Deserts and Desserts

Editor's Pick Award

Our Editors awarded this travel blog entry for providing relevant information that may be useful and inspiring for other travelers.

Hi all,

It´s not been long since our last update, but we´re packing a lot in before our stop off in England so thought it better to send shorter more frequent blogs.

Since we last updated you we spent a couple of further weeks in Bolivia which is an incredible country - sadly we had nothing to do with the rare skeleton and precious jewels that were found in a Bolivia pyramid in early May (thanks Tim), maybe if we´d have spent less time in the bar on the Inca trail....

You´ll see in the photos that we´ve finally managed to upload a photo a tyìcal Bolivian lady in national dress, complete with typical bowler hat and baby blanketted to her back. Whilst the baby is optional, all women across the country wear bowler hats, apparently the size and angle indicates their tribe and marital status. This has fasinated us since we arrived and it was only last week that we finally discovered the origin of the trend. Apparently in the 19th century an English guy invested his life savings in buying bowler hats in England and shipping them to South America to sell to the locals. Unfortunately for him the men simply were´t interested so being the entrepeneur that he was he told the high class Andean ladies that bowler hats were the latest fashion accessory for women in London and Paris. Amazingly they brought it and in a rush to emulate the Europeans he sold out, well over 100 years later the trend continues (Rosh - that´s putting yourself on the map!).

Bolivia may be stunning, however the poor country has suffered over the years. Various wars with it´s neighbours (none of which Bolivia has won) has managed to reduced the size of Bolivia to a third of what it once was. It has also suffered at the hands of it´s leaders (one president swopped 10,000 acres of Bolivia for a stallion - talk about ´my kingdom for a horse´) who have managed to massare the economy, in 1985 inflation was 10,000%pa - people literally had to collect their pay by the wheelbarrow (for those at Barclaycard imagine the re-pricing).

On the plus side, apart from amazing scenery, interesting people, jungle, pampas, (forgetting the crazy death road and minibusses) etc etc Bolivia has also been blessed with the most amazing cakes and sweets I have ever seen. They actually have guards outside the cake shops to keep the queues under control and to stop you taking photos (given the guard only came up to my shoulder I figured I was safe getting this snap). For once I am secretly happy to be allergic to wheat otherwise we´d be booking an extra set on the flight home for all the pies I´d be putting away!

Our last few days in Bolivia were spent on a trip around the Salars which are the worlds biggest natural salt flats. The trip was fatastic, flat salt plains as far as the eye can see leaves you with no sense of perspective (made for some very amusing photo opportunities). Rups might mention in his part that we went on this trip with some 19-pre-uni-year olds who, whilst lacking in age, made up for it ambition and challenged us to stay up drinking with them on the first night, bless them, they didn´t quite realise what they were taking on - like lambs to the slaughter. Anyway in the process of proving that we weren´t past it I happened to spend all our money. Before Rupert tells you all the embarassing details, I would like to add that whilst this is true, I did get us a very good deal - 1.5 litres of rum for less than a pound.

The Salars trip finished in Chile and we were met by fantastic food and Chilenan wine - yay! The Atacama desert is amazing, dry, mountainous and very chilled out. We decided to spend a couple of days taking in the local scenery (and another a night out with the aforementioned 19 yr olds) and trying out some of the local activities, such as sandboarding on the deset dunes. I was so up for this.... how hard could it be? As it turns out for someone that´s never snow boarded, pretty hard. Anyway after a few spectacular falls and a mouth full of sand I managed to complete some decent runs and even got some sic (maybe accidental) air. There´s probably no need to point out that Rups was flying all over the dunes like he´d been born with a board strapped to his feet.

At this point I decided that maybe it was time to get the adrenaline sports side of things back in my court so booked us in for some horse trekking in the desert (not sure about spelling - obviously I mean the sandy type, not the cake and icecream variety). I´d not been horse riding since I was ten (perfecting the over-head swallowdive ended my riding career at this point), but I felt surely it ws like riding a bike and I surely couldn´t have forgotten much? I was right, as I got on the horse it all came flooding back to me, great.  Unfortunately  though my horse hadn´t been educated in an English riding school and we didn´t speak the same language. Luckily he did understand left and right so as I couldn´t make him stop I started using Ruperts horse as a bumper. Plan was going very well until Rups´ horse got fed up with us and kicked mine in the face causing us both to hang on for dear life.

After this slight incident we changed order and followed our John Wayne guide and his current  squeeze off into the desert just like real cowboys and girls. So much so that Rups insisted on throwing his hat in the air and playing ´air-lasso´ for the best part of an hour. In complete contrast I decided that I would stick to what i know and ride ´Énglish-style´ anyway perfecting a very posh ´Mary Poppins style´ rising trot. In hindsight it was embarassing - we were bad comedy extras in a romantic western.

This brought us to the end of our Chilean travels (the weather is far toooooooooo cold to visit any further south) and a flight to Buenos Aires, this time we will be boarding complete with fresh towels and hot water, just incase we´re called on for any deliveries (Zoe - happy to bring these to the wedding). It´s now less than two weeks until we´re back in the UK and we´re already fanticising about English food and what we´re going to eat (jacket potato, cheese, beans....), obviously we´re also looking forward to seeing as many of you as we can.

Hopefully Rups will also add something to this blog, but while I´ve been typing he´s discovered that he has access to the economist website and can therefore look up the Barclays and ABN AMRO status. Haven´t seen him this excited since the bar announced 2 for 1 on G&Ts.

Hope you´re all OK and get ready....

Jo xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

PS - Started my postcards last week and found that sending ten postcards from South America costs more than two nights accomodation! Won´t be sending any more I´m afraid - this will have to do!

Hi all (Rupert now),

Ok the 2 for 1 on G and T´s was only 30 minutes ago and we´re typing this as we drink them so my enthusiasm for getting some news isn´t that high!

Thanks for all the additions to the last blog and all the replies to the e-mails they´re great to hear.

Apologies but I forgot to menton some of the animals that we saw in the Amazon, mostly the Pink Dolphins, which we went swimming with (this seems to be turning into a theme!) We pulled the canoe up very close to where we were catching the pirañas annd not more than 10 minutes away from where we had seen the aligators. The guide said "swimming" and nodded his head at the water, conspicuously he made no motion to go in himself! Tentitively we slipped into the water once the dolphins had appeared - they scare off the aligators apparantly.... The dolphins are pretty ugly but they occasionally try to nibble your feet. The enthusiam you feel when you do get close to them is tempered by the knowledge that it´s not very far from the aligators and once the dolphins haven´t been seen for a couple of minutes maybe the inside of the canoe isn´t so bad after all. The Guide had the trip of his life time though when a couple of American girls we were with decided they needed some "Bolivian naked photos" and stripped off. They stood at the tip of the canoe wobblng around while Jo took photos and the guide´s eyes popped out!

Meanwhile back in La Paz we discovered the best Pub in Bolivia which claims to be a 100% fake English pub, it dicscourages tight Yorkshiremen, serves pints of PG tips and tried to get the lonely planet to reprint its latest edition to include it. We also took an open topped double decker bus tour of the city. When we got up to the top deck it was strangely low - despite being open topped. When sitting down the sides only came up to our shoulders. As soon as we started though we soon worked out why. In Bolivia they string electric cables accross the street at about 11 foot high (as opposed to the ones on the pavement at 5´10"). Every once in a while as we were looking accross at another statue of Simon Bolivar an inch thick cable (no doubt carrying 20,000 volts) would skim accross the top of the bus and Jo and I would dive sideways to prevent decapitation (and electrocution).

What am I thinking about ....... Boliva doesn´t have 20,000 volts ....... people here are only allowed 1v each twice a month!

After the trip we tried to book our trip to the Salars which went swmmingly until we had to pay. I tried to hand over my Bolivianos but the woman wasn´t having any of it, apparantly half of them were fake. We´d encountered this a couple of times along the way in south America - once with Peruvian Soles and once with some US Dollars that we´d picked up in Brazil last year. This time however we had just taken the notes straight out of the cash machine! What can you do in that situation - it´s impossible, if you take them into the bank then they just deny that their machine spat them out. Just the prce of doing business I guess....... We´ve passed them off ourselves now to some gulible restauranteur...

I mentioned last time that Jo was feeling pretty unwell, that continued, and I seemed to have caught the same thing - for each of us it took 11 days to get better which was a little tedious. The worst of it came in a restaurant in La Paz where we had quite a surreal experience. Dinner took about an hour and neither of us were at the table for more than 30 minutes.

Conversation went something like this,

Jo (shortly after arriving) "Just going to pop to the loo"

5 minutes later

Rupert "Thank god you're back, have you got the paper" (already standing)

5 minutes later

Jo "I´ve got the menus, I'll have a spring salad and a sprite"(running past)

5 minues later

Rupert "I´ve ordered"(grabbing the loo roll)

5 minutes later

Jo "I´ve been thinking ..... what can we get Dan for his birthday" (moving quickly)

5 minutes later

Rupert "don't know, maybe a drinking game" (running off)

5 minutes later

Jo "How about getting hold of his Mo-ped and paying someone to Pimp his Ride" (Dashing past)

Well you get the idea don´t you it was a very short conversation that lasted half an hour, and in case you´re interested we thought that although "Pimping Dan´s Ride" would have been the best present we thought the logistics would be too difficult....

After La Paz we took a bus journey to a place called Sorata which is in the middle of Coca growing country and in valley below 2 of Bolivias highest mountains. When I say "bus" journey I might be exagerating a tad what it really was was a tiny Toyota Hiace (think VW camper for an approximate size) which had been converted to fit as many people in as possible. This very definitely didn´t mean converted for gringo sized people but with the aid of a crow bar I squeezed myself into the back seat. This meant that I had to keep my head firmly on one shoulder or another, if I dared to put my head up everytime we hit a small bump I would scalp myself against the roof.

Jo meanwhile was having an even more interesting time closer to the front. Everytime we past anybody that stuck their hand out we'd stop and let them in. We started the journey with every seat ocuppied (about 14 people) but we quickly managed to fit in another 8 making it 22 passengers and 1 driver. You might ask where these people went and I can´t really give you an answer, we'd all just shove up a bit and and another person would get in. By the 22nd though there was one guy that stood in the doorway and basically lent over the top of Jo so that she couldnt mave or even raise her hands to scratch her face. When a couple got out the same guy sat down opposite her and fell asleep (passed out - he was very drunk) with his hands on Jo's legs (which by this time were around her neck because there was too much luggage on the floor for her to put them down - much to the amusement of the Bolivian men).

Once we'd arrived Jo started to feel a little better so we thought we'd undertake a challenging 2 day walk in a day. The 9 hours were pretty hard going but we managed it and were rewarded with some of the best views of the trip from the bottom of the glaciers down 5500m to the valley floor.

On one of our journeys we met a Dutch girl who told us about a very interesting experience that she'd had in the jungle. She went out there with a friend and was given this drink made from certain jungle flowers by a Shaman (medicine man). An hour later nothing had happened but when she asked the guy if this was normal he just told her to wait. As she sat down by the fire a giant Care Bear walked up to her and asked if she would like to go for a ride. As if it were the most natural thing in the world she jumped on his back and for the next 7 hours flew around the jungle getting to know everyone who lived there.

Her friend meanwhile spent the 7 hours screaming at the fire and still wont talk about what happened to her. Although they were sat next to one another the whole time they didn't know was happening to the other. The Dutch girl told us that it was the most amazing drug she had ever taken and to quote her "After all I'm Dutch and I've had everything else". We did hear about a similar thing happening in Peru and someone who didn´t know what they were doing gave a traveller some of the same stuff, got the dose wrong and the guy is now dead. This has lead to a massive clamp down over there on "fake" shaman.

From Sorata we went back via La Paz to Uyuni and the salt flats. They are part of what used to be the sea (currently at 4000m above sea level) and are about 150 miles wide and 200 miles long. They are basically a 10m deep pile of completely flat bright white salt. The trip took us through the salt flats, accross the desert on the other side, past flamingos on coloured lakes and eventually to the Chilean Border. There were no cash machines in Uyuni and we could expect none when we arrived in the Chilean desert town of San Pedro, so for about 9 days we would have no access to money. Accordingly we had gone prepared with a lot of US dollars to change. Once out of Uyuni however there was nowhere to change them. We knew that there were certain national park fees to pay but had enough Bolivianos to cover them and buy a few essentials.

A couple of beers into the first night Jo asked me if I had any money on me as she was off to the little camp shop where we were staying. I handed over what we had left and asked for another beer. Unfortunately I hadn´t really been watching what Jo had been doing for most of the night. As it happended Jo was busy proving to a couple of 18 year olds that 30 years on the planet gave her a much higher capacity for alchohol than they had. Jo returned from the shop with 2 bottles of Rum a couple of bottles of coke and 15 Bolivisanos (about 1 pound) of change.

Oh dear.......

Not enough for the park fees, not enough to get into Chile and as it turned out only enough to go the toilet twice in the next two days (I was still feeling pretty ill at this point!).

Anyhow to cut a long story short Jo and the boys drunk the rum and by the morning the Boys had declared that Jo could indeed drink a lot "for an old bird" and agreed to split their remaining funds with us so that we could get into the park and into Chile.

We had a great time in San Pedro - a very relaxed litttle mud brick town in the Atacama Desert, Jo and I went Sandboarding and came back full of sand - it reached parts I didn't even know I had! We then hired some horses and acted like cowboys for half a day, it was very wild west. When we got there they told us to put on some chaps and I knew it was going to be a good day as we would even have a costume! Infact they were a little disapointing as they only came up to the knee but it was still really enjoyable.

Only 2 weeks left now before we are home. See lots of you then but until then roll on Argentina and those steaks!

Rupert