TravelStream™ news feed for member mistahall on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/mistahall en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:20:18 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mistahall/2/1221419580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mistahall/2/1221419580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mistahall/2/1221419580/tpod.html Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:20:18 -0400 Andes to the Amazon

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Bogota, Colombia

Thanks to the multitude of transportation delays I endured in Bolivia, and a little too much dawdling in Peru and Ecuador, I didn't have nearly as much time in Colombia as I'd hoped. No time for Cartagena or Medellin. Instead I just spent four days in Bogota, which wasn't so bad as it was easily my favorite big city of the trip. Why? By far the most diverse slate of cultural offerings, even though I took advantage of almost none of them. Good food at rock-bottom prices: pizza and soda for a dollar, arepas filled with whatever you wish, and even a good veggie set-lunch place. The cost was a relief after the wallet-suck that is Brazil.

I did make it to a couple museums, both free. Donacion Botero houses the work of Colombia's most famous painter, who makes everyone he paints look like an over-inflated balloon. Friendly guides showed off weapons and other relics, including the blood of Pablo Escobar at the Police Museum. I also took some time to explore the streets of historic La Candelaria, peopled with a mix of pensioners, businessmen, and mowhawk-sporting teens. The rest of my time was spent in internet cafes, where I trawled Craigslist for potential apartments in preparation for my return to LA. Found a good one, and as I write this I'm surrounded by boxes in my new room in Culver City. Time to unpack!

Here's the final flickr set of this trip.
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Leticia, Colombia

As antisocial as I can be at times, I do have to admit that frequently the thing that makes or breaks a traveling experience for me is the people I share it with. Lucky for me my seven day cargo boat trip through the Amazon included the group of English medical students it did. No, I didn't need their medical expertise, but their company made the trip much more fun than it otherwise would have been. They'd just finished a month of volunteer work in Georgetown, Guyana and had plenty of horrific stories from that wreck of a city. We passed the hours talking and playing cards, and sharing the misery of all those mundane meals and cramped conditions made it all bearable. Actually, misery is a big overstatement. It was a pretty fun trip. We did have to eat chicken with white rice and plain spaghetti twice a day, but hey, at lunch they also gave us beans!

We saw dolphins swimming alongside the boat a few times, but otherwise wildlife spotting was minimal. After six nights, we arrived in Santa Rosa, where we boarded a smaller boat for the brief trip to Tabatinga. I walked across the border to Leticia, Colombia and went straight to the airport to buy my ticket to Bogota. A few hours later I was in the air.

Photos from the big river cruise are on flickr.
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Manaus, State of Maranhao, Brazil

Thanks to all the delays of the preceeding week, I also missed the boat I'd hoped to catch out of Manaus. This left me with three days to get to know this huge international port city in the middle of the Amazon. Unfortunately, one would have been plenty. Got there on a Sunday and that night discovered that there was vitually nowhere to eat. After a bit of wandering around I eventually found a few food stalls on the street. Strolling around at night here wasn't particuarly advisable (as the employees at my hostel constantly reminded me). Lots of dark, deserted streets and virtually no other tourists. Never had any trouble though, just didn't feel very safe.

On my second day I met a guy from England who'd just finished a month of dental volunteer work in Bolivia. We toured the former mansion of a rubber baron and attempted to visit a forest preserve only to find it closed. Pigged out on ice cream and a lunch buffet too. One of my favorite things about Brazil is their per-kilo lunch buffets. Pretty simple, you load your plate up with whatever you want and pay based on weight instead of the all-you-can-eat version you find back at home. A great way to try out a lot of new foods, and this way no one wastes anything. Most places cost at least $12 a kilo, which is not a bad deal for Brazil. Yes, Brazil is expensive. Almost as expensive as the US. Especially painful after paying Bolivian prices.

After much hunting, I managed to find a book exchange at Hostel Manaus. A big relief as I had nothing left to read and was about to embark on seven days of doing not much besides laying in a hammock! Armed with plenty of new reading material, I was ready for my longest Amazon boat journey.

More photos from Manaus on flickr.
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Porto Velho, State of Rondonia, Brazil

Knowing I had only a few days to get to the first riverboat I planned to take, I did my best to get going quickly after my jungle trek. Of course it didn't work out as planned. The night bus out of Rurrenbaque was booked so I had to spend another night there and take the next day's late morning departure. It was supposed to be about a 15 hour trip, putting me at the border late that night. Instead, the bus stopped around 2am at a town a few hours away from the border, and the driver said they'd resume around 6 or 7am. Not feeling like checking into a hotel for just a few hours of sleep, I slept on the bus in the station with a few other passengers. We finally got to Guayaramerin mid-day, and I proceeded to the Brazilian consulate to get my visa. Of course I was told that it would take until the following day, but after a quick conversation with the man in charge, I was told it could be ready today for $130. Seemed as if I basically paid a $20 bribe to get the lazy bureaucrat to do his job. Visa in hand, I boarded a boat and crossed the river to Guajara-Mirim. Late that afternoon I caught a bus to Porto Velho. I arrived around midnight and got a cab (the busses had stoppped running for the night) to the port. I had planned to take a boat that left at 6pm but all the above delays caused me to miss that one. At the port I met a guy who worked on a different boat leaving the following day. I slung up my hammock on deck and slept soundly in port that night with a handful of other passengers.

All did not go smoothly after that either. Since the boat was scheduled to leave around 2pm, I took a few hours the next day to walk around the town, use the internet, get a bite to eat and buy a few supplies. Upon returning to my boat, I found it almost completely empty and the few remaining items were being unloaded onto a new boat. I ran on board, grabbed my hammock, and scrambled aboard this new boat to find it packed from bow to stern with hammocks. Determined to not get left behind, I squeezed my hammock in anyway, as many a local would later do. This boat I was on was the one that Lonely Planet warns travelers to avoid due to the need to change boats in the middle of the night about half-way through the trip. That turned out not to be a problem as on our first night, the boat ran aground and we spent about 10 hours waiting for them to free it. So we changed boats mid-day without any trouble.

Your ticket on these boats includes meals, and they aren't as terrible as you'd imagine. They're just terribly repetitive. Breakfast on the first boat consisted of only crackers and coffee, and both lunch and dinner were the same: chicken, white rice, and plain spaghetti. The second boat actually served eggs and plantains with breakfast but otherwise the same fare. The second boat was also a bit larger. It had a sun deck and snack bar up top, so not quite as claustrophobic. I was the only gringo aboard either vessel, but befriended the young Brazilian guys and girls that were my hammock neighbors. I got to practice a bit of Portuguese and they worked on their equally meager English skills. We occasionally stopped at small riverside towns to pick up or drop off cargo, which provided a welcome diversion from the monotony. Five nights after boarding, we arrived in Manaus.

Check out some photos from this riverboat trip on flickr.
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Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

This may sound a bit over the top, but let me start by expressing just how elated I was to discover upon arrival here that I was finally in a place where people knew how to prepare plantains. No, seriously. They eat plantains in the Andes, but they are invariably hard, dry, and bland. Here they make maduros like I remember eating with Cuban food growing up in Miami: soft and sweet. And it's not just about the plantains. Here I found yucca as an alternative to potato too. I'm not saying that there isn't good food to be had in the Andes, but the unrelenting lack of variation (meat, rice, potatoes, repeat) really wore down whatever pleasure I take in eating after a while. Anyway, I was glad to be in this tropical locale, and not just because I could finally wear shorts and flip flops.

I came to Rurre to take a trip into the Amazon. Not in a big boat down a major river highway like I would soon be doing in Brazil, but up a small tributary into undeveloped jungle. After a lot of shopping around, I booked a three day trip into Parque Nacional Madidi for the following day. My group consisted of a Belgian couple and one guy each from Ireland and Italy, plus our guide Loy. The six of us traveled a few hours upstream from Rurre in a small motor boat to the camp that would be our base for the rest of the trip. We slept on beds in cabins and ate our communal meats in the dining hut. Spent our days walking the winding paths through the surrounding jungle and did a bit of night walking as well. We saw wild boars, caiman (like a crocodile), some large racoon-like rodent, monkeys high in the tree tops, parrots, and plenty of insects. After the first night, the Irish and Italian guys left and we gained a Spanish girl who lives in Brazil. Of note primarily because she's the first person I've ever met (outside of Los Angeles anyway) who's also doing a film studies program. I got in a little Portuguese practice with her as well, as my next stop was the Brazilian border.

Lots of jungle pics on flickr.
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Trinidad, Bolivia

First a bit of backstory: After leaving Potosi by bus, I stopped for a few hours in Sucre, and then for a full day (but no nights) in Santa Cruz. It wasn't that there was nothing of interest to me in these towns, but by this point I was getting close enough to the end of my trip to realize that I just didn't have time to spare if I was going to make it all the way through Brazil to Bogota.

Trinidad was supposed to be another quick stop on my way west to the jungle, but it turned into a two day visit thanks to the political protests which shut down much of eastern Bolivia following the recent referendum. My bus pulled into town just before sunrise and I bought a ticket to get out of town that same evening before taking a motorbike taxi to the main plaza. Finding no restaurants open at that early hour, I walked to the local market, outside of which I found a few dozen people eating some completely foreign looking substance. I decided to give it a shot and it turned out to be delicious. Called tujure, it's sort of a thick pudding made from corn and served in a bowl with milk and sugar. To get slightly ahead of myself, the next morning I went back to the market and tried a different version made from plantains called payuje which was just as good. Too bad I never found them again after Trinidad.

Back to that first morning. After eating, I walked back to the plaza, had a seat on a park bench, and read while waiting for the rest of the town to open up. As the hours passed, nothing seemed to change. I wandered around and observed men on motorcycles setting up roadblocks on all the main streets into town. Saw groups of men walking around with big wooden sticks and heard fireworks going off. All of this was vaguely menacing, but it never got especially scary. Gradually it became clear that this town was shut down for the day, so I spent about twelve hours either on that park bench or wandering the surrounding blocks. The only food available was from a stall set up outside selling the usual chicken and rice. I was eager to get on my bus as evening approached, but when I arrived at the bus station I was informed that the bus would not be departing due to a lack of passengers. I reluctantly trudged back into town and found myself a bed for the night. Thankfully, the strike ended around sundown and the restaurants and internet cafes slowly opened up. The following morning I got on a bus and was finally moving again.

You'll find a few Trinidad photos in the Rurrenbaque flickr set.
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Potosi, Bolivia

Highest city in the world? Depends on how you define city I suppose, but Potosi is certainly high at almost 16,000'. It sits at the base of the world's largest silver mine, which I visited one afternoon. Everyone in my group was given a hard hat with light, as well as a jacket, pants, and boots to protect our clothing. On the way to the mine we stopped at the market to pick up some gifts for the miners. The usual gifts include coca leaves (they chew them for energy) and bottles of soda. We entered the mine (which has claimed the lives of millions of miners) and spent a few hours wandering the countless tunnels. Even climbed between levels via a rope ladder down a narrow shaft. We also stopped to present our offering of cigarettes and alcohol to El Tio, a devil god the miners worship. Our guide finished off the trip by detonating a stick of dynamite outside the mine for our entertainment. A touristy trip all the way around, but I do appreciate that I don't have to do this kind of work. Boys get sucked into mining very young and the average miner is dead by around age 40.

See some more photos from the mine on flickr.
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Tupiza, Bolivia

Tupiza is best known to us tourists as the nearest major town to where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their demise. The landscape is fittingly similar to the American southwest, with canyons and spires colored a dozen shades of red. It's here that I finally decided to do a bit of horse riding. How could I not given the setting? First I had to get out of Uyuni, which proved fittingly difficult. I had hoped to take the train south, but it sold out before I attemped to buy a ticket. So I was up for the second day in a row at 5am to catch a bus south. I know I've griped a lot about the cold in recent weeks, but the first few hours of that morning take the prize for coldest of the entire trip. I was more than a little concerned about the condition of my toes, despite thick socks and shoes. Survived unharmed of course, only to have our bus get a flat about half-way to Tupiza. We were stuck in soft sand, so instead of changing the tire, they promptly loaded us all onto a second bus. My seat's leg room was so minimal that I opted to sit on the floor for the final four hours of the trip. 11 hours after departing, we finally arrived in Tupiza, where the weather was gratifyingly mild.

The next day I set out on a five hour horse ride through the surrounding countryside. This is the first time I'd been on a horse in probably at least 15 years. I was accompanied only by my guide, 13 year old Gregorio, and his horse's 3 month old pony. I rode Tupa, a mild tempered, big brown horse. Didn't get much in the way of instruction thanks to the language barrier but I managed to figure out the basics with reins and heels before too long. Tupa didn't need much guidance anyway; he knew where he was going. We stopped to explore Cañon del Duende and Cañon del Inca on foot, but spent most of the day riding. I handled some brief episodes of trotting and galloping without much difficulty, although my, um, rear was a bit sore afterwards. A fun excursion, and I hope to get back on a horse much sooner than my last interval.

See me riding the range on flickr.
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Uyuni, Bolivia

The train ride south from Oruro was one of the transportation highlights of this trip, at least until it got dark. Beautifully bleak scenery, and for a few minutes a flock of flamingoes flew alongside the train. I arrived in Tupiza late Friday night, and promptly crawled into bed in order to keep from freezing. The next morning there were lots of tourists piling into SUVs to begin their tours of this desolate corner of the country. I foolishly decided to have a leisurely breakfast and look into tours for the following day. I hadn't considered that since the following day was referendum day, there would be no tours departing. In fact, the country passed a law forbidding any sort of travel, by train, plane, boat, or car for the 12 hours before and after the election. So I was stuck in Uyuni until Monday. Not the ideal place to be stranded as there's next to nothing to do in this tiny, frigid town. I spent several hours a day (OK, twice a day) at Minuteman Pizza, a great little restaurant run by an expat from Boston. Best pancakes I've had in forever and of course great pizza too. I also met a couple from New Zealand (who live in London) who were similarly stuck on Sunday and we walked out to the nearby "train graveyard" that afternoon.

When Monday finally rolled around, I joined a tour group consisting of 3 Lithuanians (who primarily spoke Polish), a Chilean guy, and his French girlfriend. The six of us and our tour guide Bernardo rolled out of Uyuni late that morning in our Toyota Land Cruiser. Every guide in the region appears to own the same make and model. We were beginning a 3 day, 2 night tour of the far southwestern corner of the country, which contains some of the most otherworldly scenery on the planet. First stop was the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. The remains of a prehistoric salt lake, now it's 4,000 square miles of blinding white. We visited an island in this former lake, which is now covered with cactus, and spent the night in a hostel constructed of salt blocks. I didn't take one of the obligatory photos that plays with perspective in this land without points of reference, but you can see some good examples of what can be done here and here.

On the second day we visited several lagunas, culminating with Laguna Colorada, a lake dyed bright red by algae. It's one of several lagunas we visted that day that are home to large flocks of flamingos. The second night was even colder than the first (somewhere near 0°F) and we were up at 5am to drive to the geyser basin, which sits at an elevation of over 16,000 feet. This was followed by what I felt at the time was possibly the best moment of my entire life, when we arrived at a natural thermal pool and I felt truly warm for the first time in days. Somehow I never even felt cold climbing out of the water, drying off and getting dressed while exposed to the freezing air. The rest of the group was headed to Chile, so after a stop at Laguna Verde, we dropped them off at the border. Bernardo and I then began the 7 hour drive back to Uyuni. It wasn't a cheap 3 days (thanks to my sister and grandparents for funding it with b-day money), but definitely a memorable experience.

Warning, there are a lot of flickr photos from this trip.
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Copacabana, Bolivia

Crossing into Bolivia proved to be a fairly painless process. It was, however, costly. Citizens of the good ol' US of A have to pay $135 for a visa as of very recently, while most others get in for free. Thanks Evo. With my wallet significantly lighter, I got to Copacabana by mid-afternoon. Turns out I arrived in the midst of the year's biggest fiesta, which seems to have something to do with Independence once again. Is independence really something to get so excited about when you've had more governments than years in your independent history? Just asking.

Anyway, Copacabana is not the place you've heard Barry Manilow singing of. It's a town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, where the local church blesses cars twice a day. I didn't witness the ceremony, but saw plenty of colorfully decorated vehicles on the road. I only spent one night in town, and the one useful fact I can pass along that the guidebook didn't prepare me for is that they do not believe US$1 bills are worth much of anything. They'll gladly take any other denomination off your hands, but ones are for some reason considered nearly worthless (ironically I got mine from the Bolivian government as change for the visa fee). I managed to get the rest of my cash changed into Bolivianos soon enough though.

Forgot to set my watch forward an hour upon crossing the border, and as a result missed the boat to Isla del Sol in the morning. Lucky for me quite a few other tourists had missed it too and nine of us banded together to hire our own boat for the 90 minute voyage. Hit a bit of a snag when the boat captain announced that he didn't have enough fuel and there wasn't wany to be had in the town, but we settled on a slightly shorter trip (the others were coming back with him too) and were off.

Isla del Sol is apparently the birthplace of the Inca sun god, and perhaps thanks to him it was indeed a sunny day. I took advantage of the sunshine and hiked down to the southern tip of the island. Despite the usual frigid temperatures, I really liked it here. Beautiful scenery and very peaceful. Were it 20 degrees warmer, I might have stayed a few days longer. Instead, I packed up the next day and started my boat and bus journey to the big city.

More photos from the lake on flickr.
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