lima, quito, and the worst border crossing in south america

hey folks!

well, it was an eventful 22-hour bus trip to Lima! it should have been 20 hours, but there were manifestaciones (protests) again, so we had to wait for the police to clear the highway so that the bus could pass. when we did eventually pass, we were warned to close all the curtains on the bus because the protesters throw rocks at the passing buses. but no windows were broken, so it was all good.

a guy on our bus got stopped a few weeks earlier on the arequipa-cusco highway, and the bus couldn´t get through at all: so he ended up walking with his backpack for two days until he could find somewhere to catch another bus to cusco. he could have gone back to arequipa, but everyone told him he`d only have to walk two hours to catch another bus, and by the time he realised they were wrong there was no turning back!

(but if that had happened to us there´s no way we would have walked, because it would have been impossible for me. we would have gone back to Ica and waited a few days.)

anyway, Lima was lovely! we stayed in Miraflores, which is the upmarket area of Lima with all kinds of fancy shops and restaurants, shopping centres, cinemas... it looked so classy, and there were stores selling Reebok and Sketchers and Billabong and other such international brands... I actually had a little bit of culture shock for the first couple of days. honestly, even Santiago and Buenos Aires didn´t have the same ¨rich suburb¨ feel, and we´ve been in some pretty basic places for a while now!! I was really wierded out.

I enjoyed Lima though. we stayed there for a week, mainly so that I could see a decent doctor and my knee could have a chance to get better. it´s healed now, hurray! (amazing how fast it did get better after I found a decent doctor and a decent bandage!!) there´s still an ugly-looking scar, but that just ups my hardcore factor I reckon.

we went out one night in Barranco (another suburb of Lima) and met a group of students, originally from Arequipa, who were AWESOME. only the girl, Daniela (who was lovely), spoke English but our Spanish is at enough of a level now that we can have some very basic conversations, and other than that we just had a dance with them. it was a really fun night. I guess you never really have very in-depth conversations in bars anyway so the language barrier´s not such a big deal?

they all added us on facebook afterwards and left heaps of comments on our photos full of spanish slang, almost none of which I understand, which saddens me indeed!

also while we were in Lima, we were eating dinner in the hostel one night and watching over the shoulders of some Peruvians watching the news, and I was (bizarrely) understanding more Spanish than I usually do, and I realised they were talking about a murder : someone had killed someone else, and one of them seemed to be famous, and both were young men, and there was a lot of talk about an apartment? ¨this needs to be cleared up,¨ I thought, and asked the Peruvians to explain. apparently, a famous hairdresser - Marco Antonio - had been murdered a few days earlier by his boyfriend and a few accomplices for his money!! woaaahh crazy stuff. pretty big news in Peru!

anyway, our plan from Lima was to fly up to Bogotá, in Colombia, and head for the Carribean coast. that plan was completely scrapped after we basically spent all day with a travel agent trying to find an affordable way to do it! (the travel agent was lovely: she told us all about her baby son, and gave us a cookie that her mum made, and searched through a million flights for us.) it´s holiday time for Peruvians so flight costs are through the roof: and we just don´t have enough time left to make the cost worth it. plus, we had to buy a flight back to Buenos Aires as well, to get home. ouch!

so we went to Ecuador instead!

we took a 19-hour bus overnight to the northern border of Peru, which left us in Tumbes. from Tumbes, we had to somehow get across the border into ecuador. we´d been warned ahead of time that this border crossing is notorious for fake officials who try to steal your passport, rip-off taxi drivers, ¨money-changers¨ who give out fake US dollar notes, border officials who try to convince you that there is a fee for entry to ecuador (there isn´t), et cetera, and therefore has earned the title of ¨the worst border crossing in South America¨ (no mean feat)!

a note for Mum: nothing we read said the border crossing was actually dangerous. you´re just very likely to lose money over it!

we´d planned to catch a bus with Cifa, who take you across the border on the same bus and leave you in a town about two hours from the border, in Ecuador. but the minute we got off the bus in Tumbes the bus company wouldn´t let us walk down the street to find Cifa´s office, claiming that we had to catch a taxi because it was dangerous to walk around town. I was very skeptical about this, thinking it was more likely that they were working with the taxi drivers, but what can you do in that situation? we had to reassess. (my Lonely Planet was once again useless, containing the wrong address for the Cifa office that had apparently moved years ago.)

anyway, another option presented itself. a girl Lion had been sitting next to on the bus, Anna (who spoke fluent Spanish), was on the verge of outstaying her Peruvian visa and needed to go over the border and re-enter the country to be given a new visa. so she had arranged with the bus company to take a taxi to the border: the taxi driver´s friend would help her with the visa formalities and then take her back to Tumbes. she suggested we come with her: once we´d been through the Peruvian immigration, the driver would take us onto the Ecuadorian immigration and help us find an onward bus to Quito. the price was reasonable, so I figured why not? with their help, the border crossing might work out a little easier.

this probably sounds incredibly dodgy to you, the casual reader (especially if you´re my Mum, or worse, Lion´s mum). Anna did assure us, however, that the taxi drivers frequently worked with Cruz del Sur, the bus company we´d come with from Lima (who are the best - and safest - bus company in Peru). I probably wouldn´t do it again (to be honest the decision was a little rushed), but it did all turn out okay. the taxi driver took us through as planned, and didn´t even rip us off! (incredible!)

Anna, translating from the driver, told us on the way that the border was reknowned for dodgy fake-officials asking to see your passports. so when Lion was accosted by a policeman demanding to see her passport for no apparent reason (he hadn´t asked anyone else) she was understandably reluctant to hand it over. he wasn´t impressed, and displayed his discontent by slamming his fist into his palm and yelling ¨RESPETO!¨ (¨respect me!¨) in the end she had to hand it over and hope for the best because he wouldn´t let her any further into the immigration office. turns out he was a real police officer (how were we supposed to know?!), and it all worked out okay.

then we had to walk over the border between Peru and Ecuador with all our bags and the taxi driver, which is probably the most threatened I´ve felt in South America because the border town was complete madness, with people everywhere.

we dropped our bags and bought a bus ticket at one of the dodgier-looking bus offices I have seen in South America, although apparently they are a major bus company in Ecuador. they were okay in the end, despite the flaking paint and bare concrete and rusting security barriers.

anyway, after dropping our bags we had to catch a different taxi to the Ecuadorian immigration office, about 5km away, to get our entry stamp. we had to pay one US dollar for the taxi and the smallest note I had was a 20, so I was glad our driver was still with us to make the grumbling Ecuadorian driver give us change rather than just taking the whole 20! the Ecuadorian immigration process went smoothly, except for one of the policemen asking me a lot of suspicious questions about our driver, who was still helping us out (reassuring?!)

then we took the taxi back to the border town (the driver left to pick up Anna and take her back to Tumbes - I hope everything worked out okay for her!), and waited there for two and a half hours until it was time to catch the bus. finding vegetarian food for lunch was almost impossible and we were starving, but in the end we went into the cleanest-looking café we could find, disregarded the meaty menu, and asked them to make us an omelette and a cheese sandwich. (I could have eaten meat, of course, but I have had more than enough food poisoning experiences on this trip!!) they looked at us rather oddly, but a very greasy omelette and a cheese sandwich we did, in fact, get (and quite cheaply too)!

the bus trip to quito was pretty fun until sunset. tropical climate wind blowing in through the windows, banana plantations, women in midriff tops and men in wifebeaters (the men were mostly middleaged and potbellied though, not that interesting).

oh, and a big shed with a painting of the world trade centre falling with ¨taliban here¨ painted on the side - i had noooo idea what that was about until Lion googled it and found out that it´s a rather famous (or infamous?) ¨Taliban-themed brothel¨. iiiiiiiinteresting?! here is a photo I stole from someone else´s blog (hobotraveler.com), because we went past too fast to get a snap:

kind of disturbing to come across after that monumental border crossing!!

come 5am, and after a night with no dinner (ugh), we were in Quito and taking a taxi to our hostel. the hostel is lovely, one of my favourites so far, and the staff are really friendly. we´ve booked a five-day tour into the Amazon with them (our reason for coming to Ecuador in the first place). we leave for that tonight, and I am excited!

we went out last night in Quito (in the old town, which is full of police all night on a weekend and is therefore quite safe, although we still took taxis everywhere rather than walking, to be on the safe side). once again we discovered the uselessness of Lonely Planet when their recommended pub was shut down some years ago, and nobody we asked had ever heard of it!

but we met a family on the street - one of whom, a man called Jose, had lived in Sydney for a year and spoke amazingly good English - whilst trying to ask the police for directions, and they showed us the way to the best part of the old town for nightlife. it was a pretty good night in the end, filled with Ecuadorian folk music (much better than Bolivian or Peruvian folk music which is way too panpipe-heavy), mulled wine, tango and salsa and a surprisingly helpful policeman who helped us catch a taxi home. ¨Ecuadorian police : a mixed bag?!¨

coming up next...... THE JUNGLE!!!

jungle trek: an aborted version, including the tale of how a guide is fired

hello folks!

so you have now learnt of caroline´s jungle trek experience, which was very exciting and enjoyable (if you have not read this yet go to the previous two entries). my experience was a little different, unfortunately!

so we bus´ed about four hours to the top of a mountain (about 4000 metres asl). the guide got the bikes off the top of the van and prepped them. we put on our helmets and wooly hats and jumpers and raincoats (for the cold wind) and gloves, and after a quick briefing off we scooted, or rather cycled. the van followed about 100 metres behind us.

we were on a fancy new bitumen road, heading down a mountain, keeping to the right as you`re supposed to on peruvian roads, and keeping away from the steep cliff-face to the left dropping off to a considerable fall were you to go over (no railings). to the right, there was a deep, steep-sided triangular, cement ditch to collect rainfall run-off and/or the frequent rockfalls.

i was daydreaming, scooting down with a smile on my face and thinking of a time i rented a bike in christchurch (i´d completely forgotten about that day). literally about three minutes into the ride i suddenly realised how close my bike wheel was to the ditch at the right. too late!! looking down, i saw the wheel drop slightly into the ditch; i tried to correct it back onto the road but the next thing I knew I was lying on my back on the bitumen a few metres in front of my bike, and a number of body parts hurt. (nothing was broken.)

thirty seconds later i was surrounded by people, and nothing hurt at all. in fact, i felt so good that I wanted to get back on my bike again! (luckily, nobody would let me.)

they helped me sit up, and i could see that my leggings had ripped off both my knees and i´d skinned the right one well good. there was a little blood on my left elbow, and quite a lot of bruising there and on my right knee (though I didn´t realise this til later). i´d ripped my left glove completely in half (though my hand was fine). i scratched my face, too, but not very badly.

one of the guys, John, who was a lovely wouldn´t-hurt-a-fly fellow from Scotland who was very kind to me in the coming days, suggested that he could take a photo of the wound on my knee. I think he was trying to cheer me up. unfortunately for him, i react to stress and pain by becoming a rather unpleasant human being, so i replied with an agressive, ¨NO I DON´T WANT A F***ING PHOTO! WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO, SHOW IT TO MY MOTHER?! I DON´T F***ING THINK SO!!¨ .... everyone laughed, kind of nervously. sorry John. if you ever read this, I apologise!

Lion said by the time she reached the group again everyone told her, ¨yes she seems to be alright but i think she´s just a little pissed off about the whole thing.¨ hahaha. i know i shouldn´t be, but i´m vaguely proud of that. at least they didn´t say i was a crybaby!

the guide Frank turned up and held out some sort of dirty tissue that he proposed to place onto my right knee. I refused adamantly (at least my aggressive state was good for something)! this is when I found out that he did not have ANY kind of first aid kit. not so much as a bandaid! luckily, i had a few clean bandages and a little bottle of iodine in my own bag in the van, which i purchased in australia five months ago (at the time i felt vaguely like a hypochondriac but now i am very glad)!

nobody else in the group had brought a first aid kit (even though a number of them had one at their hostel back in Cusco) because they were told the guide would have one. in fact, out of all the tour groups we met on the way to macchu picchu in the coming days, all of them said that a) their guide told them he´d have a first aid kit and b) he didn´t. I will come back to this later.

anyway, I had to sit in the van the rest of the day watching everyone cycle down the hill. it looked like fun. we stayed in Santa María that night, by which point I established that I could not walk without the help of Lion´s walking stick. this state of affairs continued, despite my hopes, for the next two days, so in fact I did no trekking whatsoever. two colectivos (a kind of shared taxi), a train and a great deal of boring waiting later (thanks to John for lending me a book) I met the others in Aguas Calientes, and caught the offensively expensive 25-minute bus to Macchu Picchu.

Macchu Picchu, I´ve gotta say, was completely worth it. and my leg did feel well enough that day (sort of - i´m paying for it now) to do a 45-min hike to the Sun Gate, where you get a view from above. not quite as exciting as the ladder-mountain Lion climbed, but it probably felt like as much of an achievement!

anyway, there is more to this story. in Santa Teresa, where we were staying the second night, I attempted to find another bandage so I could change the one on my knee, but I couldn´t. all the tiny pharmacies or tiny medical clinic (with one nurse, and an assistant) had available was some coarse guaze that I knew would stick to the wound, so I figured I was better off leaving my bandage on. (if you recall, none of the guides had first aid kits.)

unfortunately my bandage stuck anyway, and I woke up on the morning of day three in considerable pain. my knee hurt so much I was worried that it was infected (it wasn´t, luckily, and still isn´t), but I learnt to my consternation that I was eight hours´ bumpy bus ride from Cusco and the bus wouldn´t leave til that arvo, so I had no choice but to risk the nurse in the tiny medical clinic. I didn´t trust her and she knew it, but to her credit she was very lovely and explained everything she was going to do.

the bandage was so badly adhered to the wound that it took her half an hour to remove it. (one of the more painful experiences of my life, and by this time I was DEFINITELY a crybaby.) she spoke no english, so the guide came with me to translate. he also had to translate, due to her curiousity, the meaning of the word ¨f***¨ that I was yelling periodically. sorry, nurse. well, I´m sure she´s heard worse in Spanish.

this cost me 45 soles, which is not that much money (about 20 australian dollars) but because the guide didn´t have a first aid kit (if he had, I would have been able to change the bandage myself, and also I felt the agency should learn that not taking a first aid kit is NOT okay) I decided when we got back that I wanted the agency to pay me back for it. we´d booked the tour through our hostel, and they agreed, so they gave the ol´ boss a bell.

the boss and the guide were supposed to turn up at the hostel in half an hour to discuss it. Lion and I had the feeling Frank, the guide, was going to get blamed, but I believed (and I still do) that it´s the agency´s responsibility to make sure the guide has all the right safety stuff. so we were planning to stress that belief; but they didn´t turn up. the manager of our hostel, after 45 minutes, gave us the money back himself and told us that the guide had admitted he didn´t have a first aid kit, and that because of that he was going to lose his job.

I doubt they were joking. after I reported them to the hostel they had to do something drastic, otherwise the hostel would have stopped referring their guests to them and they would have lost a lot of work.

the manager of the hostel claimed that the agency gave all their guides first aid kits, and that they just don´t take them on the treks. I don´t believe this at all. there must periodically be accidents: and none of the guides had kits! surely some of them would be responsible enough to take them. and if it is, as they claimed, a sackable offense not to take them, surely they´re not all idiots? but I will never know, I suppose. I feel a little bad for Frank. but the manager claimed he´d find another job with a different agency, so I suppose he´ll be okay.

perhaps I got the message across to the agency about the first aid kits, even if they did choose a scapegoat first. I hope so.

anyway my knee: is very slowly getting better. after five days there´s still a lot of skin missing and I have to use Lion´s stick to walk, so I`ve been told I have to keep it immobilised and elevated for a while. BORING. we`re about to take a 20-hour bus to Lima, so that will be a bit of forced immobilisation at least! I still haven´t been able to find a decent bandage and I had to go through the rip-off of a stuck bandage procedure twice more (not as bad as the first time luckily). I´m hoping to find something decent in Lima.

okay I´m hungry and this is a great deal for you all to read so time to finish! can´t wait for my knee to get better so I can regale you all with more adventures. make sure you read Lion´s posts as well, her stories of that hike are hardcore. LATER, robocop xxx

A Magical Journey: Dia Tres

Hello! Apparently my parents want me to finish writing about the Inca Jungle trek so I guess I will have to. Incidentally you will note that my experience of the Inca Jungle trek was quite different to Ro's. Long story.

Well. After the monkey shenanigan it seemed like nothing would ever be exciting again but I was incorrect. That night over dinner (spaghetti Napolitana for the vegetarians, much like the spaghetti Napolitana we had eaten for lunch that day in fact) our guide Frank told us that we had two options for DAY THREE. The typical trek involved walking for a couple of hours along a road to the hydroelectric station, then another couple of hours along a train line to Aguas Calientes, the small town that acts as a base for all tourists to Macchu Picchu. Our other option was to take a collectivo (small painful bus) to the hydroelectric station before hiking along the train line and arriving at Aguas Calientes around 2 or 3pm. We could then spend the next couple of hours climbing up and down a mountain called Mt. Putucusi in Aguas Calientes to get our first glimpse of Macchu Picchu at sunset, from an angle most people don't get to see.

This was clearly a more enticing option. As we sat on the collectivo it was evident we weren't missing too much. It was dry and dusty and not overly jungly and if you don't think "jungly" is a word then I suggest you consult the Scrabble dictionary where you will find it along with "junglier" and "jungliest." The walk along the railroad was nice, though. A lot junglier, though not the jungliest place we saw.

Eeeeeeeeeentonces we got to Aguas Calientes and dumped our backpacks in the hostel and got READY TO RUMBLE. I try not to swear in this blog since my mum once told me she read it to my nana but just imagine I am about to swear now. HOLY SNOOT it was a tough climb. It was really really tough. It started out with some steep stairs. Okay, we thought, this is not so bad. We are tough and can handle it. There were only four of us by that stage, excluding our guide, and we had been powering along the railroad like nobody's business, so we thought we were pretty intense.

One thing about Mt. Putucusi (this means "Happy Mountain" in Quechua, a fact that I find simultaneously pleasing and untruthful) that nobody told me is that the path includes seven vertical ladders with steep gaps between the thick wooden rungs. They also failed to inform me that apparently over seventy-five percent of people who begin the climb decide to turn back once they hit the first of the ladders. Actually I am glad I didn't know this. I assumed I was just being a big pansy. It wasn't the scariness of the ladders that scared me, you understand, but my general unfitness. I haven't been jogging in South America, you know. So once I was halfway up the first of the ladders I thought to myself "Holy snoot, this is probably going to kill me, but I am going to have to continue because it will hold everyone up if I slow down." The longest of the ladders is over 100 feet.

I recommend you click here to see a picture of the nasty thing.

Our guide Frank scampered up there like he did it on a weekly basis, which of course he did. We took probably an hour and a half to get up there as a group, which actually wasn't too bad, although it didn't feel brilliant after seeing Frank rocket up like a sherpa. The vertical wooden ladders stopped after about 45 minutes, but the climb along the Inca trail (not the Inca Trail(tm), but one of many Inca trails) was still steep and vicious with huge crumbly steps and loose rocks. We were simultaneously discouraged and encouraged by passing about ten people from another tour group, the only other people we saw on the mountain, who each invariably told us we were "almost there" and it was "worth it" and a splendid view of Macchu Picchu was "just around the corner" and gave us wildly different estimates of the time required to make the summit (two minutes; fifteen minutes; eight minutes). But when we got there... ahhh. We really had been almost there, and now we were there. And it was worth it.

It actually made my eyes water a little, the combination of exhaustion and thrill. From where we stood we couldn't see a single tourist. Just beautiful expansive terraces sprawled across the side of the mountain, and Huayna Picchu, the mountain that you see in every picture of the ruins. We were so excited to have made it that we were jumping around and whooping and high fiving and just exhaling with pleasure at the sight. I felt like an Inca.

On that note I'm going to leave off for now. I'd like to write more but I have places to be. Tonight we get on a bus to Lima, a real twenty-four hour mare. ("Mare" is a really ridiculous phrase we learnt from Rosie and Anna, our English parters-in-crime from Bariloche and beyond. It means "nightmare" and I don't really know why I just decided to use it.) We're indulging in Cama mode, though, because we've trod much of the terrain before and it's hideous. Cama mode means your seat goes back really far and is nice and wide and sometimes made of leather. They often give you wine and whiskey before bed. Probably not in Peru though. You can also get Semi-cama, which is tolerable, and Classico, which means it goes back just a tiny smidgen and is probably a bit like being in hell. Semi-cama is standard. In Cama mode they show Slumdog Millionaire and in Classico they show films that are written by, directed by and starring Nicholas Cage. In Semi-cama it can go either way.

(When we were fledglings, we took the 32-hour trip on deadly boring Ruta 40 from El Chalten to Bariloche in CLASSICO mode. We had no idea what we were missing out on. It wasn't even that bad a trip, but you wouldn't believe how much mileage we've got out of this story. Whenever anyone tells us about their nightmare bus trips we can crap all over them.)

So I suppose I will finish this tale of wonder later. I'm more likely to remember if you pester me so if you want to hear how it ends then shoot me an email.

Love love love
Lion

A Magical Journey: Dia Uno y Dos

I am officially an intense person!

That is correct. Last night I successfully completed the Inca Jungle trek. Which isn't necessarily the most intense trek in its own right, but we supplemented it a bit to make it more intense.

The first day was MOUNTAIN BIKING. I am not really a mountain biking sort of person, to be honest, but I was still pretty excited. We took a long and winding road up a mountain; definitely the naked version, there was no soothing Spector effect at work. That's a Beatles reference for all you non-fans. What I am trying to say is that it was a very uncomfortable and bumpy bus journey that made me quite nauseous. So I was quite relieved when we started biking.

We started out on the road. It was all downhill and the road was lovely and smooth but it was kind of spooky, because there were rather a lot of hairpin bends and such. I ride my bike in Perth quite a lot but generally I do not have the opportunity of falling off a cliff so this was a bit more frightening. Later we found out that a girl died on one of these bikes in February. She was hit by a truck coming around a corner. I don't think she was with our company though. The road was beautiful, anyway. It was freezing at first, with cold cold winds coming from the mountains, but after an hour of riding you could feel the first hot breaths from the jungle rising up to the road. So it was kind of odd, alternating between going "Ooh that's a bit chilly" and "Ahhh well now that is just lovely".

We rode like that for a couple of hours but then it was time for some hella intense biking! The scenery changed from alpine to JUNGLE and the road switched from asphault to bumpy old rocks that jolted you around like nobody's business. I was kind of spooked, but actually I found it much less scary than the road section. Reason being that there were no longer the huge drops from the side of the road, and the hairpin bends lessened just a little. Also the cars had to go slower. So after clutching the brakes desperately for the first two hour, I finally CUT LOOSE. Man, was I awesome! Barrelling all over the shop like a ROCKET with my cycling gloves making me look like someone incredibly tough.

We stayed at hostels the whole time, which was sort of nice and sort of disappointing. Tents are more intense.

Okay! I hope you are not too intensed-out because it is time for me to tell you about DAY TWO. This was the first day of hiking! Actually it was a pretty chill day. We hiked along a road for a bit. Then we hiked up a hill, which was sweaty work in the hot ol' jungle but fairly manageable, and then we hiked downhill. There is not much else I can tell you about the hiking so instead I will tell you about the CASA DEL MONKEYS.

We stopped at a great little hut high in the jungle for a rest and to buy snacks, if you wanted. It had been a steep old climb up until there so we were happy for the rest and were reclining on the ground with another tour group when we saw an odd creature come galumphing up to us, looking exactly like a cross between a beaver and a wombat. He leapt onto a wooden stump and seized hold of a waterbottle full of purple liquid in his little paws. Then he stood on his hind legs and poured it into his little buck-toothed mouth. I still have no idea what type of animal he was.

I noticed that the other tour group was looking at something and wandered over and there was a MONKEY! He was tied to a tree on a sort of bungee cord, so that he could scrabble up the wall and fling himself between trees. He didn't really show much interest in the tourists, but there was a cute American girl patting him when he came close and feeding him banana and asking people to take pictures of her with the monkey and I watched her primate progress with jealousy. But then a sweet little kitten came up to me and sat in my lap so I happily patted it and didn't mind too much about the monkey.

Then the tour group got bored and wandered away to lie in the hammocks, so I wandered down to watch the monkey in action. He flung himself about the trees for a bit and scrabbled for food. Then he started glancing at me with those big funny disconcertingly human eyes, then flung himself about a bit more. Then he crawled onto a rock near me. Cautiously I stretched out my arm a little closer to him. I thought he would probably try to bite me, but I had my rabies shots and besides he was the family's monkey and I have incredible reflexes (not really though). Instead of biting me, though, he grabbed my arm and wrapped his arms around it, like he was hugging it, and pressed his face to it gently, almost like he was kissing it.

I was kind of ecstatic and sat there a while longer, watching him wander off and jump around some more. After a while the señora who lived at the house came up to him and removed the bungee cord, so the monkey was free to move around where he liked. At first I had thought the cord was so he couldn't escape and run away, but actually I think it was just so he didn't crawl though the tourist's bags and steal things (I saw him trying this). The monkey came straight up to me, hugged my arm again and then crawled into my lap. He then stayed there for the next ten minutes, sometimes scrabbling for food and sometimes flopping relaxedly. Ohhhhh he was so great! He let me scratch and pat him and he was so sweet and soft and small I thought I was in love.

Our tour guide Frank called us all together and told us it was time to move on, and by that stage the monkey (Marty I believe he was called. Or perhaps Ma-Ti, like in Captain Planet) hopped his way out of my lap. The señora picked him up and picked up one of his paws to make him wave goodbye to me. "Ciao, Señorita!" she said. "Ciao, amigo!" I said to the monkey, and reached out an arm to wave. But he grabbed it and hugged it again and then climbed on my shoulder and nuzzled into my neck. Everyone laughed indulgently and the woman went to gently remove him and he curled his tail around my arm to make it harder for her to pull him off. Unfortunately she eventually succeeded and we were at last to be parted. But I guess that what I am trying to say is: Mark, it is over between us. I am sorry. But I have met someone else.

More details of the journey to Macchu Picchu coming soon! Unless I get lazy and can't be bothered! Quite possible.

Love love love
Lion

You make me feel like blogging, I wanna blog the night away

Not really or I would blog more often. But I am waiting for Ro to do whatever it is she does so I am here in a net café and suppose I should update this.

Weeeeellllllll! We are in Cusco, our most touristy destination so far. Actually I really like it! It is a beautiful city and although there is a McDonalds around the main plaza, it is so discreet that I didn't even realise what kind of establishment it was until someone told me. The Plaza de Armas is an absolute cracker - Peru seems to do plazas quite well. The only problem is that you are constantly attacked by people offering massages, meals and cheap paintings. There are so many people selling so many paintings and they are so cheap that Ro suspects they are paint-by-numbers jobs executed by slave children and I suppose there is no reason why she might be wrong.

FACT ABOUT PERU! They looove Aerosmith.

We went to the Nazca lines and despite my initial reservations (not so much about the lines but about spending money; four months of travel have not cooled off my inherent stinginess) they were grrrrreat. Really they were. The plane made both of us feel a little sick though; I was quite pleased it was only a half hour flight. But apart from the surprising clutch of nausea it was grand. The spaceman! So creepy! The hummingbird! So elaborate! The tree! Less interesting but aesthetically pleasing. In fact I bought a little wire-cut necklace of it from an old hippie who told me that he was a true artisan and all the other guys running jewellery stalls were hacks. He showed me how he cut the necklaces which was genuinely quite impressive.

I also bought a Nazca Lines tourist shirt which Ro has since been mocking me for(my thriftiness apparently does not extend to vile tourist parephernalia). Personally I think it is very cool. It has pictures of the Inca astrological calendar on it, which is a bit silly because it has since been debunked that the Nazca lines were supposed to represent the calendar, but I rather think this adds to its charm.

That afternoon... we went swimming! There was a pool at our hostel. It was such a great hostel, in fact, that we are now staying at their sister hostel in Cusco. Also very nice (probably not as nice but the people are good.) And we made friends with a wacky Englishman called Rob who works as an English teacher in Saudi Arabia and played Connect 4 with him. I was amazing at it to be honest. Ro also managed to make the boy who worked at the hostel fall in love with her so nice one, Ro.

Oh but the bus to Cusco was a NIGHTMARE. Probably the worst bus trip yet. It was supposed to leave Nazca at 8 but we were informed it wouldn't leave until 9. This was actually good news because we had just realised that we left our bathers and towels back at the hostel, so we ran back to get them. We didn't eat dinner because they usually give that to you on the bus, but they screwed up and didn't get me a vegetarian meal (even though it said on my ticket, 'VEGETARIAN'. So dinner was a miniscule packet of plain potato chips until morning, when I recieved a chemical-tasting sliver of orange cake and half a foam cup of lukewarm black instant coffee. "Breakfast," apparently.

I couldn't eat dessert either because it was a cup full of gelatinous crap (possibly jelly). Ro wasn't very tempted by hers either and left it on her tray. Later it fell off the tray and much much later, twelve hours later in fact, I found it for her! In the lining of the lovely felt hat I had bought for Mark in La Paz.

There was a poor dear little thing sitting behind us, about four years old, who had been on the bus since Lima. She didn't cry and hardly whimpered but periodically vomited while her mum held up a plastic bag and sprinted off to the toilet with it. It was a really nauseating journey, actually. Ro and I were both quite motion sick and people seemed to be rushing to the loo left right and centre. We were on the top (most overnight buses are double deckers, and the plebs like us go on the top) but when we got out of the bus for a wee break there was a monumental pile of vomit sitting outside the toilet. One must train oneself not to require said facility on these journeys.

We took some Phenergan which helped with the motion sicky and got me four hours of sleep. Shame the trip was thirteen hours long, really. We were meant to arrive at 10 - in fact I've heard of people doing the trip in 9 hours - but we didn't get to the station until 12.30. Then we got absolutely flooded by taxi touts, who are a bit dodgy in Peru, so you have to check their lanyard thingy. We were with two other Aussies and a legitimate yet sneaky taxidriver tried to charge us 20 soles ($8?) to go to the station. But soon enough he seemed willing enough to take us there for 8 soles.

THEN our room at the hostel wasn't ready! Was a bit annoying but didn't matter too much since I was so hungry I couldn't speak by this stage. So we went to a café that served all-day breakfast and I ate scrambled eggs and drank coffee and felt magnificent (comparatively). Anyway, I guess that was the end of the tearful journey and things were much happier from then on in.

We haven't done much in Cusco yet! We'll go to Macchu Picchu soon OBVS. It's a good place just to wander though, and there are an obscene amount of markets. There is some really great international food, too. We went to a brilliant Israeli restaurant the other day. 10 soles ($4) for a semi-set menu - I got hummus and pita, falafel with fries and salad, a drink and a pancake with dulce de leche all of which was brilliantly tasty. Oh and they gave us a starter of bread and dip too as if all that other stuff wasn't enough. And there is a pretty famous place called Jack's that you have to queue up to get into, but the food is great, the milkshakes excellent and the servings obscenely generous (I couldn't finish my meal, which typically is not a common scenario in my life).

There are many humourous tourists here, up to their eyeballs in khaki for no apparent reason (disguising themnselves from the llamas I suppose) with enormous SLRS just waiting to be liberated from their ostentatiously knifeable shoulder straps. In fact I've never been in such a touristy place in my life. There are lots of little alleyways full of gringo hangouts and the occasional person offering to sell you marijuana. Apparently they offer cocaine too, but it hasn't happened to me yet. In fact the only times anyone's offered drugs have been when I'm hanging out with someone of the male persuasion. Perhaps in Peruvian culture it is considered unladylike to snort stimulants from a toilet seat. Anyway, I find the sells slightly amusing as they tend to come from people whose main line of work is touting. "Dinner amigos! Very good, very cheap! Happy hour! I give you free Pisco Sour!" And then sotto voce, "I sell you weed, good weed for you amigo."

I have so much crap in my pack and I don't want to get rid of ANY of it. Travelling is traumatic. I have two pairs of silly trousers now. And the top section of my back is overflowing with ludicrous gifts. Oh well. When I get back to BA I can get rid of my cold weather gear. I guess.

Man. Who needs a drink?

Love love love
Lion

from Arequipa to Nazca to see a few lines

sometimes overnight buses are a blissful and cheap way to time-travel between cities: get on a bus in Mendoza, go to sleep, blank out the next 12 hours and wake up in Córdoba. awesome!

then there are those times when they are a sleepless 10 hours spent listening to the man behind you snoring, periodically bumping against the freezing window, feeling motion-sick as the bus winds through the mountains in the dark, eating crap food (that you´re vaguely worried will make you sick; how long ago was this beef cooked?!) and then being unceremoniously deposited on the streets of a strange new town in pre-dawn darkness and trying to sort through the mobs of hassling taxi drivers and folk selling rooms in their hostels. ¨amiga, amiga!¨

luckily, we booked a brilliant hostel for Nazca: they said (in spanish that i half-understood in my bleary state), ¨the beds you have booked are still occupied, but here, in the meanwhile you can have this room (worth twice the one you booked): feel free to sleep in the beds, use the soap (soap! we got hotel soap!) and generally mess it up until your actual room is ready at midday.¨

so we slept til midday. ahhhhhh. thanks guys.

so why are we in Nazca? well firstly because I wanted to see the Nazca lines and Lion agreed to come to see them with me, and secondly because we are then going to Cuzco for Macchu Picchu and the road from Arequipa to Cuzco is blocked by ¨manifestaciónes¨ (protests) and there are no bus companies running that route except really dodgy ones that might apparently dump you miles outside Cuzco and force you to hitchhike whilst protesters are throwing rocks at you (one story we heard from another traveller). alternately, they might take backstreets around the protests and construct makeshift bridges of wood for the buses to cross (our friend Martin´s experience). so while that does sound like a fun adventure (except for the rock part), we figured the Nazca route might be a bit easier.

it´s quite odd to be finally going to Macchu Picchu, one of the supposed ¨must see¨, ¨this will be the highlight of your trip¨ destinations. not to be ¨one of those people¨, but I have a feeling my highlights are going to be things like the time we went into a step-back-in-time diner in the middle of nowhere in Chile, truly resembling a scene in a Western, where all the customers were drunk old men enjoying their siesta a little too much. but I am sure that Macchu Picchu will be great, and I will have to admit to being a pretentious jerk and eat my words within days.

by the way: I did get a bit sick in Chivay, which was boring, but I got better real quick and because we had to stay an extra night we ended up seeing a pretty big street party: the folks of Chivay were having the 184th anniversary of their town. other than donkeys and llamas and dancers galore, we saw a giant sculpture of bamboo being constructed during the day, which we took to be some kind of street art until Lion realised the entire thing was covered in live fireworks. (there were also a few extra firewords on the ground, which small children were playing with.)

we heard it set off at midnight and rushed out onto the street (look, I´d like to say we partied with the locals all night and all that, but guys, there was still ice in the gutters at midday the next day: it was TOO COLD). anyway, picture spinning wheels of fire, spraying sparks all over the streets, and cheering crowds. it was WACKY. so something good came of the lettuce-incident!

we have 45 days left now!! ...oh my goodness, that´s not very long at all!!

Ro is Sick of Peru

Oh wait I mean she is sick in Peru. Yes it is true, the Deital Department of Health and Hiking has once more blighted us. We have made our way to the APPARENTLY breathtaking Colca canyon. Yesterday we arrived in Chivay after ascending on the old bussy-wuss to a monumental 4700m (Chivay itself is only 3700, though. Still high enough for me to get a spot of head pain.)

Upon arrival we caught a cab to the hot springs just out of town. Well, not hot springs but hot pools. They weren't quite hot enough for my liking but they were pretty good, surrounded by cliffs. One thing that really tickled my fancy was the woman coming around with a menu in a plastic sleeve. So you could order drinks and food to ingest whilst luxuriating in the thermal baths! Hel-lo! That sort of thing is not usually my bag, but the fact that I could actually afford it made it more my bag. So I went craaazy and got a Cuba Libre. Ro went insaaane and got a Sangria. Ugh. Nightmare. The woman came and bought them to us with a little bendy straw in each and it was quite a thrill.

Since we were already firmly ensconsced in the lap of luxury we decided to go hogwild and get a half-hour massage too! Talk about hedonism! Ro was massaged by a nice friendly looking Peruvian woman in a comfortably-fitting t-shirts and cotton trousers. I was massaged by a sweaty gentleman who appeared to be an amateur boxer, attired in a gorgeous shiny singlet that stretched invitingly over his magnificent gut and a pair of red budgie-smugglers that might have been a decent fit for Harry Potter. But he was very professional. And the entire exercise, baths and rum and all included, worked out to about $20 each, which is really not so bad.

But thennn we woke up nice and early today, all ready to hike our way along the fine old canyon, when Ro woke up sick! We blame the lettuce. Sheesh guys, are you just trying to punish me for buying a walking pole or something? Or perhaps this additional blight is because I accidentally said ¨shite¨ when I bumped into some holy table in the delightful convent in Arequipa the other day. (A woman with red hair gave me a filthy look, but why? At least I had the decency to Gaelicise it.) Eeeeeeentonces (that is Spanish for ¨So.¨ A little touch of culture for you) we might just catch an ol' autobus to the canyon instead.

Oh by the way. Ro and Greg both kindly informed me that the reason no one comments much is because it is a labyrinthine and near-impossible process so I ´spose you are all forgiven.

Where's the love y'all? I don't know.
Caro

copacabana, running out money and heading for Peru

Hey all!

So after our last post Caro and I both got sick within a day of one another (not very sick, just enough to have to each spend a day in bed) and by the time we were better we were sick of La Paz and didn´t want to wait around another couple of days getting our strength back and getting everything sorted out again, so we didn´t go hiking on the Choro trail. This is still a source of some misery to me.

However, we went to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca instead and that was lovely.

We caught a minibus (another one) from La Paz. After about two hours´ driving, the minibus stopped next to Lake Titicaca and the rest of the bus got out and wandered off. ¨They must all be getting off at this town,¨ we thought, remaining on the bus. Not so. Two armed sailors (Bolivia has a Navy, and yet not a coastline) wandered up to our bus and indicated that we should get out. After a little bantering in Spanish we established that they wanted us to catch a ¨ferry¨ (a small rickety motorboat, through the wooden boards of which we could see water below) to the other side of the lake, and that the minibus would meet us over there. ¨Um... how?¨ we wondered. The mystery was soon solved when we saw the minibus drive onto a similarly rickety wooden barge. We all made it across okay.

Copacabana in Bolivia is not the Copacabana that the song is about... that place is in Brazil. Nevertheless it´s a fairly peaceful town on the bank of what appears to be an ocean but is actually high-altitude Lake Titicaca.

There is an island in this lake, called Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) which most people catch a ferry to from Copacabana. However since we missed the Choro trek, Caro and I and our new friend Martin (from Germany, who we met on the minibus from La Paz) decided to hike 17 kilometers to another town on the edge of the peninsula, and hire a motorboat from there to take us to the island.

The trek was beautiful; it went along the shoreline of Lake Titicaca most of the way, past all these little farming villages with donkeys and llamas and pigs and cows and sheep and dogs gazing at us from beside the dirt road.

Halfway along we saw a ¨floating island¨. Way back in the day, some folk in Bolivia and Peru used to live on floating islands built from reeds, fishing for trout all day. Supposedly some people still live like this but it is difficult to know whether this is true or not because all the ¨floating islands¨ advertised by tour companies are now just (quite literally) built for tourists. But since we were walking past, we went to have a look anyway. It was kind of cool, I guess. They were using empty plastic drink bottles, tied together, to support the raft, as I could see through the reed fronds hanging down. I don´t think that´s quite traditional but I suppose it´s pretty sensible. The guy running us, in answer to Martin´s question, said that he lived there because ¨there is great fresh fish and the tourists come to see the raft¨. We appreciated his honesty.

Catching a little motorboat from the end of the peninsula was pretty fun - again, we could see the water through the wooden planks, but we made it across okay. Our driver (who saw us walking along the road and ran out to offer the services of his boat) dropped us at the island, not at the usual landing bay, but at what appeared to be a small cliff. ¨There is a little path up there,¨ he told us, ¨You can walk to the town from there. Twenty minutes.¨

Forty hard-slog minutes later, we did in fact reach the town. And then we had the new dilemma of trying to find something to eat, exhausted after hiking all day (hiking at altitude is kind of tough by the way) because everything was closed - the locals were having a fiesta. This means they were all down at the plaza in their Sunday suits (men) and shiny party dresses (women), swigging from beer bottles and dancing around drunkenly. But we found an open restaurant eventually and boy howdy was it good to eat!

My bed had a window at the end of it. Miraculously, I somehow awoke in time to watch the sun rise over the lake without getting out of bed. It was pretty great.

We walked around Isla del Sol a bit the next day and then caught a ferry ¨back to Copacabana¨. This meant, we discovered, first being deposited at the other end of the island for an hour and a half, and being forced to pay 5 Bolivianos to get off the boat. Not that good of a time for Caro and I, since we were once again starving (and badly needed lunch), but also because we had run out of cash. There is no ATM on the island, obviously, but what we didn´t realise before we left La Paz is that there is no ATM on Copacabana either. We knew we were going to be pushing it with money, but after having to pay that 5Bs we had to borrow money from Martin for lunch.

It would be okay, we reckoned, because we´d be back to Copacabana before 5pm and we could get a cash advance from the bank. Well, after this ¨now you have an hour and a half to wait on the island¨ that we were not expecting from the ferry, we did not get back to Copacabana until after 5pm and the bank was shut. It did not open again until 2.30pm the next day.

Caro and I spent the intervening time living on a few emergency US dollars hidden in Caro´s pack, about $5 worth of Chilean currency I was planning on taking back to Australia as a souvenier (changed for a pretty poor rate, since we were miles from Chile), and some torn Bolivian bank notes that we´d been hoarding for a while (we begged the girl at our hostel for some sticky tape to fix them up again - bingo, another 40 Bolivianos! magic!)

Anyway, the bank eventually opened, I eventually got through the inevitably huge queue and we eventually got enough money to pay for our accomodation and leave town!

After a slightly hellish night bus and bording crossing we are now in Arequipa, Peru. Hurray! It is already clearly richer than Bolivia here, which for some reason feels really strange. For example:

• People selling empanadas (yummm) and fruit juice (yummm) and magazines (muy interesante!) are selling them from shops, rather than little trolleys on the street;
• I haven´t seen any little old ladies in traditional dress selling piles of mandarins/bananas/eggs laid out on cloth on the road;
• Haven´t (yet) seen any super-dodgy looking markets selling super-dodgy looking food;
• Even the advertisements on television look richer!!

And all kinds of other small things. Hell, even the beggars look richer! Also, people are taller and more European-looking. Some of them are taller than us!! Wiieerd.

We're not getting any Yunga

Hey hello gringos. I hope everyone is going well?

I am sort of curious about how actually reads this blog. Word on the street is that there are more than two of you, but I am not certain whether this is. If you read you should comment. It makes us post more when we feel we are not alone in the universe.

I had a great great great birthday! Thank you for asking. Ro and I went for a wonderful old hike down into a valley in Coroico. There was a river at the bottom thick with butterflies, including those enormous bright blue ones fringed with black around the edges of their wings that you think only exist in documentaries or something. A butterfly even landed on my shoe and chilled out there for a while which I am pretty sure means good luck. It was a lovely little patch of river; we only saw two other people and found a delightful watering hole to swim in, and then just lazed around in the sun.

The walk back up to town was kind of tough. It involved a spot of bushbashing our way up a steep hill. But it was worth every second of it. And it was a perfect day, probably the sunniest and warmest birthday I have ever had.

We were pretty beat by the time we climbed back up to town, so we went straight to Cafetál, a hostel restaurant that apparently does the best food in Coroico. I myself can only report on the quinoa casserole, but I can unreservedly say that it was extremely tasty. We also befriended a very nice girl, a student of art history from Amsterdam wearing a red poncho, and invited her to join us at our table. We had heard from someone in town that there was a fiesta on the top of the mountain that night. So we asked her if she wanted to check it out with us, which she did.

It was a very odd sort of celebration. When we arrived there were cars and taxis parked everywhere. The top of the hill was mainly bare, except for satellite towers and a church. And obviously cars and taxis, and lots of people, and little stalls, and a band playing pachanga music (this rubbishy genre that I truly hate, not entirely dissimilar to Michael Crawford singing Cat Empire songs, or maybe Ricky Martin's ¨Cup of Life¨ on repeat play) on a little stage.

Coroico is a wonderful place, one of my favourites that we have been to. It is lush and green, and we stayed at a beautiful hostel. The sort of place that calls itself an ¨Eco Reserve,¨ but unlike most ¨Ecotourism¨ it only cost $7 a night for a beautiful spacious double room, with enormous windows through which you could see hummingbirds and big squirrels and mysterious enormous rodents.

But nooowwwwww we are back in La Paz! Staying in a slightly less gringo part of town. Before we were on Jiminez, which is so gringo that stores in the surrounding streets have everything written in Hebrew to support the outrageous volume of Israelis in alpaca jumpers.

Tomorrow we hike again! A nice little three day baby called the El Choro trail. It leaves from high up in the mountains, almost 4700m, but then runs downhill, almost down to Coroico again in fact. We were both a bit worried that it might be a bit tough on our knees, all that walking downhill. So today I bought a walking stick and I think now I can officially announce that I am the sort of person who hikes! Congratulations me. And it was only $20 (a pair of poles is usually five times that amount, I don't know what kind of jerk blows that kind of money on glorified freakin' dowelling rods.) So those mountains should WATCH OUT.

One wacky thing about La Paz is that there are some quite decent restaurants of the Asian persuasian. Sorry, I will never say ¨Asian persuasion¨ again. Or will I? Before we went to Coroico I ate some pretty rad tenpura at an Asian fusion place (they accidentally served me shrimp at first which was odd since I ordered ¨Tempura de Verduras¨ off the ¨Menu Vegetariana¨ but boy were they apologetic when I embarrassedly pointed out that I don't eat seafood), and last night I got pad Thai at another Asian fusian place which was even better, and then tonight I ate tofu yakisoba at a modest yet enchanting Japanese place! BELIEVE IT OR NOT. Mannn it's great, being able to afford to dine out.


We'll be back on Saturday. Just in case you are wondering.


Love love love
Lion

wacky transport day

hello everyone! let me tell you about our wacky transport day. it was one of those days where you spend most of it thinking, ¨boy we are definitely not in australia right now¨.

after la paz, we decided to go to a little town called coroico, a few hours and about 1500m down the mountain. most gringos do this journey by taking a mountain bike tour down ¨the world´s most dangerous road¨ but Lion wasn´t keen and I couldn´t be bothered so we just took the bus.

the ¨bus station¨ was apparently in a suburb of la paz called villa fatima, so we took a taxi. (you can´t fit on a bolivian bus with a backpack.) the taxi driver drove reasonably smoothly, except that at one point he took a wrong turning and thus decided to reverse approximately two blocks to get back to the turning. the rest of the traffic didn´t seem too impressed, but then again people honk for no apparent reason pretty much constantly here so maybe they didn´t mind?

(as an aside, it´s ridiculously cheap and fast to get a taxi in south america at any time, in any location. what´s wrong with our home city that taxis are so difficult?)

anyway, the bus station was an old service station that had been gutted out, and the buses were an eclectic collection of minibuses with cramped seating, each with a very pushy little old lady (bolivia does pushy old ladies VERY well) racing around the grounds yelling the destination and price of their minivan. as we arrived in the midst of this in our taxi, we were not even out of the car when we were accosted by about seven of these ladies yelling, ¨COROICO AMIGA? QUINCE BOLIVIANOS AMIGA! CORIOCO AMIGA? EN ESTE MOMENTO AMIGA¨

this kind of aggressive salesmanship happens almost everywhere in bolivia, and it´s not just targeted at gringos (well, maybe a bit more at gringos sometimes, but the minibus ladies yell at EVERYONE) - so we are a bit used to it now. however, as we were standing there with our packs surrounded by all these ladies I realised they all a foot shorter than us, and so rather than feeling confronted I couldn´t help finding the whole thing a bit funny.

anyway, we chose our Señora (pretty much randomly), and the driver strapped our packs to the top of the minibus as I watched nervously and wondered if they would make it to Coroico (they did), and then we piled in and waited.

Señora, who had assured us that the van was full and that it would be leaving ¨in este momento¨ (i.e. right away) ran off to recruit more customers. I wasn´t that surprised. (the minibuses don´t really have a departure time, they just leave when they are full of people. this works well in a busy city like la paz. however catching the minibus on a slow day, we later discovered, can be a loooong process). luckily, it didn´t take her long to find passengers this time, so when finally the microbus was nice and uncomfortably full we departed.

Lion was sitting in the front, on the gearbox, between the driver and a bolivian man whom (she would later discover) was bus-narcoleptic and kept falling asleep on her shoulder. to his credit though, he held her guitar for her. being in the front, she got a nice view of the driving style, which consisted of the driver crossing himself and muttering a short prayer each time he went to overtake. (but he was a pretty good driver really, most of the time he only drove on the wrong side of the road when there was nothing else coming.)

thus we headed out of the city (past a seedy love motel called ¨hotel paraíso, 24 horas entrada¨), and through a police checkpoint. every police checkpoint in bolivia is accompanied by rows and rows of stalls selling biscuits, drinks, fried chicken etc. the sellers come up to the bus window, holding armfuls of stuff they think you might want. or, as we discovered from watching everyone else, you can also shout your order to them. then they will race back to the stall and grab the bottle of water or whatever and try to get back to the bus before it departs again.

a group of young bolivian guys on our bus asked for a bottle of coke, but they were a little late about it and our bus started to take off just as the señorita passed the bottle through the window (and before they´d paid her). so she had to run after us, and the bus was through the checkpoint by then so they had to ask the driver to stop. ¨un momento, no pagé la señorita!¨. no, mate, you didn´t! by the time she had caught up to the bus she was pretty pissed off and NOT impressed by their fumbling around for change, which they still hadn´t found. ¨cinco bolivianos POR FAVOR!¨ she said again (not very politely despite the ¨por favor¨), rolling her eyes and panting.

anyway, then we were finally off onto the highway. Lion and I had heard it was going to be a four-hour trip, so we were pleased to see a sign that said it was only 82km to Coroico. ¨great!¨ we said to one another, ¨it won´t be far at all!¨ however, we were less reassured when the next sign said 97km. and then when the next sign (about five minutes down the road) said 60km, we started thinking maybe something wasn´t quite right. from here, the signage went back to 80km, down to 40km, back up to 65km, down to 40km, back up to 45km, and then was still saying 40km twenty minutes later.

the journey took two and a half hours, in the end. I still have no idea how far it was.

the most humourous thing about this journey for me (there were a lot of competitors) was the narcotics checkpoint. we saw the sign indicating we´d be reaching such a checkpoint in 500 metres, and looked at each other worriedly (NOT because we were carrying any drugs... we just weren´t looking forward to the wait, and having our backs searched, etc). but that happened was that the driver passed a list of the passengers´ names (which had never, at any point, been checked against any kind of ID) and the minibus sailed on through.

pretty sweet huh? be nice if customs in Australia was that easy!

we have since been through this checkpoint a second time, and I swear that what I saw was the ¨narcotics officer¨ passing a big yellow envelope to the driver, rather than the other way round? nooo idea what was going on there.

anyway now we are in Coroico, safe and sound! and it is lovely. it is in the Yungas, which is a mountain range covered in green sub-tropical rainforest complete with hummingbirds and big colourful butterflies and stunning views and a very, very cold river. there are all kinds of other stories to tell about Coroico but I am out of time. we went for a hike on lion´s birthday yesterday, which was quite difficult and also quite stunning.

anyway now I have to go and meet our new friend from the netherlands for dinner. maybe soon we will go on a three-day hike. good times!

hope you are all well!! xxx

Chompas y Guitarras

Let me tell you about the hostel we are staying at. It is called: Hostal Cactus. I really like cacti so this is a pretty good name. Inside it is painted white and a pastel cupcake green, and it is full of potted cacti and also of gorgeous 70s paraphenalia such as a plastic parrot mobile. It is laid out like a little old motel, with two stories running down long corridors, and there is also a little roof garden with a kitchen.

They screwed up our booking so we are sharing a matrimonial suite. I have no idea why it is called a ¨matrimonial suite¨ unless your idea of sexy times involves a toilet door that doesn't close, fecal/blood stains on the walls, and a double bed that dents in the middle so that you are forced either to spend the night on tenterhooks, hovering on the edge of the bed, or roll into the centre for some forced snuggling. I suppose the last one is a bit romantic.

The showers and toilets are all in one so you can't have a shower without potentially making trouble for someone in need of a urgent wee, and they are coated with wires so I thought I was going to be electrocuted for the duration. They also have doors with nice big gaps up the top and bottom, basically like saloon doors, so that all someone would have to do to catch me in a state of nude squalor would be to stand on tiptoes and not squint their eyes shut.

In other news, yesterday we went to a Moroccan place, creatively called ¨Marrakesh,¨ for lunch. The woman who served us, who appeared also to be the owner, was odd. She was singing along to a CD in a husky yet tuneless voice and with a tremendous passion. She also flung her arms out and spun around dramatically a few times. When she brought out my drink she attempted to wrap a napkin around it, but failed depressingly. She then beamed at us and serenaded us with the chorus of the song in a most theatrical manner: ¨Mujeres!!!!¨ (that means, ¨Women!!!¨)

¨She's drunk,¨ I hissed at Ro, when she wandered off.
¨What?¨ said Ro. ¨Really?¨
¨Nah, I dunno,¨ I said. ¨She's a bit weird though.¨

But then we noticed she was drinking a large bottle of beer. The cook caught us looking at her and rolled her eyes. I raised my eyebrows at the cook and mimed slugging back a large glass of alcohol. She grimaced and nodded. And so the rest of the lunch was spent being assaulted us with seemingly nonsensical Spanish, the drunken mujer happily ignoring our numerous pleas of ¨No entiendo, lo siento.¨

Despite this misfortune, I am in magnificent spirits. Why?! you might ask. Because... WE HAVE GUITARS! Oh oh oh man I am so happy about this. I have a little ¨traveller's guitar,¨ as they call them around here. It's a funny little triangular thing. It cost about $90, which may make you think ¨holy crap EXPENSIVO¨ but I think it is a pretty good bargain. For one, I bought it off an awesome guy called Pedro, and I bought it from his workshop as opposed to one of the crappy street stalls. He was a crackin' musician from what I could tell, and he was very fond of his instruments, and they were much nicer than most of the street stall ones we played, not to mentioned better priced. So far as silly little guitars go, this is a nice one. And Ro got one toooooooo! A full-sized puppy, also from Pedro. He was a good friend to us.

Plus, here is a really nice trick: when I get back to Australia I can sling it over my back, using my new embroidered travellin' guitar case which I purchased from a separate outlet for $8, and RIDE MY BIKE WITH A GUITAR. Now that is what I call awesome.

I also bought a stupid chompa (jumper) that I have been looking for absolutely everywhere. It is dip-dyed with a picture of a sun on it. I am so happy!

Love love love
Ms. Lion

Our Ladies of La Paz

Soooo we are still in Sucre. But not for long! Thank goodness. I was growing a little weary of it. Tonight we catch a bus to La Paz.

Still, we have had a pretty good time. The 25th of May went off pretty nicely. There were as many brass bands as you might have imagined. The afternoon was quiet though. We bought hats! When I was in Australia I lost both my cowboy hats. And I hate not having a cowboy hat. So I bought an amazing one off a woman sitting in the street with a rug full of silly hats. Ro bought one too, not a cowboy hat though. Gosssssssh I love hats. When I return to Australia I don't intend to be seen without one.

I didn't buy any fairy floss even though that was my big plan for the day. Disappointing. When it came down to it I just wasn't in the mood.

We had a wacky old night. First we went to Joy Ride, which is Sucre's official Gringo Café. There are quite a few competing for the honour but Joy Ride certainly deserves to own it despite their hopeful catchphrase ¨NO SOLO PARA GRINGOS¨. We danced to some sweet tunes for a while (actually they were awful tunes let's be honest) but then it shut at 2am! WHAT. Bolivia, you are letting down the nation of South America. We got laughed at for trying to go out at 3am in Argentina. Anyway, we didn't really know what to do after that but we befriended a gentleman originally from Kenya but now living in Bolivia, who lightheartedly insisted that he was a hustler and robbed banks for a living (actually he lived with his aunt and studied nursing), and he told us that there was a shisha bar that stayed open late.

Well, I don't smoke, and Ro doesn't smoke, but it was open so that was reason enough to go. It was almost deserted bar a group of some very giggly, sleepy looking folks who were almost horizontal in the corner. They kind of flapped their hands at us in an attempt to wave. Marijuana is as illegal here as it is in Perth, and the menu certainly didn't say anything about it, but regardless I suspect from their demeanour that they had been ingesting. We eschewed the opportunity to order a hookah of tobacco infused with vanilla or rose (actually rose sounds quite good now I think about it SHAME ABOUT THE TOBACCO) and instead nestled into the cushions for some deep and meaningful conversation. It was a pretty good time. Actually I almost fell asleep. It was quite late by then. But they didn't seem to mind.

That is pretty much all that we've done of interest lately. Today we went to the post office. It was a rush. I bought a shirt. We went to the laundry. We are feeling ready for La Paz.

Love love love
Lion

Sweet as Sucre

Here's something weird. When we were in Argentina we met a girl who seemed convinced that it was virtually impossible to get by as a vegetarian in Bolivia. ¨Well, people in Bolivia surely need to eat vegetables OCCASIONALLY, you might think¨ I suggested, ¨so perhaps I can occasionally buy a salad from a restaurant, or perhaps I can buy a vegetable in the markets once a week, or something along those lines, so as to maintain basic nutrition.¨ She maintained the satisfied disposition of someone deeply knowledgeable who is forced to consort with ignorant morons. ¨No, I don't think so,¨ she said.

I find it interesting that none the people who have said such things about Bolivia/Argentina/South America in general - there have been a few - have been vegetarians (although some have been ¨basically vegetarian¨ and have been ¨forced to eat meat¨ on occasion).

As it happens I think I have probably eaten better in Bolivia than anywhere else on the entire trip so far. The reason? Everything is so flippin' cheap that I can dine out every night if I want to. (I don't, interestingly enough, even though going to the supermarket is just as expensive. Even dining out grows a bit tiring after a while.) I have eaten some truly excellent meals here, and all for less than $10, which usually includes a drink and often a dessert. As to vegetarian options - well, the salads are actually substantial here and usually contain generous amounts of tasty things like baby corn, cheese and olives that are inevitably skimped upon in Australia. The tortillas - ahh, the tortillas. Tortillas in South America are usually of the Spanish variety rather than the Mexican one unless otherwise specified, i.e. a delicious eggy omelette/quiche/pie. They are wonderful with seasonal vegetables, or provolone and champignons, or papas fritas (believe me when I say that an omelette-with-french-fries may just about be the greatest thing you can ever have with your coffee on a Sunday morning, except maybe panqueques con dulce de leche, but really that's a better dessert.)

And let us not forget that Bolivia is the land of QUINOA! Boooyyy do I love quinoa. It is a wonderful grain containing ALL the essential amino acids that I love to cook with in Australia, only it costs $7 for a little box. Here, every menu is liberally riddled with quinoa soup, quinoa casserole, quinoa pie... The quinoa pie at the Bibliocafé is probably the best thing I've eaten since I've been here. With broccoli(!) and other vegetables and really tasty cheese (the cheese in Argentina and Chile is largely so flavourless and rubbery that I can hardly bother to eat it, which is saying something when it comes to me and cheese), it is truly a magical little terracotta pot of joy.

Another thing I'm crazy about is JUGO NATURALES. ¨JUGO¨ is pronounced sort of like how an American or stupid person might pronounce ¨HUGO¨ which I find very pleasing. I'm entirely smitten with JUGO DE FRUTILLA which is none other than STRAWBERRY JUICE! What a concotion! The marvellous thing is that, while one might pay about $6 for such a delightful beverage in Australia, here it is more like 6 Bolivianos. Which is about a dollar! BARGAIN.

Finally I would like to announce that I am a woman at last. The reason for this? I like olives! Congratulations are in order, I think. When I came to South America I had a lucky feeling that if I just gave it a go, maybe I would learn to enjoy this most mature of foodstuffs in time. But I had no idea it would happen so quickly! The last olive I ate in Australia was tolerable, I guess, but only just. It came from a woman sitting next to me at the Leonard Cohen concert who insisted I would like it, that it didn't taste like any other olive on earth. She was talking out of her pooter, it tasted exactly like an olive, but it was nice of her to share her food with me I guess so I shouldn't complain. Then a guy in Bariloche let me try one of his black olives and I kind of liked it. THEN in Mendoza I tried a green olive when I went on the wine tour with Rosie and Anna and BAM! Olive fever! That very night I bought a packet of them from the supermarket and I knew I was an adult. Olives here are super cheap and they are so good, with thick thick smoky skin that tastes of wine and incense. And they come with everything! On every menu! Like little green slivers of magic.

Soooo today I went up to the Sucre mirador with Ro, which is something we've been planning to do for some time but never getting around to, and it was beautiful! A fine view of the old town, but a bit of a hike was involved so we went to the Mirador Café to relax and read a little and I ordered a vegetable tortilla and jugo de frutilla and I enjoyed it so much that I kept thinking ¨I should really write a blog post about how much I enjoy the food here,¨

and then you will never guess what we did on the way home. WE WENT TO A CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL! It was pretty great. I tried a really odd frambuesa creme thingy ('frambuesa' means 'raspberry' in Spanish, and it's a good thing that jugo de frambuesa isn't widely available or I'd probably never return to Australia). Then Ro and I each tried a shot of sweet liqueurs - Ro tried the chocolate blanco and I the ¨leche de tigre,¨ which means ¨tiger milk.¨ ¨No es legal,¨ I admonished the boy at the counter sternly, but he informed me that it was not the milk of real tigers. The best thing about the liqueurs was that the shot glasses themselves were made of chocolate. GENIUS. And theeennn I tried a doughnut sort of thing. It was pretty average to be honest. But still... great?

The other good news is that we finally managed to go to a decent book exchange so I got rid of Jude the Obscure (pretty great but MISERABLE, sheesh, what an indictment on marriage) and Heart of Darkness (blergh) and got Islands in the Stream and freakin' War and Peace instead.

Anyway the point of this post, apart from the last couple of paragraphs I guess, is to tell all those people who don't know jack about vegetarianism to shut the hell up with their fear-mongering ignorant opinions and concentrate on boring other travellers with the superiority of their overpriced North Face backpack instead of pissing me off.

Love love love
CJ Lion

P.S. The internet café is playing ABBA songs in Spanish! It sounds exactly like ABBA though? I'm so confused!

Varsity Blues

Well boy howdy that was a weekend to be remembered! Last night especially was amaaazing (apparently "amaaazing" is something Australians say a lot).

Karen, a girl from Canberra/Spanish school who reminds me of Joan Cusack when she´s sober and Joan Cusack being drunk in School of Rock when she's drunk, invited us to go to a Britney Spears tribute show on Saturday. Daniel, a charming German gentleman also from school and our hostel also invited us to go to see an band at the Bibliocafè, a kind of hip restaurant/café just round the corner. We weren't quite sure what they were going to be like but Daniel had heard that they were an oi band - hi Mum and Dad, "oi" is a type of punk music that skinheads like. Both seemed deeply appealing so we rejoiced to discover that Britney was on at 7 and the band not until midnight.

Britney was disappointing. I can not pretend otherwise. It was not so much a ¨tribute show¨ as ¨a bunch of jerks dancing around to Britney songs.¨ I would have liked a singer or at least a little bit of mime. But it was still a rocking good time in the old Auditorio Pachamama.

One quite funny thing was that, before the gig, Karen and Ro each bought a bottle of Coke from an old women at a kiosk stall. She stressed that she would like them to return the bottle once they had finished drinking. They recycle glass bottles a lot here, which is of course great. "Certainly," they said. She stressed this sentiment three more times. "Of course," they said uneasily. Then we went into the show and halfway through a woman who appeared to be working at the venue came up to us. Did we have any Coke bottles, she asked, there was a little old lady waiting outside desperate to get them back. I have no idea how she found us ("FIND ME THE GRINGAS" I imagine she demanded) what she was planning to do with them.

After that we headed to the Bibliocafé for food and music, but not before stopping in at little sports stadium on the way to watch the end of a game of futsal between a couple of universities. Kind of like Uni Games. Futsal is just indoor football really. Which is just indoor soccer really, if you're Australian. There were only two minutes left of the game though.

The band was pretty boring to be honest. It turns out that they were not actually oi punk, but were called "Oi." In fact I think they might have been called "Oil." They were sort of like Karnivool only with a couple of guys switching between reed flutes, pan pipes, African drums and didgeridoos. They were not unskilled on the didgeridoo, I have to say. The rest of the band were relatively dull though. One amusing thing, though, was that Ro ordered a Café Moca. Which is evidently just a mocha. What they brought her, however, was a coffee with vodka. Black and instant. After she told the waiter and got her mocha, though, he had the audacity to charge us for this ridiculous International Roast con Vodka concoction, which was as violently foul as you might have predicted. It cost 20 big Bolivianos too! I felt obliged to attempt to drink some of it after that, but I didn't get far.

Sunday night was less of a blowout. We were completely exhausted and decided to have an early night. At 8.30 we were sitting around in the hostel and I was just getting ready to make myself a pre-bed Milo (they have Milo here! In Chile too. It's not quite the same, though), but then a nice Australian gent called Tommy came along and we got chatting about the futsal game we'd seen last night and decided to go see if there was anything else on at the stadium. We'd stay for 20 minutes or so, we thought. So we checked out the end of a men's basketball game, which wasn't overly interesting. Next was the women's basketball. We noticed a strange buzz in the stadium, and found ourselves seated next to the most hyperactive, excited group of students in the WORLD. They were chanting, yelling, jumping and dancing, taking their shirts off, waving flags, banging balloons and bottles together and drumming their feet on the ground to make noise. They had come from Santa Cruz and I absolutely could not fault their devotion to the Santa Cruz women's basketball team. As Tommy said, "I cannot believe that this is happening at a women's basketball game on a Sunday night."

At first there were about 20 of them but by the end of the game the numbers had swelled to around 35, and that didn't include us as we were swept into Mexican waves and chants of "Viva Santa Cruz". I've never felt such devotion to a sporting team before. It was completely awesome and I'm pleased to announce that our girls played a magnificent game, completely crushing Tarija or whoever the other team was. When the final buzzer went, the guys flooded the court and swept the girls into an embrace and they jumped around the court for a good ten minutes.

The really cool thing is that, just before the end of the match, Ro was befriended by a Santa Cruz gentleman who was sitting next to her, and he invited us to come hang out at the after party. And it was amazing! It was held in a big sporting yard... kind of thing... in the open air, with concrete bleachers all around, and there was a stage set up with a band playing, and men and women outside selling pizzas and fried food and this crazy drink in plastic cups made of vodka, milk and cinnamon and served hot. Which sounds awful but we decided to try just a cup and it was incredibly tasty.

Then we danced with our new friend Pierre and one of the girls from the basketball team came and dragged us over into the circle where all the Santa Cruz kids were dancing. And then Pierre pushed me into the circle to dance with this enormous guy who seemed to be, I don't know, Sports Captain or something, and it was kind of terrifying, but I busted some moves and they all cheered for me! Everyone was suuuuper nice, which was exciting because we are sometimes treated with suspicion by the ladies. I think they think we want to poach their men. Honestly you guys, it was like the end of an American varsity film, only BETTER. I kept thinking the camera was going to spiral above us and the credits would slam down over us to the tune of "All The Small Things" by Blink 182.

Now I want to go to Santa Cruz because everyone was so completely great. There were other schools at the after party but the Santa Cruz kids were definitely having the most fun. The best thing was that they had to go back to Santa Cruz that night so we still got to bed before midnight! Party on.

Ro is unwell at the moment. Please give her your love and maybe send her a nice email?

daylight savings and sucre ravings

So (as I learn from facebook), Perth rejected daylight savings yet again, huh? Classic Perth!

Right now we are in Sucre. Here are some things you should know about Sucre:

• it is the unofficial capital of Bolivia and the Supreme Court is here
• there are a ridiculous number of lawyers´ offices, which I suppose follows
• it is a UNESCO world heritage site and there is lots of lovely white spanish architecture
• a number of people here are addicted to absinthe and as a result there is a bit of a schizophrenia problem (obviously you can´t tell this by looking at the buildings)

But the best thing about Sucre is that on the 25th of May they are having a bicentenarial celebration of independence, and right now they are ¨warming up¨ for it. What this means in practice is that when you walk down the street, or are otherwise just minding your own business, you have (at any given moment) approximately a 50 percent chance of being suddenly accosted by:

• a marching brass band
• a group of folk dancers
• a lycra-clad bicycle race
• a street parade of extremely excited teenagers in various halloween-style costumes
• a man on stilts dressed as Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas
• a sudden firework or smoke bomb
• a terrible (or wonderful?) rock band consisting of electric-charango and panpipe players
• ...or any other such combination of the above.

Lion and I spend most of our time shaking our heads and saying, ¨What is the DEAL with this city?!¨ Turning up in Sucre at the moment is kind of like wandering into Perth during Prosh (minus the newspaper-sellers), except that the craziness here goes on for weeks.

We have been here since last Saturday night, doing a bit more Spanish study and fancying ourselves as people who might, one day in the very distant future, be able to speak fluently in another language (at the moment I oscillate between believing this is possible and believing it is a hopeless dream). But vale la pena (it is worth it) to try and learn anyway, because it´s actually pretty fun!

It has also been v. rejuvenating to stay here for a while and settle in a bit, because before that I don´t think we´d stayed anywhere for more than five days since Bariloche?! Gosh, how long ago was that, a month and a half? Two months? It´s been good to see so many places, but I was getting a bit sick of all the moving on!

Lion and I had our three-month travelling anniversary on Sunday. That is ... such a long time! Also, it´s halfway through our trip. We didn´t do very much, just cheers´d with jugo de naranja (orange juice) glasses at breakfast and then proceeded to get horrendously homesick for the next couple of days. (But don´t worry, we´re hells of perky again now!)

Our next stop will be La Paz, probably on Tuesday... where I am going to buy a guitar!

Tonight we are going to see a Britney Spears tribute concert (which, I would like to clarify, was not my idea) with another Australian chica from Spanish class, and then maybe we´re going to see a SKA/punk band afterwards with a German guy from our hostel. Looks like an action-packed night in Sucre!

Altitude Lovesickness

Righto so it has come to my attention that neither of us have written about the crossing into Bolivia yet, and since it was one of the most spectacular things we have done all trip one of us should probably do so. Frankly I'm not sure either of us is going to do it any justice, but if either of us is it is certainly going to be me and not Ro so I suppose I had better give it a whirl for everyone's sake. It is going to be long so, you know, go make yourself a cup of coffee or something.

Man, it was completely stellar. A righteous good time. I absolutely recommend the trip to anyone in the vague area, and the company we went with - Pamela Tours - was basically without fault. Our driver Orlando didn't speak any English (unless he was amusing himself with a very cunning prank) but he was helpful and courteous and a fine driver. Not that I'd know. The food and the accommodation was better than I was expecting (the toilets were awful) and I enjoyed both thoroughly. No breakdowns and no food poisoning, which so far as I can tell puts it in at least the top 5% of all tours run across the flats.

The first day wasn't all that salt-themed to be honest. We headed off in a minibus around eight in the morning and after an hour or so arrived at the Bolivian border. This first hour involved a reasonable ascent and I drank a great deal of water so as to ensure I would not grow dehydrated at altitude. I thought myself very sensible at the time, but combined with the diuretic effect of Diamox I was absolutely desperate for a wee by the time we hit the border. ¨Thank god,¨ I thought when we arrived, ¨a border crossing, a fine place to go to the toilet.¨ I didn't consider the fact that the Bolivian border crossing would probably be a little bit less schmicko than the Chilean and Argentine crossings with their fancy pants ¨x-ray machines¨ and ¨security¨ and ¨toilets.¨ It was basically just a tiny brick hut. They didn't seem to give a damn what you brought into the country, in fact the only reason they seemed to exist was so that you could get a stamp on your passport and thus be permitted to reenter Chile.

Long story short I was forced to search frantically around the DESERT for a place to relieve my torment. The only thing I could see was a sort of deserted looking tiny brick hut. ¨Could I go behind that do you think?¨ I asked my travel companions. ¨It's a HOUSE,¨ they said, looking at me in disgust. Eventually I found a mound that provided enough decency to stop me getting shot for public exposure but not enough to hide me from the numerous jeeps that lumbered past, faces glued to the windows (I probably made that last bit up).

Anyway this is supposed to be a story about the salt flats, not my bladder. Sooooooo we transferred into a Jeep with our travelling companions, Jen and Trin from Canada and Stephanie and Oliver from France. PS Did I mention that I love the desert? It is so beautiful. Actually the first few moments in Bolivia were not overly beautiful. I kept thinking of Moriarty´s ¨I don´t think you should go to Bolivia Caroline, it looks really bad in Quantum of Solace.¨ You were right Moriarty!... BUT NOT FOR LONG. Soon the landscape became all wonderful and red and terracotta coloured and the sky was enormous and blue and the mountains were striped with glorious golden shades. We saw some pretty great things. Lagoons that were named for their colours, like the Laguna Verde and the Laguna Blanco. We had heard that you couldn't tell the difference but I guess we got lucky because we could! The coolest was the red lagoon, which was all full of flamingos and surrounded by big old llamas with pompoms on their head, the ridiculous sweet things.

We saw one of the rock deserts that had inspired Salvador Dali, though only from a distance. It was sort of cool but not really that interesting. We saw geysers! Not the shooting hot water in the air type, but the bubbling hotpots of sulfuric water and mud. Vaguely cool although I was sort of worried at this point because my middle finger was turning yellow. It was cold outside.

It was a cruisy day. We arrived at the hotel (NOT ACTUALLY A HOTEL be warned, but less primitive than I had expected. EXCEPT THE TOILETS) really early. So we had lunch and I had a little read and a little chillout sess and then it was time... for afternoon tea! Man do I love afternoon tea, I drank tea and ate galletitas (little biscuits) and it was great. Just when we'd decided we were done with afternoon tea and were thinking about whipping out a deck of cards, they bought out dinner. Sheesh! They gave us some pretty great vegetable soup and bread. Luckily I wasn't souper (oh ho ho) hungry after the whole afternoon tea thing, because dinner was a platter of fried chicken, potato fries and fried banana. When we talked to the other group that went with our company they said that they only got the chicken and chips. Jen and Trin suspect the cook picked up a bunch of bananas that they left on the table after lunch and decided to roll with it. Oh well.

By this stage we were exhausted. It was about 8:30. Oh well, again. We went to bed. But not without... sleepover chitchat! Turns out we got on like a house on fire with our new Canadian friends Jen and Trin so there was much post-lights-out giggling. Also once we had gone to bed and the lights were out and we were all comfortable dozing off Orlando popped his head into the room and happily announced ¨Hola, amigos!¨ which was extremely funny for some reason. He just wanted to tell us what time breakfast was in the morning.

Whooooooooo are we ready to hear about DAY TWO on the salt flats? The first stop was SALVADOR DALI'S DESERT. Well one of them. We saw the big upside down triangle rock! I wanted to have a good old stare at it, but it was surrounded by other people doing the salt flats tour who felt the acute need to be photographed in front of the damn rock. Eventually I got a good look though and some sexy photos. I wasn't in them.

Then we saw what we thought was a salt lake! It wasn't salt, though. It was Borax. Or Ajax, as Jen seemed to think. The wackiest thing ever is that, even though the sun was shining and it was a glorious day in the old Bolivian desert, the lake was coated in ice. Do you know how cold it had been the previous night? I don't either, but it was somewhere between -10 and -20.C. Frosty as all heck! The Canadians were unperturbed but I was going to bed in my thermals and jumpers (chompas) and socks and hat and all that business.

We stopped for lunch by another salty or boraxy or whatever it was lake, this one covered in flamingos again, and had a nice old time eating pasta salad and watching the same people who insisted on clambering all over Dali´s desert now chase flamingos so as to capture photos of them in flight. Which, I feel bound to point out, Lonely Planet says is an ¨Environmental No-No.¨ After lunch we saw a volcano! It didn´t really look like a volcano so much as a mountain having a smoke. Still kind of cool. It was also cool when Orlando pointed out that the rocks we were standing on were in fact hardened lava.

Thennnnnn we hit the salt lakes! Well, the beginning of them. The best was yet to come. We drove on them for a while until we hit the salt hotel which actually was kind of a salt hotel. Well, it still wasn´t a hotel but it was super salty! The walls were made of salt, and the tables and chairs and beds, though not the mattresses. I was excited to see that they had a picture of Evo Morales in one of his trademark chompas (attn MAGDA and TOM, "chompa" is the Bolivian word for "jumper!") on the wall. It wasn't made of salt.

By this stage we had come down by a cool 2000m or so and altitude sickness was vanquished, it seemed. We ate some more vegetable soup and read books and drank cups of herbal tea and it was lovely. (I was reading a wonderful book called 'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck that Jen and Trin gave us. I finished it a couple of days ago. It is a magnificent achievement and I recommend it to all.) Ooooooh and the hostel and the little town surrounding it was full of cacti, which I thought was pretty cool... AT THE TIME. I love cacti.

The next morning we had to get up SOOOOOO EARLY! Well, we left at six or so. That is early, yes. That is because we were to watch the sun rise over the salt flats. "Big flipping deal," I thought grumpily. I sort of changed my mind once we started driving across 200 square kilometres of salt, though. We drove on a little more and ate breakfast by the cactus island. Which is just an island of cacti. If this doesn't sound awesome to you then you are obviously crazy.

I can't really tell you how great the salt flats were. The colours and the expansiveness and the patterns in the salt and such. So here are three of my favourite pictures from Ro's camera (mine had lost its battery by then), on the extreme offchance that you have failed to see them on Facebook by now. You can click to enlarge.

Ro on salt.


Me on salt.


Team Robolion reenacting the Beautiful Ladies hombre on salt.

That'll do, piglets.

Love love love
Lion

Boliviargh!

We are in Bolivia and it is so Bolivian that I can hardly stand it! Here are some Bolivian things that have happened to me so far:

-We bought a menu del dia - menu of the day - for $2 each. Soup, bread, fried rice with egg and potato and even one or two vegetables in the rice, and a piece of watermelon. Ro got meat with hers!

-We had to use several toilets without seats. Also: we used a squat toilet!

-I bought ludicrous stripey pants which I am currently wearing. Also a tie dyed headband, ohhhhh nooooooo.

-KATE! Pay attention, this bit is about you!! Due to automobile difficulties, I was forced to entertain myself by playing 'Singing Songs To Ro That My Sister Has Written.' She was thrilled to hear joyous and jaunty renditions of 'Big Fat Roly Poly Santa,' 'Poor Wrinkly Kate,' 'Like A Little Russian Peasant Girl,' 'The Hippopotamus Song' and more too I think.

-We got stranded for a night in the highest city on Earth (no dodgy business mum don't worry).

But I have to go and catch a bus to Sucre! I just wanted to assure you that I am doing well and that Boliv is living up to my wildest dreams.

Love love love
Lion