Lake Ttitiaka, La Paz and Potosi - Living dangerously at high altitude!

Tequili Island
see all photos »

First of all, an apology for not updating my blog for a while - I{ve been very busy and unsurprisingly the internet in Bolivia is crap!  Anyway I have absolutely loads to tell everyone about, so here goes...

Lake Titikaka (Puma Lake)

There are some things you want to do whilst your travelling that you tell your parents about before you set off

After a long drive from Cusco we arived in one of the most boring towns in South America - Puno.  It only stands as a stop off point for people wanting to visit the islands on Lake Titikaka, which luckily is all we used it for!  Having said that I did manage to get the drunkest I have been on my trip in one of the bars, where some of the girls on the tour managed to take over the bar and served quadruple cuba libres to me when I ordered a lemonade...  but that´s another story!

Local dancing with gringos!
see all photos »

The trip to the islands started with a 4 hour boat ride on the slowest boat in the world - it had a car engine as it´s motor, and I think it may even have been the engine from my old fiesta!  Anyway we eventually got to Taquili island (not to be confused with Taquila island), which is beautiful, with one beach and hardly any people at all.  We hikied up to the top of the island where we were given a traditional lunch, which consisited of soup followed by fresh trout just caught from the lake, chips and rice.  It was followed by some traditional dancing, and luckily I didn´t get dragged up to show off my Peruvian dancing skills!  We then trekked all the way back down the 300 odd steps down the island to catch the same speed boat to Amantani island, where we were going to stay the night with a local family.

Amantani Island, where I stayed with a local family
see all photos »

The village we were staying in was on the side of a hill, and I was pleased to discover that my local family lived close to the bottom!  The house was very nice, almost like a bed and breakfast, and the three of us who were sharing were made very welcome, at least I thought we were (the locals speak Cechua - of which I know about 2 words of!).  The dinner served up was incredible - particularly considering the resources  available to our Mama!  We were served the best soup I have ever tasted, and some kind of pasta dish washed down with Nescafe coffee, which was a nice surprise!  The main event happened post dinner, where we were dressed up in traditional clothes (which was just a poncho and hat for blokes - girls had to wear about 30 skirts!) and were sent on our way with our Mama to the community centre for a party!  The party consisted of a pan pipe and strings band playing local music and everyone dancing around with one another.  The most popular dance was "ring-a-ring-a-gringo", where you basically hold hands and spin and get thrown around the place!  This was a brilliant experience, and I really felt like I got to know how the locals live their lives and have thir fun.  They even put on a few dances for us relating to their professions (mainly agriculture!).

Everyone dressed up at the party
see all photos »

After a comfy night in the local house, we were up early for another short (in distance, not time) trip to the floating reed islands.  These are incredible - every year the occupants (roughly 5 families on each island) have to put a new layer of reeds down, and literally everything is made of reeds!  The pictures speak for themselves really, but I was extremely impressed with the locals!

La Paz

The border crossing into Bolivia was surprisingly smooth, and we were soon into La Paz - the world´s highest capital city.  It is also one of the world´s most chaotic city!  There are markets everwhere, and cars everywhere!  Due to a monsterous hangover and lack of sleep I didn´t really see much of the city when we got there, and instead chose to eat at a fast food place and hit the hay early!  I needed a good night´s sleep for what lay ahead the next day...

Floating reed island
see all photos »

There are some things you want to do whilst your travelling that you tell your parents about before you set off - mountain biking down the world´s most dangerous road, where on average one person a day has died, is certainly not one of them!  It was INCREDIBLE!  We were kitted out with the best equipment - the wheel on my bike alone were worth nearly US$2000 - and given all the stories about people who didn´t listen and ended up 400m down the side of the mountain with horrific injuries - to prevent us from doing something stupid and becoming another statistic!  The ride started with a 20km ride down a twisty tarmacked road, getting up to speeds of 50kmph, through fog and rain, winding in and out of slow moving trucks!  That was fun, but didn´t have the fear factor I was expecting.  The 40km down a dirt track that is only wide enough for one car and had hundreds of blind corners with 400m drops to one side certainly did, however!  When I say that the ´road´ was only wide enough for one car, I mean that there are still cars that use the road, and when a car is coming towards you you need to head towards the mountain edge and let it past!  It took us a few hours to get to the bottom of the mountain, with lots of stops, and the reward for finishing and not dying was a beer and a buffet at an animal sanctuary!

Ready to try and avoid killing myself
see all photos »

The following day, after meeting the two new people joining the tour, I managed to do something else my parents hoped wouldn´t happen on my tour - I saw the inside of a Bolivian prison!  San Pedro to be exact, the prison made famous by the book "Marching Powder" by Rusty Young.  I haven´t read it, but I would like to now, and aparently the book describes the place exactly as we saw it.  We were taken round on a tour by a convicted drug trafficker, who was actually quite a nice bloke (for a criminal).  The place is bizarre - the prisoners have to buy or rent their own cell, and if they can´t afford it then they have to sleep outside, and have a very short life expectancy.  Not only this, but the prisoners bring their families to live in their tiny cell with them, sio there are children running around amongst rapists, paedophiles and murderers.  There are shops, restaurants, sports pitches and games rooms - it was like a town within the city, and I was pretty shocked at how good the quality of life for a criminal with a bit of money (which, to be honest, is any GOOD criminal!) could be!  Unfortunately I didn´t take any photos, because we were advised to only take one camera between the group.  I will get the photos sometime soon and chuck them on facebook.  The last thing I want to say about the tour is that at the end we were asked, by the convicted drug trafficker, whether or not we wanted to buy coke from him!  How ironic that there is a coke plant within the prison!

The long and winding road
see all photos »

Potosi

And so my time in La Paz ended!  We headed south to Potosi, which used to be one of the richest cities in the world, and now is one of the poorest in Latin America.  The reason for it´s early riches is because of the mountain by the city that is full of silver, zinc and lead.  The reason for our visit was to head down the mines and see for ourselves the conditions the local miners work in.

The tour started with a demonstration of how to blow up dynamite!  I have a great video of this happening, and people´s reactions of "Jesus Christ" and "Fucking Hell" pretty much sum up the power of it!  The shock waves we felt were pretty large and unexpected to say the least!  The tour of the mines themself pretty much consisted of squeezing through small spaces and trying not to panic and hyperventilate!  Some of the  tunnels were so small that I had to lie flat and kind of scramble across over rocks and mud - it was an experienc,e but I wouldn´t say I had fun!  Coming out to the fresh air at the end was a good feeling though, and I´m very glad I took the tour.

The miners
see all photos »

We didn´t stay in Potosi for very long, and headed towards Uyuni (yet another very boring small town only there for stopovers!) to prepare for an excursion on the salt flats.  I won´t go into any detail about this now, as I have yet to upload the photos and have spent nearly 3 hours on the net this afternoon when there are 50p beers to be drunk.  So you will have to wait... but it was probably the best excursion so far so make sure you read my next blog to find out why!

I will try and update again before Christmas, but in case I don´t,

It was a tight squeeze!
see all photos »

FELIZ NAVIDAD!!!

Chrismas cheers and beers to you all,

James x