Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
gosh. returning to blogging after harriet´s two [spectacular] contributions is a little bit daunting. i fear i might have to "write myself in" like we were always told not to do in exams. i´ve left it too long as well, and can´t possibly go into as much detail as the last six weeks deserve. this means you´re going to miss out on characters like david, the jehovah´s witness "on wife number three" who joined us [uninvited] in a peruvian ice cream parlour to tell us about the various ex-wives and children he has scattered around the globe; or gaby, the unbelievably upbeat american who, each morning on a trek where i was reluctant to even leave my sleeping bag for fear of the cold, burst out of her tent almost singing what a "beautiful morning" it was; or, in fact, any of the Angry Young Englishmen we met at the various england games we watched in various locations. but i will be as complete as i can, which means going back to where harry left you - in la paz...
so, the ritz was kind of, well, ritzy. the guys threw me a little "welcome back" party [caipiriñha-inclusive] and it was such a wonderful thing to return to after a sad time at home. check-out the following day wasn´t until two in the afternoon, so we made sure we rinsed the satellite tv up until the very last second. and took the majority of the fruit-bowl-display in the lobby! unfortunately after such lavishness, the return to our "usual" grotty hostel in la paz was even more of a shock to the system. most literally for the boys, who proceeded to get very, very ill and were confined to their room [scented with stale gauloise and mould] for a couple of days. harry and i used this time wisely - reading the grazias i´d brought back out from england, and cutting and dying harry´s hair. twice.
once the boys were feeling able to get out and about [aka once enough immodium had been consumed] we were able to do some of the super touristy stuff that, up until then, we´d only heard about - the museum of musical instruments, which the boys, of course, owned [and when i say owned i mean "played johnny cash songs on a variety of crappy bolivian instruments"], the open-top bus tour of "the most beautiful sights in la paz", which was, essentially, a display of the traffic problems of the city, and the real pinnacle of our la paz tourism - "cholita wrestling." our introduction to this was "enforced fun" on a bus up to the venue, which felt like an 18-30s holiday on wheels. i won a wrestling mask on the merit of my ungainly dancing to "sexy b*tch" by david guetta, and we drank pre-mixed cuba libres. at 3 in the afternoon. we were then taken to our ring-side seats, to watch a series of intricately-staged wrestling matches where comedically dressed "bad guys" threw overweight bolivian women wearing traditional dress to the floor, and jumped on them. seriously - the photos prove it!
after wishing the boys a teary goodbye, harriet and i embarked on our first mammoth journey since being reunited - the start of us making our way up to ecuador and colombia, which began with an epic bus up to lima, where we drank copious starbucks and watched "sex in the city 2", before we headed on to huaraz - a mountain town in the the north of peru. here we embarked on the "santa cruz trek" - 60-odd kilometres of hiking at a fair old altitude in the cordillera blanca. i am not ashamed to admit that this was not my favourite experience of travelling thus far - it became clear on the first day that my lungs had got far too used to good, thick, bristol air, meaning that i found it nearly impossible to breathe as we climbed higher. on top of this, camping around 4,000m a.s.l. was THE COLDEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE - we had thick sleeping bags, and i slept in every item of clothing i possessed, yet still shivered the whole night through. the scenery for the three days was so beautiful, but i was happy to get back down to sea level and continue on up the coast.
essentially, mine and harry´s visit to ecuador was a necessary stop on our way to colombia, and its promised sunshine. we managed to fit in a few towns [most of which were rainier than england!], but really ecuador for us was all about quito, which was qinda qool. there is an amazing old city, with more churches than you can shake a rosary at, and a presidential palace with wonderfully slack security measures. as well as these quasi-cultural excursions, harry and i also went to the "vivarium" [basically a snake/reptile house] and posed with a boa constrictor round our necks, and the natural history museum, and posed with various poorly-stuffed dead things. classy. the other excellent thing about quito is that it is tantalizingly close to the equator, affording harry and i the chance to visit the various museums that have sprung up around lines drawn on the ground promising to be The Actual Equator. one museum was substantially cooler than the other, and had various "scientific" experiments set up to demonstrate the different forces on either side of the equator. the thing with water swirling down a plug actually worked, and harriet balanced an egg on a nail, though we´re still not entirely sure what this had to do with our position on the globe.
so from quito, on to colombia, and on to [probably] our favourite country so far. this is partially due to the fact that colombia was sunny [meaning we are no longer the pastiest people in the continent] but also due to the fact that it was beautifulbeautifulbeautiful, and filled with exciting things to do and lovely people to do them with. of course, the country is not without its problems - cocaine is EVERYWHERE, which, to a drug-virgin like myself, was terrifying. every hostel owner seems to have a side-line in dealing, and even the young lads that sell single cigarettes and chewing gum outside the bars and clubs have extra merchandise that´s not displayed amidst the lollipops. still, this slightly seedy side of the country didn´t spoil the time we had, which was spent doing all kinds of wonderful. we started in the "coffee district" where we stayed in an old plantation house, hiked in steamy cloud forest, and visited a working coffee "finca", to see where our yummy morning coffee was produced. from there we headed up to a little fishing village on the caribbean coast, for scuba diving, drinking, and dancing the nights away. harry and i hadn´t dived for years, so we were a little terrified before our first dive, but it all came back pretty quickly [i was told, unhelpfully for those of you that understand, that it´s like riding a bike...] the visibility wasn´t all that great, as we arrived after a thunderstorm, but this was more than made up for by our BEAUTIFUL dive master, who, despite strong suggestions otherwise, we still refuse to believe was gay. it was hard to leave taganga [both emotionally and physically - the heat made our now-16kg backpacks unbearable!] but it was made a little easier by the fact that we were heading to one of colombia´s national parks - where lovely beaches are fringed by jungle. there was a slight hurdle to getting to this paradise, involving an hour-and-a-half-walk through the ridiculously sweaty forest, but our reward came in the form of a heavenly beach, complete with cliff-top hammocks to sleep in for the night. here we sunbathed hard, pushing through the sweat to develop not-bad tans after only one day! our last stop in colombia was cartagena, a beautiful city, still on the caribbean coast, complete with colourful buildings, beautiful plazas, and incredibly expensive bars. we stayed for a few days, wandering around, taking it all in whilst simultaneously taking it extremely easy. needless to say, it was with heavy hearts that we left all this behind. heavy hearts and complete confidence that we will return at some point in our lives.
and now, after months of expectation, two flights, and 48 hours on a bus, we´re finally in argentina. and loving it. but then that´s for the next blog...
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- comments