A Chile reception...

Haha, sorry I couldn't resist. We've finally arrived in Chile, showered and checked into a fab little hostal in the desert town of San Pedro, near the border with both Bolivia and Argentina. We've had an amazing couple of days tripping round the psychedelic landscapes of the south-west of Bolivia; seen the world's largest salt flat which was covered in water, and which produced optical illusions such as cars and mountains floating hundreds of metres off the ground.

the train cemetery outside Uyuni

Laur playing in the salt flats

flamingos grazing in the amazing lake colorado

We've seen bright red lakes and martian landscapes of red soil and towering multi-coloured mountains, flocks of pink flamingos and andean foxes, and had a freezing, eerie early-morning start today where we visited huge craters spewing sulfur fumes, bubbling rock and steam into the air. The circuit is dominated by europeans with the odd Aussie thrown in, so we've been discussing european politics and dredging up our schoolboy/girl french and german - we're thinking once we've conquered spanish these are next on the list!

the stone tree in the surreal uyuni desert

relaxing in the hot springs

San Pedro is small, welcoming and very gringo-centred, much more so than anywhere we have been in Bolivia and Peru, so we are going to recuperate here for a few days before we head south to Santiago. More pics to come in future updates...

Leaving La Paz...

After 3 months of intense study and relative luxury in our penthouse suite in Sopocachi, we're finally hitting the road. We've had a fun farewell week, playing Wallyball and hitting the clubs in La Paz, but it's time to stuff everything into our suitcases and head for the (apparently amazing) Uyuni Salt Flats which border Bolivia and Chile. Paid work in South America continues to prove elusive, but there have been hopeful signs recently, and certainly our spanish is improving out of sight - que bueno!

dancers at the Oruro Carnival

Cholita wrestling!

Balcony view of the Yungas in Coroico

We've managed to make some friends here too, and had some valuable english/spanish conversation swaps with a range of people, been to jazz bars, house parties and exhibition openings, visited museums, cholita wrestling and folklorica penas, mini-breaked in tropical resorts in the Yungas and the Inca heartland - the Isla del Sol where the sun was apparently born, hiked in the mountains and all around the vertical streets of La Paz, seen Bolivia's biggest street carnival, made offerings to the earth god Pachamama, celebrated the day Bolivia lost the sea in a war with Chile, watched KKK-resembling easter processions and heard distant dynamite explosions as half the workforce of Bolivia marched out in protest at their low salaries.

Semana Santa procession

A car dressed up for Palm Sunday

However, the nights are starting to get nippy up on the altiplano, and we are keen to get some beach time before we fly on to Ecuador for the next major stage of our trip. We'll be off-line for a while in the Salar but back in touch when we get to Chile - stay tuned!

Laur´s favourite lagoon in Bolivia

A giant turtle in the southwest desert in Bolivia

Life in La Paz - 1 Mar 2011

It´s been a while since we have posted (2 weeks to be exact) and we are settling in comfortably into life in La Paz. We are living with a lovely family in Sopacachi, the swankiest part of town - our neighbours are embassies, language schools, western-style cinemas and galleries, although we´re only ever a few minutes away from poverty and pollution. San Pedro prison is about 10 minutes walk, almost close enough to hear the riots that have been happening there recently.

Our routine is to do classes during weekdays, studying at night and fitting in cultural stuff - concerts, films (en espagnole naturalamente) and museums. This weekend we are off to the carnaval in Oruro, the biggest cultural event/fiesta of the year for Bolivia. We´ve been quite lucky with our timing, as we also experienced Peru´s biggest festival last month purely by chance (Candeleria).

Our host family are a grandmother (Bertha), mother (Pamela - who runs the house) and daughter (Pamelita - "little Pamela") who are very chatty and welcoming. We have superb views of La Paz and the surrounding crater/mountains, and a good kitchen so we can recover from the inevitable problems we have with local food and water (not having built up resistance to bugs). We haven´t met many other gringos yet, but have our first house-party to go to soon, so we hope will be able to make a bit of a network of acquaintances.

Classes are going really well, and we are improving slowly but surely - especially being able to speak to the family when at home, and to people when out in the street. It´s a pleasant life and although we miss our friends and family, we feel quite at home here.

Settling into La Paz - 13th Feb 2011

Today we continued to get to know our new home, dealing with the effects of altitude (shallow breathing, high heart rate and bizarrely in my case, swollen lips) and researching accommodation and language school options. We visited a gigantic Sunday market, where stall after stall featured miniatures of everything you could imagine, from cars and money to shops, clothing, electrical goods etc. These were all made so that people could take them to be prayed over, in the hope that they would acquire them in the coming year, and it was quite a little industry in Bolivia.

A large part of the afternoon was spent sitting in a cafe with wi-fi trying to work out what our options would be, something which we are still not sure of exactly. In the evening we decided to try out La Paz’s art-house cinema, watching a documentary about SA politics over the past decade or so which was absolutely fascinating (although a challenge to our Spanish skills in parts). On the walk home we discovered the Japanese cultural centre, which had an excellent restaurant in it – two more reasons to be deeply enamoured of La Paz.

Copacabana to our new home - La Paz! - 12th Feb 2011

A pleasant morning lying on the beach waiting for our boat back to Copa this morning, and we had time to check out the Inca steps leading up to where we had stayed the previous evening. Our money was running out, and fuelled only by chips and salsa and an apple, my tummy was grumbling all morning and I was started to grumble myself. Once back on the mainland, Laura did a market run and soon we were happily eating cheese rolls and on the bus again to La Paz, our final destination for the time being.

me being unhappy with dinner last night

more reed boats in the Isla del Sol port

The bus trip across the straights was broken up by a short ferry crossing where we had to disembark and our bus went on its own ferry across the water while we went onto a passenger one, a very efficient operation as tens of buses would pass through this area each hour. We seem to be travelling with young germans now who are a suitably enthusiastic peer group, and also running into other gringos from different stages of the same circuit, in that way that you do.

Our bus catching the ferry across the straights

My holy footwear

The rest of the bus trip seemed to go quite slowly as the landscape changed around us – Bolivian mountains being more rounded with funny-shaped peaks, and the ever-present snow-capped peaks of the Cordillera Real mountain range in the distance, which we had admired from afar on Isla del Sol.

the Cordillera Real

And what an amazing sight greeted us when we finally rounded the corner from El Alto – the indigenous town above La Paz itself – and saw the dramatic location of the city. It is set into a huge crater, with green land on one side and houses steeply built into the rim of the crater on the other side spilling down into the main centre. It was huge and impossible and one of the most awesome city views I have ever seen – up there with Tokyo at night from on high, or London from the air.

We used our last Bolivianos getting a cab to a place we thought we had booked by email (it turned out the message had somehow not gotten through – the guy gave us a very suspicious explanation as to why this was), and experienced the madness and bustle of La Paz on a Saturday night, we seem to be really good at turning up in new places at their busiest times. There were people, and soldiers, everywhere, all happening on streets that banked sharply upwards and downwards in each direction, lined with a heady mix of colonial buildings, new and crumbling modern buildings and dotted throughout with distinctly Bolivian religious and public buildings.

Booking in a the Austria Hotel, a colonial stalwart of the backpacker scene, we were perfectly located in the centre, a block from the presidential palace and cathedral, and wandered out to experience La Paz without our luggage. A pleasingly cheap and high-quality dinner later and we were ready for bed, determined to start our research into language schools and homestays in the morning.

Isla del Sol - 11th Feb 2011

We packed up most of our stuff leaving it with the hostel, then headed off on another public boat to Isla del Sol, the legendary Inca birthplace of the Sun and a hot tip from many of our friends who had visited the area. It was raining heavily on the way over which didn’t seem appropriate and the engine of this boat kept stopping too, but we made it eventually and as if by magic the rain stopped and the sun came out for the entire duration of our stay.

Inca greets us on Isla del Sol

Cacti on Isla del Sol

The Island was gorgeous and situated in breath-taking turquoise waters, and we spent an enjoyable day navigating Inca ruins and being floored by the views in either direction as we walked along the spine of the mountain range which ran the length of it. Hardened by our recent trekking to Choquequirao we found this walking a lot easier despite the relentless sun, and made it to the south end of the island by late afternoon.

Midday heat on the Island

Wild flowers on the isle

ceremonial table in the Inca ruins

dung beetles in action

That evening from our hostel balcony we were treated to some of the most spectacular sunset views I have seen anywhere in the world – hopefully the many photos that Laura took will in some way do justice.

the sunset begins...

the sun dips

Laur checks out the colours

the sky is aflame

those colours again

Crossing the border - 10th February 2011

Today we took off early in a luxury bus to make the border crossing into Bolivia. We got a bit of a shock as the driver emphasised how important it was to produce the tourist entry card which we’d filled in on the plane arriving into Peru – I’d kept this but Laura hadn’t. Fortunately, and perhaps predictably you could pay to overcome this problem, and Laura lucked out as the official in charge of people who’d lost their landing cards was incredibly nice, going out of his way to help her queue-jump so we could be on our way.

The Bolivian side of the Lake immediately felt different (although this may have been in our minds), more peaceful and scenic. Our first stop was Copacabana, prompting some predictable Barry Manilow comments from me. The town itself was small and comfortably geared up for backpackers, who were there in abundance wearing Llama colourful clothing and listening to Bob Marley in ethnic-themed cafes – the lingua franca of water-oriented tourism.

A station of the cross - one of 14

the dolores (pains) of Christ

We settled into a nice hostel with friendly, chatty staff who helped us along with our Spanish, then went for a wander up the hill overlooking the town, featuring 14 stations of the cross - large cruxifixes with dedications on them periodically set on a winding path up a steep (naturally) hill. At the top were further monuments depicting crucial stages in the crucifixion story, and a great view over the bay.

illicit photo of the inside of Copa Cathedral

Cholita vendors outside the Cathedral