Dec 06

Potosí with its silver mines used to be the richest city of the world at some point. The Spaniards dug up so much silver that they could have built a silver bridge from Potosí to Madrid and still have silver left to carry over it. It is a lovely little city with loads of interesting colonial buildings and a relaxed atmosphere.
Most of the people visiting take a tour to the mines, where miners are still operating in terrible working conditions. The tour around the mine was a bit shocking. The heat and the lack of oxygen the miners have to work in is just crazy. Most of the miners only survive twenty to twenty-five years working in the mine! Another striking fact about Bolivia by the way is that the age people are allowed to retire is more than the average life expentancy! Anyway, I felt a lot like a stupid tourist when I had to jump out of the way again when a two-ton-cart pulled by four young lads was roaring by or when miners had to stop their work for a bit to let us pass by. But the travel agency assured us that part of what we were paying went to the miners, so that was quite good.

The Koala Den, the hostel I was staying in, was wonderful. You pay about 2.5 euros for a dorm, breakfast included. There is a tv-room with a DVD-collection, a sitting room with travel guides from all around Latin-America, a book exchange and a kitchen.

Ciao!

Sucre is the Cusco of Bolivia as well as the actual capital. It is a nice city to spend a few days with beautiful buildings, parcs and squares. Locals give it nicknames like the Athens of America and the White City. A very nice hostal is Villa Plata in Calle Arce. I had a very small room, just under the roof, where I spent the entire Saturday between bed and toilet, I do not know weather it was from the Jugo the bananas I had the other day at the market, or the 6 bs (0.6 euros) almuerzo (lunch) in a local restaurant or the chicken in sweet and sour in the lovely local Chifa or even the water. Anyway, on Sunday I was completely recovered and could go on exploring the city again.
Another recommendation in Sucre is the Joyride Café, owned by a Dutch guy. It is very touristic but the vegatarian pasta I had there was delicious and the tacos and pique macho I saw passing by looked very good. Another thing on the menu: kroketten (the Dutch kroketten, vleeskroketten in Flemmish). There were some newspaper articles at the wall about Evo Morales visiting the café and stating that it is not only a gringo place!

The only anoying thing in Sucre was that I was followed by a bunch of ten, twelve little children, the ones that shine your shoes. I picked them up at the main square. First there was one and then soon, all the others came. I was just reading a bit on a bench and said politely that I did not needed my shoes polished when they asked. But they just kept on insisting, so after a while, I stood up and left. I walked all around the city and into a post office, but they just kept on following me. Then, I went to a cyber café for almost two hours and they just walked in there as well and started playing games. When I left the cyber café, there was only a few left and I got rid of those last ones by hiding behind a car!

Peace out!

After two days of waiting at the airport and finding out our TAM-flight (that is Transporte Aero Militar) flight to Rurre, as locals call it, was canceled because of the rain in Rurre, we finally took of. The flight was very nice and so different from all the horor stories I had read about it. Arriving in Rurre after a week in La Paz was like arriving in a different world. The heat and humidity are ever present and the quietness and naturaleza all around make Rurre a very nice little village. The day we arrived, there was a strike, so we had to walk into Rurre, which gave us a very good impression. I took a bed in a dormitory in Hospedaje Oriental, a lovely hostal with a big garden with hamocks for relaxing in it and trees from which you can pluck very tasty mangos and bananas.
Next day we, five Aussies, Rachel and Ruth, two lovely girls I had met and hung out with the day before, and Catherine, Chris and Jackie, left for a three-day-tour in las pampas. It was beautiful! The jeep annex boat trip to get to our base-camp were lovely. The wildlife and sun were there to keep us company, although it is raining season and there is supposed to be less wildlife to spot in this period.

The camp was lovely and so were our guide Jimmy and our cook . The second day we went horseback riding, in the rain, in the morning, swimming with pink dolphins in the afternoon and looking for lagardos (aligators) at night. The third day, we took boat and jeep back to Rurre and drove through the magnificent landscape of the pampas again with tucans, monkeys, dolphins, aligators, turtles, sloths, several bird species I had never seen before amd loads of mozzies in it, it was just beautiful!

At night, we had a few beers with our guide Jimmy and several other tourists in the Moskkito Bar, where you can have very good trucha (trout) as well. Next day, we left for a two-day selva (jungle) tour in Parque Nacional Madidi, again by boat. Walking, eating and sleeping under a shelter in the jungle was cool and again, I had the lovely company of Rachel and Ruth and our guide Eric and his girlfriend Reina. Although the pampas tour was better, the selva-tour was still very enjoyable, but maybe a bit too short.

The flight back into La Paz was only a few hours late and we arrived well after dark.

Que les vaya bien, amigos!

When you arrive in La Paz, you get a beautiful view on the city from 'El Alto'. The city is built in layers, poor people (used to) live high up and rich people down. With an altitude of 3,660 meters, La Paz is said to be the highest capital in the world. The only problem though is that Sucre is the constitutional capital of Bolivia, not La Paz. Like the Dutch, Libian and South-African governments, the Bolivian government is not seated in the capital, that is why there is so much confusion. La Paz is the biggest Bolivian city though, with about 1.4 million people. It is a very busy and noisy city, a lot of traffic and polution, but there is a lot to do and see, too.

Walking along the many markets is a joy for the eyes, ears and the nose. The mercado negro is probably the most famous one, but the bit I have seen of it, I did not like very much. Go out and explore the markets you bump into by accident, they are much more interesting than the clothes on mercado negro. A must see is the Mercado de las Brujas, the witches market, where you can buy amulets, potions, good luck goodies, llama foetuses etc. Close to this market, there is a whole street with souvenir shops, for those out for buying souvenirs. Take a walk along the main streets of La Paz as well, they are crowded with people, traffic and stalls, but it is all very interesting to see. The amount of illegal cd's you can buy here is incredible, I have found one shop where legal copies can be bought. Plaza Murillo is without any doubt the most beautiful square in the city and has La Paz's cathedral as well as el Palacio del Gobierno in it.

A nice half-day trip away from the city's noise is to the Valle de la Luna, public buses take you there in about an hour. It is a bit of a tourist trap although the moonlandscape is amazing. The surroundings are very beautiful and inviting for a walk back towards La Paz. Remember you can stop the buses wherever you want. The Valle de la Luna is also very close to La Paz`s zoo and to the Muela del Diablo (the devil's molar), both of which Eva and I did not go to visit.
Another attraction is San Pedro's prison, a village in itself. The prison doors are open and San Pedro has shops, restaurants and churches in it hence rich prisoners do not have so much of a bad life.

A must when you are in La Paz is the Careterra de la muerte, a 70 km-long mountainbike downhill-track that takes you from the very cold La Cumbre, at an altitude of 4,700 meters, to the tropical Coroico, 3,500 meters down. The beginning is all asphalt and you can reach speeds up to 70 km/h without pedaling! Than after an hour or two, the real carretera de la muerta starts, no asphalt any more, just a small path with a ravine of up to 700 meters going straight down at the side! There is quite some trucks, buses and cars you have to overtake on the death road, so it is all very exciting. The road was chosen the most dangerous one in the world because on average, there are 26 vehicles going down every year, which makes an average of one every second week! Over the eight years travel agencies have been running mountainbike-tours down the Careterra de la Muerta, eight people have died doing it, six tourists and two guides. In our group, three out of five people fell and one of them was unlucky enough to fall down on the asphalt at high speed, so he had to be taken back to La Paz to get his chin stitched. The other two got away with only some scratches.
But it is all well worth it. The landscapes are amazing and the adrenaline rush is wicked. After you have made it down, a van takes you up half an hour and takes you to a hotel where you are served a buffet. Unfortunately, I had had a very bad diarrhoea for the first time this trip the nighth before, but after about seven tablets of imodium in the morning, I made it down, where the stomach ache started again. The four hours by van back to La Paz, doing the Death Road the other way around, were terrible, I was in pain and had to stop the van two times to flee into the bushes.
The agency I booked with was very good, it is called X-treme downhill.

Hasta luego, amigos

The Joker group with about twelve Belgian people we kept on meeting in Peru provided me with a travel companion after Thomas had left. Eva, a lovely girl from Mortsel (near Antwerp) wanted to travel to Bolivia, too, so when we met again at Machu Picchu, we decided to travel to Copacabana together.
Copacabana is a little city at the Bolivian side of the Lago Titicaca, eight kilometers passed the Peruvian border. It is a perfect basis to do a day trip to the beautiful Isla del Sol. If you go there, take the boat to the north of the island in the morning, do the lovely eight-kilometer-walk to the south and take the boat back from there. Make sure you walk up the hill in Copacabana, too, it provides a gorgeous view on Lago Titicaca and over Copa, it is perfect to see the sunset. Copa has an impressive cathedral worth visiting and it has quite a few good restaurants where you can sit outside in a nice garden under the ever present sun. Try the 'Pico Macho', a traditional dish with spicey beef, salchicha (pork sausage), paprika and of course, chips. Order a glass of api to go with it, it is a typical Bolivian drink made from brown maize. You can take a Paqueño to go with it, too, it is a tasty Bolivian beer but there might be some misunderstandings if you ask for a Pequeño grande. The market is worth paying a visit, just to see how they sell meet, uncooled of course with tons of flies circling around, or to buy some fruits.
Eva and me stayed overnight in the south of Isla del Sol, at Don Thomas. You get a room full of flies, there is no water, nore is there electricity and the toilet, well the hole with a plank with a hole in it over it, was overfull. But we only paid 6 bolivianos (0.6 euros) and had a good night's sleep. Next day, we wanted to walk to the litlle port on the south of the island, but we miscalculated a bit and ended up having to climb rocks and doing dangerous things as the coast line was getting rockier and rockier and steaper and steaper. Then to make it even worse, it started hailing heavily and fortunately Eva managed to get a fishing boat to get over to the shore and pick us up. The port seemed to be still very far and we would never have gotten there without walking the whole way back because further on, it was impossible to walk. Quite a good adventure that was, the rowing boat back to the port.
The colectivos (little white vans for public transport) from Copacabana to La Paz do not seem to be very safe as there are several reports of tourists getting robbed on them or even kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to give their credit card's pinnumber. So, you would better take the tourist bus to La Paz, it is only 10 bolivianos (1 euro) more expensive and it is safe. There is signs up warning you for these incidents in several tourist places in Copa as well as in La Paz.