From horses to hell

If anyone ever hears me complain of my job, all you have to do is say ¨Potosi¨ and I´ll shut up. I promise. The mine tour we did today was one of those weird experiences that no one wants to do, but you sort of feel obligated to do. The mine used to be one of the richest in the world, and Potosi itself was the largest, richest and one of the most influential cities in South America...now Im sure 95% of you have never heard of the place. We hit up the Miner´s Market at 8am, loaded ourselves up with dynamite, ammonium nitrate, blasting caps, soft drinks and coca leaves. After that we swung by one of the processing plants, where they take the rock and filter out all the goodies (Zinc, Lead and Silver) through the use of cyanide and whatever other horrible chemicals they can think of (with all the excess junk being pumped into the local river free of charge!). Then it was up to the actual mines where we flipped on our headlamps and descended about 100-200 metres into the bowels of the earth. Kids as young as 10 work their asses off in these cramped, dusty and hot corridors (the bottom level hovers continously at 42 degrees) with 90% of the miners dying of a variety of lung diseases well before their time. The mine was fairly empty today due to it being Saturday, and the groups that we did come across were well on their way to being a few sheets to the wind. Nothing beats drunken miners with high powered explosives at the ready. As we came across different guys we´d hand out our gifts to them and they´d thank us by grinning with their coca stained teeth and throwing a few incoherant slurred phrases our way. In general they seemed like really nice guys and our guide seemed to be telling the truth when he said that any man without a sense of humour, isnt allowed to work the mines. Given that I was up the previous night vomitting due to the altitude (compliments of Potosi...highest city on earth), I jumped on the opportunity to try coca leaves, which are a natural fix for altitude sickness. Within an hour my lips and teeth were dyed green, my mouth was completely numb and everything had a happy tinge to it. I´m assuming that the coca was also the reason my normally claustrophic self was somehow able to belly crawl through hell. We finished the tour by lighting off a few sticks of dynamite on the local hill.

Prior to this little dip into mother earth we had completed our two day horseback trip in Tupiza. This ride was much better than the previous one at Coroico as the kid who guided us wanted us going muy rapido constantly. Lots of cantering with the odd gallop thrown in and my equastrian skills seem to be at an all-time high. Getting into the sadle the second day after riding for 8 hours the previous day was a pain I could have lived without, but it was a necessary evil. Highlights of the little trip include charging goat herds at full speed with Sabre (my lovely horse, who I miss dearly), grossing out the ¨posh¨ New Zealander who joined us with our disgusting conversations, traversing a flooding river on horse and watching the sheep headbutt one another at the little farm house we stayed the night at. Speaking of which, the family somehow made us a great meal of llama steak, rice, potatoes and this onion dish, all for a measly 5 bolivianos (65 cents of so). All in all a busy last few days and we're all looking forward to heading to Santa Cruz tomorrow night (currently in Sucre) and taking it easy while our Brazilian visas are processed.

Beautiful Bolivia

The salt flat tour was a smashing success. Day one involved driving out to the actual salt flats, wading through the water and generally getting salt all over the truck and our clothes. Given that it´s the rainy season here, the entire salt flat is covered with about 5 inches of motionless water, so it´s like standing on a neverending mirror. We passed through a strange salt town at one point, stopping to poke around and try to find some bathrooms. The town was really bizarre. I had no idea that literally everything in a town could be built from salt. Salt chairs, salt glasses, salt houses, salt poles, very strange and I expected Mad Max to come crashing through at any moment. From there we went south of Uyuni (the town we originally left from) and climbed up higher in the mountains before staying the night in a miniscule little military town somewhere in the desert. The next day was spent driving through llama covered fields and along flamingo filled rivers. The roads in Bolivia seem to be at points non-existant and more often than not we would find ourselves driving either straight cross country or through dry riverbeds, 4x4 is a must. Stayed at yet another military/mining camp that night (at an altitude of 4600+ metres...cold...so cold) then set out in the morning for the hot springs. Swung by the Chilean border (or close to) to drop some people off, then made our way back up country where we spent our third night in a town nearby where we had first slept. The fourth day consisted of driving back to Uyuni and visiting the train graveyard on the way (basically a portion of the salt flat that´s filled with rusty old steam locomotives). In our car were Justin and Misha (I hope thats how you spell it!), a couple from new zealand, who we hung around with through the entire tour, very cool people and I hope to see them again. Justin was a wealth of bizarre drinking games, and each night was spent sitting around a table with a multitude of different nationalities, no one quite understanding one another, but having a good time regardless. This morning we grabbed another 4x4 to go down to Tupiza, where I am currently sitting. The landscape of Bolivia continues to fascinate us all. It goes from jungle to desert to snow capped mountains in a few hours of driving. The area around here is covered with bright red mountains filled with bright green plants, the kind of environment I would expect a dinosaur to pop out of at any given point. Given that we´re quite close to where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made their final stand, we decided to partake in another horsebacking expedition. We leave tomorrow for a two day trip along some of the mountain routes and should see some more crazy scenery as well as hopefully gun down some outlaws. Took over a 100 pictures, but can´t show any as I don´t have my camera with me at the moment, and even if I did, it´s soo sloooow....Adios!

Prior to the Salt

We arrived in Oruro mid afternoon on tuesday and proceeded to complete some errands. The train tickets (to Uyuni) took forever to get and during the lineup I dropped my laundry off at the local laundrymat, the order was taken by a 7 year old girl, but I thought nothing of it, given that most places around here have their kids working as soon as they can crawl. She said to come back at 1:30 the next day, perfect due to our train departing 5 hours after that. Walking around town, we decided to try this resteraunt that came recommended by Lonely Planet. The description talked about it being run by a celebrity chef, Don Roberto, and to invite him over for a drink cause he has some amazing stories. The thing is, lonely planet often gives little suggestions like this, but usually they never come close to being achievable. This one was different. The guy was literally standing outside his resteraunt and quickly hustled us upstairs to a table. Within 5 minutes he had us buying a round of beers, a bottle of wine and the most expensive lamb roast on the menu. I can't overstate how cool this guy was. He just sat there and filled us in on his life for an hour. He's been a personal chef for Hugh Hephner, Cher, Jim Belushi and Bill Gates. He's been to over 70 countries and was the top executive chef of the Hilton Hotel Chain during the 70's. He's essentially retired back to his home town in order to look after his family. Anyhow, enough about him, but needless to say, he's probably one of the most interesting people I have ever met. The lamb was also fantastic and supported his reputation. Following this we wanted to hit up the town for a night out. Since I had no clothes I was forced to wear shorts, a t-shirt and a toque. After an hour of looking for a place, and probably a hundred different jests and jokes from the locals about the stupid gringo wearing beach clothes in 5 degree weather, we finally settled on a Karoake bar. We made fools of ourselves for a few hours singing Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie then hit the sack. Next morning we journeyed to some hot springs just outside town and nursed our hangovers while lying in these little private baths. Back to Oruro, tried to grab my laundry at 1:30, store was closed. Tried again at 2, 2:30, 3, finally at 3:30 the store was opened and the woman said it wouldn't be ready until 5. Back at 5, no laundry, they didn't even know where it was. So finally I literally sat on their counter until they recovered my seemingly lost clothes. Finally at 6:20 I got a bag of wet clothes. Train arrived early this morning in Uyuni at 2:30am, checked into a 24 hour hotel and hung my clothes from different spots throughout the room to dry, it is proving less than successful. This morning we booked a 4 day expedition into the salt flats and beyond. Not sure exactly what we're going to see, but everyone recommends it so there must be something else out there besides salt! Shall post a debriefing of our mission upon our arrival! Adios. Sorry, no pics, no tengo USB.

There and back again

Well our trip to Coroico is over and we somehow managed to come out alive! If you haven´t read Jason´s blog for the trip there, then I suggest you do. Needless to say, it was a terrifying experience and probably a bit more than we bargained for, but exciting nonetheless. We stayed in a bit of a different hostal in Coroico. It wasn´t actually in the town itself, but up the hill a ways, accessible only by 4x4 taxis. Extremely quiet and we had our own little casa to ourselves and would wake up each morning to the jungle birds, with an amazing view of the Bolivian mountains. Went out to explore the area one day and hired some horses to speed up the process. We took the beasts right through town and the locals thought it was funniest thing, as they would come running out to the street and laugh and wave to us. Made our way up through some rough roads past coca fields (really wanted to see some armed drug lords cruising around and were dissapointed in their absence) and orange groves to a second village above Coroico. Extremely poor and the people here seemed just plain scared of the horses and the strange white humans riding them. I quite enjoyed being back on horseback and am going to look into some longer expeditions in Argentina. We celebrated our equastrian prowess with a ´3 man´ hot tub. Granted I think it was made for 3 short bolivian men, and it took quite a while for us to squeeze in there, the $2 bottles of bolivian wine helped ease the pain and general anxiety at being in such close contact with Jason and Ryan. Much of our time in Coroico was spent listening to the pounding rain on our tin roof casa. We had been warned of these so called ´rainy seasons´ and can now appreciate their glory. Knowing that it had been raining for 5 days straight, made us feel exceptionally excited about our return trip up death road. On the way to the bus station (to catch the bus back up the road) the taxi we were in went into a sideways drift down a muddy clay hill and for a while was wobbling on two wheels, great way to start off the day. We left yesterday afternoon in a packed minibus to meet our maker. The road back was in much worse condition then the road on the way there. Instead of small streams intersecting the mud, it was now raging rivers which we had to cross in our minibus. Before what we thought were waterfalls on the road, were more like dripping facets compared to the versions we had yesterday, which actually were waterfalls. But enough talk, ill let the pictures speak for themselves, although I hardly think they do it justice. Arrived back into La Paz in the middle of a snow storm. We were all quite excited as it felt a wee bit more like home, although due to some laundry issues, the only thing I currently have to wear is a pair of surfer shorts. Warmed up in one of the thousands of underground little restaurants throughout La Paz, drinking warm wine and eating llama steaks (which by the way, if you can find in Vancouver, I highly advise to try...delicious meat), glad to be alive after the harrowing journey. Plan is to leave today for Oruro, where tomorrow we´ll catch a train to Uyuni, to visit the salt flats. Thats about it for now! Adios! Pictures! New and improved Gaucho Jordan We don´t know his name, but this is the man who successfully navigated us down the death road, I am forever in your debt. Pretty sure Jason was about to hug him there. Next three are random death road pictures. Keep in mind thats about how wide the thing is the entire way, and on the one side is a straight drop probably 500-1000 feet. Not only did we have to somehow squeeze by the big cattle and cocoa trucks, but our driver was actually passing other drivers heading down in an effort to get to Coroico on time. Didn´t get any shots on the way back, just believe me that it was much, much worse.

La Paz

The last two days in Santa Cruz were spent researching our route. At first the plan was to head west and then north up peru and then down the amazon into Brazil. For a multitude of reasons this was vetoed. Since then we´ve thought of everything from just heading straight up through the jungles of Bolivia into the Amazon Basin of Brazil, to going south into Argentina and wrapping back to Brazil that way. The only constant to each plan was the need to be in Rio de Janeiro by about February 20th. The more we read about Bolivia, the more we decided there was to do here and subsequently have decided to spent about a month travelling just within its borders. Knowing that the Brazilian visa is a pain in the ass, we embarked on that quest monday morning and soon found out how much of a pain in the ass it is. Went to the brazilian consulate, he then gave us a checklist of things we need to return to him with, they included: photocopies of our yellow fever certificates, credit cards and passports, recent headshots of us, a document describing our route within brazil signed by a notary public and a bank receipt stating that we had sent $40 to this Brazilian account. Took us the better part of Monday to complete all that and when we finally managed to get it done, the Brazilian consulate was closed...why wouldn´t they close at 2pm. Anyhow, last night we caught a super nice bus to La Paz (capital city of Bolivia, and in fact the highest capital city in the world at a staggering 4000+ metres). Some very cool scenary as we climbed the Andes mountains from the lowlands. Upon arriving here we headed to the Brazilian Embassy, which said everything looked fine, but unfortunately the bank receipt is for the Santa Cruz Brazilian consulate account, not the La Paz Brazilian Embassy account. Luckily our plans call on us to return to Santa Cruz in a few weeks so we can take care of things there. We hopped over to the Canadian consulate to check about voting abroad, and were met with more dissapointment as it appears to be a lengthy and frustrating process just to get a ballot here, let alone sending it back. Aside from our diplomatic problems, Bolivia itself is really cool. The people seem extremely friendly and aside from the headaches we all have from the altitude change, everything is ship shape. Plans from here include a ride down ´The World´s most Dangerous Road´ (don´t worry its just a name....), then mayhaps a couple day hike around the area. After which we´d head south to the salt flats and visit the salt mines, then back up to Santa Cruz where we´d catch ´The Deathtrain´ (once again...I think it´s just a name, they sure have some ominous ones around here) to Corumba, Brazil. We´d like to dip south into Paraguay before heading over to Rio, but we may just go through the Pantanal (jungle region of Brazil). Either way, it should prove to be an exciting next few weeks!

Pictures! I wasnt actually able to view the pictures before I posted them, due to the strangeness of this computer, so I threw two random ones up. The first is a shot of a street down La Paz. Note the massive lineup along the wall, that was only about a quarter of the thing, it stretched around the corner and then on into eternity. Also, the strange little hats that the women wear...be interesting to know where this fashion started, but ít seems like all women over the age of 30 are required to buy one.

Next shot is one as we descended from the top of La Paz into the city center, taken from the bus.

Bolivia!

Much to the dissapointment of my mom and all other women in my life, our original plans on travelling to Columbia were cancelled! Upon reaching the travel agent in Panama City, we were told that Canadians need an onward ticket when arriving in Columbia, leaving us with the option of buying a return fare there and only going one way! We vetoed this and began looking at other destinations. At one point we had the woman just ramble off all the cheap fares in South America, and upon hearing Santa Cruz we jumped on it. Although this was the first time any of us had actually heard of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, we thought it had a nice ring to it and decided to commit. The ladies around the office all got quite a kick out of these 3 gringos who were buying plane tickets to places they´d never heard of. After buying, we vowed to resist looking up any information on the country and city until we were on the ground in Santa Cruz. It was a pretty interesting way to travel (not that I usually know where I´m going anyway...) and I hope to get the chance to do it again sometime. Our flight left at 4am, and since we didnt want to pay to keep our bags at the hostel for the day, we just moved into the departure lounge at the airport. Half a day and a dozen jello pudding snacks later, we were on our way to the southern hemisphere. Seeing as we didn´t know the conditions we´d be flying into, we assumed that any destination in Bolivia would be high in the mountains. We had visions of sherpas unloading our backpacks onto snow covered elephants and dog sledding our way to the center of town. These were destroyed when the captain announced it was a sunny 29 degrees on the ground, boooo. The city and landscape actually look similar to southern Mexico, and I´m not yet ruling out the possibility that we´ve somehow flown back up to Mexico... The rest of the day will be spent finding out where we are, and how to get around Bolivia!

Pictures! I had hoped to do more, but the connection here is slooow. So there´s just the one, a shot of some random twisting river as seen from our plane, somewhere near the equator. I have some great shots of the two tucans that are being held hostage with clipped wings at our hostel. Very fake looking birds and after studying their habits (Im reading a Charles Darwin book right now, so it seemed the proper thing to do), I have determined that they do not subside purely on Fruit Loops.

Darnit, I have since learned that the random twisting river shot didn´t even make it...

Last hours of Central America

We´ve just spent the last 2 hours visiting the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal and I think it by itself was worth the trip down to Panama. We went right at the beginning of the day so to see the big cargo ships heading over to the atlantic side. Its quite the process of squeezing these guys in, raising them up, then pulling them out of the locking system. Boats all over the world are built with the size of the panama canal in mind and you could see that at work as each ship would have about a foot of clearance on each side. Panama City itself is quite different than the rest of the Central American capitals. You can clearly see the American contribution to the city in it´s skyscrapers and highways. The thoughts of sailing to Columbia were squashed as apparently some current has moved in and stretched it from a 4 day to a 20 day trip to get there. That and the guys who ran the sailboats all seemed a little flaky and not the type of people I´d want me ferrying me there. Plans as to how to get to South America are still in the making, but it´s definitely going to be by air, the destination is as of yet, undetermined.

Pictures! One last shot of Playa Del coco (mainly because Michelle dropped several hints about wanting to be seen on here...)

The Canal in all its glory. That average cost of a ship going through the Canal is a wopping $46,000 (it may be a little higher actually). Was great watching that big cargo ship go through, they had some space at the end of the lock so they also threw in a little passenger boat...who´s occupants thought themselves royalty as they paraded in front of us and wouldn´t stop waving. Also, Maurice, you would have loved the tugs, outside of the locks there were fleets of massive tugboats waiting to steer each vessel to its waiting spot.

Panama City as seen from our hostel...which oddly enough is in an 8 story building (first time I´ve taken an elevator to a hostel).

Panama

Happy New Year!

We celebrated the turning of the calendar in style with another awesome homemade meal (Chicken parmesan sort of...) and a small speedo fashion show. Following that, we hit up the town for a few hours of debauchery out on the strip and in the main bar. Tons of people there, didn´t seem to be any trouble, so all in all it seems like the whole town, including us, had an awesome time. The following day of recovery took on a much more somber mood as it was also the day that Dev, Dani and Michelle left. Quite sad to see them go, but the fact that they were able to come down was awesome and I thank them all for making the effort! The guys then moved into the place and much of the day was spent watching James Bond movies and feeling sorry for myself. We were up and at it early the next morning and on a bus bound for San Jose. Thank god there were no seats available, or else I might have actually gotten one, instead I had the pleasure of standing for the majority of the 5 hour bus ride, while periodically dozying off due to the gravol I had popped previously and falling onto the lap of the old man beside me. Arrived at San Jose by about 12:30, found a hostel, did some chores around town and then introduced Jas and Ry to one of the old hangouts that I had frequented during my short stay there a year ago. Once again we were up early this morning, and grabbed a morning bus to David, Panama. Would have liked to get one right to Panama City, but they were all sold out, so we decided to find our own way there. The Panama border was a bit of a nightmare with little kids and frantic police telling us to go to different booths. Apparently we weren´t the only ones confused, as a french couple were escorted off the bus and sent back to the border after we finally got on our way due to a problem with their documentation. The roads in Panama are exponentially better than the sad excuse for Costa Rican roads. For the first time, what people refer to as the Pan-American Highway, actually looks like a proper highway. We're currently stranded in the David bus terminal with nothing to do for the next 6 hours except twiddle our thumbs and watch everyone´s favourite Latin soap operas. It´s dark and rainy outside, so walking around really feels like being back home, minus the 30 degree breeze blowing in my face. The bus for Panama City leaves at midnight and we should arrive at about 6am tomorrow...which will hopefully bring a close to this long day of sitting on buses and eating greasy bus food. Once in Panama we hope to check out one of the Canal locks then find out how we´re going to get to South America! Adios!