Treezy's Travelling Tales and Tantalising Tidbits

And so we come to the end

treezy — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:20:00 GMT

I'm home. Just got back a few hours ago after what felt like a long time, and I guess was, although South American buses are all so long, it was comparable with those distances (time wise anyway).

And so, my last few days in Buenos Aires were great. I met some cool people, wandered around a bit and went to an amazing drumming band. I ate icecream, empanadas and generally had a lovely relaxing last few days.

So now that I'm home, I guess that I can write a final entry for this trip.

It was a trip full of highs and lows, excitement and boredom, stunning landscapes and boring flat expanses. I was happy and sad. I laughed and I cried. I made new friends and saw old ones in new places.

I fell down some stairs, played with some monkeys, white water rafted down the Amazon and hung out with locals. I spent evenings full of people and conversation, and evenings full of Cable TV. I saw great live music, and I made some great music with a few cool jam sessions.

I spent my birthday in the wilderness, I wandered through markets and museums and generally got lost in towns just for the hell of it. I spoke the language and understood it at times, although plenty of other times I got frustrated at my lack of understanding about the culture and the language.

It is impossible to say what a favourite place was, even though I know it will be one of the first things that people ask. Everything was so different and I loved things for completely different reasons. On the whole the trip was one of extremes and beauty and I'll never forget it. Of course it wasn't all good, but the good stands out as highlights and the bad makes for good stories (after all who wants to hear "my trip was great and nothing bad happened").

I will not miss the busyness and craziness of the streets and having to risk your life crossing roads, the sewage smells, the intense poverty, the distances to travel to arrive anywhere.

But I will miss the colours and excitement of things, the market stalls, the people busking at intersections and the amazing people that I have met.

Thank you South America. I will return one day. I promise.

Waterfalls and the Circus

treezy — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:32:00 GMT

So I got to Puerto Iguazu, a little town with a big beautiful waterfall. Although it borders 3 countries (Brazil, and Paraguay also), the Argentinian side is supposed to be the best. And it was incredible. Absolutely majestic waterfalls, bigger than I have ever seen in my life. I got a boat ride under the falls, and the sheer power of the water made it definitely difficult to see but also even to breathe. But it was a cool experience. The park itself is gorgeous and I spent a happy day wandering around with a guy, Benny from the hostel I was staying at.

In fact I enjoyed the hostel and the town so much that I decided to stay an extra day, just chilling and I saw a sign saying "Circus". It listed all the things it had.

Tigers

Magicians

Trapeze Artists

Jugglers

and something that I couldn't translate. One of the English guys at the hostel translated it as 'balloon of death' and I was sold. I mean really, was it death by suffocation? Would he have to get himself out of a balloon that was slowly filling with water before he drowned? The possibilities were endless, and so on my own, because nobody else wanted to go I went to the Circus.

Step back in time 20 or 30 years and you have a bit of an idea of the kind of circus it was. I love circo arts so I was quite looking forward to all of this. Unfortunately I have been spoilt living in a city with an incredible circo arts programme and although it was good, wasn't as good as stuff that I've seen before.

I was also one of the few solo people there. Everybody had kids with them. I can't wait til I have kids so I can legitimately go to these things. But I was probably as excited as the next kid at the start.

So it was fun. The only things I didn't like was the use of animals. They had pretty emaciated looking tigers and horses and I didn't like that. I only stayed because I was curious about the balloon of death, and because animals aside, I was having fun.

The last act was what I wanted but Steve had translated it wrong. Not the balloon of death but the globe of death where a motorcyclist rode around a large circular structure. Not a balloon but really cool, and one of the few things I hadn't seen (although I also hadn't seen a tiger jump through a flaming hoop before but I think I'd rather not again anyway).

So all in all something different to do to get me out of the hostel. THe funniest thing was on the bus coming back to Buenos Aires, just coming out of Iguazu we got stopped by passport control. One of the guys came up to me, asked officially to see my passport and then grinned. "Circo!" he said. It turned out he had been at the circus the night before with his kids and he recognised my tattoo. He gave me a lolly as he asked me how I liked the circus and Argentina. Strangest passport control I had even been through but I wasn't complaining. I like lollies.

MIddle Earth

treezy — Fri, 9 Oct 2009 09:18:00 GMT

So it seems that Middle Earth isn't just for the hobbits. It is also, more literally the middle of the earth. As in the equator line. It was one thing that I wanted to do while I was in Quito, and it was a great day!

A huge number of us (9 in total) left the hostel after quite a large logistical feat to get us all organised together. It took almost two hours to get out there, and when we did, we did, we went first to the large imposing monumental monument and took the photos standing on each side of the orange line. After the novelty had subsided, we had some lunch and wandered to the site of the "real" equator line, measured with GPS, a mere 200 metres away. THe original expolorers (French I think) need to be commended though, as they got pretty close without the use of any cool equipment.

So to Inti Nan we went, the museum where the real equator was. At first when we found out we had to have a guide, we weren't keen, but we were so happy that we did. Our guide was absolutely fantastic and for the first 40 minutes told us about indigenous cultures and interesting things like head shrinking (literally what it sounds like) where they used to shrink the heads of people they respected after they killed them (hmmmmm) and did all sorts of ritualistic gruesomeness in the name of ceremony and tradition.

Anyway, all of this was very very interesting but soon we got to the stuff we all came for. The science experiments! Now I don't know about you, but I thought that the water swirling different ways on different sides of the equator was a myth. But it definitely isn't. I saw it with my own eyes. It does go one way on one side, the other on the other side, and the water goes completely straight down on the equator (this only works at the site of the real equator though. Try doing this at the fancy monument 200 metres away and the results would have been distinctly disappointing).

There is also an experiment that shows that you are weaker on the equator, and one to show that you are less co ordinated. There was an experiment with an egg to show something that I'm still not completely sure of (but I did get a certificate saying that I balanced an egg on a nail at the equator) and although no experiment, a handy sign that says that you weigh less at the equator (woohoo!)

All in all it was a fascinatiing day and one of my favourites in recent times. I felt like I was learning AND having fun. If only all of school could have been on the equator, playing with water and eggs...

Wishful thinking I suppose.

So that gets me to the end of this bit and almost to the end of the whole bit. I flew from Ecuador back to Argentina a few days ago, and all in all, Ecuador is an absolutely amazing country that I would love to return to one day (if nothing else to travel to the Galapagos islands). Ecuador is a country of absolute amazing beauty and the people are friendly and welcoming on the whole. Quito is a gorgeous capital city and it has a lot of great stuff to do, see and experience.

The end of this trip is near, but first I have to go back to Argentina as I have ten final days in this continent...at least for this time.

Gallery: Ecuador

treezy — Sat, 3 Oct 2009 03:18:00 GMT

Gallery: Peru

treezy — Sat, 3 Oct 2009 02:41:00 GMT

Hanging out with the hippies

treezy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:41:00 GMT

Hello there,well this entry brings me into the Ecuadorian capital.

I met this hippy chick in Cuenca a few weeks back, and she has been travelling through South America for 2 years, in a van playing music and selling bracelets to keep going. We got on really well when we first met and she had a great vibe (I even got up on stage to sing a song at one of her gigs which was great fun). Anyway, she told me that she would be in Quito for a while and to give me an email when I was done with the sanctuary.

I did, and she told me where she was staying. When I arrived, it was a cool vibe of dredlocked artisty types all similar to Laura. On my first night, I went out with Laura (my friend) and her friends from her van. They were on a market mission and Laura asked me to come along. When I say market, I don´t mean buying, I mean selling and so we all wandered to one of the main squares in the New Town and set up shop. It was a fascinating night, being purely an observer of course, seeing who came and the conversations that occurred. I had a long chat with one of Laura´s friends Nadie, about their whole lifestyle and a few things occurred to me then and over the next few days hanging out with these guys and people similar.

I think what they do is amazing. They travel incredibly slowly, and have absolutely no ties to society. What they make through music gigs, selling their crafts or other little ventures they scheme up, is communally put into the kitty and they do tend to live day by day, hand to mouth. They rely completely on the universe to provide and they seem incredibly happy doing it. I think that years ago I wanted to be one of these travellers, as it is a true sense of travelling rather than the more false ¨tourist¨ sense that you get on a shorter trip.

What I have realised though is this. Although I definitely have a creative side to me, I could never be this completely free. I love home, I love my family and my friends. I adore travelling and always will, but I like the security of saving up money and then going on a trip. I think I fit in the middle. I am not like Laura, relying on small change earned every single day just to buy food, and yet I am not like other tourists, whereby I don´t want to experience a country in a matter of a few days or weeks. I think I am partly like the former group, where I do make real connections with the local people through things like couchsurfing, help exchange and volunteering, but I do do some tourist things of course can see the definite end of a trip.

I have had several people say to me in my life ÿou´re so lucky¨that you can travel. This is one thing that I was chatting to Nadie about and we both agreed that luck has nothing to do with it. It is all about choice. I choose to do and spend my money on travel. Anybody could do it. I´ve just decided that I like the excitement and unpredictability of travelling.

So back to the hippies, I spent my last night with Laura as a return to where we began. Music. The thing that we connected over the most. This girl is talented with a sultry Janis Joplin style voice and guitar talent that really inspired me. We went to this bar where she had a gig, and she once again asked me up on stage, saying that she loved the collaborative nature of music. I would have to agree, particularly with this evening. After the official ¨gig¨had passed, staff members and friends went up and sung, played and jammed their way through a few English songs, but mostly Spanish which made the night extra special and different for me. We were at the bar til 3am and although exhausted, it was one of the best nights I have had since I have been in South America.

Rivers and Monkeys

treezy — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:39:00 GMT

So I am in Tena at the moment, a dusty little jungle town overlooking the Amazon. I had decided before I got here that I wanted to do some rafting, but it is low season here at the moment, and so there were no trips going for the next day. I amused myself the following day by going out to this place where there was supposed to be monkeys running wild.

I got there and I was the only person there. It isn{t really advertised so I was happy to find out about it. I paid my $2 and was handed a big stick. I felt like I was looking up at one of my brothers when I looked at the top, so I guess the stick was about 6ft 4. I wandered off into the jungle, wondering what the stick was for. I think it was offically to use in case a monkey ran wildly at you, but soon I turned it into my Amazonian warrior stick! Wandering around the park, I felt like the intrepid explorer. I was the only person for miles and that was a cool feeling. Unfortunately a huge torrential Amazonian rain storm started and I hid under a tree for the next 20 minutes, annoyed that apart from two monkeys at the beginning of the trail there had been no sighting of any animals. I wondered if the stick was really for chasing off snakes with, and ventured out of my hidey hole, and tried to get back on the path (your intrepid traveller had lost the path). Laughing off the idea of a snake stick, I heard a slither in the distance and saw him. Not needing the stick I decided that it could be used now as a walking stick as I was only wearing jandals and my feet were slipping all over the place (not the best footwear, granted but it was hot when I set out). Following the path back, I found myself returning to the start! Frustrated, I sat and watched the monkeys (same ones as before) before deciding that there was no way I was going to lose the path this time. I would make it to monkey island! I took a different path but 10 minutes later found myself at the river again, exactly where I had been the first time. Admitting defeat, I sat on a rock looking over the river, feeling quite calm and relaxed. I headed back realising that the lack of signs or maps was probably the reason that this wasn't a major tourist spot. Taking a short cut through to get back to the monkeys at the beginning, I realised that it was right through a colony of biting ants. Again jandals were probably not the correct footwear to wear while tackling predators of this calibre. They were incredibly bitey!

Reaching the same two monkeys I watched as one found a banana, peeled it and ate it. Wandering up closer to him to get a good shot of him, he ran for me with a crazed look in his eyes, and I used my stick! Hoorah for the stick!

Got back to town, and booked a rafting trip for the next day. Today I woke up early and made it down to the office. I had the most incredible day. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm not good with a lot of things. I hate heights, I am claustrophobic, am always the last in a gruop when we are walking, but I ADORE water sports. Rafting particularly. I thought it might be cool to raft down the AMazon (well a tributary but who is being picky) and was really excited. I went with the company (www.riverpeoplerafting.com) and it was brilliant! My guide Tim was fantastic, and I was so happy, going through the rapids, laughing when water splashed me in the face (it was hot and it was very refreshing) and was utterly having a fantastic time. That is until we got to the WALK OF DOOM (dun dun dun). I was told that we had to walk through the jungle around a waterfall that was too dangerous to raft through. I thought I would be fine and Tim helped me in the really steep bits. That was until he dropped the bombshell that we would now be abseiling downa cliff face to reach the bottom. Ok so I exaggerate. It was barely 5 metres, but (and remember my fear of heights) to me it was the thing of doom, and stared at it with a look of abject terror on my face. I was truly terrified. But what goes up must come down, and down I had to go. Tim helped me the whole way (and I had a guide rope strapped to me as well) and often had to guide my foot down to the next ledge. By the bottom, I was an absolute wreck and I couldn't wait to get back in the water, a place where I felt completely comfortable and confident.

Finally we were all back in the boat, and I had a smile on my face again. We went through some pretty dicey rapids, but I laughed through the whole thing and absolutely loved it! We stopped for lunch on a beautiful secluded beach and then back in to finish the journey.

We finished in a small jungle village where to my (and everyone on the trip) absolute delight there were monkey running wild through the streets. I'm sure they are an absolute menace to the villagers there, but to us it was a fabulous end of a fabulous (well all except the bit where I was a quivering mess) day!

Another Sanctuary and my getting older day

treezy — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:30:00 GMT

I´ve been out of touch the last few weeks, because I have been volunteering in another sanctuary, this one very close to the Amazon jungle near a small town called Mera.

The sanctuary, Merazonia (http://www.merazonia.org/drupal/?q=home) couldn´t really have been more different from my last animal sanctuary but it was an interesting and beautiful place to spend a few weeks.

Getting there began with a bit of a drama. Getting off the bus at what I thought was this tiny town called Mera, I checked with the driver in my best Spanish (esta Mera centro?) which of course means ïs this Mera central?. I got an affirmative and off I hopped, and sat down to wait to be collected. After a while I knew that things didn´t feel right. I had been told to stay where the bus dropped me off, but also in the email it had said that there was a small town square. I was sitting where the bus had dropped me off, but there was no square in sight. I waited a bit longer and then after about 45 minutes, I knew something was wrong. I spied a blonde girl and went to ask her if there was some kind of central square anywhere nearby. She said that there wasn´t really and was I sure that they were to pick me up here and not in nearby Puyo. Yes I announced confidently, it was definitely Mera. ¨You´re in Shell, not Mera, Mera is the next town over, 15 minutes by car¨. Cursing my situation, I thanked her, and jumped into the nearest taxi, feeling that surely, an hour later, they wouldn´t still be waiting. But they were, amazingly, and the journey began!

To get to Merazonia, it is a 30-40 minute hike which would probably be quite pleasant without your pack, but with it, was pretty exhausting. Donned in gumboots I finally made it and got given a quick tour of the place, vowing that the next time I walked that trail would be to leave again. I had decided that I would rather live in complete isolation of the modern world anyway while I was there. An absolutely beautiful setting, the sanctuary isn´t right in the jungle, but in thick forest officially called Cloud Forest due to it being slightly higher in altitude. Whatever you call it, it was beautiful isolated, and I was quite impressed with their construction with volunteers having built everything that we used, including the kitchen, toilet and shower block (complete with composting toilet and gas showers to make them hot - one thing that Mera had plenty of was water)and the dining area/sleeping building which was an impressive 3 story wooden structure.

Our work, and this is where the sanctuarys really differ from each other, consisted more of construction level stuff with only little bit of animal care. Coming from La Sende Verde, with 50+ animals and all the work focussing solely around that, I was a bit surprised to find that there were only 3 tamarinds, 2 capuchins and 5 birds. It was definitely still a place in progress. However, I kept myself busy, painting, varnishing, fixing paths among other things. The other major difference between the two sanctuarys were the fact that in Bolivia, the animals were never going to be able to be released (I think it is much harder to release rescued animals there) so we were able to handle them a bit more (not handle but let them interact with us if they wanted to). Here, the hope is that one day they might be able to go back into the wild, so we were discouraged from letting them come to you. While I understand both points of view, from an experience point of view, obiviously the former will be more interesting for a volunteer, but although I am cynical about them ever being able to release the animals (due to too much input with them already) I really respected what they were trying to do.

One of my favourite animals that I saw there was the tamarind, a monkey I previously had never seen, and was surprised when i finally saw it. It looks nothing like a traditional monkey, not using its tail but has really strong arms and legs. It is tiny and the adult tamarinds remind me of lions. The baby one looked exactly like the worm in Labyrinth (¨Ello¨¨did you say hello¨, ¨No I said ello but that´s close enough¨). I´ll post a picture of the baby when I get a chance on this post and you can make your own mind up.

Anyway, the experience was interesting and mostly enjoyable. I do realise now that my passion with this sort of thing lies more with a sanctuary that is a little further on in the process (i.e fully up and running and having animals). It´s the animal part that was so incredible with the last one, and although I did enjoy my time at the sanctuary (and it will be great once it gets going), my experience was less to do with the animals than I had originally anticipated.

Of course, I spent my 29th birthday there. It was a pretty quiet affair although one of the women made me a cake (well two actually) so that was nice. I missed being around my friends of course, but getting to the internet today to read all my birthday messages put a smile on my face.

End of Peru and into Ecuador

treezy — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 08:37:00 GMT

So after Cusco, I hightailed it up to Ecuador. To be honest, I wasn´t hugely impressed with Peru. I loved Arequipa and Machu Picchu but the whole feel of the place is in your face tourism. They see you are walking dollar signs and you really do feel it.

I have been in Ecuador 3 days and I already feel the difference. the streets are cleaner, and here in Cuenca it has a really nice musician feel to it. All the cafes have paintings and good music playing. I had a great welcome to my hostel today, as I walked in and thought ¨that sounds like Fat Freddies Drop¨. I checked in and then the next song, I really recognised. Ït is a New Zealand band¨I exclaimed, only to have the talian owner of the CD say `I assumed it was Irish, as the person that gave it to me was Irish`. It was a great little welcome to this city.

In a few days I will be in another animal sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon. I won´t have too much internet access I imagine but as my birthday is in a few days, it will be a birthday to remember. Hopefully it will be as amazing an experience as the sanctuary in Bolivia was.(p.s I finally got around to putting up a few of my photos from the sanctuary in the Bolivian photo section).

Anyway, not really much to report in this entry. I have been a bit homesick the last few days, with there being no hostels and only hotels. When you´re travelling on your own, hostels are so much better as you get to meet people. Hotels don´t tend to have character and everyone stays in their room. But that´s part of travelling. Not every day is amazing. Some days you don´t do much at all, but it´s all part of the experience.

All I know is I think I´m going to enjoy Ecuador a lot.

Cusco and Machu Picchu

treezy — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:39:00 GMT

Ok, so in the last entry I wrote how I like Arequipa for it´s subtlety and lack of pushy tourism like there was a little bit in Puno for Lake Titicaca.

Well Cusco is a completely different kettle of fish. It is a really pretty town, but immediately I got the feeling that it was a town that sees white people solely as a source of income. Therefore you are quietly relaxing in the square and you will have 5 people coming up to you with their mobile market stall trying to hawk their goods on to you. The peruvian (and Bolivian) market items are great, but the problem I have with all the markets and stalls is that everyone sells the EXACT same thing. I have bought a few things either for myself or for gifts, but once you have got the stuff you want, it gets a bit tiring the constant verbal stream of ¨alpaca sweatshirt, made with real alpaca wool¨

I do like Cusco but my back meant I couldn´t do any walks, and it is horrendously expensive! It didn´t help that someone from the hostel stole 400 soles (equivalent to $200NZD) while I was sleeping. It´s only money though right. I´ve met people who have had their cameras stolen and that is much worse.

So yesterday me and another 2 girls that I met in Arequipa, Hillary and Jess went to Machu Picchu. We stayed overnight in a town called Aguas Calientes (meaning hot water and named that way for the hot springs which was very good for my back although I think the town should be renamed Aguas medium temperature as the pools did not fully live up to their name). Apart from the pools though (which I did enjoy) and the proximity to Machu Picchu, the town is horrible. Everything is double or triple the price of anywhere else, the food is awful and you get harrased by people standing outside every single restaurant waving at you trying to get you to go into their restaurant.

Anyway, enough about this crappy little town. On to the main event. So this morning, we woke up at about 4.30am and by 5.30am I was in line for the bus, and at 6.30am about to enter. I wanted to get there early because I wanted to have more of a sense of isolation when I was up there. There were still people but it was definitely a great time to go. Unfortunately for that time of the morning, it was pouring with rain, and really foggy to begin with, so a drowned rat vaguely resembling me was walking around the site to begin with. So, was it all worth it? Well yeah, eventually. When I arrived it was cloudy so the impact of the scale of the place was lost on me. I walked around the site, being very impressed by the skill of the architecture, but at the same time annoyed at the rain. After a while though things started looking up. The cloud cover started lifting and I got a great view of the place. Admiring it´s impressiveness, I slowly wandered around going back higher. The view of the entire site from there blew me away. It was there that I stayed looking at this thing for at least half an hour just in awe of its beauty. I finally got why it is one of the seven wonders of the world. This place is awe inspiring. It would have taken them so long to cart up the stones up an incredibly long and high altitiude path, and then to have them fit so perfectly together is a mark of true brilliance.

So yeah, it made up for the horrible tourist town that is at the foot of it. Machu Picchu is very very cool.

Arequipa

treezy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 01:48:00 GMT

Well I just left Arequipa after spending 10 days there. It was a great city and a great hostel, so I stayed.

Although by the end I had definitely outstayed my own welcome, I stayed for the 450th birthday celebrations of the city which was great fun.

I also went to Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. While the canyon and surrounding scenery was beautiful, and I got to see Condors flying really close by, the trip didn´t wow me.

I also went to this amazing museum display where they had a 500 year old Inca Sacrificial princess that they had found on the mountain. It was fascinating and kinda creepy. I liked Arequipa because it felt like a real town. It didn´t have an overbearing in your face tourism feel that a lot of places seem to have and it was relatively cheap. I also did a real cultural experience that I had absolutely no desire to go to, but ended up being convinced. I went to a cock fight which was possibly one of the most horrific things I have ever seen. It is legal in Peru and we were the only foreigners in the place. It was a proper ring like spectacle with happy music to hide the horror that some of these roosters die. They attach razor blades to their feets, and then leave them to it. It seemed so normal for these Peruvians, but I could barely watch it. A good thing was that if the rooster does die, they do eat it after so it isn´t a completely senseless death, but I watched with half horror and half interest at the way the Peruvians treated this as completely normal. I am in Cusco at the moment, but in a bit of a bad way. In true Theresa style I was coming down the stairs in Arequipa yesterday morning, and I slipped and fell, falling onto the edge of the step with my back. The noises of complete and utter pain that escaped my mouth were horrible, but luckily at exactly the same time, these guys checked in and they had some first aid training. They gave me iboprophen and sugar in the form of coke to deal with the shock and then went down to the pharmacy. I was so lucky there doesn´t seem to be any damage to the spine. It seems just badly bruised around the muscle, but god does it hurt, and the 12 hour bus ride here did me no favours.

And now, here I am in Cusco, where there are heaps of walks and treks (not to mention Macchu Picchu, although I was never going to trek that anyway) and now i can´t do much. I´m pretty sure that there is a granny way of getting there, so I´ll check that out. I´m definitely in the wars this trip.

Lake Titicaca Part two

treezy — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:14:00 GMT

Ok, so I gave it another chance. Not the town, because I still think that´s a bit rubbish but the lake.

And I´m lad I did. I went on a tour out to the lake. This side was very different to the Bolivian side. For starters, the lake was filled with reeds and so the feel was just more right. We were going to the floating islands which in itself was really cool. They make their islands out of this amazing plant and the island is truly floating. We got there and we had a talk about how the island is made, and their lifestyle and it was truly really interesting.

After this, was where the commercialism came in. All of the women took one or a couple of us into her hut to show us inside. My lady showed me inside and I was very surprised to see her two year old son glued to the television. I guess some things don´t change wherever you are. I dressed up in their colourful clothes and then we went outside and took photos. I´d seen their market set up outside their houses, and so I was expecting to buy something, but I didn´t like how they did it. Instead of letting us wander through the market, we just sat in front of our lady´s stall. I drew the short straw as the only thing she made were these blankets (granted they were gorgeous and handmade but they were expensive) and they kind of guilted you into buying. I sat there for ages deciding whether I truly wanted or could make use of it, and I decided I could but I still didn´t like the way it was done.

Having said all of that, I still liked this side of the Lake so much more. It felt like what I imagined it would be (besides the overwhelming commercialism) and I got to ride down Titicaca in a reed boat which was awesome.

Now I´m in Arequipa and have been for 5 days. I love it here, and tomorrow I am going to visit the world´s deepest canyon, Colca Canyon.

Back to La Paz, and Lake Titicaca

treezy — Tue, 4 Aug 2009 07:35:00 GMT

It´s been a while since I last updated anything on here. The reason is I haen´t really done too much of note.

Finally left the sanctuary just over a week ago, and decided to spend a few days in La Paz. It ended up being a week, after I was so sick that I had to call the doctor in who told me that I had a parasitic stomach bug and conjunctivitis and gave me a mountain of medication to take. I spent the next few days in the hostel, generally feeling awful and watching a whole lot of DVDs.

I did see one interesting thing though that wasn´t connectd to a movie. It is called Cholita Wrestling and basically is Cholita women (the traditional women in the big skirts and hats and men dressed up in silly costumes fighting WWF wrestling styles with a Bolivian spin). It was the craziest thing I have seen (have a look at cholitaswrestling.com) and with our entry ticket we got a tiny souvenir of a cholita woman. We also got popcorn which we were to throw at hte performers if we saw something we didn´t like. I decided that the popcorn was too tasty to throw and ate it, but the highlight was an old CHolita woman taking off her shoe and whacking one of the performers on the head when they came and fought outside the rink.

My dose of violent entertainment over, I spent my remaining days in La Paz relaxing and also seeing the new Harry Potter film. Hoorah.

But I needed to keep moving and so to the Bolivian Copacabana it was, which rests on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Most people think that Lake Titicaca is the highest navigatable lake in the world, and the tours definitely capitalise on this misinformation. Although it is definitely one of the highest in the world, Peru and CHile have highest lakes, but Titcaca is the largest lake in South America by volume of water, so that still makes it special. I liked Copacabana, as it had a small town, but hippy style to it, and I spent a couple of days there, chilling out, buying cool presents and things for me and taking a boat to the Isla del sol (Island of the sun).

Today, I took a bus to Puno, which rests on the Peruvian side of the Lake, and am fairly unimpressed with the place, so I might move on to Arequipa tomorrow. I feel like I have ¨done¨ Lake Titicaca.

So I am in a new country after 6 weeks. What were my impressions of Bolivia. Although it isn´t everyone´s cup of tea, I had an amazing time here. The Salt flats was an amazing trip and the animal sanctuary was magical and a place I will remember forever. I also really liked La Paz in spite of the fact it contains lots of things I don´t usually like in a place. Bolivia was also incredibly cheap. I was going to see the Amazon in Bolivia as well, but decided that Ecuador heralded more wildlife and I had already seen so much wildlife so close up in the sanctuary that to see more in such a short time would lessen the effect.

Haven´t been in Peru long enough to notice the differences yet (although the internet is much faster) but I´ll be sure to make note of things when I see them.

La Senda Verde Animal Sanctuary

treezy — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:13:00 GMT

I´m here (www.sendaverde.com) and it is beautiful.

Imagine waking up in semi rainforest at the bottom of a gorgeous valley every morning to Mackaws and then spending your day, feeding and playing with the animals. It is pretty special.

I never thought that I would be in such close proximity to some of these animals. I never thought that I would have a spider monkey climb up into my lap and curl into me and fall asleep at dusk just as he is getting cold. I never thought that I would be feeding peanuts to an Andean spectacled bear or being groomed by a capuchin monkey.

It´s great here. You wake up early and give the animals their first feed of the day. There are 5 species of monkeys,some mackaws, parrots and a host of other birds, coatis, a bear, a boa, turtles, rabbits, along with a wild cat, domestic cats, and some of the most beautiful dogs I have ever come across. All of the animals generally have been rescued from abused situations.

After feeding the animals, we feed ourselves, and then it´s time to clean the animals and at midday feed them lunch. There is so much space here that it is great that most of the animals have as much space as they like to wander about(the bear has an enclosure of 3000square metres for example). Some do have more space than others, but it is a well designed place, and always being improved upon.

A bike group always comes down every day to see the animals, so we always look after them and then we feed the animals their last feed of the day.

After that feed, most of us generally decide that it is monkey playtime and we go up to cuddle the spider monkeys, the howler monkey or the baby capuchins. It´s pretty sweet here, and it feels so disconnected from the often crazy world that is South America. It is so far removed and this is the first (and probably only time while I am staying at the refuge) time that I have come up to the main town 20 minutes drive away to use the internet.

I don´t know how long I´ll stay here, but this experience is sure to remain with me for a very long time. (Photos will follow once I am at a faster speed internet but until then just have a wee look at the website to get a bit of an idea of where I am).

Until next time...

La Paz and Coroico

treezy — Tue, 7 Jul 2009 02:05:00 GMT

Well, I spent a day in a hostel in La Paz, just spent recovering and sleeping (I had felt incredibly terrible in Uyuni) so I needed the space and time.

After that I moved to this couchsurf spot in La Paz which was amazing. Basically this kiwi girl and an American are staying there at the moment, and they have this squat couch surf flat where anybody can come and stay there (there record is 20 people at one point and hey the kitchen floor is a viable sleeping space right?)

Anyway, there weren´t that many when I was there for the first few days. I learnt how to make those cool woven bracelets which I wear with pride, and basically spent a few days chilling out, talking to people and rediscovering rum (I haven´t drunk it for 10 years after a particularly bad experience so it was interesting to know that I actually quite liked it (with coke of course).

La Paz is a great city. Full of life and craziness, I really love it. The altitiude and the hills make it a difficult city to walk around (I´m used to flat Christchurch remember?) but I love it.

On the third night that I was there, we had quite a few people turn up and I think we have about 14 people that night. I managed to grab a good mattress spot, as I left the night life early (I´m definitely not any where near as much of a party animal as these guys).

On Saturday we came up to a town called Coroico which is in a beautiful valley, and there was a music festival. It was a great night, and I had lots of fun. On Sunday I checked in to a hostel and slept for 20 hours and I feel great now!

Today I head to a nearby animal sanctuary for a couple of weeks and then to the Amazon jungle!

Salt lake adventures!

treezy — Thu, 2 Jul 2009 05:50:00 GMT

Day 3 saw us have a little bit of a sleep in (8am) and then we were back on the road. The highlight for me came when we saw our first glimpse of a salt flat. It looked exactly like snow and the effect was otherworldly.

On the third night we stayed in a Salt hotel which was pretty cool. It wasn´t right on the salt flat, so ecologically it was better for the environment. It was awesome. The walls, the floor, the table and even our bed (although not the mattress) was all made out of salt!

In the morning we rose early to try and make it to this island with lots of cacti on it for sunrise. We didn´t quite make it there, so we got out and jumped around on the salt flat. Now this thing is huge! At 10582 km², the Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world, and the perfect playground for silly photos. It was a cool day with breakfast on the cactus island, and then a long time just taking photos galore.

We also visited another salt hotel, this one not allowed to have people stay in but was a cool place to stop anyway.

Lunch was at a nice wee market town called Colchani where they process the salt, and then it was to Uyuni which I must say is an uninspiring dusty little town. I was also feeling pretty sick again by this stage, but managed to make it (just) to La Paz on the night bus.

Well that about catches me up. In a few days time I will be at La Verde Sende wildlife santuary just a few hours north of La Paz. La Paz is strinkingly beautiful with the hills but my god is it busy!

Until next time...

Lakes, lakes, more lakes and flamingos!

treezy — Thu, 2 Jul 2009 05:43:00 GMT

Day two saw us begrudgingly get out of bed at 4am! Not a particularly nice start to the day. But we were happy we had when we got to our lunch spot. It was a hot spring in the middle of nowhere and it was lovely to sit in for a while.

Today we saw the lakes of many colours. There was a blue one, a green one and a red one where the flamingos lived.

It was a fun day on day two but nothing exciting happened (i.e no more getting stuck in the mud) and for a while there we cheered every succesful crossing that Max made. We got bored of that after a while.

All of our accommodation was in the same room as each other, and we stayed in the cutest places (if not freezing!). You have to remember that the altitude around these parts was about 4000m and it hit me pretty hard, so although I spurned the coca leaves, I loved the coca and chamomile tea that they provided at breakfast.

I had an early night, and fell asleep, again exhausted!

Stuck in the mud

treezy — Thu, 2 Jul 2009 05:27:00 GMT

So Thursday last week saw me getting in a jeep for a four day trip from Tupiza. Tupiza is a nice wee town, very wild west and is where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid came to their demise (or very near). I watched the movie to celebrate being in the area. I had wanted to see that movie for a long time anyway, so it was a nice excuse.

So the five of us (all who had met up on the night bus) jumped into the jeep with excitement and off we went. Our group consisted of Emila and Michael, a lovely Irish couple, and 2 German boys, Mike and Sascha. I was very happy with our wee group. The only thing that could have improved it would have been if anyone had been able to speak decent spanish. Our guide Max, and the cook Elizabeth spoke only Spanish and while we got by, we wished we could have conversed with them more. We went with the tour company Valle Hermosa, who I highly recommend, and we also stayed there as well so we got a small discount on the trip.

The scenery at the beginning was rugged and rocky and as we passed our first llama we all yelled out "LLama". We stopped to eat lunch with the llamas in the field below us. The food for lunch was a great omen of the great food to come, and we were not disappointed! We also got to know Amanda, a cool American chick who spoke fluent Spanish (very helpful) and who was with a group of 3 Parisian boys who weren´t being super friendly so we befriended her instead. They were part of the other jeep with the same company so we stayed together for the whole trip.

All was great until we came to a grinding halt. Expecting our big beast of a jeep to get through anything we got out of the jeep hoping that this would be a 5 minute stop. However, we were firmly stuck and without a spade (another group gifted it to us later) we (well the boys, as the girls were sectioned into the other jeep to keep warm or something) shovelled the mud out with plates (I assume that they washed them before serving us dinner on them!). The three of us girls were having a great time in the back of the other jeep, laughing and feeling minorly guilty that we didn´t have to do anything.

We did finally get out and help once we realised that they were collecting stones for leverage and then Shrubbery! We finally managed to get out of there 3 hours later, after we had resigned ourselves to a freezing night in the jeep. We were extremely glad to see our beds, and after a late dinner, exhausted we fell asleep.

Gallery: Bolivia

treezy — Thu, 2 Jul 2009 01:29:00 GMT

Getting into Bolivia

treezy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:35:00 GMT

(belated entry - actually wrote this about a week ago)

So I´m in Bolivia but not without a little bit of trial and error.

My bus didn´t leave until midnight on Monday, and so the hostel kindly let me wait inside the hostel. It was all good and in the morning I had put some laundry in to be washed, with them saying it would be back by 10pm. Plenty of time. So I was relaxed, watching a movie when I realised that it was 11pm and I still didn´t have my laundry back. Getting a little nervous I checked with reception who assured me that it would be back in time. At 11.35pm it comes back and I rush off to the bus station, determined never to believe an Argentinian again about time or distance as they always exxagerate to tell you what you want to hear.

So I get to the bus station with plenty of time to spare, and feeling like a bit of an expert on these buses, find my seat, and prepare to launch into a deep dark sleep, hoping to make it last all the way. I was exhausted, as I had had little sleep from the night before as we had all gone to a reggae gig in town.

Unfortunately my best laid plans were thwarted, as after only 2 minutes of sitting in my seat, the conductor taps me on the shoulder and says that i have to leave. I have a ticket for the wrong day he says, my ticket is for tomorrow. Gathering my things in a bit of a dazed confusion, I know that there is no way that this is my error. I may not be fluent in Spanish but I had gone down to the bus station the day before, asking for a ticket for tomorrow (mañyana) and there is no way that that could be construed any other way. Of course, as I am frustrated any Spanish I know goes out the window and I start speaking in English, getting myself very upset and bursting into tears as I did not want to have to wait an entire nother day. I was here now, and now was the ticket that I had asked for. The conductor didn´t seem to care less, until my saviour appeared in the form of an amazingly fluent Spanish/English speaker who relayed how it had been a mistake from the company to the man. By this stage, I was aware that I was crying and everyone was looking at me (I hate that!). I was feeling very embarassed that I was crying but it seemed to work, as suddenly, the conductor who couldn´t care less, actually bent over backwards to get me there. The bus was full so I couldn´t stay for the full time, but he sorted out a plan that would get me there at roughly the same time).

Ariel, my new friend translated to me that I could have a seat until the next stop about half an hour away, but then would have to stand until Jujuy, and then change buses. I accepted this, grateful that I would get to the border as planned, even if in a slightly less comfortable fashion.

The first fourty minutes were fine, as I had a seat, and then I had to give up my seat to the rightful owner. I wasn´t prepared to stand and I had no idea how far away this next town was, so I sat on the cold floor, freezing and incredibly uncomfortable, not entirely sure how long I could sit this way for.

At this point, an Irish guy taps me on the shoulder and tells me that there is a little ledge at the back of the bus. Incredibly grateful for this, I find my new seat, still freezing but a hell of a lot more comfortable. Unfortunately that didn´t last as I had to sit there for the next hour and a half, feeling increasingly jealous at all the sleeping bodies around me, wishing desperately I could be one of them.

As planned I got off the bus at Jujuy but the bus that was supposed to be there at the same time, arrived 40 minutes later. Finally I got on my new bus, exhausted and promptly fell asleep.

Waking a few hours later at the Argentinian border town of La Quiaca, I had to find the border. Not signposted at all, I eventually found my way there,walked across and was processed by customs (incredibly easy). It all took quite a long time and once I found the bus station in the Bolivian border town of Villazon, I was certain that I had missed the bus to Tupiza.

But to my absolute surprise when I arrived, there were all the guys from the other bus (including Ariel the Israeli Spanish and English speaking guy who saved me the night before) and the Irish guy who had pointed out my slightly more comfortable seat.

Feeling a little like a ¨The Amazing Race¨contestant who was behind but caught up to the others when the bus was delayed, I was happy to reunite with these guys. Actually there were a lot of us. Somehow we had collected 10 people, and once we got to Tupiza we checked into a hostel, and are going to do the Salt flats in 2 groups of five which makes it a lot simpler and cheaper.

So anyway, an eventful night, but I did make it in the end and that´s the important thing.