Month: April 2019

Boobies. Lol

It’s safe to say that, by now, we’ve had more than our fill of night buses in South America. Thankfully, the one from Puno to Arequipa was the last one we’d have to endure as our journey to Huacachina, nearly 400km to the north, featured the ever so slightly less tedious prospect of a 12-hour day bus. Far from being done to save my heavily strained circadian rhythms though, this seems simply to be a result of timetabling constraints imposed by the need to get buses back up to Lima as quickly as possible.

But anyway, whilst the nuances of trans-continental transport logistics may be of interest to me, I doubt anyone else cares. Least of all Katy, who stood in the courtyard of Flying Dog hostel at 5:45am stewing over the need to be up for a 5:15am pickup which, of course, did not happen at 5:15am. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that Peru runs on GMT (Greenwich Maybe Time), but we still haven’t managed to work out how exactly anything is able to function when there is such a lackadaisical approach to time-keeping. Perhaps this was just more irksome this time because every minute that passed was another minute that we had unnecessarily dragged ourselves out of bed.

Shortly before 6am, our guide turned up at the hostel and escorted us to our bus for journey ahead, a single-deck, semi-cama coach. Fine for a day-time trip, but as we got on, the bus was still offloading very cranky, sleep deprived Hopsters  (‘Hopsters’ being the collective noun for Peru Hop customers that the company insists on using at every opportunity, Marketing’s invisible hand is slowly working its magic in Peru) who had just arrived after a 10 hour overnight ride from Cusco. Poor sods.

The bus made its way through the streets of Arequipa, picking up and dropping off passengers as it went, including our Kiwi friends from the Colca Canyon tour. Our guide for this leg of our journey was a young, curly haired and fresh-faced Peruvian called Joao, who was surprisingly enthusiastic for someone who had was slap-bang in the middle of a 22-hour shift. After a quick pit-stop at a garage just outside of the city, Jaoa handed out a packed breakfast to each of us and sent a menu round for our lunch for later in the day. Breakfast consumed, we bedded ourselves in for the first leg of our journey to the small coastal town of Chala.

On top of not screwing up your sleep patterns for several days, the day busses have the advantage of giving you something to look at. After leaving Arequipa the bus descended quickly through the Peruvian Desert, a patchwork of red and brown chasm and vegetationless golden dunes stretching uninterrupted as far as the eye can see. 3 hours after our departure we dropped down through a deep, rocky ravine following a dried up river bed which led us down to on to a large roundabout overlooking the Pacific where we joined Route 1, the Peruvian stretch of the Pan-American Highway. Despite its lofty title, the road is a poorly maintained single carriageway which meanders along the clifftops overlooking the sea, providing an exciting rallying opportunity for our driver who had a keen interest in the back-ends of the numerous trucks on the road

We headed north for a further 4 hours, arriving at Chala at about 2pm where we were treated to a surprisingly pleasant lunch of fresh Ceviche and Fried Trout in a sea-front restaurant. After a short break we boarded the bus again and headed inland through the Nazca desert, one of the driest in the world and home of the renowned Nazca Lines. The southern end of the desert is a baron, sandy plain which stretches from the coast to the foothills of the Andes about 30 miles inland.

After heading through Nazca City, we worked our way through the rocky northern section of the Nazca desert which is covered in a layer of deep-red oxide coated rock and sand atop of a greyish subsoil. It’s this area of the desert which hosts the Nazca lines, a network of enormous glyphs, figures and anamorphic shapes up to 370m long. The lines were created by the Nazca civilisation roughly 1500 years ago, each consisting of trench about half a foot deep dug through the top-soil. Even today it is not fully clear why or how the lines were created, and theories range from the more rational – they were religious symbols drawn to appease the gods – to the stupid – they were landing pads for alien spacecraft. Today, with the exception of a depiction of a lizard which had a Highway ploughed through it, and a depiction of a hummingbird permanently scarred by idiots from Greenpeace, the lines are remarkably similar to how they were when first constructed; preserved naturally by the arid conditions and surprisingly consistent temperature and humidity in this costal desert.

The Nazca lines are dotted around the desert over an area of about 20 square miles, and the only way to see them properly is from the air by taking a bi-plane out of Nazca or Ica. The tour operators who offer these flights are poorly regulated though, and fatal crashes involving tourists are all too frequent, so we opted instead to stick with the free trip Peru Hop do to one of the viewing towers overlooking the site. It was pretty late in the day when we got to the viewing tower and there was quite a large queue of tourists waiting their turn to climb to the top. As the sun set it was our turn to climb, making it to the top to look over the lines with just enough time to spare before the light faded too much. From our vantage point we could see the tree, the hand/frog/thing and the Lizard, cut in two by the road. Along with the zoomorphic shapes we could see numerous other lines and large geometric shapes stretching off in to the distance. It was really cool to see these lines up close and to get a sense of their scale, but to be perfectly honest they are best off appreciated in a photo gallery where you can see them in their entirety. Its impressive that the ancient Nazca people pulled off drawing these huge shapes without being able to see them from above though.

The sun set across the desert as we set off again for the final few hours of our drive to Huacachina, the small Oasis just outside the city of Ica. We arrived about 8:30 in the evening and were dropped off in a large, sparsely developed plot of land about halfway between Ica and Huacachina where we checked ourselves in to the Huacachina Desert Hotel.  A little confusingly the hotel didn’t have a sign outside, so we ended up ringing on the door of the only building in roughly the right location. Luckily this turned out to be the right place and we found ourselves in an exceptionally pleasant, clean and well laid out little hotel with a pool, a kitchen which was free for guests to use, a bar and dining area and a 2-story block of 10 rooms at the back. After a long day of being on a bus we were fully ready for bed so stuck on the industrial size fan the room was equipped with and went to sleep.

The following day we woke to gorgeous sunshine, blazing heat and huge sand dunes towering over the walls around our hotel. Ica and Huacachina are on the edge of a vast sandy desert filled with towering dunes, it’s the picture postcard image of the typical desert you might imagine as a child. But having not been able to see the dunes when we arrived the previous night seeing their imposing presence so close caught us by surprise. We’d earmarked the day to be a relaxing one where we didn’t get up to much so after a quick trip to a supermarket we spent the rest of the day lounging by the pool reading and taking the occasional dip. It’s a hard life all this travelling.

Monday rolled in and we spent another morning and early afternoon being rather unproductive, before setting off to Huacachina for the Dune Buggy and Sand Boarding tour we had booked on to with Peru Hop. We walked the 20 minutes or so to Huacachina through the sandy verges of the road until we dropped down the short hill in to the Oases. Huacachina is a small lagoon surrounded on 3 sides by restaurants and hotels with the 4th side being a sandy beach stretching straight onto a dune. The permanent residency is only about 100 people with the whole town geared up solely for tourism. We’d heard before arriving that Huacachina was a bit of a dive and a tourist trap but were pleasantly surprised to find that, whilst certainly not the world’s most amazing place, the lagoon and its surroundings are really quite pleasant. A wide, bench-laden stone promenade lined with trees and rustic Parisian-style streetlamps encircles most of the lagoon, the town is clean and the restaurants and shops overlooking the promenade are pretty much what you’d expect to find in any tourist district in South America.

We got to the meeting point about 3pm along with around 150 other ‘hopsters’ and were slowly and chaotically organised (there’s no translation for this word in Peruvian Spanish) in to groups before being led up on to the dunes and assigned to a buggy. The sand buggies are large, open sided vehicles with broad, deeply grooved wheels, huge suspension springs and a reassuringly beefy roll cage all around the passenger compartment. The seats are arranged in 3 rows of 3 in a stadium like layout with the front seats nice and low down towards the centre of gravity. Katy and I ended up in the front seat with the driver and the gear stick stuck in to Katy’s leg.

Our seatbelts as tight as we could make them, the driver jumped in, turned over the engine which coughed up a plume of sand from its previous adventure and we were on our way, steadily heading out of the make-shift car park and up to a small control point where our driver handed over our entry tickets to a customs officer of some description. Only the Peruvians – a people with an incredible imagination for arbitrary taxes – would bother to have a ticket control point to entre a desert. It was like the scene in Blazing Saddles where there is a single toll gate in the middle of the Utah desert and nothing to prevent you going around it. Once through the control point the driver stamped on the throttle and the buggy bolted up the massive dune in front of us and Katy, as if physically linked to the throttle pedal, dug her hands in to my leg and buried her head in my shoulder.

The buggy tore over the sand at break-neck speed, bouncing over bumps and hurtling down the valleys between the dunes. I loved it. Katy hated it. The driver, a big jolly fellow who had enough confidence in his own driving to not wear his seatbelt seemed to get off on the screams of the gringos, finding particular amusement in the moment Katy grabbed his leg as we went down the side of an especially steep dune. After 20 minutes or so of bombing around we congregated with a group of other buggies atop a trio of ridges to do some sand boarding. The driver handed out the boards from an open storage cage at the back of the buggy (somehow, they hadn’t been flung free) and we took it in turns sliding head first down the dunes. Piloting the board took a little bit of skill and there were more than a few who took a tumble on the way down, but the forgivingly soft dunes ensured that nobody suffered anything worse than a grazed knee and a mouth full of sand.

After taking on the 3 smaller dunes the driver took us to the top of the tallest dune for miles around and we had the more daunting prospect of a much longer and steeper run. Katy and one of our fellow buggy buddies (I know! I should have thought of that sooner as well!) egged each other on to go down. Another smaller dune and then a final really steep dune later we were done, but not before I managed to fall off on the last slope, diving shoulder first in to the dune and completely smothering myself in sand. The sun was setting as we made our way back to Huacachina where Katy had decided that after our ordeal, we needed a sizeable amount of booze to soothe our frayed nerves (for the record, I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to argue). We headed to a restaurant down on the shore of the lagoon and made full use of the happy hour specials. Several beers and cocktails later, we got back to our hotel and decided that the best way to get all the sand out of our hair, ears, toes and all the other places sand can get to when you’ve spent the day sliding through it on your stomachs, was to go for a late night swim.

Our final day in Huacachina was an early start as we’d booked ourselves on to a tour of El Catador vineyards just to the north of Ica. The region of Ica is renowned for its Pisco production, regarded by many as the best in the country. At El Catador they still make the Pisco using the traditional production methods developed during the colonial era. The grapes used for Pisco are descendants of the grapes originally brought across by the Spanish in the 16th century when they began setting up vineyards for wine production. The hot, dry conditions in Ica cause the grapes to grow small and sweet, the high sugar level making them produce very sweet wine (way too sweet for the export market but popular here) and also makes them perfect for distilling in to the much, much more potent Pisco, typically between 40% and 45% proof. After a brief tour around the production facilities we were led down in to a basement bar for an opportunity to sample the products of the vineyard. We sampled the Rose and a couple of Whites produced on site, all of which were too sweet for our taste, as well as 3 varieties of Pisco including a creamy liquor made with maca root that tasted surprisingly like Baileys. Sampling complete we merrily staggered back on to the bus and headed back to our hotel to spend the rest of the afternoon again lounging by the pool, letting the effects of the Pisco steadily wear off.

For a renowned tourist trap, Huacachina had proven rather pleasant and we enjoyed our time there a lot more than we had expected to. We were sad to leave our lovely little Hotel the following afternoon to make the next leg of our journey with Peru Hop to Paracas, a small coastal resort on the other side of the desert built around the bay formed by the large, mushroom shaped Paracas Peninsula. We arrived in the early evening and headed to our hotel in what had been described by one of the reviews as being ‘in the ghetto’ (presumably by someone who had never been to a developing country before, by local standards it was a perfectly normal street). Hungry, we headed out to one of the restaurants recommended by our Peru Hop guide, a 5th floor rooftop fish restaurant which received our business only because we were hungry and didn’t know until we were up there how expensive it was. That’s how they get you.

An underwhelming meal later we headed back to our hotel where we both had a terrible night’s sleep owing to the noisy fan and plastic mattress protector which we had to unpeel ourselves from every few hours. Ho Hum. At least we were only staying there for 1 night owing to it being the Easter weekend and every hotel in Paracas being full.

We woke up involuntarily early the next day and trudged down for breakfast, groggy and irritable. We did at least have something to look forward to though, a boat trip out to Islas Ballestas Nature reserve, a small chain of islands about 10km off shore that hosts thousands of sea birds including pelicans, cormorants and humboldt penguins as well as being a breeding ground for sea lions. We spent about an hour on the boat working our way around the island and watching the mass of wildlife, the highlight being the infant Sea Lions only a few weeks old frolicking in the water on the gravelly beaches. The mass of wildlife on the rocks was incredible and as we made our way back to shore a vast swarm of blue footed boobies (lol, boobies) was making its way back to the island from a fishing expedition, all flying in formation close enough that they appeared almost like a black blanket floating across the sky.

Back on land we went for a spot of lunch at a small bar that served the tastiest smoothies ever in giant glasses shaped like fish bowls. Our adventures for the day continued with a bus ride around Paracas National Reserve, a national park covering the Paracas Peninsular as well as a small stretch of desert further inland. The bus stopped at several vantage points overlooking the sea and the rest of the reserve as it worked its way back up the coast. Not a great deal to see, but the sparseness of the landscape has its own charm and the jagged rocks along the sea front had the familiar feel of the Dorset coast, albeit without the vegetation.

Our short tour finished and we headed back to Paracas to board our final Peru Hop bus, a 5-hour ride to Lima, stopping en-route at Tambo Colorado, a set of Inca Ruins named for the red colour the buildings were painted, some of which can still be seen today. The site is a large and fairly impressive complex used, rather mundanely, as an administrative outpost overseeing the coastal trade routes.

The sun set as we left Tambo Colorado, setting too on the final stretch of our South American adventure. Next time it rose, we’d be back in Lima with just over a week to go before flying home.

I hate night buses

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you that if sleeping was an Olympic sport, I would get gold every time. I slept through an earthquake in La Paz for heavens sake. I could probably fall asleep now as I sit at a small Ikea style table overlooking the pool just outside of Huacachina. Anyway, I think you get the idea that if you look up “Katy Boyce” in the dictionary, it would say “main occupation: sleeping”. Night buses in Peru however have proved to be somewhat of my Achilles’ Heel. Perhaps this is revenge for me claiming that I can sleep anywhere, ‘ha ha!’ thought the bus, ‘I’ll soon show you!’. The seats are not made for ample Western bottoms and if you’re anything over about 5’6 then good luck! Also they seem to insist on making the leg rests out of this awful plastic which isn’t ideal when you’re travelling in heat, as you find yourself having to repeatedly unpeel your sweaty legs – YUM!

 

We were picked up in a timely fashion from our hostel in Puno and headed out to the suburbs to meet the larger bus which was to take us to Arequipa. In true South American fashion nobody was telling anybody what was going on and so all the people going to Arequipa and all the people going to Cusco found themselves in front of just one bus, but planning to go in completely separate directions. As it transpires, when we got onto the bus it was then that the guide decided to inform us that the bus would go about 4 hours towards Cusco (away from the road to Arequipa), and then those travelling to Arequipa would change buses and go all the way back down. Fantastic. So now not only would we be able to get no sleep but we would also get to be interrupted half way through our journey! It turns out that reason for this is that those travelling to Arequipa meet the bus that has departed from Cusco and so it means they only have to run 2 buses rather than 3. I’ve had only good things to say about Peru Hop up until now but honestly for the price we paid, it hasn’t been half as good as it has claimed to be. The seats recline just not quite enough for you to get comfortable (not like our lovely El Dorado bus in Bolivia ❤ ) and there aren’t always USB chargers on every bus like they claim. It’s nice to have an English speaking guide on board but I think knowing what we know now, we wouldn’t use them again.

 

Arriving in Arequipa our lovely AirBnb host Rosa-Luz had advised us that checking in at 5am wouldn’t be a problem, for which we will be eternally grateful. Once again however, Peru Hop had other plans. We stepped off the bus, groggy and grumpy and ready for a nice long kip, and were promptly shown to our minibus and taken to our AirBnB. Just kidding, we were made to wait 45 minutes in the dark with no apology and no one telling us what was going on. One of the guides did seem to be getting arsey with someone on the phone but at no point did she stop to communicate with us just what was going on. When a minivan did eventually turn up, the driver and his companion spent a good further 10 minutes chatting away outside the van while we got more and more frustrated. This wasn’t helped by the woman next to me saying “this is just how it is in South America, just calm down”. I’m not sure that ever in the history of someone telling someone to calm down has it ever actually resulted in that person calming down, in fact it often, as in this case, has the opposite effect. The rage was palpable but as I am a calm natured person and rarely lose my temper (*cough*) I chose not to punch her in the face and we were soon underway. We dropped off a few of our fellow travellers and then the driver decided to stop at a random doorway, get out of the van and proceed to have a further 10 minute discussion. Anyway, we finally arrived at the AirBnB at around 6:30am, a good 1h30 minutes after we had arrived in Arequipa. Not great. I fired off an e-mail to PeruHop to complain and to their credit I did receive a response from one of the owners but it was very cut and paste, oh well, enough complaining, time to enjoy Arequipa!

 

As is tradition post-nightbus, Dave went for a well needed nap and I stayed up and tried to get the TV to work. Our AirBnB was located to the North of the city just outside of the main tourist area next to a beautiful green park and with cracking views of two of the city’s Volcanoes: Misti and Chachani. Luckily both are closely monitored in case of eruptions so we felt very safe. Following Dave’s awakening we popped down to the town centre for a mooch around and discovered the beautiful Plaza de Armas, with towering palm trees and the white volcanic buildings, it firmly shoved Sucre out of the way, claiming the top spot for most beautiful city (sorry Sucre, still love you for dinosaurs though.) Groceries acquired and still feeling a little worse for wear we headed back to the flat, settled down with a mountain of nachos and spent the rest of the evening exploring exactly what there was to do in the city.

The answer is, not that much really. The main pull of Arequipa is the nearby Colca Canyon, the second deepest Canyon in the world and one of the best viewing points for spotting the endangered Andean Condors in the wild. We did however manage to find a free walking tour and so normal service resumed. We popped along to the Las Gringas restaurant meeting point and were greeted by our delightful guide whose name has unfortunately escaped us (Dave thinks it was Juan, I said that was racist). He was certainly one of the best guides we’ve had in our time in South America, with exceptional English and a flamboyant style, he took us round the city and explained the history of Arequipa. With almost year round late spring/early summer temperatures, it attracts a lot of Europeans and there seemed to be French people everywhere. The upside of this is that we consumed a lot of tasty crepes during our time there. We also found out that evidence supporting the Big Bang Theory (the space one, not the awful TV show) was uncovered in the Boyden Observatory just outside of the city, so that’s pretty darn cool! We finished our walking tour at a rooftop bar just before sunset and spent a bit of time taking it all in before heading back to Las Gringas for a pizza and a beer. Or at least we would have ordered a beer if it was possible to have anything but craft beer in Arequipa. As an aside, they do have various different ciders which are brewed locally so that was a nice treat, but to be perfectly honest, sometimes you just want a beer. A normal pilsner with no frills and no inflated price tag. Sorry it seems this is turning into the agony aunt blog post, I’m not ungrateful I promise, I fully appreciate just how wonderful an opportunity it is that we have to be travelling like this…….but……beer!

Aside from a beautiful main square and excellent walking tours, another of Arequipa’s main tourist attractions is the fabulous Mundo Alpaca or Alpaca World! I think the use of the word World here is probably slightly hyperbolic as it’s more of a shed with a small field filled with llamas and alpacas. The guide gave us a quick tour in v-e-r-y s-l-o-w and v-e-r-y c-l-e-a-r Spanish and we had a chance to feed the llamas and get up close and personal with the machinery used to process the wool, which was really interesting. We could have taken the opportunity to see yet more traditional weaving patterns but if I never see another one of those, it will be too soon. After visiting Alpaca “World” we one again trotted off into town to see another one of Arequipa’s claims to fame: Juanita. Juanita is a perfectly preserved ice mummy, killed between 1450 and 1480, when she was between 12-15 years old, as a human sacrifice to the Ampato volcano god by the Incas. Her skin, teeth, hair, organs and blood are remarkably well preserved. Sadly for preservation reasons, we didn’t get to see Juanita in the flesh (sorry) but we did get to see another equally impressive mummy – Sarita. She’s not quite as well preserved as Juanita but it was still really interesting. Our tour guide spoke very good English and explained all about the different artefacts that were found surrounding her before we finally stepped into a freezing cold room to see Sarita herself. I think I probably could have stayed there all day staring into those empty sockets but we were soon ushered out by the guide. It’s definitely worth a trip if you’re in Arequipa, especially if you’re there during the high season when you get to see Juanita herself, and there’s a short film at the start all about the discovery and the conditions surrounding it.

 

Feeling suitably peckish after our visit to Sarita, we headed off back to the AirBnB to do a bit more research about Colca Canyon tours. We booked with the Peru Hop recommended company, hoping that their tour group recommendations would be better than their ability to organise minivans and luckily for us we were correct. Paying around £40 for a 2D1N tour, we were picked up just down the road at around 7:30 and began our long drive through the Arequipan landscape, stopping at various points along the way to be sold tourist rubbish but also to see some more volcanoes. The landscape around Arequipa is almost prehistoric, the volcanic nature of the terrain provides for some excellent photo opportunities. Our group consisted of ourselves, a handful of Israelis, a Spanish couple, an older Swedish couple and a young family from New Zealand travelling with their 10 year old daughter. We got quite friendly with Rachel, Stu and Isabelle during those two days and were grateful for their company. Stu set up a pest control business that it turns out sold its products in the garden centre Dave used to work at – small world eh! Continuing on our journey, our guide Flor pointed out the mountain where Juanita was found and also the volcano just next to it which erupts on average around 24 times a day. The air was noticeably hazier and it was clear just how much the ash lingers and why when that volcano erupted in Iceland it proved to be such a big problem. We reached a high point of 4910m that day, not quite the highest we’ve been but close enough that we were starting to feel a little wobbly from the altitude. We quickly headed back down to the town of Chivay at around 3500m and headed to our third hot springs of the trip where we got chatting once again to Rachel and Stu about life, the universe, and everything. They were going to spend ~2 years travelling all around the world before probably heading back to New Zealand. Apparently 10 is the perfect age to do it because children still like their parents at this age, are old enough to appreciate it all, and haven’t turned into horrible teenagers yet, so that gave us some food for thought with regards to future plans.

After the hot springs our guide told us that during dinner we’d be treated to some more examples of local traditional dances and songs. ‘Oh goody’ we thought. It’s not that we’re heathens and can’t appreciate the subtleties of tradition and local culture but dear reader please understand that at this point this was about the 15th time we’d been ‘treated’ to these dances, and often they’re by bored looking teenagers who have obviously been bribed into it by the prospect of tips from the gringos. However, I have to say that on this occasion we were pleasantly mistaken. The couple performing the dances seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, or at least doing a very good job of faking it. The food was also really nice, especially as it was evident that this place exists solely for tourists. I even got to hit Stu with a bit of rope so I can’t complain. Isabelle was adamant that we get involved at every single opportunity but unfortunately as we are boring grown ups and would rather have a conversation she was often left to her own devices, twirling around the dance floor and generally having a jolly good time. After this we headed to our hotel which, given that we’d only paid £20 each for the whole thing, was better than expected. There was the usual 1 pillow, twin beds, no TV remote situation and Dave did manage to leave his fantastic flamingo swimming trunks behind (add that to the list of ‘things Dave has left in South America’) but it was clean and warm which is all you want really.

 

Up bright and early the next morning for our 5am departure, we were finally off to see the thing we’d come all this way to see: the condors. There’s a particular point along the Colca Canyon called the Condor Cross which is the best place to see them as they sit lower down in the Canyon waiting for the thermal currents to be warm enough to lift their huge 3m wingspan 15kg bodies up into the air. Before arriving to the cross, we took a short hike to a point slightly lower down to appreciate the full depth of the canyon, we also saw some dead cows which I thought was exceptionally cool but which Isabelle thought was gross. and was much more interested in asking us what our favourite brand of sock was, or what our favourite mythical creature was, or what our favourite colour was, or if we were a dog what breed of dog we would be, (Marks and Spencer, Dragon, Green, German Shepherd, in case you were wondering) before promptly dismissing our response and telling us what hers was. Kids are great. We then finally headed up to the Condor Cross where we only had to wait a short while before the flight of the concords (not the band) began. We saw about 10/12 in total which is really good luck as some people come all that way and don’t see any of them. In fact several groups arrived about an hour after we did and didn’t see a single one. It’s really very impressive to watch these huge great birds fly around and we were completely mesmerised as they flew incredibly close straight over our heads. They didn’t seemed to be fazed by the tourists at all and it’s clear why they attract so many visitors. After about an hour we made our way slowly back to the bus, but not before stopping to introduce Rachel and Isabelle to the wonders of the Granadilla, and managing to convince Isabelle that the seeds inside are in fact frogspawn and that we were eating baby frogs. I’m now starting to understanding why my older siblings and parents (ok, my Dad) spent all that time winding me up when I was younger, it really is quite fun. And so began our long drive back to Arequipa, we stopped in various places to take more pictures and look at more of the same jumpers/scarves/condor keyrings/penis masks that you see everywhere else in Peru but after the Condors, nothing really came close.

Arriving back in Arequipa we said our farewells to our Kiwi friends. We were going to be getting the same bus to Huacachina in a few days time so it wasn’t goodbye forever and Dave and I were particularly looking forward to more opportunities to answer Isabelle’s relentless questions. Our final day in Arequipa was fairly uneventful, apart from some particularly good pasta and a cracking pizza, there isn’t much that stands out as being particularly memorable. There was also a cat that looked remarkably like my brother’s cat Spock so I called him Spocky Dos (Spocky Two)  and also a lovely ginger cat. Yes ladies and gentlemen I did come all the way to South America just to talk about the cats I’ve seen. You should think yourself lucky, I think Dave’s going to strangle me if I stop to pet another dog in the street. Anyway, on to Huacachina…

An Englishman, a Kiwi and a Bolivian go out in to the desert.

Apologies for the delay in this blogs publishing, we’ve been staying in a series of places with very unreliable internet connections.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned during our time in South America, it’s to never take the UK’s small geography for granted. This is a lesson that was going to be hammered home very hard over the coming week.

Our bus to Uyuni from Sucre, winding westwards through the Andes to the vast Plain which hosts to the Bolivian Salt Flats took just over 8 hours. After the steep slopes on which most of the towns we’ve visited in South America sit, the pancake-flat Uyuni was something of a welcome change. That’s pretty much Uyuni’s only redeeming feature though, it’s a small, dirty and dusty block-layout town known, even amongst the locals, as something of a ****hole. The town used to be a hub for exporting the regions rich mineral deposits but now serves primarily as a jumping off point for tourists visiting the salt flats. The strong winds that blow off the salt flats through the city strew rubbish everywhere and cover every surface in a thin layer of grey-brown, salty dust.

After spending half an hour waiting for the receptionist to show up we finally checked in to our hotel for the night, a somewhat underwhelming twin room (we’d asked for a double, but this is South America; sometimes you just have to settled for a rough approximation of what you asked for (further note on this; this can go either way. At time of writing we’re sitting in a suite room where we’d only booked a double. Six of one…)) which looked like it was last renovated in the late 80’s. It was the best we could get for a reasonable price and for just 1 night it served its purpose. Due to Uyuni’s remote location and the high salt content in the soil, there is no agriculture or fresh-water supply and consequently the cost of living is very high; a cost reflected in the price of hotels, restaurants and other amenities.

The following morning, we headed over to the offices of Quechua4WD, our tour operator for our 3-day salt flats tour. Here we met our guide Nando, our Driver Daniel and Saatchi, a Kiwi of Sri Lankan heritage who now lives in Canada and spent much of the first day of our trip seeking my approval for the numerous (he claims) sexual conquests he’d made during his time in South America, and largely ignoring Katy.

We departed Uyuni about 10am, stopping first at the ‘train cemetery’ 3 miles to the south of the town. Back in the late 19th and early 20th Century, Uyuni was a major rail depot en-route to the Pacific, but with the collapse of the Bolivian mining industry in the early 1940’s the line fell in to disuse. The majority of the engines and rolling stock were dumped in sidings on the outskirts of Uyuni where they quickly fell in to disrepair, and were scavenged for any easily removed valuable parts. Today, the nearly 100 trains slowly rusting in to the desert landscape with the salt-filled winds whistling through them are covered in gravity and an unrelenting swarm of tourists. There’s a plan to turn this place in to a museum; the sooner the better.

After half an hour of wandering around the train cemetery, we jumped back in our 4×4 and set off towards the small village of Colchani, one of several towns on the shore of the Salt Lake where the locals are permitted to mine and refine the salt. As well as packing salt for wholesale and retail, the locals use densely-packed blocks of salt from deep within the salt flats to construct buildings and make ornaments and statuettes to sell to passing tourists. After a quick tour around one of the many family-run salt refineries we headed out on to the salt flats.

The Bolivian salt flats (Known as the Uyuni Salar) are the largest in the world, covering an area of over 4,000 square miles, or about half the size of Wales. The elevation change across the entire Salar is less than 1 meter, meaning that satellites use the large, flat reflective surface for calibrating their altitude sensors. During the rainy season the Salar is covered in a thin layer of water, turning it in to the world’s largest natural mirror, whilst in the dry season, the water evaporates leaving just the crystallised salt deposits. In the centre, the Salar is about 50cm more elevated than at the edges, meaning that as the wet season ends, the centre is dry but the edges are still submerged in a few centimetres of water. This makes March the optimal month to visit the Salar as you get to see the Salar in both states. Lucky Us!

We drove out about 3 miles on to the Salar, stopping at a small outpost made of salt bricks, inside of which is an expensive hotel and restaurant. The outpost also serves as a staging post for the Bolivian Leg of the Dakar Rally, which has been coming through the Salar since 2014. Whilst we had a mooch about attempting to identify all the flags on small outcrop by the outpost, Daniel prepared lunch for us. Refreshed, we set off again deeper in to the heart of the Salar. Once we found a spot without any other tour groups too nearby, we stopped to take advantage of the Salar’s unique landscape for ‘perspective’ pictures. Nando showed off his creativity with the perspective shots, having us climb wine bottles, ride llamas, walk along our own shoelaces like tight-ropes and hold miniature versions of each other.

After an hour we continued further until we found the edge of the area still covered by water. According to Nando, at this time of year the water recedes at a rate of several hundred meters a day. The plan was to stay out on the Salar until sunset taking photos with the reflection, but sadly the high winds negated the mirror effect. To kill the time, we popped on some wellies and set off in the direction of some Flamingos we could see in the distance, deciding after half an hour that that was probably a pretty dumb idea and making our way back. As the Sun began to set the wind dropped off and we were treated to an utterly awe-inspiring scene with the mountains in the background, the red and pink clouds and the setting sun reflected off the now perfectly tranquil water.

In the twilight we headed back to Uyuni, stopping off at a small local restaurant for a meal where Saatchi informed us of his genius plan to control the human population by banning vaccines. That night our accommodation was a charmingly decrepit hostel with a surprisingly comfortable bed. It would have been a perfectly good night’s sleep were it not for the loud Americans banging on the door to the hostel at 2:30am. Owing to political disagreements between Bolivia and the US, Americans have to pay about $160 to get a Bolivian Visa. Evidently this is not enough.

Groggy, sleep deprived and cursing the USA we staggered down for breakfast with an irritatingly refreshed Saatchi who hadn’t been bothered by the commotion in the night. Nando turned up soon after to pick us up and we jumped back in to the 4×4, this timed joined by a Japanese couple who were travelling with us to the Chilean border. I’d tell you what their names were, but I can’t remember. They spoke little English and no Spanish (Goodness knows how they’d made it so far through South America) and spent much of the day asleep in the back of the 4×4.

Our adventure for the day took us south from Uyuni on a long trek through the epic Bolivian Altiplano towards Eduardo Avaroa National Park which occupies the southwestern corner of the country by the Chilean and Argentinean borders. The journey took us first along paved roads for a couple of hundred kilometres before heading off-road in to the desert. For hours upon hours we meandered through valleys and ravines, past lakes and mountains, stopping every few hours or so to take stock of the breath-taking landscape. With each valley we went through the geology and wildlife changed dramatically. One moment we’d be in sandy desert, the next surrounded by Quinoa fields or massive, chaotic rock formations shaped by volcanic activity and sandstorms. We passed several lagoons filled with Flamingos, including the aptly named ‘red lagoon’, given a deep crimson colour by the high concentration of Algae fed by the hot springs pouring in to the lagoon from the surrounding mountains. This is a really beautiful part of the world, and its remoteness means it is largely untouched.

Towards the end of the day we climbed to nearly 5000m (but not quite over 5000m, which is good because our travel insurance isn’t valid above 5K), the weather closed in and it started to snow. We made our way through the mist and snow to the Sol De Manana fumerals; boiling pools of grey volcanic mud that give off a constant stream of thick, sulphurous gas. The snow, mist and high winds combined with the fumerals created an utterly other-worldly locale, truly like nothing else on earth.

Our final stop for the night was a small, remote village on the shore of large lagoon where we would be staying the night. Our accommodation was a simple shared dorm with the mattresses propped up on breeze-block bases. Comfortable enough, but at 4400m, the prolonged effects of high altitude made for a difficult night’s sleep. Before bed though, there was time to head down to the hot spring by the edge of the lagoon. Our remote location, complete lack of light pollution and high altitude meant that the sky was more densely packed with stars that any night sky we’d ever seen. The ark of the Milky way stretched over the lagoon in front of us all the way to the horizon and for over an hour Katy and I just lay there in the hot spring, gazing up at the stars, more relaxed than we could remember being in a long time.

The final day of our tour started with a trip south to the Chilean border to drop off our Japanese friends. The car park for the Bolivian immigration office is on the Chilean side of the border meaning that, technically, we entered Chile. Yay! The border between Chile and Bolivia marks the frontier between South America’s richest and poorest nations, despite this the border is marked only by a small ditch that is easily stepped over. Nando couldn’t help but make sly observations regarding border walls. Our business concluded we set off back north, following a similar pattern as the day before, stopping off at natural beauty spots as we worked our way back up to Uyuni. The final stop we made was at Laguna Negra on the edge of an ancient lava field. The lagoon is surrounded by tall, jagged orange rocks jutting out at all angles from lush green grasslands, grazed upon by flocks of Llamas. Nando said this was his favourite stop on the whole trek, and it was very easy to see why.

After a long day in a 4×4 we arrived back at Uyuni and, having been without internet for 3 days, desperately caught up on the Grand Prix results. As if we hadn’t spent enough time in vehicles already, we now had a 10-hour night bus to La Paz ahead of us. Goody. As is tradition, I didn’t sleep a wink, meaning that by the time we got to our hostel in La Paz I’d been up for about 26 hours. We didn’t do much with our time in La Paz, I mainly slept, and Katy wrote the previous Blog post. We ate at the hotel restaurant and got an early night’s sleep as we had to be up at 5:30 the following morning to catch our bus back to Copacabana.

Up early but well rested, we departed La Paz for the final time, arriving in Copacabana about 11am. We checked in to La Cupula again, where we’d pushed the boat out a bit and treated ourselves to one of their suites complete with Jacuzzi, Chimenea and view over the beach. Despite the luxury, it was still a good deal cheaper than a night at a Premier Inn. The next day we took the boat out to Isla Del Sol, the only real Activity in Copacabana which we were unable to partake in on our previous pass through the town due to illness. Isla Del Sol is the birthplace of the sun in Inca folklore, and today is home to about 3000 people across 3 communities. Disputes between the communities over income from tourism spilled out into violence a few months ago, resulting in most of the island now being inaccessible to tourists and ruining it for everybody.

The boat ride out was about an hour and a half in to the wind and over choppy waters. Once at the Island we went for a short walk up past some ruins, north-west across the island before heading back down to another port in the village of Yumani. With most of the island closed off there wasn’t a great deal to see, but it was a pleasant enough walk.

We got back to Copacabana about 5pm just in time to catch our bus across the Peruvian border to Puno, arriving at about 8pm. It was sad to wave farewell to Bolivia, a country we’d both enjoyed greatly, and more so than we thought we would. Whilst on the bus we booked ourselves on to a tour of the floating Islands near Puno for the following day, which meant another early start for a 6:45 pick up. The minibus picked us up at the surprisingly prompt 6:50 to head down to the port where we boarded a riverboat with about 40 other sleep deprived tourists. To wake us up we were serenaded by the delightful combination of out of tune guitar and off-beat panpipes covering a medley of western pop songs. The offending musician then rounded the boat for tips (What’s Spanish for ‘guitar tuner’?)  before being replaced by Alex, our guide for the day.

The floating islands are home to the Uros people, an offshoot of the Aymara who live on a network of floating islands made of reeds which have to be constantly replenished to prevent them rotting away. In total, there are about 5000 people living in communities across Lake Titicaca on both the Bolivian and Peruvian sides, but by far the largest of their communities is the one near Puno, located in the centre of a large series of reed-beds and frequented daily by fleets of tourist boats.

In this community there are around 90 islands straddling a wide natural channel through the reed beds. Our first stop was at a small island in the channel approaching the village, here the village leader assigned us to a particular island to visit. This way the tourists are distributed evenly around the islands, allowing each island (typically home to 2-5 families) to share equally in the revenue from tourism, as well as controlling the footfall on each island which can accelerate the rate at which they wear down. We were assigned to ‘Condor Island’ about two thirds of the way up the western row of side of the channel. The islands inhabitants helped bring our boat in and we jumped down on to their home. The Islands are about 3 meters thick and 2/3rds submerged, they have the feel of a firm mattress, giving way slightly under foot and gently swaying with the movements of the lake. Our group was gathered around in a semi-circle and one of the Islands inhabitants who gave us a short demonstration of how the islands are built and how the locals go about their lives, complete with dolls and toy boats.

Our little show-and-tell complete we were invited to look inside the homes of the locals, take pictures from the islands watch-tower and, of course, to buy tourist toot. As we departed, we were given the option of riding on one of the large catamarans fashioned of reeds that they locals refer to as ‘Mercedes Benz’s’. Large and unwieldy, they exist purely for the amusement of the tourists. We couldn’t resist though and climbed aboard on to the upper deck for a ride across to the large capital island on the side of the channel, but not before the local’s sang us some farewell songs, including a rendition of ‘row row row your boat’.

On the capital island we had the opportunity to get our passport stamped with a ‘Lake Titicaca Islands’ stamp (bad idea) and buy more tourist toot. The floating islands are genuinely interesting and seeing the unusual way of life of these people is fascinating, but as with so many rural communities in the developing world the population is dwindling fast as the young depart for better opportunities in the cities. What’s left of the population is now totally dependent on tourism and the Islands have a gimmicky, almost theme park like vibe to them. It’s lamentable that the islands have lost their authenticity but were it not for the transition to capitalising on tourism, this is a way of life that may well have disappeared entirely by now… Half a dozen of the other.

After the floating Islands we set off for the island of Taquile, about an hour and a half’s boat ride away just outside of Puno bay. The experience here was much like the Isla Del sol the day before, without the disputes dividing the island. After an hour of walking along the north of the island we arrived at a rustic, rather charming little town square, much of which was unchanged from the colonial era. After regrouping we headed down to a small restaurant in the garden of a local family home for a very tasty meal of Quinoa soup and trout fresh from the lake (The trout is an invasive species here, so it’s guilt-free meat!). There was, of course, the usual demonstration of local textile production and traditional dances to accompany our meals and Alex gave us an explanation of the unique dress customs of the Islands communities with a suspicious focus on identifying who was unmarried. Like the floating islands, Taquile’s population is also in decline. Perhaps they hope to get more than just money from the tourists…

We headed down to the harbour and boarded the boat back to Puno, this time opting to sit up on deck with a Dutch woman called Ava and an Ausi called Paul who we’d struck up friendships with over lunch. We got back to Puno about 4pm and headed back to our Hostel to ready ourselves for yet another night bus, this time to Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. But that’s a story for next time.

Jura-sick Sucre

Still feeling the after effects of being vibrated down a mountain a few days before, we had a day to kill before our El Dorado night bus to Bolivia’s ‘official’ capital, Sucre. Rather than sit in a coffee shop and eat cake all day, we booked ourselves onto another Red Cap walking tour, this time of La Paz’s massive cemetery and a trip on the cable car up to El Alto – La Paz’s poorer sister city – to the huge Sunday market.

La Paz’s Cementerio General is a bit different to the graveyards we have back home. Death is seen much more as ‘the next step’ in life rather than the end of the road that it is in Western culture, so cemeteries are a combination of mourning and celebration, giving them a really unique atmosphere. We stopped just past the entrance amongst the towering graves for an explanation of a slightly more gruesome aspect of the strange amalgamation of Catholicism and local shamanic religious culture – the Ñatitas. A Ñatita (meaning – snub nose) is the skull of a deceased person which is kept in an altar in the home and serves as a guardian against bad things happening to you. Daily offerings are made to your Ñatita to keep them happy and to make sure good luck keeps coming your way. Offerings include booze, money, cigarettes, sweets, chocolate….all the good stuff basically. Then, on the 8th November every year, people from La Paz bring their Ñatitas to the cemetery so that others can come and be blessed. The Ñatitas are dressed in hats and clothes, even sunglasses, and placed on altars around the cemetery before being surrounded by flowers and offerings, with people hoping that the Ñatita will make their wish come true or bless their family. Often the skulls are passed down from generation to generation and once a Ñatita is yours, it’s yours for life. If you don’t get along with it, or if it doesn’t get along with you, you are allowed to give it away but selling it is strictly forbidden. Oddly enough if you do want to acquire a Ñatita, paying a larger sum to your local coroner will secure you a Ñatita of higher social standing, a doctor or lawyer Ñatita for example. As you can imagine, the Catholic church doesn’t really approve of not burying these skulls but they tend to turn a blind eye in order to maintain a healthy relationship with the local indigenous communities.

 

The cemetery itself houses thousands of graves. Families purchase their own slot in the wall, with the higher slots being cheaper due to the need to climb a ladder to pay your respects. In general families will pay to keep the slot for around 2 years before allowing the payments to lapse, you get 2 months’ grace period before your family member is removed and cremated. It’s interesting to see the differences in the wealth of the families buying the graves, with fancy marble and glass fronted plots next to those filled in with cement and words crudely drawn into it; serving as a morbid reminder that no matter who we are in life, we all kick the bucket in the end my friend! Walking around the place you can sometimes see small pieces of paper attached to the graves, our guide informed us that these were eviction notices – some things never change. On a slightly more cheery note, the cemetery is also home to some cracking murals. We were told that there is an art contest every year and the winners are permitted to paint a mural in the cemetery. They’ve even started some on the roofs of the graves as well so that when you take the cable car over it, it looks a lot less grey. The contest recently opened up to foreigners so if you’ve always dreamed of having your art on show, surrounded by a whole bunch of skeletons then you know where to go!

 

Having had our fill of the macabre, our next stop was the El Alto market. Our guide warned us that pickpocketing is rife at this market, particularly of gringos. Some of their favourite tricks are to drop something, then when you stop to help them they steal your stuff, or someone will throw a fake baby at you and when you catch it, they take the opportunity to help themselves to anything in your pockets. For the most part, both Peru and Bolivia have been very safe, seemingly due to the fact that tourism now makes up such a large portion of their economy and if they get a reputation for being a bit dodgy then the lovely western currency won’t make its way to that part of the city. Rucksacks secured to our fronts and pockets emptied of anything other than snotty tissues, we took the red cable car up to El Alto. The market itself on a Sunday stretches to around 5 kilometres, making it allegedly the largest in the whole of South America. Selling everything from socks to car parts to cameras stolen from tourists down in La Paz and unfortunately some endangered animals as well. Luckily we didn’t delve too far in so we didn’t see any of the more upsetting things BUT, in a Katy first, I was the victim of a pickpocketing attempt! A chap dropped his hat in front of me and bent down to pick it up, preventing me from going forward, then before I knew it, a large woman in black was fiddling around in my pockets. I hope she enjoyed my snotty tissues. I quickly barged forward to re-join the rest of our tour group and excitedly explained to Dave that I had just been pickpocketed! Not that she managed to get anything. We were largely left alone to explore the market after that but it was definitely an experience. Opportunistic crime like that can largely be forgiven in my opinion, if you’re stupid enough to walk around with expensive gear within easy reach in one of the poorest countries in the world then really, it’s to be expected. Besides, give it a few days and you can pop back to the market to buy your stuff back. Apparently you can get some really good deals on technology stolen from gringos but we didn’t stick around long enough to find out. With the tour largely over, we parted ways with our guide and our group and headed back down to the relative safety of La Paz where we stopped at a little Mexican place for dinner before heading to the bus station to catch the long anticipated night bus.

We’d heard many a horror story regarding Bolivia’s buses but for the most part, our experience overall has been a positive one. The night coaches for El Dorado are double decker and can probably fit around 30 people. We were elated to see that our bus was FULL CAMA. This means that the seat reclines all the way back to 180 degrees with a little foot rest that folds up, giving you about as close to an actual bed as you can get. We’d heard rumours of these mystical full cama buses but were firmly told that they didn’t actually exist and the companies that advertised them were just a way to get a bit more money out of the gringos. We had paid around £20 each for the privilege and let me tell you dear reader it was worth every penny. The only slight downside was just how hot the bus was. We’d been told Bolivian coach drivers like to crank up the AC so had prepared for a chilly night but it was SO warm that by the end of the 12 hour journey we were both feeling very groggy. BUT we had arrived in the beautiful capital of Sucre which could only mean one thing – DINOSAURS.

 

One of the unfortunate downsides of taking night buses is that you end up at your destination incredibly early in the morning and hotels often won’t allow you to check in until after midday. We’ve been incredibly lucky so far (in no small part I imagine due to it being the off season) that the hotels we’ve arrived at have all had our rooms ready when we arrived. El Olivo Viejo was no exception and even had the added bonus of a beautiful pussy cat and a big softy Labrador to welcome us. We were even more pleasantly surprised to find that we had been upgraded to the rooftop suite which included a kitchen and a cracking view over the brilliant white city buildings, as well as the surrounding mountains. After a shower and a nap, we decided to head out to a local ‘gastro-pub’ style restaurant for dinner before researching a walking tour of the city for the following day (as is tradition).

The following morning, bellies full of the hotel’s great breakfast and having bid hasta luego to our feline friend, we headed to Condor Café, a local non-profit co-op offering walking tours, Spanish lessons and a range of veggie dishes. We arrived just after 9am, ready for our 9:30 walking tour. Except there was no 9:30 walking tour. Unbeknownst to us, it had, since the last Trip Advisor review was listed, moved to 10am. Ho hum. We sat outside the café under the blue Sucre sky and Dave took the opportunity to go on a little trip to try and find some replacement sunglasses for the ones he snapped during his little brush with death down Death Road. Much to the frustration of both Dave and his eyes, we seemed to have found the only street in Sucre that didn’t have a little knock off sunglasses stand. He bravely soldiered on as the clock ticked to 10am and our walking tour finally began. A group of around 10 of us were led through the city by Alistair, whose English wasn’t fantastic but we muddled through. He first took us to a local weaving shop (oh goody another one…) featuring products made by the local indigenous communities around La Paz. Unlike Peru, the communities of Bolivia’s Altiplano use far more muted colours, owing I would imagine to the lack of diversity in its flora and therefore a lack of colours to be obtained from various plants in the region. Still, they were very interesting and had we had the room in our suitcases, probably would have brought a few bits home. Our next stop on the tour was the main square – Plaza 25 de Mayo – so named for the Chuquisaca (modern day Sucre) Revolution of 1809 which followed the fall of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, leading local residents to question the legitimacy of its rulers and to posit their independence. It’s often referred to as the first step in the Spanish American wars of independence, so that’s pretty cool! At the time of our stay in Sucre, Bolivia was commemorating (or perhaps commiserating?) its loss of the Pacific Ocean following the Pacific War with Chile in 1883. ‘El Die del Mar’ or The Day of the Sea is marked every year on the 23rd March with parades through the streets with local military operations as well as local schools and marching bands. It’s an interesting story which others online are able to explain much better than myself but one interesting point is that in 2013, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, petitioning them for the return of the ocean. Sadly, or perhaps not, depending on your views on the whole matter, the petition was rejected. The Bolivians are a resilient people though and they are now planning a new legal challenge. Hopefully one day they will once again regain their access to the sea. Unfortunately with all this going on it meant we couldn’t hear a word Alistair was saying so we quickly moved on to a local chocolate shop – Para Ti.

 

Para-Ti is a Sucre run chocolate factory with several shops around the city. The cacao is sourced in the Bolivian jungle and processed to exceptionally high standards before being finished off by European trained chocolatiers – so it’s not bad I guess. We were allowed to sample one chocolate each as part of our tour, I went for coconut, Dave went for pistachio – yum. Vowing to come back at a later date, we moved on towards Parque Bolivar, so named for Simon Bolivar, largely credited with liberating vast swathes of South America. It’s a really pretty park with French influences, including a mini Eiffel tower in the centre, though this one is bright orange and doesn’t really do the original any justice. Each to their own I suppose. Following our jaunt around this pretty park, we were herded onto a bus where we headed up to one of the higher parts of the city where a lovely view, and some booze, awaited us. With our tour guide safely leading the way, we wandered into what at first glance just looked like someone’s back yard but it soon became apparent we were at one of Bolivia’s famous “Chicharias” where we got to sample some very strong Chicha. We took our seats in the corner but not before the local drunks welcomed us to Bolivia and tried and failed to chat up some of the women in our group. Chicha is a fermented corn drink that tastes, oddly enough, like scrumpy. It’s quite potent but we enjoyed our small glass before heading outside to play what we were told was a traditional Bolivian drinking game. The premise of the game is fairly simple. A metal frog around the size of a grapefruit sits atop a metal frame with a shelf on top containing various holes. You’re given a cup full of coins and the aim of the game is to throw the coins at the frog and the holes, with each awarding various points. If you manage to get a coin in the frog’s mouth then you win, otherwise the person with the most amount of points is the winner. I wasn’t very good. Dave was ok. The winner was a tiny blonde woman from the USA who I suspect has a long history of playing beer pong so we weren’t too disheartened. Our tour finished up at a fabulous view over the city, next to a lovely restaurant called Café Mirador which was beckoning us to stop and have a beer, so we did. After enjoying our meal and with the weather similar to a hot Mediterranean summer we decided to head back to the hotel, but not before a chap approached us and, for the 99999999999th time this trip, asked us if we’d like to buy some weed, or some cocaine. He was very polite, apologising for disturbing us in the first place and spoke perfect English but unfortunately neither of these two criteria were sufficient for us to risk a stay in San Pedro prison, so we declined. Heading back to the apartment, we stopped briefly to buy some totally legitimate Rui Foo (I think they’re supposed to be Ray Bans?!) sunglasses for Dave, as well the necessary supplies to make ourselves nachos for dinner. The rest of our evening was spent drinking beer and catching up on Star Trek because that’s what you do when you travel half way around the world, right?

Sunday morning arrived and the beautiful weather continued. Sucre is a particularly radiant city in the sunshine, with the light bouncing off the pearlescent white colonial style buildings, highlighted against the clear blue sky. We headed down to the main square where a bus was waiting to take us to Tarabuco, a market town around 1h15m drive away from Sucre. Tarabuco is home to a large Sunday market where you can buy everything from the normal tourist rubbish to DVDs of Cholitas dancing, to shoes, to cows, and everything in between. We were greeted at what we were told is the only restaurant in town (read, the only gringo friendly restaurant in town) by a radiant woman named Katy (!) who was absolutely delighted to find out that we shared a name. She expressed her love of the English language before explaining everything we could have ever possibly wanted to know about Tarabuco and the market and how to say “no thanks, maybe later” in Quechua (which we have now forgotten). After wandering round the market and picking up a few souvenirs for some lucky people back home, we headed back to the restaurant where Katy greeted us once again and we sat down to enjoy a 3 course lunch for 40 Bobs (around £4.40). The meal was peppered with Katy apologising for the delay every time she brought out a dish, despite the fact that there was no delay. This woman was as mad as a box of frogs but quite possibly the nicest person in the whole of Bolivia, if not the entirety of South America. The restaurant was family run but she explained that she was an engineer, heavens knows what she was doing in this tiny little mountain town. After lunch we were treated to a display of local dances by some young girls from the town. They looked about as enthused as teenagers do when they have to do anything mildly inconvenient, but we gave them a few Bobs for the trouble. We bid farewell to our eccentric host and headed back to Sucre with our bellies full and our minds open and in the evening enjoyed some pasta and a few rounds of gin (that’s the card game not the drink) before bed. And that’s when the fun began…

 

The following 3 days I had the absolute pleasure of being entirely bed bound due to a delightful bought of travellers’ stomach. Fear not dear reader, I do not wish to relive the experience anymore than you want to read about it so I shall simply say that we did not get to see nearly as much of Sucre as we would have liked but that Nurse Dave was on top form as always. I’m sure I’ll get the chance to return the favour when we head to Asia.

It was now Thursday and, despite not feeling 100%, I was determined to go and see these flipping dinosaurs if it killed me. Cretaceous Park is situated next to a working quarry around 5km outside Sucre’s town centre. It is home to some delightfully derpy life size models of the dinosaurs that inhabited the region many many moons ago as well as its star attraction, the world’s largest fossilised remains of dinosaur footprints. Over 5000 individual footprints from at least 8 species can be seen in the 1500m long cliff. It’s really something that needs to be seen to be believed. At 110m high it stands imposing over the rest of the park. With our entrance ticket we also had the opportunity to get up close and personal with these footprints. Sadly a few years ago a large section was lost due to water damage and the park is now seeking funding to cover the entire section with a protective layer of plastic. They’re nearly there so hopefully they can prevent any more of these amazing footprints from being lost. Being a huge dinosaur nerd, a gift to the gift shop was inevitable and I was heartbroken to find that the only t-shirts on offer were child sized (I can’t think why!). So after acquiring a new deck of playing cards, we headed back to Sucre where we finally ventured to the local Para-Ti chocolate shop and acquired some goodies for when my stomach settled down a bit. We then headed back to the hotel for our final night of luxury before our journey to Uyuni and slumming it in the salt flats for 3 days, but that’s another story for another time….