We found out last night that we would not be taking a night bus to Uyuni, but instead would take a combination of bus and train to make our way down during the day. This meant those who had just arrived in La Paz had one less day to see the city, and this caused an issue….especially for those who just put their laundry in and didn’t think they could get it back before we headed out. Needless to say, their reaction was not that pleasant, and it created an unusual first impression, one that I’m sure they didn’t want to give (Hokee mentioned it a few times that he doesn’t usually react in this way). But in the end we had a good night of bonding at dinner, where it took them about 45 minutes to get the food out….the last time I recommend a restaurant to the group that’s for sure.
The next day we had a rather late start for a full day of traveling. We left the hotel around 10, and had around 11 hours of traveling down south. The first bus was to the town of Oruro where Jen regaled me with her life story; she told me it would only take until we got out of La Paz, but it did managed to keep us entertained and occupied for much longer than the ride out of La Paz. We actually arrived in Oruro an hour ahead of schedule, but the bus driver decided he would spend this time trying to decide if we were headed to the bus station or the train station. We must have spent a good half hour sitting on the bus in plane view of the train station waiting to be let off.
Because the bus took so long to figure out where to drop us off we had less than an hour to catch our train down to Uyuni, which meant we had the world’s fastest lunch, and with the amount of food they gave us, we were forced to eat like our life depended on it. Somehow we managed to move after lunch and climb on the train. As most of the west coast of South America is mountainous, trains are a rarity, so this was quite the luxury. After leaving the station we made our way around Lago Uru Uru which was filled with flamingos. As the lake is very shallow, they raised the tracks a bit and ran them through the middle of the lake, so our view of the flamingos was that much closer. Soon after leaving the lake we saw a beautiful sunset out one side of the train as we made our way down the expansive plains that run through the middle of Bolivia’s highlands. As we still had another 5 hours on the train, and all the movies were in Spanish without any subtitles, we spent the rest of our train ride playing cards and games, after we figured out how to turn the chairs around to make it a little easier to converse with each other.
We arrived in Uyuni at around 11 at night and were greeted by the cold Bolivian mountain air and were all pitying the people who were boarding the train for the return trip at night, there was no way that would have been a warm trip. But the first thing we had to do was figure out how to get food since none of us have eaten in about 10 hours. Luckily, JuanLuis made a call to our hotel to ask them to keep the restaurant open for a few extra hours so that we could eat. After our long ride, it was a welcome site and provided me with a unique opportunity to talk with the owner, an expat from Boston who moved down to Uyuni (a dead end one horse town with nothing in it before he opened this restaurant) when his wife finished school in Boston.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
May 12-15 - Her name was Lola ...
Sandy left from La Paz on Monday morning to head back to Toronto via a day in Lima, while I headed back to the Peru border to stay at Bolivia's lakeshore town of Copacabana (not to be confused with the song in the entry's title ... that was about Copacabana ... a bar in Miami). I picked the bus up for Copacabana at a random street corner in La Paz, no bus station or ticket office, just three busses lined up on the street.
The bus ride to Copacabana was a long ride, especially since I had seen the scenery before. The most interesting part of the ride was the ferry crossing, but I had done that before and spent this time as a tour guide telling all the other gringos that you had to get off the bus, buy a ticket, get on this boat, and get back on the bus. Once in Copacabana I stopped being a tour guide and headed to a hotel up on the hill where I had a beautiful view of the town.
My intention while staying in this town for a couple of days was quite simple, relax, catch up on my blog and read a book while hanging out in some cool cafes. Well, Copacabana let me do just that. The nice thing about this town is that it is overrun with hippie tourists, and therefore it is full of cool places to hang out for a while to do some reading and writing. The only problem with all of this is that I couldn't sleep for the life of me (too much coffee) and it was extremely cold (it even snowed the first night I was there and I woke up to ice on the tables outside) and I only brought a t-shirt and jacket from La Paz. This meant I spent more time than I wanted poking in and out of shops to find a sweater that fit me ... remember, everything is built for people 5 feet tall. But the nice thing was, this didn't dampen my spirit at all.
After a great two days of relaxing, I headed back to La Paz along the same road, where thanks to the sunlight, the water and sky had the same colour and the islands seemed to be floating in the sky ... a rather breath taking sight. I spent most of the afternoon (even though most of the day was already gone) hanging around some cafes to finish off my blog writing and get ready for the start of my next GAP tour through Bolivia. Oh ya, remember those zebras who were running a traffic school for the kids at the Mother's Day festival, well they were directing pedestrians across the street today....we have Smokey the Bear, Bolivia has Zack the Zebra.
The next day I spent hanging around La Paz finishing off some of the things I had to do (including booking a trip I will tell you about later) and met my next GAP group that evening.
The bus ride to Copacabana was a long ride, especially since I had seen the scenery before. The most interesting part of the ride was the ferry crossing, but I had done that before and spent this time as a tour guide telling all the other gringos that you had to get off the bus, buy a ticket, get on this boat, and get back on the bus. Once in Copacabana I stopped being a tour guide and headed to a hotel up on the hill where I had a beautiful view of the town.
My intention while staying in this town for a couple of days was quite simple, relax, catch up on my blog and read a book while hanging out in some cool cafes. Well, Copacabana let me do just that. The nice thing about this town is that it is overrun with hippie tourists, and therefore it is full of cool places to hang out for a while to do some reading and writing. The only problem with all of this is that I couldn't sleep for the life of me (too much coffee) and it was extremely cold (it even snowed the first night I was there and I woke up to ice on the tables outside) and I only brought a t-shirt and jacket from La Paz. This meant I spent more time than I wanted poking in and out of shops to find a sweater that fit me ... remember, everything is built for people 5 feet tall. But the nice thing was, this didn't dampen my spirit at all.
After a great two days of relaxing, I headed back to La Paz along the same road, where thanks to the sunlight, the water and sky had the same colour and the islands seemed to be floating in the sky ... a rather breath taking sight. I spent most of the afternoon (even though most of the day was already gone) hanging around some cafes to finish off my blog writing and get ready for the start of my next GAP tour through Bolivia. Oh ya, remember those zebras who were running a traffic school for the kids at the Mother's Day festival, well they were directing pedestrians across the street today....we have Smokey the Bear, Bolivia has Zack the Zebra.
The next day I spent hanging around La Paz finishing off some of the things I had to do (including booking a trip I will tell you about later) and met my next GAP group that evening.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
May 11 - Lego Land
This was Sandy's and my last day together and we opted to spend it exploring La Paz. It was also the last day with the rest of the group which would continue on to Buenos Aires. Sandy had a few more gifts she wanted to pick up, so we went out shopping again in the artisan market. The nice thing about La Paz is that the textiles are incredibly cheap ($20 for an alpaca sweater) and the quality is out of this world. Because there are so many shops and so many different patterns, you can shop for a long time to find the sweater, hat or socks that you are looking for. So off we went to the market to explore yet again.
An interesting thing about the artisan market in La Paz is that it is surrounding the witches market. This market caters to people who are looking for various potions or combinations of things to bring them luck, a child, a wife, or even money. I have visited many of these before in South America, but none are quite like this one. Most of them involve eating or drinking tea from different plants, but not here. This one offers powder of a condor beak, candy to appease the Pachamama, silver frogs and best of all, dried llama fetuses. That's right, the street stands are covered with llama fetuses, the most disgusting thing you have ever seen (if you burry them under your house, it brings those who live in it good luck). It will definitely remove any appetite you might have. And for those who don't know what combinations of things they need, not to worry, there are packages that you can buy ... the luck plate or the money plate ... McDonald-ization of the witches market is in full swing.
After we had found everything we were looking for (I still have to go back to find my presents ... but it's good practice for my Spanish, and you can learn a lot from talking to the women in the shops) we headed down the main drag, after stopping in on the Mother's Day service in the San Francisco church (Hey Mom, they don't have to wear a tie to church here, and they are one of the most religious countries in the world ... in fact the most dressed up person was in jeans and a button down shirt). From the church we happened upon a festival celebrating Mother's Day. There were bands, dancing demonstrations, a small traffic driving school for kids (run with zebras) and all the stores had their mascots out in front to celebratw Mother's Day. Sandy and I had to stop at Dumbo's (yes, they have an ice cream joint called Dumbo's) to have my picture taken with Goofy ... remember I am a McCurdy ... what do you expect.
In front of Dumbo's we bumped into the rest of the guys in our tour group who had been turned away from the San Pedro Prison. Now, from what they told me, I will not be able to go either, so I might as well tell you about this one-of-a-kind prison. Dead centre in the middle of the city, this prison is mostly filled with people arrested for drug trafficking, and only 20% are serving their time while the rest are waiting for their trial. The interesting thing about this prison is that inside there is a small town. There are no guards inside and the prisoner's run everything including shops, restaurants, a professional soccer league and other services a community would run. You even have to rent your cell, so if you have a lot of money, you can rent a nice one, but if you don't you might have to take in roommates. If this isn't enough, people in the prison live with their families. Their wives and children come into the prison to spend the night, and in the morning they leave to head to their job or to school. Up until recently, one of the largest sources of income was tourism, where you would walk up to the gate, talk to an inmate, determine a price for the tour, bribe the guard to get in and then go for a tour. Surprisingly, this was probably one of the safest things to do in La Paz as they relied so heavily on this source of income, they didn't want anything to happen to prevent the guards from letting the tourists inside. Sadly, because most of the people inside were there for drug trafficing, the tourists began to arrive in search of drugs, so the guards have shut down tourism, only families are still able to come and go.
After lunch with our GAP group, Sandy and I headed down to take the city tour that everyone said was so good, and it was quite well done. We drove through the city to see most of the highlights ... shopping district, rich part of town, slums, presidential palace ... more than I thought La Paz had to offer. I will have to return to most of these places on foot to explore more fully (especially since the phone wires made it impossible to take pictures as they actually fell down into the double-decker bus). They even took us to a lookout over the city, and I kid you not, La Paz looks like it was made all out of Lego. Even though I have said some towns look like they are built out of Lego, I'm pretty sure my godson actually made a replica of La Paz out of Lego without even knowing it.
The bus tour was also a source of some great useless facts including.
- Bolivia has had over 100 presidents since it was founded. At one time they had three different presidents and one president only lasted 6 hours
- When Bolivia beat Brazil in a soccer match in La Paz, FIFA baned any games over 3,000m, making La Paz the only soccer stadium that can't host a FIFA match
- The women in Bolivia wear bowler hats that are about 10 sizes too small (picture the fat man from those black and white movies who wore the bowler hat at an angle ... that's the women here). The story goes that some guy from Europe was sent a shipment of hats that were too small, so he brought them to Bolivia and told everyone that they were the fashion all over Europe ... and people bought them and still do ... upwards of $300 for a hat.
Our tour of the city ended in the Valley of the Moon, a landscape of dirt pillars, much like the badlands in Alberta, except these badlands don't have any fossils.
By the time we got back from our tour, we had enough time to go for a final dinner with all our friends from GAP, and then Sandy and I spent the rest of the evening hanging out before she had to return to Canada in the morning.
An interesting thing about the artisan market in La Paz is that it is surrounding the witches market. This market caters to people who are looking for various potions or combinations of things to bring them luck, a child, a wife, or even money. I have visited many of these before in South America, but none are quite like this one. Most of them involve eating or drinking tea from different plants, but not here. This one offers powder of a condor beak, candy to appease the Pachamama, silver frogs and best of all, dried llama fetuses. That's right, the street stands are covered with llama fetuses, the most disgusting thing you have ever seen (if you burry them under your house, it brings those who live in it good luck). It will definitely remove any appetite you might have. And for those who don't know what combinations of things they need, not to worry, there are packages that you can buy ... the luck plate or the money plate ... McDonald-ization of the witches market is in full swing.
After we had found everything we were looking for (I still have to go back to find my presents ... but it's good practice for my Spanish, and you can learn a lot from talking to the women in the shops) we headed down the main drag, after stopping in on the Mother's Day service in the San Francisco church (Hey Mom, they don't have to wear a tie to church here, and they are one of the most religious countries in the world ... in fact the most dressed up person was in jeans and a button down shirt). From the church we happened upon a festival celebrating Mother's Day. There were bands, dancing demonstrations, a small traffic driving school for kids (run with zebras) and all the stores had their mascots out in front to celebratw Mother's Day. Sandy and I had to stop at Dumbo's (yes, they have an ice cream joint called Dumbo's) to have my picture taken with Goofy ... remember I am a McCurdy ... what do you expect.In front of Dumbo's we bumped into the rest of the guys in our tour group who had been turned away from the San Pedro Prison. Now, from what they told me, I will not be able to go either, so I might as well tell you about this one-of-a-kind prison. Dead centre in the middle of the city, this prison is mostly filled with people arrested for drug trafficking, and only 20% are serving their time while the rest are waiting for their trial. The interesting thing about this prison is that inside there is a small town. There are no guards inside and the prisoner's run everything including shops, restaurants, a professional soccer league and other services a community would run. You even have to rent your cell, so if you have a lot of money, you can rent a nice one, but if you don't you might have to take in roommates. If this isn't enough, people in the prison live with their families. Their wives and children come into the prison to spend the night, and in the morning they leave to head to their job or to school. Up until recently, one of the largest sources of income was tourism, where you would walk up to the gate, talk to an inmate, determine a price for the tour, bribe the guard to get in and then go for a tour. Surprisingly, this was probably one of the safest things to do in La Paz as they relied so heavily on this source of income, they didn't want anything to happen to prevent the guards from letting the tourists inside. Sadly, because most of the people inside were there for drug trafficing, the tourists began to arrive in search of drugs, so the guards have shut down tourism, only families are still able to come and go.
After lunch with our GAP group, Sandy and I headed down to take the city tour that everyone said was so good, and it was quite well done. We drove through the city to see most of the highlights ... shopping district, rich part of town, slums, presidential palace ... more than I thought La Paz had to offer. I will have to return to most of these places on foot to explore more fully (especially since the phone wires made it impossible to take pictures as they actually fell down into the double-decker bus). They even took us to a lookout over the city, and I kid you not, La Paz looks like it was made all out of Lego. Even though I have said some towns look like they are built out of Lego, I'm pretty sure my godson actually made a replica of La Paz out of Lego without even knowing it.The bus tour was also a source of some great useless facts including.
- Bolivia has had over 100 presidents since it was founded. At one time they had three different presidents and one president only lasted 6 hours
- When Bolivia beat Brazil in a soccer match in La Paz, FIFA baned any games over 3,000m, making La Paz the only soccer stadium that can't host a FIFA match
- The women in Bolivia wear bowler hats that are about 10 sizes too small (picture the fat man from those black and white movies who wore the bowler hat at an angle ... that's the women here). The story goes that some guy from Europe was sent a shipment of hats that were too small, so he brought them to Bolivia and told everyone that they were the fashion all over Europe ... and people bought them and still do ... upwards of $300 for a hat.
Our tour of the city ended in the Valley of the Moon, a landscape of dirt pillars, much like the badlands in Alberta, except these badlands don't have any fossils. By the time we got back from our tour, we had enough time to go for a final dinner with all our friends from GAP, and then Sandy and I spent the rest of the evening hanging out before she had to return to Canada in the morning.
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