Chile, Where the Beautiful Roam Free...

Ah Santiago, what a tall glass of water you are. That you can actually drink without 10 million vicious bacteria mashing your internal organs to a pulp...

After 3 weeks in Bolivia there was a certain degree of culture shock when we were ushered into our suite at the Sheraton, and then went out into the sweet smelling sunshine of Santiago. I kid you not, everyone here is good looking and well dressed. There's also the sensation that everyone is just barely curbing their , ahem, appetites, and at the slightest provocation would just go for it with each other in the streets. Well, that's the way I interpreted it anyway!

The week has passed in a gentle haze of good food & wine with a bit a skiing in the Andes thrown in just to keep things interesting. I can highly recommend a very good Santiago tour guide, Fernando. Very knowledgeable, average driving skills but a winning personality. What more could you ask for?

Chile, the little part of it I saw, is wonderful.

Yes, it was sore...

So what happened next was that after much (OK, 10 minutes) deliberation, the wisest course of action (considering the track record of Bolivian transportation) was to head straight back to La Paz so that we didn't miss our excursion on "The World's Most Dangerous Road"...

As I mentioned in the previous entry, I didn't get to see much of La Paz last time I was there (accursed trout!), turns out that was no great loss. I know this is a personal preference issue, and that one man’s vibrant exciting cosmopolitan street life is another man’s stinking, crowded, charmless cess pit, but you’ve gotta have an opinion in this life! Guess which side I came down on…

On the positive side, there was something I really liked about La Paz: its wonderful sense of order when it came to the organization of streets by items you could buy there. For example, the was a whole street devoted to Hats, Lightbulb Lane (all apparently wired to one streetlamp), Wedding Cake Boulevard, Plastic Tubing Avenue, Petticoat Lane (knowing reference for the London dwellers out there…) Dog Accessory Alley, and Moldy Banana Drive to name but a few.

Took another tumbled on the crumpled concrete streets, even BEFORE I’d got to the pub, and did my ankle in again. Poor me, please be generous with your sympathy. That night a Manchester Barman, of the totally mad, wired and in your face variety, was very nice to me and gave me a copy of the most wonderful book: “Kiss My Tiara” by Susan Jane Gilman. I can wholeheartedly recommend that everyone, both male and female, read this book. It’s very funny, insightful, and gives a painfully truthful A to Z of why women have sex. Just call me Oprah!

Went to an incredibly interesting little museum in La Paz: the Coca Museum. Now I only have half remembered facts here, so please do some of your own research about how soundly dicked the people of Bolivia have been over the little coca leaf, first by the Spanish and then, of course, by the USA! The Coca leaf was revered by the Andean people, with religious significance to Pachamama (Mother Earth), as a stimulant to help them work harder and ignore their hunger pangs, and also as a breathing aid in the high altitudes. The Spanish Inquisition decided the chewing of coca leaves was a mortal sin (unless it was used by the miners, who provided Spain with so much of their wealth), and then in the 1950s declared as a source of evil by Uncle Sam, who despite having only 5% of the world’s population consumes 50% of the world’s cocaine. Anyway, enough of my 6th Form Common Room rant and back to the blogging, right kids!

An early start on the morning of the 12th for our bike ride on ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Road’ from La Paz to Coroico in the Yunga region of Bolivia. What the hell was I thinking? The starting point was at a pleasant oxygen depleted altitude of 4760 meters, (15.616,80 feet). A bit hard to catch you’re breath when you’re nervous, excited and trying to get used to being on a $2500 full suspension bike. Which is the right break to use? How do I change gears?? What’s the point of changing gears??? Help, I’m, flap-lining!!!!

Anne, our intimidatingly muscled guide, gave us a suitably terrifying safety talk (“prick about or look at the scenery and you will die, quickly if you’re lucky”), then told us she wanted our group to be first at the finishing point hotel so she could get a hot shower. No pressure then…
After a quick offering to Pachamama of each of us taking a swig of 97% proof alcohol then dribbling some into the ground for Her, we were off. Some at a slower pace than others… There were some killer uphill sections on the normal paved road, then it was onto the real bad-boy stuff. A rough gravel track, 3.2 m (10.5 ft) wide in places with 1000m (3280 ft) drops. Plus the fact you’re sharing the road with minibuses, full size buses, trucks and even petrol tankers in both directions.

There are people employed to stand at particularly perilous sections of the road to alert cyclists if it is safe to carry on. I was so accustomed to their signs being green that I didn’t register when one chap was excitedly waving a big red one at me, so I just sailed past, trilling a merry “Hola!” at him as I went. Luckily I heard Paul screaming at me just before I had a head to head to a sizable truck. I paid lots more attention to the roadside saviours after that…

An average of 29 vehicles and 4 cyclists go over the edge every year. As you can imagine, the survival rate ain’t exactly high…

After 64 KM (40 miles) we reached our destination, Yolosa, dirty, sweaty, tired but happy. We took a bus to Coroico for a shower and a relax by a hotel pool. The rest of the group returned to La Paz (SUCKERS), but we smugly picked up our bags and walked (staggered) off to Paradise AKA: Hotel Sol y Luna.

Here we had our own private cabaña called Nectar to call home for the next 4 days. Utter bliss. We could cook for ourselves (a treat after 2 months of restaurants), a balcony with gorgeous views over the Yungas, and the opportunity to pick fruit off the trees, run around with no clothes in and light fires.
In the midst of this serenity I managed to fall and hurt my ankle again (luckily whilst clothed). I met Sigrid, the German owner of the hotel, who offered to give me some Reiki treatment to help fix it (I’d hoped for Percoset, but whatever). I went to her home further up in the hills and as she was giving me the treatment a storm erupted. It was magical, lying there with the sound of the rain on the roof, feeling utterly relaxed, and dare I say it, happy! I’ll never forget it.

I’ll gloss over the less than fragrant and comfortable bus trip back to Arequipa as I spent another day in the sunshine and beautiful gardens of Casa de me Abuela, and now we’re in Lima airport waiting for a flight to Santiago Chile. Bring on the wine and skiing!

Bolivia –Land of Opportunity for Things Not to go to Plan…

Sorry about the peevish tone of my last entry, I felt very ill and sorry for myself.

So my sunny optimistic attitude was proven wrong and the rain stopped at Aguas Calientes. We got the first bus up to Machu Picchu at 5:30am to watch the sunrise and generally be a bit awestruck by the sight. I had to feel a little sorry for the 3 young British lads who had obviously got up in the middle of the night to do the three hour hike in order to be there before anyone else – they arrived at the exact same time we did. It was a pretty impressive display of swearing from them though! Hard to describe Machu Picchu with any great justice, so I’ll just show you one of our pictures:

There are many theories about Machu Picchu: its purpose, the reason for its remote location, etc., but my favorite one is that it was a holiday resort! A sort of Club Med for the Inca people to kick back, get a bit of R&R and be somewhere where there’s no cell phone reception for a little while…

Do you see that big, BIG mountain in the background? That’s Waynu Picchu, and yes, we climbed it! I know, I’m just as astonished as you are. True to form I climbed that beast no problem and then took a digger on the final, flat 50 yard stretch to the buses and spannered my ankle. Elegant.

All aboard the Vistadome train back to Cusco. I’m sitting quietly, minding my own business, admiring the views, when THIS inexplicable and horrifying knobhead jumped out in front of my face:

I think the rest of the carriage enjoyed my loud yelps of terror.

We then got off the train and directly onto a night bus to Copacabana, Bolivia, with a change at Puno. Despite pie-crust promises of a bus fit for an Inca Princess with lots of lovely heating, this was the only journey (so far) I have taken where there was ice on the INSIDE of the windows. Ponder for a few minutes about how comfy and easy it would be to get some sleep on that would you?

Onwards and upwards to Bolivia, an overland border crossing involving the world’s most disinterested immigration officials. I must have an honest face and they must have been secretly scared of Paul’s now luxuriant beard. We spent a lovely relaxing few days in Copacabana, (Lake Titicaca, world’s highest navigable water, Isla del Sol, blah blah blah). There were also beautiful sunsets, and delicious but vindictive trout.

Bolivia’s capital La Paz was the next port of call, the world’s highest capital city. I’d love to tell you more about La Paz but the trout wreaked its revenge and I spent 40 miserable hours in a hotel room awaiting death’s sweet kiss. I have to let you all know, if you didn’t already, that Paul is an angel in human form and looked after me in a way that would make Mother Theresa look heartless. Thanks darling. Anyway, even if I had been in robust health there was sod all going on due to some referendum elections taking place, and the police had decided that to make sure that no one was too drunk/hungover to vote they would ban drinking and general fun for a few days before the voting day! Welcome to Bolivia!

In La Paz they take zebra crossings rather literally:

Of course there were also numerous strikes taking place, preventing us from getting to Uyuni to start our tour of the salt flats, so we flew to Sucre instead to see if we would have more luck from that direction. Sucre is a beautiful University city, at the time very empty and sleepy due to the referendum thingy. They are too busy learning stuff to strike there, so we bussed to Uyuni (colder than a Boston winter – no joke) and folded ourselves into a jeep with 4 other people, plus driver, for a 3 day tour of the Salar de Uyuni.

The best and most memorable part of the tour was the salt flats, where something like 18 million tones of the stuff is mined every year, to the delight of cholesterol reducing drug manufacturers.

There was other stuff like colored lakes, volcanoes, flamingos, hot springs, a frigid and depressing dormitory and the WORST BATHROM EVER. Bear in mind people: I have been to Glastonbury and thought I had seen the worst the world of toilets had to offer. Oh no innocent child, not by a long way…

We’re now back in Sucre, which is odd with people around and shops and bars actually open! We were meant to be flying to Cochabamba tomorrow but LAB Airlines have decided they can’t be arsed and have cancelled the flight. Their website also no longer exists which is encouraging from the national carrier. So, who knows what’s happening next! Watch this space…

A final note: All over Bolivia are ladies with brightly colored blankets over their shoulders carrying something their back, smashing it into your face when they walk past you on the bus. These somethings could range from 10 pounds of potatoes, a baby, a starter motor for a Nissan Sunny, chickens or an occasional table. You just never know and it seems kind of rude to take a peek in to satisfy your curiosity…