Weird and wonderful Bolivia

We knew that we had arrived in Bolivia when the buses turned from luxury Argentinian buses to tin cans on wheels...after an unpleasant journey from the Argentinian border we arrived in Tupiza (Bolivia). We had made friends with a pair of British air hostesses and quickly set about organising a tour of the Bolivian Altiplano and Uyuni Salt Flats. We got lucky and departed in a convoy of 3 Toyota landcruisers the following morning. How these tour companies make any money is beyond me. Our tour included drivers and cook for group, all meals and basic accomm for 4d/3n 1200km journey from Tupiza to Uyuni for the grand total of $200US each, and this was an expensive tour.

One of the many water crossings in the Altiplano.

The tour was worth every cent and more, we had our breath taken away, literally. The tours average altitude was 4200m above sea level, the highest point being slightly above 5000m. We were constantly surrounded by snow capped mountains and volcanoes with lightning and thunder around, traversing snow melt streams with llamas grazing, walking through ancient ruined villages, sitting quietly by mineral lakes with thousands of flamingos wading, climbing over crazy rock formations, bathing in thermal pools and walking around geysers. I have no doubt must be one of the most unique places on the planet.

I was lucky enough to capture this lightning strike.

Flemingos wading in one of the many lagoons we visited in the Altiplano.

The final part of the journey was visiting the train graveyard on the outskirts of Uyuni and the famous salt flats to watch the sun rise and take some funny pictures, as there is no perspective because the horizon is barely recognisable.

Good fun in the train graveyard, steel fabrication is not as time consuming these days, look at all of those rivets!!

Of course I got to be at the front of the Evolution line...Cait is still stuck in the Neanderthal Era, haha.

We were extremely lucky to have a fun and informative guide, a great cook and a fun group of people. Overall an amazing experience and introduction to Bolivia.

After 4 days of bouncing around in a landcruiser, battling the constant headaches from the high altitude, cold at night, very early wakeups, no showering and very basic accommodation we were ready for a break. We escaped from the town of Uyuni ( pretty awful depressing place) the same day we arrived and headed to Sucre ( capital city of Bolivia) for a break. After another pretty awful bus ride (see next paragraph) we arrived in Beautiful Sucre.

We stopped in Potosi for 3 hours in the middle of the night waiting to fill the bus after bepromised a 20 minute stop. At one stage about 1.5 hours into our stopover we pulled out to our delight seemingly on our way, only to head down the road to fill up with petrol before returning to the same spot to wait another 1.5 hrs, extremely frustraiting.

We stayed at a terrific B&B in Sucre, had some showers, ate some delicious food and enjoyed exploring the world heritage listed city with its colonial architecture and all white buildings. We visited and ate at the food market which was a great find for us, it had a huge restaurant section and about 30 fruit salad stalls making delicious cheap food. We had a nice few days in Sucre and felt very refreshed.

A beautiful Monastery in Sucre

People are always on strike in Bolivia, not sure what these people were striking for though.

This time picking a better bus we headed to La Paz on an overnight Cama suite bus, the driver had the heater up full blast and we roasted the whole way which was pretty unpleasant.

La Paz is the highest altitude city in the world sitting in a basin 3600m to 4000m+ elevation, we were getting used to the altitude now. We explored the sprawling markets which were endless ( the largest covering almost 30 street blocks and selling everything), visited the coca museum and cycled the famous Death Road.

Fruit salad stall at the Market in La Paz, delicious!

The Coca museum traced the history of the infamous Coca plant from its use thousands of years ago by the Incas, to the exploitation of it by the Spanish conquistadors to work native slaves to death in the lucrative mines of Bolivia (mostly Potosi), to its modern history being used to make cocaine and being used as one of the first local anaesthetics, in drugs, tonics including coca cola and use as a recreational drug. The locals and miners still chew coca leaf constantly for its amazing properties including alleviating the affects of altitude and giving the chewer heightened alertness and stamina. No samples though unfortunately, haha.

The Death Road also once classified as the Worlds Most Dangerous Road has been closed to all but local traffic can be ridden on a 63km downhill mountain bike in a tour. Cait and I can now say we have survived the tour. The scenery was again spectacular but it was hard to look at the scenery with at the most extreme a 400m vertical drop on one side and a sheer cliff on the other side of a 3.5m wide windey downhill "road". There have been hundreds of fatalities on this road including in resent history I think 10 cyclists doing one of the tours ( mostly people being a bit silly and over confident). We survived!

Taking a break during our death road ride. 

We departed La Paz for our final stop in Bolivia, we visited Lake Titicaca and Isla Del Sol ( Island of the Sun). We had a stopover in Copacabana ( tourist town) on the shore of the huge lake and headed our to the Island.

The Island was beautiful, we stayed for two days and walked all over the Island ( no cars) through villages and fields. It was extremely peaceful and relaxing. Again 4000m in altitude. We found a spectacular and truly unique restaurant and dinned with 6 other travellers. We waited hours for our meal watched the sun set over the lake, exchanged travel stories and drank wine while Pablo the one man band did everything in the small restaurant. It was worth the wait, we feasted on delicious fresh trout from the lake and had quinoa and steamed vegetables ( including broccoli and carrot so hard to come by in South America) and was a night to remember.

Beautiful views over Lake Titicaca

Locals hard at work on the Island, this man was using a very primative piling technique, quiet remarkable.

Locals on the Island carrying goods from a boat.

Relaxing after walking around the Island all day.

The whole family, dad working, mum resting and kids playing on the Island.

Walking around the Island on day 2 in shorts and t-shirt was a very bad idea, extremely cold, I was having my picture taken by Cait but hiding behind the wall for protection from the freezing wind.

Fastastic dinner at Las Valas restaurant with other travellers.

Another Bolivian moment was the extremely overcrowded boat which transported us from the island back to the Mainland. The boat was jam packed with about 60 tourists, half on top of the roof and half in the cabin. We were terrified the while time that the boat was going to sink or the roof would collapse. It was an extremely slow boat ride, we were both very relieved to be back on firm ground. I felt almost stupid to be on the boat but with little other choice to get back to the mainland we were again trusting that the little wooden boat would have at least one more crossing left in her.

One of the very dodgy and overcrouded ferry´s on Lake Titicaca.

In summary, Bolivia is an amazing place with beautiful and stunning experiences to be had, and the people are also beautiful and resilient, everything is super cheap but at the same time it can be a little scary, crazy and frustrating. There is so much more to do here that will have to wait until another time.

We have now entered Peru for the next leg of our journey.

Until next time

Adios

Western Argentina- home of the Malbec and Parrilla BBQs

We are currently lying low as Caitlin and I battle what we think is a water bourne disease.... Between a doctor and a water engineer you would think we might have the know how to avoid such a calamity but my trust in a local telling me we can drink the water was a bit shortsighted and now we are paying for it. Bottled water from now on is the moto of this tale.
After being delayed by landslides/mudslides we finally got on our way across the border from Chile to Argentina. The immigration across the border was torturously slow but we finally made it to Mendoza, arriving at 3am at the autobus estacion. After finding ourselves an ATM to get some local currency we swiftly jumped in a taxi and headed to our luckily open hostel for a few hours of sleep.

Exploring Mendoza was terrific and aspects reminded us of Melbourne. Some bright spark had the foresight to line the boulevards with beautiful sycamore trees which now provide relief from the scorching heat and do a very fine job of beautifying the city. There are many parks and plazas here which break up the city, some very large and grand parks with the Andes looming over the city creating spectacular views while the plazas are small but also very popular with the locals and many have water features, grand statues and beautiful ceramic tile features. We rode around the biggest park on a hot afternoon which was very nice until the unfixable rattle of the front mudguard on my bike and the constantly skipping gears became increasingly intolerable and the soon to follow puncture was a showstopper. Luckily it was downhill mostly back to the hire shop. I think the hirer offered us one free hour for our trouble but our poco espanol meant we didn't quite know what he was saying.

Riding around the Park

 

 

 

Local boys training for soccer in the heat while we sipped lemonade in the shade. Haha

This didn't put us off riding too much and so we bravely jumped on a local bus the next day to taste the local wine which Mendoza is so famous for on a self guided bike tour around the Baccus area. We test rode our bikes before giving the thumbs up and heading off with a little map to spend the day popping in and out of the local Bodegas ( wine houses). We felt very privileged at our first tasting to have a very well known local Italian man named Carmello Patti give us a tasting at the aptly named Carmello Patti Bodega. He didn't muck around and swiftly whipped out some reserve bottled from 2003 and 2004 which proved to be stunning on the nose and pallet. Mendoza is very famous for Malbec and red wine and so not surprisingly we loved the Malbec, Cab Sav and Red blend. The bottles sitting in Mr Patti's cellar for 10 years certainly helped too, wow, thank you Mr Patti. I seriously considered shipping Mr Patti's wine back to Aus but decided to save my Pesos.

Us and Mr Patti

 We visited two other wineries one where we had a tasting in a huge underground concrete tank converted into a cellar. Until the 1980s Argentinians consumed on average 92 litres of wine per year when the was a step change and the Bodegas decided to go for quality rather than quantity so the huge storage tanks were made redundant. Production at one bodega has changed from 30 million bottles in a peak to currently about 1 million bottles which is a huge change.

Caity and her bicycle.

A slightly different stop on the bikes was at a boutique chocolate, conserve and liqueur house where there were a huge assortment of these produces. Included in the degustation tasting was the opportunity to taste her absinth which was extremely potent of course. We could only handle a little of it in the heat of the day. It was fair to say after that and the wine tastings that the bike riding was interesting.

Absinth!! Powerful stuff!!

On the weekend we decided that a trip to the local hot (and cold) springs would be fun way to beat the heat only to discover that half of Argentina thought it was a good idea also, but it was still a great relaxing day amongst beautiful scenery in the mountains ( not far from the highest peak in the Andes which we got a glimpse of on the way). It is fair to say Argentinians love a Parrilla BBQ and the Mate tea (herbal boardering on recreational drug tea which makes you relaxed). At the springs there were literally hundreds of locals cooking open flame smokey BBQs and sipping Mate all day. The smell of the smokey meat cooking meant that Cait and I were salivating all day but I did not envy the cooks one little bit while I did laps of the cold pool and starred at the beautiful mountains and swiftly flowing chocolate milkshake coloured creek.

Hot springs in the mountains

Hot springs in the mountains

We dinned locally in Mendoza at some cafes and restaurants amongst the tree lined Bussling streets and plazas. They have certainly perfected the art of cooking beef which was succulent and delicious. The coffee was also not too bad( compared to Melbourne)......

Mendoza tree lined plazas

Chess in Medoza

We moved on to Salta in the far north on a semi cama bus ( a what you say? I shall explain in a tick). The 18 hour journey was very comfortable with some spectacular scenery along the way.

I have been dying to explain the bus system here in Argentina but also Chile. Buses are the main way locals get around. While local buses are pretty standard if not below, there are a range of long haul buses depending on your budget but the options at the normal to high end are incredible. The buses are supersized and and at the top end super luxurious. I don't think anything like this exists in Aus. They are something from the Aerospace industry. There are choices between semi-cama ( semi reclining) equivalent of perhaps a business class seat on an aeroplane all the way to cama ( fully reclining) and executive which would be the equivalent of first class in an aeroplane. There is an on board host who serves meals which are part of the cost and makes sure there is always an MA 15+ movie running for all the kiddies and grandmas to enjoy.......we did enjoy the latest Batman Movie which was in English much to our delight, and how could I forget the BINGO game that the host got us all playing with a PRIZE of a bottle of wine. The buses here are a whole new world, come on Aus bus operators step up to the plate!

Amazing buses in Argentina!!

Salta is a very interesting city which has similar aspects to Mendoza ( plazas and cafes on the streets) which are nice. They take siesta very seriously and the town is dead for a few hours in the afternoon. This is followed by a period of mayhem on the streets ( roads and footpaths) about 8pm which would be hard to tolerate if you were a local I imagine. The beautiful surrounding scenery is the attraction for most tourists.

Cathedral in Salta

 In an attempt to be a bit healthy and save a little dough we decided to do some of our own cooking. The supermarkets here are also mayhem, constantly busy, understocked with good foods and overstocked with bad foods ( which the locals seem to love). To get a few items for the supermarket you won't get out of there in 1/2 an hour minimum. Bagging and tagging of fruit and veg in the store, ancient technology at the checkout and needing to show passport ID to use a credit card make for long queues at the checkout. I am glad I am not a local here.

We went on a day tour to Cafeyate a small town 180 km from Salta. The journey was spectacular. Though huge valleys and mountain passes surrounded by cloud forest and gobsmacking geological formations ( Arrgh the geology nerd you say, but I assure you that even Caity was impressed). Cafeyate is also the home of Torontes a native Argentinian grape variety which makes a delicious drop of white wine. So of course we had a stop at one of the local Bodegas (vineyard/ wine house).

Bodega in Cafeyate.

Cloud forest and beautiful geology around Salta.

 We took a cable car up a nearby "hill" and we were rewarded with a grand view over the city and out to the mountains that were in every direction.

View from the top of the hill overlooking Salta and the surrounds.

 We are starting to feel a bit better after a few days and are moving on into weird and wonderful Bolivia.

Until next time.

Adios

Chile: Hablo muy poco Español

After 12 months of saving and planning and madly rushing to literally box up our lives in Aus, the time came to start our Grand Adventure around the world in 180 days.

To get you quickly up to speed in case you didn't know the plan to spend three months in South America touring Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, this will be followed by three months in Europe touring mainly France, Spain, Italy, Croatia and Greece, on the way home there will be a quick trip to Hong Kong.

Welcome to Caitlin and my blog, which will be our main attempt to keep in touch with everyone at home and share our experiences with you all, so here goes.......

We were not sure how much communication availability there would be in SA but so far we have had very good access to the Internet in our hostels and phone reception on our travel sims which has given us access to everything we may need, Facebook, Email, Viber etc....

CHILE

Our first destination flying into Santiago the capital city of Chile. Coincidently we flew on the same LAN flight as our friends Bec and Jess who are also travelling for 6 months but mostly on a different Itinerary. It was nice to spend the first day with them in Santiago.

First impressions, hot, smelly, dirty, busy city, stray dogs everywhere, toilets that don't flush properly what more could you want.... Im not in Cansas anymore would be an appropriate thing to say, we were in a new world. We battled away with our map, phrase book, guidebooks on a quest to discover the hidden gems of the city. We found some luckily.

Cathedral in Santiago

SKM office Santiago

Central Market in Santiago

Checkers Santiago style, serious game and they drew a crowd

The fish markets in Santiago

View of the city Santiago, a bit too much cloud and smog in this photo to see the Andes properly

Upside down icecream... what

Epic dinner with Bec, Jess and Caity of course. Jess' mooing noises and charades to ask for steak, ensaladas and potata fritters at a very friendly restaurant was almost as memorable as the steak itself. Cait and I managed to order us some local vino to wash it all down. The waiters had the job of getting the diners attention three times in quick succession to sing happy birthday for three groups and share a cake, also memorable.

Spectacular view of the city and Andies mountain range from the "hill" San Christobal. Bustling fish, fruit and vege markets where pretty overwhelming in the heat of the day. The Chillian's really like gelato but I don't thing the craze of the upside down ice cream cone in a cup would take off in Austalia.

I took Caity along to visit the SKM office in Santiago where we met with a manager Fernando who I made contact with in Australia. Fernando showed us some of the office and explained some of the work that SKM does in Chile. Fernando was a very welcoming host.

Next stop was Valparaiso. A fascinating metropolis on the coast an hour from Santiago. Valpo is an old busy port from California gold rush days and pre Panama Canal.

The area of Cerro Conception is where we stayed, a beautiful part of town with narrow cobblestone streets, colourful buildings, seagulls overhead, cafes and restaurants around every corner. We loved Cerro Conception, hanging out in cafes with a beautiful view, eating local food, doing some sketching, looking at the street art which was everywhere, exploring the lane ways, stairs and other nooks and crannies. Our accommodation was on a stairway!

Stairway and cobbled street in Valpo

We went on a tour to the Casablanca Valley to sample the local vino, the Valley has an incredible view of mountains ( not the Andies). The wine was rather delicious, one of the vineyards had lamas, chooks and vege patches which were able to be harvested by the vineyard workers for wool, eggs and veges to help them get by. We enjoyed learning about the history of Chillian vino and of course enjoyed sampling it. They are very proud of the local drop Carmenere which was thought to be extinct after the phylloxera wipe out across Europe but was rediscovered in Chile after it was thought to be plain old merlot, some cleaver dick decided the leaves of the grapevines shouldn't have red hairs on the back and got the vines DNA tested only to discover it was Carmenere.

We have discovered already the mighty powers of this continent, being stuck in Chile while waiting for the Chillian-Argentinian border pass to reopen after mudslides..... Eeek! We were very keen to move on to keep to our schedule as best we could. We finally got on our way and were successful at crossing the border. The mountain pass was 3000m, not enough to make you dizzy but quite cold and we got some spectacular scenery through the Andies. Some impressive feats of engineering, long tunnels, winding switchbacks and pipelines for hydroelectric power were impressive to say the least.

Hydroelectric scheme pipeline in the Andes, impressive work, need some more time to think about how they built this.

Andes Mountain Pass

Well now we are in Argentina, and let me tell you from first impressions we love the place and cannot wait to expore.