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We are off on our big adventure
Hola!
We´re writing (although typed later) this on Clare´s birthday whilst drinking happy hour beers at our lovely hotel. Thank you to everyone who sent text messages. Apologies to anyone who called, it´s super expensive to receive calls so we can´t afford to answer. Sorry. But the thought was very much appreciated, especially from everyone at Youth at Risk :)
We spent about a week in La Paz, Bolivia, in total and probably ate every food type apart from Bolivian! We also stayed in an amazingly kitsch 1970´s hotel, replete with leather studded wall covering, pictures to follow....! La Paz itself is very full-on and everything seems to happen at top speed. It´s not a very beautiful city, but is possibly the most interesting that we´ve visited. The streets are packed with ladies in traditional dress selling everything from bread to pigs trotters, from blankets on the pavement. Getting around these ´stalls´is one thing, but negotiating the crazy traffic is quite another. There certainly doesn´t seem to be any form of Highway Code there and it´s every minivan for itself!
Our time in La Paz was broken by a trip to the salt flats in the South of Bolivia. The flats are a thin crust of salt on top of a sunken river. The salt crust is thick enough in some places to support the weight of a vehicle in some places, so the way to view the flats in by tour in a 4x4.
We did the tour with Mike and Katie, our friends from the Inca Trail, and an Aussie couple they´d met. It was a really good trip, made better by the company because we all had a good laugh. We saw some mindblowing things, from 10 metre cacti that had taken 1000 yrs to grow, to miles and miles of salt desert, to thousands of pink flamingos. We stayed in a salt hotel where everything was made of salt, played basketball at 4,500m above sea level, visited geysers at 5,500 m above sea level (Clare managed not to be sick this time) and survived the most bone rattling 10hr bus journey ever!
We´re now in Coroico, which was a 2hr journey North East out of La Paz, down the world´s most dangerous road. Coroico is subtropical and it´s like being in a rainforest. We´re completely surrounded by lush vegetation and very loud animal sounds from the wildlife. We´ve mainly been chilling out, catching some rays and we also walked to see some waterfalls today.
Today is also election day in Bolivia and there´s a real feeling of excitement. It seems likely that the current president, Evo Morales, will be re-elected. Morales is Boliviai´s first indigenous president and apparently he represents the poor people and also opposes the US coca eradication policies. A local restaurant owner told us that Morales has been a good president, but that his good intentions don´t always work out. Apparently Coroico has had the materials to repair its roads for several years, courtesy of the government, but unfortunately no-one knows what to do with them, so they sit wasted.
We travel next to Sucre and onwards East through Bolivia to the border with Brazil as we travel back to our flight home from Rio. Apologies for not posting many photos recently, we´ve had loads of internet problems. But you can see some pictures on Facebook (search for Nicholas Kanakides) and we´ll upload more when we´re in Brazil.
We hope that you´re well and enjoying the build-up to Christmas. We´re listening to festive music every day to ensure we arrive home on the 23rd feeling suitably Christmassy!!
Much love to you,
Clare & Nicky
xxx
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