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Feliz Navidad chicos…hope everyone back home is suitably festive, work is winding down and daylight hours spent in pyjamas are on the increase! It´s time for the Bolivia blog, just over 2 weeks of mixed bag adventures so it might be a long blog…so boost the heating for another hour and get your brew!
For anyone looking for the Peru summary (there must be a few hardcore blog readers out there?!) I´ve put it at the end of Joe´s blog from the Inca trail-it felt a bit wrong writing about Bolivia and Peru in the same blog, as they are SO different!
I digress, we start as always with the border crossing which began with a night bus and a "direct transfer" from Cusco in Peru to Copacabana on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca…it was no surprise when we found ourselves on the side of a dusty road being directed to a collectivo/minibus (Toyota Hiace vans are all the rage here-this geeky van info obviously came from Joe!) and told THAT bus would take us to the border. So as we trundled through a dusty border town the driver proceeded to fill the collectivo with stray schoolchildren until we were practically sat on top of eachother. The border itself was the most calm and organised affair we had encountered and most importantly, Bolivia has an excellent stamp!!!
A quick taxi ride took us over to Copacabana and we spent the day settling in and enjoying a beer by Lake Titicaca. Dinner was amazing, firstly because neither of us had to eat rice (we had A LOT of rice in Peru) but also because we both had drinks, starters and a main and the bill was a whopping 8 quid. Hola Bolivia! We didn´t end up doing any trips across Lake Titicaca as I unexpectantly turned into a vomitting machine and spent the next day in bed.
Leaving Copacabana and venturing 3 hours south to the capital La Paz we splashed out on the most expensive bus (£3) as we´d heard many a story about buses breaking down in Bolivia. This truly was a gringo bus, not a dark face amoungst us. The journey was broken up by an impromptu crossing of the lake. We were filed out and onto a little boat, whilst our bus boarded what can only be described as a questionable motorised platform, which never looked far from sinking-classic Bolivia!
You enter La Paz via the El Alto plains along the shores of Lake Titicaca and I got a glimpse of local life on a Saturday afternoon. The Cholita women (bowler hats, big skirts, plaited hair and shawls) who are infamous in Bolivia were making bricks out of the mud and straw and the men were cleaning their banged up old cars in the streams…slim pickings for Saturday hobbies! The best thing I saw was a football match, the guys had these 1970s strips on and there was a big crowd, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. What was even better was the cholita women were having a match right next to them, bowler hats and all. We drove past just as a cholita woman put in a Eric Cantona type flying tackle on another lady, who proceeded to just get up with no fuss and dust herself off-extreme levels of girl power!
So, La Paz-it´s massive! A huge sprawling city underneath a snow capped mountain, with lots of different regions and a reputation for weekly protests. We stayed up near the witches market , where you can buy llama foetuses which are supposed to be great house warming gifts…I think we´ll stick with a bottle of vino and a bamboo plant ta very much! Now it was Joe´s turn to be unwell, so after a week in Bolivia there´s pretty much nothing we haven´t learnt about eachother! So we spent a few days pottering about, finding a place that did EXCELLENT mash and gravy which lifted my spirits immensely, and taking in the craziness that is La Paz.
Next stop was Sucre, and after an hour delay (it is never just 10 more minutes in Bolivia!) we were on our way. Joe slept like a man possessed on the bumpy bus (the full cama/bed seats helped) whilst I was politely told that the 10 hour bus ride had a toilet…but it was locked and they had lost the keys, however we would stop in 10 minutes. Knowing what 10 minutes really meant filled me with dread and so began the first of many peeing-on-the-side-of-the-road-next-to-animals incidents of Bolivia! Sucre was a welcomed relief. A small, quiet city with white washed buildings and a lovely café culture, fabulous! My GCSE spanish (and lots of help from my sister Laura) has done a sterling job of getting us on buses and into hostels, but I felt a bit limited in conversation and thought I should challenge myself to get better at Spanish, so I enrolled in 3 afternoons of 1:1 lessons. What about Joe I hear you say?!? Well, he has developed a lovely language he calls "European" which is 90% English, a smattering of GCSE French and a sprinkling of restaurant Spanish, all spoken in a non-descript eastern european accent…so we figured we didn´t have enough time in our trip for him to learn spanish!
From Sucre we went to Tupiza, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid territory. The lonely planet said people often stay for weeks because it is so relaxed and a great place to spend time. Liars! To say it was a one horse town would make it sound a lot busier that it was! We were planning on doing a horse-riding tour around the wild-west scenery, but when we found out the guides were 10 year old boys we decided to cut our losses and headed to Uyuni-the starting point for the Salar de Uyuni tour.
We had heard buses in Bolivia were pretty horrendous, largely due to the massive lack of tarmaced roads…and I can testify, they are not an experience to be taken lightly. Putting aside the peeing next to animals on the side of the road issue, you should be given a dust mask and sports bra to cope with the sheer bumpiness of these buses! It´s always reassuring, when the bus has unexpectedly stopped, to look out the window and see the bus driver throwing rocks into a lagoon of water to determine if it´s shallow enough to drive through! We arrived in Uyuni in a distressed state having had 7 hours on such a bus and made swift moves to book our Salar de Uyuni trip and high-tail it out of Bolivia!
The pictures of the Salar/salt flats trip speak louder than words and we think they are pretty amazing (and hopefully will attach to the blog soon after technical difficulties are overcome!). It was a brilliant 3 days full of coloured lagoons, salf flats, cacti, llamas, flamingoes, geysers (at 5000m above sea level), hot springs, hostels made of salt and epic scenery. The trip left us at the Chilean border town of San Pedro de Atacama…and from here Joe will pick up from!
Bolivia summary: well, after the comfort and ease of travel in Peru, Bolivia was a bit of a shock! On one hand it was good to feel like we were off the beaten track…but on the other it turns out we quite like the beaten track, especially if it comes with tarmac! Bolivia has some amazing scenery and is excellent for the old budget but 2 weeks felt long enough!
Best hostel: Cruz de los Andes (La Paz)
Best Place: Salar de Uyuni
Best Beer: Paceña
Best steak: Joe wishes to state Bolivia is a disgrace in the steak contest (still a Colombian top 3)
As this is the last blog before Christmas, we want to wish you all a fabulous festive period. Obviously we´d love to be there to raise a glass of mulled wine with you, but there are still 10 weeks left of our South America trip and a lot more diems to be carpe´d!
As always it´d be great to hear from you, we love reading your comments!
Lots of love,
Kate and Joe xxx
- comments
Ma Duncs Hi Katie and Jo! Happy Christmas XOXOXOXO Just made it onto your Travel Blog and it's just wonderful, I can almost feel the bumps on the road. Did Hamish tell you his big sis Rosie is having a baby in March so we're going to be Grandparents? We are so so excited, Hamish will have serious "Uncle" duties such as teaching his little nephew (we know it's a boy) the finer points of building fires and gutting fish! Keep blogging, we love it! Keep safe, all my love, Ma Duncs XXX
Tom Clark Titicaca.... Beavis and butthead! CLASS!! Have a great chtistmas! Speak to u soon!
Heather Lockton Great blog! Our bus rides have been a breeze so far in comparison to yours....although may get worse! Loved the description of Jo's European language, sounds like Spanglish to me. Anyway have a great time over Christmas and maybe we can Skype soon. My log in name is heather.lockton84. Find me. Speak soon xx
Judith and Sandra Loving your blog, you both write really well. We are pretty much following in your footsteps - now in Cusco, setting off on Inca Jungle trek tomorrow. So thanks for all your tips, we're going shopping for sports bras and dust masks this morning in preparation for Bolivia! Judith and Sandra x