After a 12 hour flight from Sydney we landed in Chile to discover three things - South America is much cheaper than Australia, South America is much more dangerous than Australia, and people in South America ONLY speak Spanish!
Although Charlotte was grateful for the UN quality food parcel which Frendo had sent with her she was pretty embarrassed to be marked by the immigration sniffer dogs and made to empty her bag at customs. If she´d spoken Spansih she would have lied and said she was going to a kid´s party.
After some funny looks from immigration officials we headed for what we hoped were the buses to the city centre. Slightly dazed and aware of 30 minutes of shouting, pushing and waving we squeezed on a bus which we hoped would take us to our hostel. Unfortunately when Charlotte checked the directions she had to break the news to Matt that she may have "mis-remembered" the name of the suburb that the hostel was in. Matt didn´t take getting off the bus too badly. And getting on the Santiago metro at rush hour with jet lag and our backpacks wasn´t that bad! It did mean however that everyone knew we had our wallets, passports, cameras, and i-pod with us. Luckily the good people of Santiago had our backs and pointed out anyone within in 10m who may be a pick pocket - by waving, shouting, or banging on the train window from the platorm and pointing frantically at the suspected offender. They also showed us how best to carry our bags and hide our cameras which was kind - but also mildly terrifying. Where the hell were we! However the journey was worth it when arrived at our hostel in a lovely area - and had the all important SWIMMING POOL.
We had 3 days in Santiago acclimatising to South America and speaking to people very loudly. Annoyingly rubbish seemed to come out when we tried to communicate anyting in Spanish and we never understood the answer, but the people seemed friendly enough and the food was great!
(A "Completo"- hot dog with mayo, sweetcorn, avacardo and tomarto. Suprisingly Matt swerved it. Charlotte AKA "Condiment Queen" wouldn`t have missed it for the world!)
We also discovered a coffee shop Called "Coffee and Legs" where women serve coffee in pretty much their knickers. And every day at one of the shops (although no-one knows which because it changes daily) they close the doors and the women take off their tops and dance on the counter. Matt was dissapointed not to have picked the right coffee shop and even more dissapointed that Charlotte didn`t quite get the point of taking a photo of him in there and got him infront of the woman`s back!
We loved Santiago, but having spent an extra month in Australia we had to get moving and boarded a 24 hour bus north to San Pedro de Aticama. Here we hung out for a couple of days before booking a 3 day trip through the desert to take us into Bolivia. As always we were really lucky with our group and the next day headed into the wilderness with some wicked people. In our Jeep was Ben (ex Swiss professional football player), Marco (efficient German), Maria (sassy Portugese journalist) and Inez (beautiful Portugese artist).
In the second Jeep were Scott and Afra, Harm, Xandra, and "the Chinese girl" - who turned out to be American!
We hit it off instantly. Sadly the soundtrack for the start of our adventure was a CD which sounded like the Peruvian version of the "chipmunks" on speed. Luckily Matt had his I-pod cable and the music soon changed. However, if we spoke one word to each other our driver Oscar would take it as a sign we weren´t listening to our music and instantly put the chipmunks back on. The battle raged for 3 days.
On the first day we crossed the border into to Bolivia and hit the desert.
We visited some lagoons - a green one, a white one and a red one and some geysers which shoot hot steam out of the ground.
By the time we reached the hostel/hut on the first afternoon it was freezing. We were at 4,500 ft and snow had started to fall. We were told that because of the snow the firewood was wet and so we sat shivvering for hours drinking coca leaves, talking and waiting for dinner until Inez broke and went to find something to burn. It´s amazing how long a Ken Folet book will keep you warm.
By the time we went to bed it felt like minus 20 and most people were either puking from altitude sickness or had massive headaches. Everyone except Matt.... who yes, did sleep wearing this.
And yes , we did sleep in this room....
The next morning after everyone had either puked or eaten breakfast we headed to the flamingo lake which was the most beautiful sight we´d seen so far. The snow added to the beauty and it was worth a night of shiverring/puking/brain exploding headaches. We had an hour to wander around the lake and watch the birds take off and land which they did with the same amount of grace as Charlotte might manage.
We also saw a rock, a volcano and some more rocks!
The second night was much warmer and we all shared a bottle of wine or two.
Turns out that didn´t seem like such a good idea the next morning when we had to get up for sunrise!
The day was excellent though. We visited a train graveyard (not sure why but it was part of the tour)
and then went to the salt flats, a desert of salt! We´ve never seen anything like it. It feels like you´re in heaven!
After several hours of playing around we headed to Uyni (our first town in Bolivia and a total s%$t hole!). We decided that getting the bus the hell out of there was a good plan and booked on the 8 hour bus to Sucre which was leaving that evening.
The bus journey wasn´t terrible, but it could have been improved if we´d been told the temperature of the bus would go down to minus 100 degrees in the night. Charlotte would also have prefered it if she had done the lid of the water bottle up properly before putting on the shelf above her head. Matt would have prefered it if Charlotte hadn´t got covered in water and woke him up in the middle of the night asking him to find her a towel. The man sitting behind Charlotte might also have prefered to have sat in another seat - in the morning Charlotte noticed that he was sitting in his kagool with his hood up and looking more than a little pissed off with her. Charlotte gave him a sheepish look and got off the bus.
Turns out it´s not easy to find a hostel for 16 people at 5am in the morning, especially when you´re dropped 2kms out of town. However by 8am everyone had a bed!!
We hung in Sucre long enough to see a local dance festival (although Matt could have done without Charlotte´s solo dance routine), catch up on some sleep, wash all our salty clothes and book a bus to La Paz. Ben and Marco, and Scott, Affra and Xandra also took the bus to La Paz that evening with the girls following a couple of days later.
La Paz is the Capital of Bolivia and doesn´t even have a McDonalds. It is built in a bowl and you always seem to be walking up hill and it looks like an ex -Soviet Block Country may do after the apocolpyse. All these things aside it is very charming and has a prison run by the inmates (not the guards) which provide half of South America with it´s cocaine. Matt and I stumbled across it on our first day and watched the coke which isn´t made in there be delivered!
We heard rumours that you could be shown round the prison by a prisoner for $20 and after meeting some Aussie boys who were visiting it on Saturday we decided to avoid them! We also spent a lot of our time avoiding the "gap yar" groups of 19 year old english school leavers who use phrases like "obscene" and "totes-amaze".
Despite the annoyingness of these gap yar tosser faces we decided to stay in La Paz for some much needed Spanish classes. Luckily classes didn´t run on a Sunday so it didn´t matter that we ended up rolling out of a night club at 10am the following morning. Matt befriended some cool aussies and after about 5 hours of partying excused himself "anyway, better go and find my girlfriend" - "Jeeeeeeeez mate, you here with your missus? Where the hell is she?" Turns out neither of us knew exactly where we were, who we were talking to, or how to get home the next day. But one thing was for sure, we agreed that we would never go back to that god-forsaken place, and amazingly we stuck to it.
On Wednesday morning our Spanish teacher told us about an important local football match which was happening in La Paz that evening. With the girls newly arrived from Sucre we hooked up and decided to become die-hard "The Strongest" fans. We didn´t expect to be interviewed on national TV (twice!) but we think we know why..
What the TV crew didn`t expect was for Matt to pull out his Chelsea flag and start chanting Chelsea songs. We were even more suprised when our teacher told us she had seen it on the telly!
With our Spanish mildly improved we left La Paz for Copcacobana to visit lake Titicaca for some beautiful sunsets - FROM OUR BALCONY!! (had to get that in) and the Isla del Sol - where the Incas believe that the Sun was born and their empire started.
We headed there with Ben and our new Swiss friend Maurus. Sadly it rained on the Island of the Sun so we missed the sunrise on the second day, but we luckily had sun for our 3 hour treck on the first day! It was stunning...
From here we borded a bus to Peru!!!
Amazon Jungle and Machu Picchu here we come, what can possibly go wrong there?!?
Although Charlotte was grateful for the UN quality food parcel which Frendo had sent with her she was pretty embarrassed to be marked by the immigration sniffer dogs and made to empty her bag at customs. If she´d spoken Spansih she would have lied and said she was going to a kid´s party.
After some funny looks from immigration officials we headed for what we hoped were the buses to the city centre. Slightly dazed and aware of 30 minutes of shouting, pushing and waving we squeezed on a bus which we hoped would take us to our hostel. Unfortunately when Charlotte checked the directions she had to break the news to Matt that she may have "mis-remembered" the name of the suburb that the hostel was in. Matt didn´t take getting off the bus too badly. And getting on the Santiago metro at rush hour with jet lag and our backpacks wasn´t that bad! It did mean however that everyone knew we had our wallets, passports, cameras, and i-pod with us. Luckily the good people of Santiago had our backs and pointed out anyone within in 10m who may be a pick pocket - by waving, shouting, or banging on the train window from the platorm and pointing frantically at the suspected offender. They also showed us how best to carry our bags and hide our cameras which was kind - but also mildly terrifying. Where the hell were we! However the journey was worth it when arrived at our hostel in a lovely area - and had the all important SWIMMING POOL.
We had 3 days in Santiago acclimatising to South America and speaking to people very loudly. Annoyingly rubbish seemed to come out when we tried to communicate anyting in Spanish and we never understood the answer, but the people seemed friendly enough and the food was great!
(A "Completo"- hot dog with mayo, sweetcorn, avacardo and tomarto. Suprisingly Matt swerved it. Charlotte AKA "Condiment Queen" wouldn`t have missed it for the world!)
Matt tried the local speciality - Wierd Fish soup. (Charlotte swerved it!)
And we stood under a flag that is apparently the size of a half a football pitch !
We also discovered a coffee shop Called "Coffee and Legs" where women serve coffee in pretty much their knickers. And every day at one of the shops (although no-one knows which because it changes daily) they close the doors and the women take off their tops and dance on the counter. Matt was dissapointed not to have picked the right coffee shop and even more dissapointed that Charlotte didn`t quite get the point of taking a photo of him in there and got him infront of the woman`s back!
We loved Santiago, but having spent an extra month in Australia we had to get moving and boarded a 24 hour bus north to San Pedro de Aticama. Here we hung out for a couple of days before booking a 3 day trip through the desert to take us into Bolivia. As always we were really lucky with our group and the next day headed into the wilderness with some wicked people. In our Jeep was Ben (ex Swiss professional football player), Marco (efficient German), Maria (sassy Portugese journalist) and Inez (beautiful Portugese artist).
In the second Jeep were Scott and Afra, Harm, Xandra, and "the Chinese girl" - who turned out to be American!
We hit it off instantly. Sadly the soundtrack for the start of our adventure was a CD which sounded like the Peruvian version of the "chipmunks" on speed. Luckily Matt had his I-pod cable and the music soon changed. However, if we spoke one word to each other our driver Oscar would take it as a sign we weren´t listening to our music and instantly put the chipmunks back on. The battle raged for 3 days.
On the first day we crossed the border into to Bolivia and hit the desert.
We visited some lagoons - a green one, a white one and a red one and some geysers which shoot hot steam out of the ground.
By the time we reached the hostel/hut on the first afternoon it was freezing. We were at 4,500 ft and snow had started to fall. We were told that because of the snow the firewood was wet and so we sat shivvering for hours drinking coca leaves, talking and waiting for dinner until Inez broke and went to find something to burn. It´s amazing how long a Ken Folet book will keep you warm.
By the time we went to bed it felt like minus 20 and most people were either puking from altitude sickness or had massive headaches. Everyone except Matt.... who yes, did sleep wearing this.
And yes , we did sleep in this room....
The next morning after everyone had either puked or eaten breakfast we headed to the flamingo lake which was the most beautiful sight we´d seen so far. The snow added to the beauty and it was worth a night of shiverring/puking/brain exploding headaches. We had an hour to wander around the lake and watch the birds take off and land which they did with the same amount of grace as Charlotte might manage.
We also saw a rock, a volcano and some more rocks!
The second night was much warmer and we all shared a bottle of wine or two.
Turns out that didn´t seem like such a good idea the next morning when we had to get up for sunrise!
The day was excellent though. We visited a train graveyard (not sure why but it was part of the tour)
and then went to the salt flats, a desert of salt! We´ve never seen anything like it. It feels like you´re in heaven!
After several hours of playing around we headed to Uyni (our first town in Bolivia and a total s%$t hole!). We decided that getting the bus the hell out of there was a good plan and booked on the 8 hour bus to Sucre which was leaving that evening.
The bus journey wasn´t terrible, but it could have been improved if we´d been told the temperature of the bus would go down to minus 100 degrees in the night. Charlotte would also have prefered it if she had done the lid of the water bottle up properly before putting on the shelf above her head. Matt would have prefered it if Charlotte hadn´t got covered in water and woke him up in the middle of the night asking him to find her a towel. The man sitting behind Charlotte might also have prefered to have sat in another seat - in the morning Charlotte noticed that he was sitting in his kagool with his hood up and looking more than a little pissed off with her. Charlotte gave him a sheepish look and got off the bus.
Turns out it´s not easy to find a hostel for 16 people at 5am in the morning, especially when you´re dropped 2kms out of town. However by 8am everyone had a bed!!
We hung in Sucre long enough to see a local dance festival (although Matt could have done without Charlotte´s solo dance routine), catch up on some sleep, wash all our salty clothes and book a bus to La Paz. Ben and Marco, and Scott, Affra and Xandra also took the bus to La Paz that evening with the girls following a couple of days later.
La Paz is the Capital of Bolivia and doesn´t even have a McDonalds. It is built in a bowl and you always seem to be walking up hill and it looks like an ex -Soviet Block Country may do after the apocolpyse. All these things aside it is very charming and has a prison run by the inmates (not the guards) which provide half of South America with it´s cocaine. Matt and I stumbled across it on our first day and watched the coke which isn´t made in there be delivered!
We heard rumours that you could be shown round the prison by a prisoner for $20 and after meeting some Aussie boys who were visiting it on Saturday we decided to avoid them! We also spent a lot of our time avoiding the "gap yar" groups of 19 year old english school leavers who use phrases like "obscene" and "totes-amaze".
Despite the annoyingness of these gap yar tosser faces we decided to stay in La Paz for some much needed Spanish classes. Luckily classes didn´t run on a Sunday so it didn´t matter that we ended up rolling out of a night club at 10am the following morning. Matt befriended some cool aussies and after about 5 hours of partying excused himself "anyway, better go and find my girlfriend" - "Jeeeeeeeez mate, you here with your missus? Where the hell is she?" Turns out neither of us knew exactly where we were, who we were talking to, or how to get home the next day. But one thing was for sure, we agreed that we would never go back to that god-forsaken place, and amazingly we stuck to it.
On Wednesday morning our Spanish teacher told us about an important local football match which was happening in La Paz that evening. With the girls newly arrived from Sucre we hooked up and decided to become die-hard "The Strongest" fans. We didn´t expect to be interviewed on national TV (twice!) but we think we know why..
What the TV crew didn`t expect was for Matt to pull out his Chelsea flag and start chanting Chelsea songs. We were even more suprised when our teacher told us she had seen it on the telly!
With our Spanish mildly improved we left La Paz for Copcacobana to visit lake Titicaca for some beautiful sunsets - FROM OUR BALCONY!! (had to get that in) and the Isla del Sol - where the Incas believe that the Sun was born and their empire started.
We headed there with Ben and our new Swiss friend Maurus. Sadly it rained on the Island of the Sun so we missed the sunrise on the second day, but we luckily had sun for our 3 hour treck on the first day! It was stunning...
From here we borded a bus to Peru!!!
Amazon Jungle and Machu Picchu here we come, what can possibly go wrong there?!?
Oh it looks amazing guys...
ReplyDeleteSo much good people, so much nice places, hell i'm getting kind of jealous again and again:D
Keep it going and don't stop enyoing;)
Who is this ? Flo is that you ? Everything is going great, we fly to the Amazon in 2 days time, very excited ! Hope all is good with you
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