Our trip seems to go in phases from totally completely hectic to just kinda busy. At the moment, we're just getting over two weeks of totally completely hectic. There's no way that we can possibly begin to describe all that we've seen and done without you having to take a week off work to read it yourselves (and we wouldn't want to do that to you!) so here are the highlights:
You know all about our silver mine adventure already. That took us a while to get over! Every time we went to sleep at night we thought about those poor guys out there. Also, about 2 days after visiting the mines, Emily caught a nasty coughy chest infection thingy. Are the two related? We don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if they were. Anyway, other than the mines, we went to the mint museum in Potosi where silver coins were manufactured from the 16th to 19th century for Spain. The well preserved machinery is kept in this impressive fortress-like building which takes up a whole block and has metre-thick walls. Ironically, these days Bolivian money is made at a cost, mostly in Spain but also in Canada, France and Great Britain.
- After Potosi we made our way to "Sucre", the political capital although we thought that La Paz was a lot 'busier'. The highlight here was the Sunday Tarabuco market which as well as providing us with a nice weaving and some pretty trinkets, gave us access to the relaxed locals for some top-quality chats about their country. Notably, the son of a restaurant owner who sat down with us at our table and told us all about Bolivia as he sees it. He was surprisingly quite negative about it and kept making excuses for the "imperfections" of it, saying that it must be horrible to be tourists!? On the other hand, he would love to go to England as he has seen it on the television and looked at pictures on the Internet....London looks like heaven (!?) and he really wanted to meet some real British hooligans! Also - do Scotsmen really wear skirts!? Hmmm.
A few interesting facts then, straight from our buddy's mouth: Doctors and dentists in Bolivia do not need any qualifications to practice, so anyone can set up a surgery. We suspected that this might be the case when we saw some really derelict dirty buildings in back streets with graffiti and broken windows labeled "gynecologist" and "beautician". No thank you! One particular street-dentist advertised his surgery as being "better than the rest" because his has lights in it (!) and his drilling machine has a high-speed function. Don't want to know!... Despite this, Bolivian country-folk could not even afford to get medical help even if they wanted to (because an appointment costs 20 Bolivianos (2.5 US dollars) - an average day's wage) so what they do when they have tooth ache is get a friend to knock the offending tooth out with a farming tool and to bash the gum about enough to destroy the nerve for good. If they're suffering from a common ailment (diarrhoea, flu, headaches etc.) they go to the village's "witch-doctor", eat some llama fetuses and drink bats' urine, and then they usually die anyway. Sadly even basic medication (electrolyte and paracetamol) is not available to them. And we thought the NHS was bad, eh!?
But that's not all. Our mate claims that no hospitals in Bolivia are equipped (or qualified) to handle any operations more serious than tonsillitis and appendicitis, (although this doesn't stop many attempting them). Yikes! He said that the real problem lies in that the qualified people cannot get any jobs as none are available. A particular law University in Sucre pumps out 250 "qualified" law students every year, but what does a country like Bolivia do with 250 qualified lawyers? And that explains why our qualified law-student friend was working in his mother's restaurant, serving our table. How depressing. Anyway, back to the notes...
- Another Sucre highlight was getting rudely interrupted one quiet evening while we were checking emails. Out of nowhere a huge commotion erupted outside the cafe, and then horses galloped past, cheerleading girls with twirly sticks skipped past and a great big marching band started beating away at their drums. What the ****!? We thought that it was just another protest, (an easy assumption to make here as protests are a daily occurrence) but on closer inspection it turned out to be the rehearsal for Sucre's anniversary parade tomorrow. Brilliant! So we finished the night sipping wine on a first-floor balcony and enjoying the show. Everyone was really buzzed and the people just couldn't help dancing to the music in the streets. It was a really vibrant atmosphere which we were chuffed to be a part of.
- Our time in Bolivia finished off on a high with a brilliant 3-day tour to the famous Salt plains of Uyuni. (Uyuni is a desolate windswept town that grew up at a railway junction in the uninhabited expanses of the altiplano). First up though, a quick look at Uyuni's museum of deformed craniums and well-preserved mummies. We're still getting a kick out of grossing ourselves out with those! After that and a surprise concert by two excellent Bolivian bands who were just jamming in some hall, we turned up at "Colque Tours" ready to start our 4wd trek across the salt plains. However, it just so happens that the very morning we were meant to leave, 400 teachers were protesting at the local gas station and 6 of Colque's jeeps were surrounded and effectively stranded. Problem! So, like most South American solutions, Colque just worked with whatever they had. They took the number of people (21) and the number of jeeps available (3) and divided them equally, then added a driver in each, all our luggage, and we were set to go. Don't try this at home - you'll get squashed!
Thankfully, the scenery very quickly began to change and our interest in our surroundings kept our minds off the various body parts which we had lost blood-flow to. The Uyuni Salt flat is arguably the world's largest at 112,000 km (squared) and it grows every year with each rainfall. How to describe it? A big white carpet. Sounds pretty dull, we know, but really you'll have to take our word for it - it's an amazing sight. The salt glistens in the harsh sunlight, and just goes on and on as far as the eye can see. A bit like snow but hard and shinier, no trees, ski lifts or stretchers. Strangely, about an hour's drive into these flats (just past the hotel made entirely of salt) is a big island with hundreds of cacti on it. Isolated and beautiful, in the middle of nowhere, just like that! You drive up to it, park the jeep and climb to the top (50m) where you can then see "the ocean" of salt and enjoy the serene silence of the immense flats. It's very bizarre. The cacti only grow 1cm per year, so the 12m-tall ones we saw must have been some 1200 years old? That's older than our parents!!!
- Still on the Uyuni tour (day two) we got to see the altiplanic coloured lagoons which are jade-green, blue, white orange and red all mixed together. They're also home to 3 species of flamingoes which just fly around eating algae and look majestic for the tourists. Our second night was quite interesting, as unlike the first night we had "basic" accommodation. This means beds without springs in a mud hut with no running water and minimal food. Bear in mind that we were still over 4,000m (12,000ft) at this point and that at night it can get down to minus 20 degrees Celsius! We had cunningly packed a few bottles of booze to warm us up before going to bed. We could tell early on that it was going to be a long night! Especially for Chris whose stomach took violent offense to the minimal food and had him up and running about in his long johns and woolly socks between the mud hut with the beds in it and the mud hut with the hole-in-the-ground in it. Bad luck, mate. Brrrr!
- Day three began with interesting geothermal phenomenon, much like we saw at Rotorua in New Zealand. You know, the usual erupting geysers and boiling mud pools. Very nice. We even managed to de-thaw our toes in the 30-degree natural springs. They were very grateful. And then, after several hours of moonscape scenery, impressive rock formations and a monstrous volcano (Licancabur, which holds the world's highest non-navigable lake in its crater at 5,960m) we were dropped off at the border to get onto another bus to go to "sleepy groovy" San Pedro de Atacama (the world's driest desert) in Chile. At this point it is worth noting that it's a good job that our group on this tour was great, because our guide's performance was...let's say, "sub-optimal" (we are pretty sure he lost his job after the tour ended). The cheeky Emilio obviously had a chip on his shoulder because other than being rude and obnoxious, he failed to turn on our hot water so the first night our shower was cold, and then he told us to wake up 45 minutes earlier than necessary just for a laugh. Naughty! Of course, we had plenty of opportunities to get very close to the group over the three days. Not only because we had to sit on them to get in the jeep in the first place, but also because freezing your little socks off at minus twenty is an experience that you definitely want to share with the rest of people in your dorm all night long and as loudly as possible. Thank you Jon for your lovely choccie cookies and for a good time in the desert.
- The highlight in San Pedro has to be the "astronomical tour" we did one night. Basically, a crazy French astrologer packs you and some other victims into his truck around 9pm and then drives you out into the boonies where he lives in a flash mud hut (with a Jacuzzi - woof!) in the middle of the desert with absolutely nothing around except his impressive collection of state-of-the-art telescopes and a heck of a lot of stars. The complete lack of light pollution makes the viewing excellent. Here, after some hot cocoa (it's still minus 20 guys, we're freezing!), he begins to seriously pummel as many astronomical facts into our ignorant brains as possible, and any time we don't believe something he says, he proves it to us through the telescopes! Did you know that the moon has a rabbit in it? And that if you know where to look you can see Jupiter and its moons with your naked eye? Well, we were impressed!
- We spent a good three days in San Pedro trying to nurse poor Chris back to health after Uyuni, but it just wasn't working, and we began to suspect giardia as he had all the symptoms... This quickly wiped our star-struck smiles off our faces and we decided that the best thing to do would be to leave slightly earlier than planned and head back to Santiago where we could get adequate medical care. Back into the bus for yet another 14 hour ride...and that was precisely when Chris miraculously recovered from his near-fatal disease (you know what it's like when men are ill!). So we arrived back in Santiago and aborted Operation Ospital because Chris was suddenly healthy as ever and simply wouldn't go there. Not impressed!
And that just about wraps up the rest of Bolivia. It really was an interesting country to visit despite the things about it that we didn't like so much. For example - why are Bolivians so rude to tourists? It wasn't just us, it was all the gringos. Seriously, there was a notable difference in the way we were treated between Bolivia and Peru or Chile. In Uyuni one night, we walked into a restaurant and were seated and given the menu. After just enough time to each choose exactly what we wanted (salad starters, pasta for Ems and a saucy Andean Potato dish for C) a waiter came up to us and told us to leave because it was too cold and the restaurant was going to close down for the night!?? We also witnessed a mad woman in a tour agency yelling her poncho off at two tourists in our group for not listening to her (one had been translating what she was saying to her partner) and countless times we were lied to, misinformed, blanked out or just simply slated. They hate us! And here's some more weird stuff:
- In La Paz - the Shoeshine boys all wear balaclavas and gloves and look really menacing. They're very intimidating as you can only see their eyes, and they all look like they've just robbed a bank. Why!?
- Most market stalls are manned by tiny children. If you absolutely have to buy a beer, or a packet of Always (Ems, not C!), a 5-yr old kid has to hand it to you? Cringe!
- Cars at night drive around without their lights on even though we know their lights work because they use them (along with the horn) to flash us with when we are crossing the street.
- There is a lot of corruption and you have to be very careful getting taxis, particularly in the big cities. The biggest danger is in the white ones...all other coloured taxis are considered safe!
- Women and men "sell" the use of their mobile phones, as it's cheaper to make mobile-to-mobile calls than it is phone booth-to-mobile calls. This means that they handcuff their phones to their own wrists and "stand by" with their arm in the air when a caller uses their phone to make a private call!
So there you have it. Bolivia is a strange old place! But despite all of these things, we've had a very exciting few weeks. We can't deny that very much like Peru, Bolivia has had some of the most picturesque landscapes in South America. Those views of the altiplano lakes are breathtaking. We often wish that we could whisk all of you over for the day so that you can see it for yourselves! We've taken over 50 rolls of film and don't believe that any of you will have the patience to sit through that many photos with us, not even the really passionate ones of you, or the family members who have to pretend to love us that much! (o: Also, the freshly-squeezed orange juice from street stalls is to die for, and we can't get over how cool it is that everybody wears traditional dress, not just to impress the tourists but just because that's what they wear. Imagine all of England in top-hat and tails, or all of Switzerland in Lederhosen, dirndl and Alphorns. Neat!
On to Argentina then. Read the next update to find out how we've managed to shop the rest of our savings away (um..err..that money was meant to get us somewhere to live on our return. Oops!) and double our weight in those "all-you-can-eat" places which frankly serve the best beef we've ever eaten in our lives (um..err..we've just put back on the 5kgs we lost in Asia. Oops!).
Till next time on the web
Emily and Chris