Rocking in Bolivia

Yo yo yo,

Ok - so I lied. Despite the plan of exiting Peru quick-style and heading for Bolivian territory which I stated in my last blog entry, due to another vicious attack of The Stomach Bug on Ruth, we actually spent a couple of days in Peru´s most famous Lake Titicaca-bordering town, Puno. And a very nice couple of days they were too (well, except for Ruth). The Lake itself was perfect. The 3820m altitude renders the air almost magically pure, creating a crystaline atmosphere and excellent light by which to admire the sparkling waters and experience stunning sunsets. The town itself was rather quirky, featuring a quaint little church by which we witnessed yet another ad-hoc band featuring many unexpected instruments. The highlight, however, was our trip to the floating reed islands of the Uros people. Bobbing merrily in the middle of the lake, these man made islands have been there for centuries, and many of the people are still living to the traditions of their ancestors. Matt and Pete managed to get a ride in a reed boat, while I managed to put my right foot through the island and sumberge myself knee deep in the lake. Fun.

Next stop was, as promised and (I´m sure) highly anticipated by my lovely readers, Copacabana. I won´t sing the song at you, but I will wax lyrical about the place. The views were fantastic, the food was divine, Matt, Pete and I conquered a near-by mountain with a shrine on the top, we visited the rather Aegean feeling Isla del Sol, an island on which the Incas believed the sun was born, and had a lovely little trip on a pedalow. All good. Check out the photos (link below). Copa, copacabana...

After Copacabana, we went straight to the world´s highest capital city, La Paz (I say straight, but we actually had to re-enter Peru and then enter Bolivia for a second time as Copacabana is a little pokey bit of land which is technically Bolivia, but is disconnected from the mainland. We had to go by boat. The bus went on a boat too :-) ) The first sights of La Paz were breathtaking - quite literally, given the 3660m altitude - and displayed a sprawling city in a basin formed by towering mountains. Even once in the city itself, La Paz was still breathtaking, although in the less idyllic sense that the pollution was suffocatingly bad! Still, the waterfalls of cars, heaving traffic, comically horizontal traffic lights, busy, buzzy, bustling streets and masses of people were a welcome change from sleepy Lake Titicaca. The highlight of the trip, however, has to be mountain biking down the World´s Most Dangerous Road. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, this road from La Paz to Coroico is officially the most perilous the world has ever seen. In places it is a mere 3m wide, in the average year 26 vehicles fatally plummet over its sheer-600m-cliff-drop rough-hewn edges, and the worst accident in recent times was in 1983 when a bus and its 100 passengers slipped off the precipice into the abyss below. And I biked down it. I have a t-shirt to prove it. (And don´t worry, I am alive.) It was one of the best things I have ever done and was exhilirating for every metre of the 64km ride. Even though seeing the crosses by the roadside had a slightly macarbre feel, it didn´t detract from the excitement one bit :-) We spent that evening in pretty Coroico to eat cheap food and drink cheap drink, and headed back to La Paz the following day to soak up the sights, marvel at the Bolivian ladies wearing comical over-tall bowler hats, drink PG Tips in Oliver´s (English!!!!!!!!!!!!) Bar, meet up with some friends from Machu Picchu, and plan the next leg of our trip. The only thing I didn´t enjoy about La Paz was seeing the poverty. Some people were literally searching through rubbish to find food, while others had clearly been homeless for years. I found myself compelled to give money to several people I met - that some in the world have no choice but to live like this is deeply saddening. Bolivia is definitely the poorest place financially that we have visited. Conversely, I think it is one of the richest culturally. It is the only so far country which I definitely want to come back to. Due to it not being quite so set up for tourists as Peru or Ecuador, I feel that there is a wealth of culture and tradition beneath the surface which isn´t being dislayed. Additionally, the scanty amount of time we have here means that some places like beautiful judicial and symblic capital Sucre and the silver mines of Potosi will go unvisited on this trip. I´ll definitely be back some day.

Anyway - this is not quite it for Bolivia. We spent a few days in warm (!), low-altitude Cochabamba, where we discovered that Pete had stowed away a selection of Egg Shampoos from the previous hostel, and got all our clothes washed. Which would have been wonderful (because we all smelt terrible), except that we ended up booking a jungle tour for a couple of days, sans clothes, and possibly sans sanity. Armed with just one pair of trousers (all over which Pete kindly spilt Coke Zero), a bikini, a top, and a pair of tights over which I wore a pair of Pete´s boxers to protect (haha!!) my dignity, we sped off to Villa Tunari. Here we white water rafted in the Rio Spiritu Sanctu (Sacred Spirit River), went trekking, canyoning, waterfall jumping and rappelling, and saw animals in a sanctuary. The animals there had all been saved from adverse conditions - we saw parrots, a puma, a bear, and were attacked by a theiving pack of monkey who ate the seeds from then stole Ruth´s necklace, tried to groom Matt for fleas and peed on Pete. Lovely. The trip was generally quite fun, although it had the down side of me hurting my knee by jumping into a waterfall, spending the 4 hour journey back literally crying in pain, and testing out the Bolivian health service. I got some very exciting x-rays, had a chat with a lovely nurse, discovered nothing was broken and was instructed to rest in bed for 2 weeks. So I stayed in bed for a day. And have been taking a lot of heavy painkillers. I think I´ll pull through.

The knee-diversion was also problematic in that it meant we came to Oruro a day late, then missed 2 buses, and are still stranded here (it´s a horrible, Gringo-hating hole where everyone is mean, tries to rip us off, and is generally horrible) until this evening when we can get a night bus to Uyuni and the Salt Flats. I won´t ruin your eager anticipation of the next entry by telling you anything about the Salt Flats...but I am really looking forward to them!

If anyone would like to see photos of the trip so far, here are a load of links for your perusal:

Pisco, Ica, Nazca: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2155964&l=6ff20&id=36900740

Cusco and Machu Picchu: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2155966&l=d7370&id=36900740

Machu Picchu continued: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2156104&l=36f54&id=36900740

Arequipa and Colca Canyon: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2156104&l=36f54&id=36900740

Puno: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2156111&l=8502d&id=36900740

Copacabana: http://cambridge.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2156112&l=edf13&id=36900740

I´ll try to get links to Ruth´s photos of Ecuador up on the next blog.

Also - please email me. Full marks go to the Standfields (and a small selection of friends), who have emailed me lots of lovely news. But the rest of you (extended family especially!) are rubbish. Send me news. Please. Now. :-) Thank you. (helensie@hotmail.com)

Lots of love for now xxxx