Time for a shopping spree
Trip Start
Apr 14, 2004
1
19
25
Trip End
Jul 27, 2004
Sucre,
Bolivia
Monday, July 19, 2004
here we checked into a cheap but quite comfortable and beautiful hotel for the next few days...the main tourist trap out here is a tour in the dino bus to visit the fossilized dinosaur tracks that were uncovered in the local rock quarry...the slab of rock that they were left in, has over the years been pushed up to almost vertical, so it was kind of surreal to look up at this huge wall and imagine the huge beast wandering around (aimlessly???) millions of years ago...
other than the dinosaurs however, we didnt do much else here other than catcha few movies in the cinema, and shop till our wallets were burning...now i dont usually buy souvenirs on my travels, but here in south america the goods are so cheap (especially in bolivia) and beautiful that i couldnt resist buying one or two items...however, that just opened the flood gates and i couldnt stop myself...next thing u know i was bargaining on large items like bedspreads and wall hangings, etc...before the end of our 3 days in sucre, i was overloaded with about 15 kilos of souvenirs...the plan was to send them all home by mail, but the girls convinced me that for the 2.5 weeks i had left, i might as well carry them around and save myself the money for a parcel....seemed to make perfect sense until about a week later when i had to carry all my shit for about 4 kms...but i will tell that story in a later installment...
a highlight for my companions was without a doubt the local dutch-operated cafe/bar...serving all the deep fried homecooking any netherlander could want, we spent more occasions in this establishment than i can count on one hand...famous for their ¨safe to eat¨ salads,(apparently, salad is the easiest way to catch a stomach ailment over here), i indulged in quite a few vegetable and salad dishes to make up for the vast amounts of fried chicken and chips i (and everyother traveller i have met) have been consuming...mmm, u can almost hear your arteries hardening...
so after the shopping spree ended, and we deemed it was time to move on to the next destination, we headed to the bus station to find out that all the buses to la paz were full due to holidays, and we would have to spend another night in sucre...not the end of the world as it is one of my favourite cities thus far, and it also meant more time for shopping...i think i was worse than the girls once i got started...and the funnier thing is, is there are only so many shops that u can visit only so many times before the owners recognize u and start to laff ar u...
finally arriving in la paz via the night bus, very early in the morning, we were further inconvenienced by the fact that our hotel of choice was full, as was the second one, and the third one...all of which we had been walking to, with all our bags (including the 15 kilo souvenir bag)...we finally checked into one, and spent another day in la paz, while we awaited our morning bus to peru...of course this allowed me time to buy just ¨1 more bag¨...okay, maybe 2...in case u didnt know, i am a bag ¨bitch¨...and i have more than i know what to do with already, even before i got here...
not much to do in this city in one night that we hadnt already done on our last trips here, we opted for a very unusual and rare choice...and that would be--------a bar for drinks...can u believe it???you would think it would be hard to come up with new and exciting things to do every night, but being the clever travellers that we are, we can always come up with some kind of a plan to kill a night...
as per usual, it was an early morning dash by taxi to the bus station (barely fitting all our luggage in the back), to get on board a bus that was definitely not the bus we had been shown pictures of... i was starrting to get a little short with the lady in charge of booking the seats...she assured us that it came with the breakfast, bathroom,and lunch that she promised us...i am not sure what my reply was, but it wasnt very friendly i can assure u...as it would turn out, we did get a breakfast of dry bread and a half cup of tea...and lunch was a nutritous meal of sugar cookies and yogurt...and yes there was a bathroom on board, so i guess she didnt really lie to us, but we were on a much cheaper bus line, so i didnt felel completely like a shit for berating her previously as i knew we were blatantly overcharged...
eventually we arrived at the border where we were greetd by thousands of people milling around trying to sell u anything and everything, change your money, carry/steal your stuff, etc...it was a gong show of epic proportions compareefd to the smaller crossing i went thru on the way over...however it turned out to be fairly straight forward and we were on our way shortly...not long after, we were arriving outside of the town of illave...this is the town we were warned to avoid on our crossing the first time, because there had been problems between the local campesinos (poor farmers) and their municipal government...the problem eventually culminating in the lynching of the mayor!!!apparently everything had settled down...well at least until an hour or two before we got there anyway...we were warmly greeted just outside the bridge leading into town by an old woman yelling at the bus to turn around, as she pelted it with rocks...the high rock walls on either side of us, lining the road, were topped with armed men that discouragingly werent wearing police or military uniforms!!!they looked fairly tranquilo at present, but were still a disheartening site...
the bus driver backed out about a km, before turning around and heading another km or two further outside of town, where we joined many other buses and vehicles who were attempting to wait out the road blockade...told it could be hours or even days before we got thru, we were quite discouraged as we sat along side of the road waiting to see what was next...but no problemo, a local man promised to take some of the passengers who needed to catch a connecting bus in the next town of puno, thru the blockade by foot, over the bridge, thru the town, and to his awaiting mini van, where we would be on our way....of course this would cost us a small fee, as does everything...this meant a quick goodbye to my dutch friends who i had been now travelling about 2.5 weeks with, as they were going to a different town to continue to their destination of machu pichu...
i loaded myself up, and now really regretted not mailing the souvenirs home as i was about to embark on a 4 km journey by foot...
that story will be told on its own in the next chapter....
