Happy New Year folks!!
Hope the jeans aren´t a bit tight, Santa paid a visit and all the New Years resolutions aren´t in tatters just yet :-)
I really feel as if I have stepped into South America now.
Crossing the border from Chile into Bolivia is like stepping onto another planet.
The first thing you notice when you walk across the border is the women, known as Cholitas in their traditional Bolivian dress of very colorful multilayered skirts, shawls, braided pigtails that are held together with what can only be described as a curtain tie and a little bowler hat to top it off.
Bolwer hats have been wore by some of the women in Peru and Bolivia since the 1920s when supposedly a shipment of bowler hats was sent from Europe to Bolivia via Peru for use by Europeans who were working on the construction of the railroads. The hats were found to be too small and were distributed to locals.
Arrived into La Paz on the evening of the 23rd of December with Matt from Oz who I met in Arica, Chile. He had met a Dutch girl I had talked into going to La Paz for Christmas who in turn had talked him into going also.
We nagviated our way through the busy streets of La Paz and eventually found the hostel. I wasn´t feeling the best with the atitude even though I had been at altitude a couple of times over the past couple of weeks but for no more than a couple of hours. So exposure to 4,500 at the border crossing into Bolivia from Chile to the 3,800 altitude of La Paz didn´t agree with my stomach and my head.
We checked in and headed straight to the hostel bar for some food and to get to know some of the residents whom we would be spending Christmas with.
On Christmas eve a few of us from the hostel went to visit San Pedro prison in the centre of La Paz. This is probably the craziest prison in the world. It is run by the inmates and families live together in the prison as the conditions are usually better than what they are used too on the outside. Guards patrol the perimeter and the families of the imates can come and go as they please.
We visited the side of the prison that holds people that have drug convictions.
Our guide was a man from Portugal in his 50´s who is awaiting trial for drug smuggling. It´s a very strange system, for instance if you serve two years in the prison and then are released you can´t leave Bolivia for two more years if you are a foreigner.
I was surprised at how comfortable the prison actually was. There are lots of little workshops producing toys and other crafts. Most people have some sort of job within the prison to provide an income. The prisoners have to rent or buy their cells for the duration of their sentence and if they have some money they can live very comfortably inside the walls. If they can´t afford a cell they I guess they have to work very hard inside the prison to earn their keep.
Cocaine is produced inside the prison and is trafficked outside which provides income. You can go to the prison, have a look around and then at the end of the tour buy some cocaine and take it out of the prison, or if you prefer you can stay inside and get coked up with the prisoners.
Which is probably a reason that most hostels don´t start serving breakfast until 12pm :-)
Christmas day was a lot different from back home.
At 6.30am everyone in the dorm was rudely awakened by a couple of drunks who fell through our door. I couldnt get back to sleep so off I went for a walk around the almost deserted streets of La Paz with my santa hat on.
As I was walking past some of the market stalls on the pedestrian streets I realised that families were living underneath the plastic sheeting on their stalls, which was a bit disturbing.
Unfortunately the gap between the rich and the poor is very evident in La Paz and it only takes a glance up any street to see it.
Christmas dinner was great, I had seen the menu on the Wild Rover Hostel website when I was in Argentina and decided that I would make the effort to be in La Paz for Christams.
The rest of Christmas week was a pretty quite affair. Spent most of the time relax and visiting some of the sights around La Paz.
On the Sunday after Christmas we went to a a very unique Bolivian spectical which takes place every Sunday just outside La Paz, the Wrestling Cholitas.
I had seen an article on these crazy but very physically fit ladies on the BBC last year and also in the National Geographic Magazine.
The event takes place in a gym in El Alto overlooking La Paz. Every Sunday local wrestling heros take to the ropes much to the joy of the local fanatical supporters of all ages.
The men wrestle the men, then they wrestle the Cholitas which to be honest look well out of it and then out of nowwhere the Cholitas kick ass. Bouncing off the ropes, pulling moves that would put any of us to shame and all in their long dresses.
On the 31st of December I was joined by Claire from Co. Down, a long time friend who wanted to delay the onset of the January blues so she is travelling with me for the next three weeks.
For New Years eve we had a fancy dress night in the hostel and the girls took much pleasure in dressing me up as one of Cinderellas ugly sisters which didn´t take much of an effort.
On the 2nd of January we decided to test our mountain biking skills by taking on the most dangerous road in the world.
It got its title as the most dangerous road becasue of the many deaths that have occured over the years. It used to be a trade route that conected La Paz to Coroico and other small villages in the Amazon basin. Nowadays it is used by mostly tourists to get high on adrenaline over the 64km continuous downhill stretch to Coroico 11,000 feet below the start of the road. Some sections of the road are roughly three meters across with sheers drops of hundreds of feet.
After all that excitement Claire and I left La Paz and headed to a little town called Uyuni, 12 hours on the bus towards the Argentina border.
Salar de Uyuni is the world largest salt flat at almost 11,000 square kilometres and at an altitude of 3,700 metres above sea level. The salt flat was created Some 40,000 years ago when a giant prehistoric lake dried, it left behind what is now know as Salar de Uyuni.
We got of the bus and joined a tour straight away for two nights three days. There were 6 of us in the jeep, two Canadians an Ozzy and an Italian.
The drivers wife was our cook for our trip and also onboard was their three year old daughter who provided us with great entertainment.
Thankfully everyone was really nice and over the next couple of days and we had a great time. We visted the salt flats on the first day and then a few Flamingo filled lagunas shadowed by Volcanoes on the second and third days.
Back to La Paz for ten minutes on the Tuesday and onto another bus to the Bolivian Copabanna along the shores of Lake Titicaca, the largest in South America.
We spent two days here and visited Isla de Sol (Island of the Sun) the main attraction. A pretty Island about two hours in the very slow boat from Copabanna. Apart from the nice walk on the very sunny day we had there are some Inca ruins on the Island and a couple of not very impressive museums.
The next day it was off again and over the border to Peru.
I dont have any pictures to put up at the moment of my Bolivian adventure and the reason will be revealed in my next story.
Ohh the suspense :-)
