Bolivians ladies love to gossip
Hanging with the locals
Does this looks safe?
The view from our hotel - Lake Titicaca
On top of Isla del Sol
Hola Amigos! Well, looking at the date, we are about on our halfway point - its been nine months thus far. I hope you have been enjoying the weekly updates. If you have anything you would like to see a bit more, just leave some us a comment.
So back to Bolivia, such a great place and I´m very glad Marina has now seen this fabulous country. Although, getting from Florianopolis, Brazil to La Paz was arduous. After an overnight bus, a 12 hour stop in Porto Allegre, a flight to Buenos Aires (with a night there), then a flight to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and finally we made it to La Paz!
La Paz, wow! Let me ask you, how strong are your legs?? You probably have an image of San Francisco and the vertical hills, well try it at 3,660 meters (approx 11,000 feet). You smokers would have a lot of trouble. These hills would have Lance Armstrong huffing and puffing! Let me say this isn´t a complaint because when you see La Paz it looks stunning. I am a softy for mountain towns and this is certainly one big one!
La Paz is also a party city. Let me give you an example; our hostel, called the Adventure Brew Hostel provides wristbands when you check in. I was sure not to lose mine as this was needed to get my daily free beer. After two days, I noticed that the bracelet said if found drunk, please bring back to the following address. Obviously this was in spanish as well.
Another thing about Bolivia around La Paz and the west, is you better fear the sun. Let me say, putting on factor 30 sun tan lotion, hourly is barely enough! Its quite funny as you see lots of people who are a bit over confident in their tanning ability and attempt to sun bathe or walk around without sleeves, hats, etc. You then see them in Peru toasted and shedding skin like a snake!! The sun at 4,000 meters is far from kind.
So where have we been this past week: Besides the transit overnight and day waits, we were in La Paz > Copacabana > Isla de Sol
Sunday - Argentinian steak: We landed at 930pm in Buenos Aires and after dropping our bags off at the hostel, we went for some delicious wine and a huge perfectly cooked steak at El Desnival - a brilliant grill house in San Telmo.
Monday - The witch market: Once we arrived in La Paz, we were quick to utilise the last few daylight hours and see the sights. One of the stranger places of our trip was the witches market where they sell all kinds of medicinal remedies. Funny enough, many revolve around "improving relationships". The strangest thing they sell at this market is dead llama fetuses. Now I´m not sure how big the market is for these things, but they were abundant. We must have seen hundreds, which was certainly, one too many. An odd museum we visited was the coca museum (dedicated to the coca leaf). Now you may remember from my Bolivia blog a few weeks ago that Bolivians are mad for coca leaves. They drink coca leaf tea, coca gum, coca candy, etc. Well, we even had coca - cola years back. Yes, you have probably heard the story about coca cola having cocaine in it over a century ago. Well its kind of true, it was made partially from coca leaves and then these leaves were outlawed in the US around 1880. Nonetheless, Bolivia still legally loves coca leaves.
Tuesday - Tiahuanaco: The most significant site of ruins in Bolivia, well, isn´t that impressive in our opinion. We arranged a day tour to take us and explain about the ruins. Unfortunately they were mostly restored in a fake looking fashion or they were just rubble.
Wednesday - San Pedro Prison & The Doors: No this isn´t a riddle and no we didn´t get arrested before you ask.. That being said, if you have been to Bolvia or know much about horrible jails around the world, San Pedro Prison in La Paz usually always makes the top 10! Now, having been in south america for almost three months we have been hearing crazy stories about this place. We have met a few people who have actually been able to arrange a tour there. Let me explain this prison, inside, its entirely run by prisoners. They are also the guards. Now on the outer perimeter there are real government guards. Inside, its pretty much run by the prisoners and you need to buy or rent your sell including most other things. The majority of prisoners are drug traffickers. Now of the tourists I´ve met, they all have done the tour via this Dutch drug trafficker. So being very interested and feeling its pretty safe based upon first hand stories, we rock up to the front gate hoping for a tour. Quickly I saw a European guy who asked us where we are from, I said Holland thinking it was him. He gave us his telephone number and we called him. He mentioned that due to the recent riot, tours are now banned, but we could come have a chat with him. We took him up on his offer and had a 30 minute chat with the guy. He told us of his hardships and how life is on the inside. My conclusion, if you have money this would be must better than real jail, but without you are in a very bad situation. This fella, Sebastian was busted for bringing 7kg of cocaine to Europe. So this guy is not some innocent person who accidentally carried a bag for someone. He seemed strange, but somewhat balanced and resolute to finish his 7 year sentence that finished in 13 months. If you are interested in reading about life in San Pedro five years ago before the changes, read Marching Powder.
So I mentioned THE DOORS. Well, I have a major regret in my life, I was walking back from a softball game a few years ago in London and I saw that the Doors (Robby Kreiger and Ray Manzeriek) were playing. In my muddied clothes carrying my briefcase and alone, I decided it would not be possible to go change and make it back in time so I didn´t go. The Doors are one of my top 3 favourite bands, more so from my youth, but I still listen to them frequently. So as we left the jail we saw Doors fliers. Looking closely we saw they would be playing IN LA PAZ, that night!! quickly we rushed to the venue and bought our tickets. They started playing, I mean rocking at about 9pm and the Jim Morrison replacement was even more convincing than Val Kilmer! Being poor travellers we didn´t buy the VIP seats and were in with the main crowd. Many of the VIP seats were empty and after a few songs the crowd surged forward jumping the fence to watch The Doors up close. Yes we did the same and I reminded Marina we were just in a prison only a few hours before.. What a great show, certainly this day was one of the best of our trip!!!
Thursday - Lake Titicaca (meaning grey puma): We arrived in the early afternoon with the sun beating down. Now the lake is at about 3900 meters and we wanted to get a bit higher so climbed Cerro Clavario mountain which is in Copacabana, the town we stayed in just on the lake. The mountain is a holy mountain home to a full stations of the cross walk and also has holy ceremonies. We witnessed one done by a priest (I presume) and the family was praying for a car, house and money - very strange I felt.
Friday - Isla del Sol: Yesterday we arranged a boat trip to Isla del Sol (sun island) which is the biggest Island on the lake. We hiked from the north to the south and then enjoyed some delicious lake trout as a reward. The island is gorgeous and the scenery over the lake is superb with dark blue waters and a light blue sky above, but, there is not much around so we decided to make our way to Puno in Peru. We caught the bus at 1830 and arrived in Puno a few hours later.
That's if for this story, the next one will be all about PERU!!
What do we have planned for this week - Puno, Arequipa and then Cuzco.
Hasta Luego,
Dan & Marina
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