TravelStream™ news feed for member matnkat on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/matnkat en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:21:56 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205848500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205848500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205848500/tpod.html Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:21:56 -0400 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Nasca, Peru

We arrived in Nazca in the early morning and wandered over to our Lonely Planet Recommended hostel. The reviewer must have either arrived during a cold spell or else been given a special refrigerated room as we were roasting in ours. The walls seemed to be made of some special heat retaining property and we spent a few hours resting and getting nicely par-bolied before Matt headed out to book some flights to take us over the Nasca lines. Late morning then, and we were picked up by our minibus and taken to the airstrip just a few miles out of town where little Cessnas took off every few minutes for half hour trips over the lines. As soon as Kat saw the size of our transport and in particular how steeply it banked after taking off she became a little nervy but bravely stuck out the whole experience (well, she could hardly get off half way through...)But before we took flight we first sat through an hour long US edutainment (That´s what they called it...) production called  'Digging for Truth'. Our Indiana Jonesesque presenter then went on to describe popular theories as to the reasons behind the creation of the lines, before rubbishing them, describing some other ones and then also taking a flight over the lines and "discovering" some new ones. Despite cringing at the cheeseyness of it, it was pretty educational to be fair and definitely worth seeing before taking our flight as neither of us knew too much about them beforehand.Now, despite flights taking off every couple of minutes Kat and I had to wait around for a further 2 hours before we finally got airborne. Apparently the Cessna's all have room for either 3 or 5 passengers and they wont go up if they're not full. Our number 3 must have had a change of heart as they never turned up and we hung around until some American chap turned up at the airport and joined us. He was quite a character, coming to Peru every year for most of the year it would seem and wandering around the landscape. He enthralled us with his printouts from Google Earth complete with all the GPS waypoints he'd marked on of points of interest.- such as "Interesting square shapes on the ground" and other such evocative descriptions. The "square shapes" which he spent a couple of days trekking to see turned out to be piles of asphalt that had been dumped by road developers... Still, we were stuck on a plane with this guy, so couldnt escape...The flight itself was just as much fun as seeing the lines. Well, at least Matt thought so. Kat classes the experience as something she's "glad shes done and doesnt have to do again". Neither of us have been in a plane that small so it was quite an experience to be tossed around so much at the whim of the wind. The lines really are pretty crazy to think they've just been sitting around for more or less a millenia - considering they only consist of sweeping aside pebbles to reveal the lighter ground beneath. Matt was reminded of the bygone days when he used to indulge in a little crop-circle making. Those disappeared by the time of the next harvest - but perhaps he could advance a new theory as to the reason behind the creation of the lines - perhaps they were just a prank by a bunch of Nascan univesity students with too much time on their hands...By early afternoon we were back on terra firma and whilst Kat snoozed Matt enjoyed the best italian he's had in a long time at a little organic restaurant that did a cracking lasagne. The rest of the day was spent wandering around Nasca trying to find anything interesting about the town. The townspeople themselves have really taken the lines to heart - not just in the abundance of cheesy souveniers, but also in the architecture of the town itself. The main plaza has replicas of the lines engraved into the streets and similar sculptures are set up around the centre - quite cool really.In the evening we were both pretty shattered so we just went to an ultra fast food chinese (both our starter and our main arrived within seconds of ordering) where we filled up to the point of bursting for less that a pound each (they defintely rely on the velocity and volume of customers at this place for their profits) and then got an early night for our 6:30 bus the next day to Lima.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205614320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205614320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205614320/tpod.html Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:16:39 -0400 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Arequipa, Peru

We havent got a great deal to say about Arequipa, spending just 2 days there and most of that time was spent eating crepes and learning to play backgammon!Arequipa, in the winter, has a pretty spectacular setting, overlooked as it is by mountains and volcanos towering almost 4000m further above it's 2300m elevation. Of course, they're still there in the summer, but damned if we could see them as they were permanently shrouded in cloud... It's also a good base from which to explore the deepest canyons in the world - but as Kat isnt too well we decided to just take a couple of lazy days and enjoy the temptations of the town itself and also the excellent DVD selection of our hostel´s TV lounge :)We found a fantastic creperia which served up some tasty meals to us (Matt was particularly taken with the "Apple Pie" crepe of apple, cinnamon and icecream). They also had a good selection of games in the cafe - so Matt taught Kat to play Backgammon, only to forget half the rules and yet still be beaten in their first game together...We really like the emphasis and effort the South American countries put on and into their Plazas. Arequipa is no exception and the material from which most of the buildings are constructed (sillar) is white and volcanic in origin and glistens in the sunlight. The first night we spent in Arequipa the central square was home to what Matt reckons was a big pre Easter week mass. What particularly impressed him though was the clarity of the tannoy system. The singing of the choir filled the square and sent shivers down his spine - which is quite an achievement for the sound delivery system considering Matt's status as a devout Athiest.In the afternoon on the second day we took a cheesy bus tour of Arequipa and the surrounding area. It was predictably rubbish, although both Kat and I were thrilled with our free bright yellow baseball caps. One highlight (ok then, the only highlight) was a visit to an Alpaca zoo and associated shop which allowed Kat to confirm that Matt had got her a bargain in the blanket he haggled for in Chinchero.That night we jumped on another night bus bound for Nasca and a date with their famous lines in the desert.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205438160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205438160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205438160/tpod.html Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:46:40 -0400 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Cusco, Peru

Our trip from Copacabana to Cuzco didnt run as smoothly as advertised by the lady we booked tickets from. To start with we were herded into a van ´(along with a young girl who was our "guide" - why we needed one was about to become clear...) and driven 20 minutes to the border. Getting across the border was easy peasy - almost disturbingly so. It´d have been nice if the border guards had shown some interest. As it was our guide didn´t even bother with the checkpoints and just strolled across into Peru. Once there the guide went to a payphone and had a conversation with whom we assumed to be our transport. After a while it became clear that our transport wasn't here and so our guide paid for another van to drive us away from the border. Despite the van being full of the 8 of us plus bags we still stopped to pick up some random Peruvian along the way. Only after another 20 minutes of bumping along with a big Peruvian bum in Matt's face did we realise that we'd actually picked up the driver that was supposed to have met us at the border, and that in fact we were driving us and him to his own van. Once there we unloaded and reloaded into our 3rd minivan if the morning and chugged along for another 20 minutes until the driver stopped at a junction in an otherwise deserted and uninteresting part of the highway. We, our bags and out guide all disembarked. Our guide explained we now had to wait at the side of the road until the bus from Le Paz to Cusco came past - at which point she would flag it down and we could get onboard the *real* bus.This pretty bizarre transport system worked itself out ok in the end though and after a further 10 hours on the bus we rocked up into Cuzco. By this time it was dark and so we just checked ourselves into our hotel (Hotel Los Ninos) which donates all it's profits to helping homeless children (it was looking after more than 500 at the last count) and got an early night.Despite being the former capital of the Incan world, there arent any Incan buildings as such in central Cuzco. However, many of the significant buildings have been built on Incan foundations and this is evident from the huge polished rocks (they're too big to call bricks) fitting snugly together without mortar and which form the base of many buildings.We spent four days in Cuzco (including our day trip to Maccu Picchu). The first day was spent just wandering through the old town. It feels like an old and grand city (in a similar way to Potosi in Bolivia) although unfortunately its pretty much 100% devoted to tourism (not that our visit will have in any way helped to turn the stats around...) but it has some lovely ornate squares and we found on our first day a great little cafe up in San Blas that served genuinely tasty breakfasts (warm freshly baked bread- yumm!) and even put in a good show at serving up an English breakfast for Matt when we returned their on the second morning. Kat unfortunately is still feeling pretty rotten so we treated ourselves to hotel delivered pizza on the first evening. The second day we were clearly feeling that the end of our holiday was in view as we spent a couple of hours in the morning on the web looking at jobs for Matt, cars for Kathryn, and both rental and purchasable properties! We´ve also spotted some nice styles of paintings that we hope will also be for sale in Lima as we didnt have time to pick them up here. In the afternoon Matt took off on his own to visit some of the Incan ruins within walking distance of Cusco. This mini adventure required him to successfully navigate his way through the murky world of local buses to get to the furthest and highest of the ruins, and then he enjoyed a pleasant afternoon of wandering back down to Cuzco visiting the 4 major ruins on the way. Only the last one, Saqsaywaman was particularly impressive, but it was a nice taster for what was to come when we visited MP the following day.It turned out to be really tricky to organise our trip to MP. You have to take the train but the cheap trains book out days in advance. So in the end we had to take a cheap train from Cuzco to MP and then return in the evening on a more expensive train (food and drink supposedly included - although they didnt mention the provided "entertainment") which only returned half way and then finally share a taxi all the way back into Cuzco. Maccu Picchu was definitely worth seeing and it does feel a bit otherworldly but it´s very expensive to boot. It cost us around 150GBP for the two of us to take a day trip there from Cuzco... The "entertainment" mentioned above involved a surreal peformance by a ballaclava'd man fondling a stuffed toy llama and dancing around for a few minutes. This was followed up by a fashion parade involving two of the train steward and stewardesses who had to don and parade in all manner of clothes (The common factor being the "grandad" level of styling - Michael, bet you cant wait to see your present...). All in all we felt a bit annoyed that we were paying extra for this! Finally in the shared taxi back to Cuzco we shared with a chap who worked for Microsoft out in Reading - so Matt was able to get his much needed fix of teccy chat - but did manage to stop short of handing out his business card.Our final day in Cuzco wasnt - in the sense that we took an organised tour of the Sacred Valley. The valley in question is the one that the Rio Urubamba flows through on it´s way from Pisaq (an hour north of Cuzco) all the way to Maccu Picchu (and presumably beyond) about 50km west of Pisaq. It´s called Sacred just because it was particularly fertile and so it contains several Incan towns and lots of their farming terraces. The first stop was at ruins in Pisaq to visit the ruins of a town on a steep hill and from their we headed onto Ollantaytambo to visit the ruins of another town (altogether more impressive). Apparently the Incas liked to build their towns and villages in the shapes of their favourite animals. According to various tour guides / books, Maccu Picchu is in the shape of a Condor (and also a Puma according to another guide) and Ollantaytambo in the shape of a Llama. We think that years of drinking Coca tea is finally having it´s affect on these poor malillusioned guides as you need an <i>extremely fertile imagination to see what they see. Finally we stopped off at Chichamba where the fascinating science of alpaca weaving (do you notice the heavy layer of sarcasm??) was demonstrated to us - although we did pick up a nice Alpaca blanket for our future bed back home...That final evening we headed for Arequipa on a night bus, where we intend to spend a couple of lazy days before heading onto Nazca and then finally to Lima.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205003880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205003880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1205003880/tpod.html Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:43:35 -0400 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Copacabana, Bolivia

We arrived in Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the middle of the afternoon. Although this small town gave its name to the much more famous Copacabana in Brazil unfortunately the beaches dont really stand up to much comparison. A we´ve decided to cut our holiday a little short we can afford to splash out a little on some more luxurious accommodation and so we found ourselves in the dome roofed&nbsp;suite of the "La Cupula" hotel with our own inroom hammock and great views of Copacabana and the lake. As well as having some nice rooms the german run hostel also has a great restaurant where we ate each night of our stay. The lake was stocked with trout in the early 20th century and Matt was able to enjoy the best fish he's tasted for a long time.After settling in we went for a bit of a wander.&nbsp;Kat was still feeling pretty under the weather so we supplemented the Pringles with some Starburst and Skittles. In the end though this just meant that she's feeling additionally sick from eating too many sweeties!There isnt a whole lot to do in Copabana itself. It has a nice cathedral and an easy hill climb rising up from behind our hotel which was a good hike for sunset one evening. Matt bumped into Clare again and they hiked to the top of the hill for sunset and to enjoy a couple of beers at the summit. After a while Debbie and Derek turned up. They had managed to make the most out of a bad situation (recall that they had their camera and passports stolen in Potosi). Derek had upgraded his camera and so was pretty happy and Debbie had upgraded from a Kiwi to a British passport :).The main reason to come to Copacabana is that it is the set off point for boats which head to Isla del la Sol about 20km away. This island is where the Inca's believe that creation began and it's home to a few ruins as well as being a pleasant place to wander around. In the event we boarded our boat early on our second morning in Copacabana. 2 hours later we finally arrived at the island. For some reason the boat carrying about 40 passengers was fitted with 2 small offboard motors - only one of which was used for the majority of the trip. Poor Kat was suffering from sea sickness in addition to the altitude sickness that she hasnt managed to shake. Anyway, once on the Island we found a guide, unfortunately he didnt speak any English..., and a group of about 8 of us set off to see the site of creation along with some ruins along the way.Suffice to say that we remain to be convinced that the world began from Titicaca rock. A one hour hike uphill took us past the following on our way to the site of creation:The remains of a temple (nothing visible - possibly all overgrown)Some rock that was supposed to look like a bird (it didnt)Footprints of the sun god (some stains on the ground)And once at the summit, we are supposed to use our imagination and see the holes in a rock where the sun and the moon are supposed to have sprung from. Finally, opposite the site of creation was a sacrificial altar which we had initially mistaken for a picnic table. I guess it was one of those tours where you really would have benefitted from an English speaking guide. Having said that, when the tour was over, the guide was very much able to make understood that he expected a tip!A lot of people then walk from the ruins in the north of the island down to the south where there is a hilltop community (Yumani) passing various ruins on the way. Because of Kat's foot we took the easy option of catching the boat back from north to south. Kat then remained at the foot of the Inca Stairway whilst Matt hiked up to see what all the fuss was about. At the top he encountered some of the people from the tour at the north who were completing their hike across the island. They hadnt managed to encounter (or more likely they had walked past without realising they should be seeing something significant) any ruins along the way although had enjoyed the scenary on the hike.Finally arriving back on the shores of Copacabana around 5:30 in the evening Matt rushed around to try to book passage out the following morning. Unfortunately we were running short of Bolivianos at this point so had to resort to booking the only transport to Cuzco leaving after the banks opened (all other transport left at around 8.30 in the morning) with the promise to change cash and pay for the bus in the morning.Come the morning, and flush once again with Bolivianos we "enjoyed" 2.5 rolls for breakfast (well, actually we didnt want to touch the 0.5 of the already chewed roll that we found in our bread basket), loaded up with more Pringles and waited for our tour bus to take us across the border and onto Cuzco.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204731360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204731360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204731360/tpod.html Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:18:51 -0400 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Coroico, Bolivia

We woke on the tuesday morning full of excitement that we were going to spend the next couple of days playing with monkeys. First of all though we had to get there. This involved catching a local minivan from La Paz. They go when full and Kat and I were the last two on the "bus". Matt had to squeeze into the front in the middle seat. This meant that whenever the driver wanted to change gear Matt would inevitably get his bottom fondled. To cut down on costs it appeared that the van had been constructed without suspension and the journey was a bit of a bone shaker. It also looks as though the bolivians are fighting a losing battle with the frequent landslides that baulk their efforts to construct half decent roads as the bus frequently had to negotiate fallen boulders and move to the far side of the road to avoid the several landslides that we encountered enroute.A positive side of these adverse conditions was that the bus had to take a diversion which took it right past the entrance to the animal sanctuary, which saved us the trouble of catching a taxi from Coroico town 7km away.The refuge works with around 6 permanent staff, most bolivian but with a Swede doing the cooking and a canadian girl who has been there for the past 4 months after returning from a previous (shorter) stay there. There were also 4 volunteers there who pay around $100 to stay for up to 2 weeks to feed and walk the various animals. They were two English couples all around our age (ish), Jo (social worker) and Chris (ex marine tree surgeon) and Neil (IT consultant) and Lisa (producer of TV ads). We had plenty of opportunity to make friends with the various animals as they roam free throughout the small refuge. "Making friends" involved getting regularly peed and pooped on and this appeared to be an occupational hazzard for all concerned. In the past couple of days they had a new arrival of a 3 month old monkey who seemed content to hang onto our necks for much of the first morning. The small squirrel monkeys (all called Jimmy as they couldnt be told apart) liked to reek havoc, steal food and mate with anything of a convienient size (The dog and cats were all viable candidates for their amour - and there was something just about seeing a dog having it's leg humped).Our favourites were probably the black spider monkeys who were the most 'human' and since pretty harmless were never on a leash so we saw the most of them. Matt made good friends with Sambo and you can see them playing in one of the videos uploaded.We had a great cabin for the two days with a terrific shower (always a big plus point when being regularly wee'd upon!) although since lunch was pasta every day (even great tasting home made pasta) we did being to feel the need for a change of diet by the second evening.There is nothing much in Coroico itself, although on our second night we went, with the volunteers and Robin the canadian, to an excellent french restaurant that is reputedly one of the best in Bolivia. It was an outdoot restaurant - but since we were down now at about only 1500m above sea level it was semi-tropical and the evenings were pleasantly warm. We´re typing this from Lake Titicaca back up at around 4000m and even though it´s midday our fingers are still freezing!On the Thursday morning we left shortly before midday and caught another nasty minivan back to La Paz and then, bumping randomly into Clare (the girl who played in goal for Doncaster Belles), caught a much nicer (though equally as cheap) tourist bus up to Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The highlight of the journey was when we all had to get off the bus as it had to get onto a raft to cross the lake cutting off about an hour of travel time. The rest of us got onto a much more stable looking motor boat to make the journey across where we were reunited with our bus for the remainder of the journey. It was at this point that Kat, who has been suffering from bad altitude sickness (and so was really not looking forward to leaving the low lying animal refuge) perked up a bit when Matt found her some imported (and horrendously expensive) Salt and Vinegar pringles...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204577160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204577160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204577160/tpod.html Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:02:55 -0500 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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La Paz, Bolivia

Overnight bus breaks downThe recommended hostel - LokiCoca MuseumPoolMDRITWShopping necessitiesReturning to La Sende VerdeOur first experience of the Bolivian night coaches turned out to be a pretty pleasant one. The seats recline almost all the way down, we got blankets, and the film was an old Chuck Norris classic... On the down side the bus broke down in the middle of the night for a couple of hours and all the men had to get off the bus to help make it work again. Well, almost all the men - Matt reckoned he wouldnt be much help not being able to understand the language so just went back to sleep.We arrived in La Paz early in the morning and got a taxi to&nbsp;Loki hostel&nbsp;that had been pre-booked for us by Jerry. It´s a huge backpackers hostel that's really geared up for the young people around here. There's a big bar with a decent pool table, they show the football at the weekends and have a TV/DVD lounge. It's situated in what used to be a pretty ornate hotel. It's certainly very different from everywhere else we've stayed so far. La Paz is a pretty crazy city, the buildings cling to the steep slopes of the various hills that surround it in a way that doesnt seem structurally feasible. On our first day we just hung out around the hostel with the others (Jerry, Nicole, Paz, Itamar and Rafael) and played a lot of pool. Matt hit a rich (and slightly lucky) vein of form and everyone was suitably impressed... this form deserted him for the remainder of the stay though :(We did take time out however to visit the local coca museum. This turned out to be a small, serious but informative museum looking at both the positive and negative effects of coca and it's derivative cocaine... more on this later.On the second day Kat had a day without Matt as he took on the Most Dangerous Road in the World. This is a 64km stretch of unsealed road, liberally sprinkled with small rocks and streams to cross, waterfalls to go under and regular drops of upto 600m for anyone unfortunate enough to slip off the narrow (1 bus width and no more in places) path. Fortunately since a sealed toll road opened last year there is much less other traffic to share the road with the mountain bikers. It was an amazing experience - real heart pumping scarey stuff in places. The weather was abismal with visibility limited to just tens of metres in places and it pretty much pored down the whole time. Muddy, slippy and pretty dangerous business. At the end of the descent (now in Coroico) we had a late lunch at a local animal sanctuary. It was an amazing place, with some great people there volunteering and helping out the random assortment of animals that had been rescued (around 10 monkeys and cats, a puppy, a wild Oscat, some ducks, guinea fowl, Maccaws, Parrots, 2 giant tortoises, a couple of bunnies, a Boa Constrictor and some guinea rabbits. Although the guinea rabbits were only there as occasional live feed for the snake...) Matt got a little close to some of the monkeys are the video attached to this posting bears out. Matt thought it was a real shame that Kat wasn't with him to share the experience as the monkeys and other animals typically just wandered around unfettered and would happily climb all over the visitors. So he resolved to try to convince Kat to spend a couple of days there with him. More on this later.The following day we both went for a bit of a wander around La Paz and to do some shopping. Matt's poor old shoes had taken a real battering on the previous day and the time had come to replace them with some Bolivian brand of hiking shoes. These are currently restricting the blood supply to his big toes and seem to have soles made of teflon - so maybe he should have gone for a more recognisable brand. Still, they were cheap...That evening Kat was feeling unwell so stayed in whilst Matt went out, of all things, clubbing with the young people. The first club was a reasonably familiar affair with cheesy music. At around 2am though they all headed, upon someones recommendation, to another bar. Matt's suspicions were first raised when&nbsp;the bodyguard outside the door&nbsp;cordially paid for the taxi we had used to get there. Furthermore, upon descending to the underground bar, there was no-one dancing. There was music however and everyone appeared to have CD's on there table. How odd. The CD&nbsp;cases appeared to be pretty dusty, or&nbsp;covered in some white powder or something. Well, it turned out that Matt's new friends had taken him to an&nbsp;illegal underground bolivian coccaine den. Still, Matt had a pleasant&nbsp;enough time until everyone started talking&nbsp;gibberish and much too fast and asked for a&nbsp;cab. Much to his relief the cab firm used by the IUBCD seemed to be legit and he arrived&nbsp;back to the hostel,&nbsp;safe and sound, if a bit bewildered...The following day we did indeed return to&nbsp;La Sende Verde, the animal refuge, where we&nbsp;spent a couple of pleasant days&nbsp;in&nbsp;relative wilderness playing with the animals. More on this in the next posting.&nbsp;
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204373820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204373820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204373820/tpod.html Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:29:08 -0500 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Potosi, Bolivia

After a nasty experience with the public loos at the bus terminal in Uyuni, clutching our bladders we jumped on the bus for Potosi. Potosi is supposed to be the highest city in the world, with the main town plaza at 4060m. It was a pretty basic bus, bigger than a minibus but smaller and more basic than any of our other transport to date. Unfortunately our seats were next to the missing window pane. A partial repair had been done with plastic sheets and sticky tape but we rightly didn't have too much faith in this. Potosi is only 100 miles from Uyuni but the journey took almost 7 hours. Mostly this was due to the off road, winding nature of the route but the protest we got caught up in after 4 hours didn't help much. We had finally reached a gentle valley after much bumping around only to have to stop the minibus with about 10 other vehicles in front on the edge of a small village. A few of us went to investigate the cause of the delay, which turned out to be a lot of stones blocking the road. The root cause of the protest was as follows:The road we were on ran through a village - let's call it village A. This road was one of two routes through the hills. The other went through village B. The road through village A is supposed to have asphalt laid down in the near future. Village B are upset that this will mean no more traffic going through their village and so they have blocked the road in village A in protest. About 40 people from village B were having a meeting in the town hall of the blocked village. There was nobody actually guarding the blockade. After about an hour the weather was looking decidedly unpleasant and we needed to get going to avoid getting bogged down in the climb ahead of us. Fortunately it turned out that the villagers from B had the same problem. Just before the thunder, lightening and rain reached us the villagers started to run out back to their vehicles. We made quick work of removing the blockading stones and we were on our way again in the nick of time. Matt got pretty wet all the same as the water started to pour in through the missing window. Despite a couple of treacherous slides on the narrow road with steep drops to welcome us should anything go wrong, we arrived in Potosi safe and sound a couple of hours later in the early evening.We caught a taxi to what turned out to be a very pleasant hostel, Carlos V, right in the centre of Potosi. The lady owner was a bit obsessive regarding her pride and joy. There was a 12pm curfew (which, as Matt found out to his chagrin, turned out to be enforced at about 10.30pm), and she was spotted on occassion running into the bathrooms after they had been used with a bottle of bleach.Debbie and Derek had checked into the same hostel so we went out for dinner with them on the corner of the main plaza. Within half and hour we were treated to the annual miner's cooperative march - at first we just assumed this to be another protest, but no, this time it was a celebration! We cant really tell the two apart here!The following day Matt, Itamar, Paz, Jerry and Raphael went on a tour to one of the mines for which Potosi is famous. 300 years ago this was the richest city in South America and for a couple of centuries underwrote much of the Spanish economy via it's prolific silver mine, the largest deposits ever discovered. The Spanish ruthlessly exploited both the mine and through it both the native peoples of the area and the african slaves brought in by the millions to work and die exploiting the silver deposits. Nowadays the mine cannot be economically mined for silver, but has plenty of other mineralistic treasures that make it worth the while of the local people to risk life and limb in the mines. There are about 17,000 miners all working pretty much individually and selling the ore they mine through a co-operative. The conditions are pretty unpleasant and the life expectancy for working down the mines is a little over 10 years. Matt found the going pretty tough with his asthma but it was a worthwhile experience.To start with we got kitted up in our Ghostbusters outfits (No ectoplasmic units though - disappointed) and made our way in the overcrowded minibus to the miners market where we were informed about the working conditions of the miners and some of the food and drink they use to relieve the conditions a little - primarily this is the Coca leaf, of Coca-cola and coccaine fame. We bought some coca and drink as a gift for the miners and took this with us into the mines. We also bought some dynamite, fuses and detonators - to play with later...The mine tour was reminiscent of scenes from the indiana jones movies with lots of people working without the aid of modern machinery, with blackened faces and empty expressions upon them.Once out of the mine we were given a demonstration of the dynamite by our knowledgable guide. Matt was a bit too close in trying to get a good photo, the force of the explosion took him so much by suprise that the result was a bit of a blur... although he recovered a bit to capture the resulting dust cloud.Potosi and Bolivia in general is an incredibly cheap place to holiday in. Our evening meal that evening, complete with drinks and followed by another drink each in a nearby bar came to under 3 GBP between us. Matt likes it here a lot...The following day the others had all gone on ahead to either Sucre or Le Paz, so Matt and Kat just caught up on a few chores and took a guided tour of the old Mint in the centre of Potosi. Because of the height of the city everything is very well preserved - from the buildings themselves, to the 18th century wooden minting machines (think huge wooden cogs and gears being pushed around by mules), to some of the bodies that for some reason or other (probably just so they had something to fill an extra room in the museum) were exhumed and after 150 years have barely decomposed at all.Sated with knowledge we settled back onto our night bus bound for La Paz...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204125540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204125540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204125540/tpod.html Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:40:36 -0500 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Uyuni, Bolivia

Day OneOur 3 israeli comrades must have found someone else to go with (probably more of their own kind, as where you find one israeli, you inevitably find a dozen more) as our jeep buddies for the next 4 days turned out to be 2 germans (Nicole and Jerry) and a frenchman (Raphael). Jerry is about 20 and doing social work in Chile instead of military service (he's a conscientious objector). Nicole is the same age as Kat and working with Jerry. She's been a nurse and social worker but, like a lot of the people travelling over the age of 30, is looking for a change of direction upon returning. Raphael I think is the youngest. Fortunately for us they all speak good Spanish (Or 'Castellana' as the Latinos prefer to call it). Despite assurances to the contrary, our driver and guide speaks next to no English and Jerry is kindly translating for us.Setting off we climb rapidly and get some great views of the crazy landscape around Tupiza (Valle de los machos). We're travelling as a loose convoy of 5 jeeps. Kat and I are sat in the back of our jeep, which means we don't get a great view out of the windows and are sat over the real axle which means we get to feel every bump along the way. Our jeep is usually at the back - we attribute this to our driver probably being the mechanic. And boy was he busy. He wasn't needed for the first incident - a jeep in front got a puncture after only 30 minutes - however, after only two hours we suffer our first serious casualty. The car with the 3 irish lads in has suffered some sort of engine problem and despite efforts by the mechanics we're forced to leave them behind. We don't hear what happens to them until half way through the second day.Once we've finish climbing and reached about 4000m, which is pretty much the base level for the altiplano the scenary has gone through several mutations. We're in Llama country now. The landscape is more gentle and rolling, although a hard moss replaces grass as the meal of choice for our curious Llama friends. As we pass them it's almost like a Mexican wave as one after another they raise their heads to see what it causing the commotion (perhaps they only have 6 second memories like goldfish...). At about 2pm we stop for lunch and all immediately run off to find somewhere to pee or poo. Inconvieniently we're on a plain in the Ahuanapampa valley so there is precious litte privacy... Lunch was lunchean meat sandwiches, really tasty actually with all the veg freshly prepared and plenty to go around. At this point we get talking to a New Zealand couple, Debbie and Derek, who are suffering in their jeep from the constant chatter of 2 israeli girls. It's also around this time that we're able to work out the mixture of nationalities. Having lost the one jeep with 3 Irish, a kiwi and a swiss girl we're now 4 jeeps containing 17 people - 2 brits (us), 2 kiwis, 2 germans, 1 french and the remaining 10 are Israeli. 8 of these had just finished their military service (although the two travelling with the kiwis were trying to distance themselves a little from the more noisy 6 others). The other 2, Itamar and Pez were both in their late 20s and weren't too impressed with their countrymen.After lunch we pretty much just travel in the jeep through similar countryside until we finally arrive at our destination, the small village of San Antonio de Lipez at about 7pm. As promised the dorms were basic to say the least. Basically a mud / clay brick hut with 7 beds in. Absolutely no form of heating and by this point we're at about 4500m and it's getting decidedly nippy. Dinner doesn't turn up until 9:30pm, so we're left to our own devices which basically meant picking up some beer at the village shop and staring at the stars. Matt impressed many of the other travellers by talking knowledgably (and, on occasion, accurately) about the night sky. It was also fun to watch the village children playing with their toys (this mainly involved them rolling around car tyres). It turned out that one of the Israeli girls had the same rash as Kathryn - so we reckon it was an allergic reaction to something in the hostel - probably the washing detergent used for the linen. She had been so concerned she'd gone to hospital before setting off to get some jabs and was running around looking for someone to administer them. Eventually one of the villagers gave her the shot. Matt was very proud that Kat hadn't needed shots - she's harder than a trained Israeli killing machine!Also, a lot of people were suffering from altitude sickness - throughout the four days various people at various times had splitting headaches - even people like Jerry, who were initially fine, succumbed in bouts. Kat and I consider ourselves very lucky that neither of us really suffered at all.For dinner the inhabitants of our jeep and the kiwi's jeep shared a cold room together for a surprisingly tasty meal of brothy soup followed by pasta and some sort of Italian/Mexican hybrid sauce - it was certainly interesting. It wasn't long after the meal that we were all tucked up very tight in our sleeping bags - both Kat and I kept on our clothes as well for extra warmth. Matt was starting to regret buying his very portable, but only fit for a british summer, sleeping bag...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1203963060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1203963060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1203963060/tpod.html Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:29:34 -0500 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Uyuni, Bolivia

Day TwoWe arose, as instructed in time for breakfast at 5:30. We were supposed to leave at 6 but didn't count on 'Israeli time'. I don't know why people who have just spent 3 years getting shouted at to get out of bed at silly hours of the morning suddenly cant when they're supposed to want to out of their own free will - but throughout the trip we were constantly being held up by them. We eventually left at around 7:30am after much standing around in the cold.First stop was a ghost town. The mines had run dry sometime around 50 years ago. The place looked like it had been deserted for hundreds of years but apparently the last people to leave did so only 30 years back. I guess that because the roofs are made from some sort of straw they rot quickly and leave no trace which makes the place look a lot older than it really is.The second day was a very long day, and again a bit disappointingly it was mainly driving with relatively few stops. Late in the morning we entered the national park which houses the lagoons, geysers and thermal pools. After a drive across a salt desert we found the first of many lagoons to house the various types of flamingo in the park (apparently 6 different species, but we couldn't tell them apart!)The highlight of the day was the stop at the thermal pools. The view was simply surreal. The pools were artificial in the sense that the geologically heated water was pumped into pools rather than them being heated directly. But this meant the water was nice and clean and the temperature just perfect. Kat, along with a couple of others, didn't fancy a dip, but the rest of us wallowed around for about an hour. Just as we were about to leave the jeep with the Irish turned up.And did they have a story to tell. The jeep had been repaired shortly after we left them, but no more than a few miles further the engine blew itself to bits. Apparently some important bit of machinery hadn't been replaced by the driver. The driver then flagged down a motorbike heading back to Tupiza and 7 hours later returned with a decent mechanic with the necessary parts to repair the jeep. They finally set off again at about 7pm in the evening. There was no way they could make it to the same village as the rest of us so for dinner they just stopped at someones house and asked for some food and they spent the night in beds at a nearby 'hospital'.As they had been driving like crazy to catch us up they were now running only an hour behind, so we expected to catch up properly at the hostel on the coming evening.On the second day we also stopped at Laguna Verde, which was a little disappointing - we think that a lot of the coloured lakes require the sun to be at the right height in the sky (and behind you) to really bring out the colours and I think with the various stops we were running behind the ideal schedule. Our final stop on the second day was at the highest point of our trip up at 5km in basically the crater of an old volcano to see the geysers and bubbling mud pools. It was sunset and well below zero and the wind made staying outside pretty unpleasant - to say nothing of the smell and fumes - but it was a pretty impressive sight nonetheless.The hostels got progressively better throughout the trip and, as the second night was our half year wedding anniversary we treated ourselves to a few drinks. Indeed, although Kat went to bed at a sensible time, Matt stayed up chatting until the locales started flashing the lights and eventually just turned them off altogether...No sign of the Irish guys and their jeep though.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204308900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204308900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/matnkat/1/1204308900/tpod.html Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:20:32 -0500 Argentina and Beyond - Adventures in Latin America

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Uyuni, Bolivia

Day ThreeThis was a really short day, setting off at around 9 and finishing at around 4:30 - starting off with the spectacular Laguna Colorada - a deep red lake with rich green shores and hundreds of pink flamingos feeding on the plankton rich water. Upon leaving the lagoon the landscape quickly changed to pure desert as far as the eye could see before we stopped at some 'interesting' rock formations. We don't get too impressed by rocks to be honest but still took all the obligatory photos! Our third night we arrived at what could almost be called a town. The hostel was pretty cosy and actually warm. There was a school nearby and we went over to have a nosey at their lessons. The teacher didn't seem to mind! After school was over Matt got involved in a bit of football with the locales. He doesn't know if his team talk was understood but it seemed to do the trick as his side was winning comfortably before Matt had to leave the pitch out of breath and coughing up blood. It turned out to be nothing more serious that a nose bleed from a combination of the altitude and the exertion!
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