour 3 in Spanish though, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker just arn´t the same when they are dubbed.
Cochabamba was pretty much just a stopover, and the only memorable aspect of our stay there was when an ATM machine swallowed mel's debit card (much to her distress). Under pressure, joel = cool as a cucumber whereas mel = a nervous wreck. Unfortunately, its mel who speaks spanish, so she had to pull herself together enough to talk to various officials at various offices and various banks and, somehow, 24 hours later, her card was back in her possession.
From Cochabamba, we moved on to Sucre, the REAL capital of Bolivia on another nightbus. This one was a slight step down from the other in that it was a 10 hour journey, the seats did not recline, there was no toilet, and it was full of indigenous people who snore. A lot. Luckily their snoring drowned out The Hills Have Eyes 2 (in Spanish of course), so swings and roundabouts. Sucre was a real change of scene. Whereas the other cities were a bit grotty, Sucre is a maze of whitewashed colonial buildings with pretty terracotta roofs. The hostel we've been staying in is amazing, run by a really friendly and helpful Swiss family. Unfortunately, mel (once again being the one to cause problems!) got a bit sick on the second day and had to spend a couple of days resting up and being looked after by Nurse Joel (uniform not included). After making a full recovery we have done plenty of sightseeing here, including a visit to the world's largest collection of dinosaur footprints, a weaving museum where we saw some incredible indigenous weavers at work (it takes them 3 months to complete a single tapestry!) and a hike to a local viewpoint over the city that had a stunning panoramic view. We also saw the wonderful sight of Spurs beating Chelsea which rivalled anything Sucre had to offer.
We're moving on from Sucre tomorrow, heading towards Potosi, which is the highest city in the world, and from then moving on to Uyuni, where we'll do a 3 day jeep ride over the salt flats. We've been really lucky with the weather in Bolivia so far... its been warm and sunny days, with rain only during the night!
We're missing everyone lots and WE WANT MORE MESSAGES. Shame on you if you dont send us one after reading this impressively long entry...
All our love,
Mel and Joel xxxxxxxx
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