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South America on a Shoestring - Sam´s Entry
Oh-laaa amigos. Donde est el Banó? I´ll stop there before it degrades into Spanglish, which we here too often in English-ridden bars - "Oh la, can I have uno beer por favour, cheers mate, grassy-arse!"
It's been nearly a month since the last entry, and it couldn't have been more action packed. We flew into Santiago and befriended a belligerent Bolivian-American who showed us a few sites and bossed us about for a bit until Dave escaped, pulling the jet-lag card and went to bed. I was flagging badly as due to time difference we´d spent 11 hours on the plane and landed 5 hours before! The day lasted about 40 hours or something silly, but I have a long-standing tradition of christening each new country with the local beer so I hit the town, albeit with Mr. All-American who I feared would scare off my chances of making friends. He turned out to be a massive asset because he spoke fluent Spanish, loosened up after a bottle of Pisco, the local spirit, and showed me an amazing Chilean restaurant. The best food I´ve eaten until today... peppered creamy beef fillet chunks with wild potatoes and sliced bread, proper Chilean! Afterwards he got us into a non-gringo club (gringo, unaffectionate term for a white person) where Latino dance music was blaring and I felt it entirely appropriate to pioneer English dad-dancing to the delight of many.
The next morning I recapped with Dave and we went exploring over the next few days, seeing Santiago's amazing gothic cathedral, going to a museum and looking at handmade titbits at an art festival. Many travellers agree with us, however, that unless you have the money to spend in high-end Chilean seafood restaurants and savour the give-star hotels and shopping, there's not a great deal to do on a budget - so we pushed on to Valparaíso after a few days. Our main source of entertainment there came from an Australian girl called Tamara who shared our newfound love for South American fast food. Our staple diet is hot dog completos (covered in avacado and tomatoes), salchipapas (hotdog meat & chips), hamburgesa (guess) and churrasco, a massive pile of meat, onions, chips and gravy. We´ve also tucked into a few barros lucos (steak and cheese sandwiches) and empanadas (hard pasties with mince, olives and miscellaneous unidentified foods). Valparaíso had a cool harbour full of warships and giant tankers, tall buildings and narrow streets; the home of Poet Pablo Nerudo (ooh-arr) and an imposing central square with huge statues. South Americans love statues, especially of Spanish conquistadores who did a great job of murdering and culturally liquadating much of the local population. They are very proud of their aboriginal culture now. Either that or they know how much tourists love alpaca hoodies, ponchos and panpipes.
Our next adventure took us all the way up Chile to San Pedro de Atacama in the middle of the desert. Chile takes perhaps 2 hours to drive across, it's so thin; but lengthways it's the same distance from Norway to central Africa. We did half of this country in one session on a bus! it wasn't actually that bad, because unlike our busrides of death in Asia, Chile is extremely developed and the roads were great.
San Pedro as a settlement is made almost entirely out of mud. It sits in the driest desert on earth, the Atacama, and it doesn't really ever rain. From there we got some hammock practice in (been neglecting this since Fiji) and booked a 3-day jeep tour to Boliva. To occupy our night there, we went sandboarding in the sand dunes under the light of the full moon, and it was awesome. Me and Dave mastered the smaller dune slope and got cocky, waxed our boards to the maximum and bombed down the steep face. Needless to say, we ate sand, but it was extremely fun!
Post-faceplant, we went to bed and got up early for our tour. We were anxious to get a good group, having heard stories of 18 people having massive parties in the desert - but our group only had 2 people, a young German couple who were very much king and queen of public displays of affection. This didn't take away from our experience. As soon as we got to the Bolivian border it became bitterly cold, and I scrambled on top of the 4x4 to retrieve my socks. It started snowing, and by the second day we were in a blizzard. We couldn't see anything at all, couldn't even distinguish between the sky and the ground, because the high plains were so featureless. I would not have been able to navigate, and our guide, toothless Pedro, seemed to be reading the route with the power of his mind. We made it to some amazing red, green and blue lagoons where there were flamingos in the water, and spent the night in a hotel made of salt! Bolivia has one of the highest salt deposits in the world, and on the third day we saw why. The Uyuni salt flats are a massive plain of salt, stretching hundreds of kms across in every direction. The language barrier made it impossible to understand how the salt was formed, but the salt had formed in perfect hexagon shapes and went on seemingly forever. This provided an excellent opportunity to take some clever photos because the white ground distorts spacial awareness, making it look like Dave could stand on my head and I could sit on a coke bottle.There was also an island in the middle of the salt flat, a green hill full of giant cartoon-like cactii!
Our tour was over when we got to Uyuni, which unfortunately is a horrible place, ringed by a dirty halo of rubbish bins, faeces and scavenging animals. There was a rusting train on the outskirts, left there to rot for half a century because there is nowhere in Bolivia to recycle the iron. We saw that, ate a llama steak (chewy!) and needed to get out of there quickly, so got a bus to La Paz. La Paz is the capital of Bolivia, and like most of the country, sits at an altitude of around 4000 metres. It was difficult to adjust to, and I had headaches for a while. After about 2 weeks at altitude we still find it difficult to walk up hills and do things we are usually more than fit enough to do. Better get used to it before Macchu Picchu! La Paz was excellent. We spent about 4 days there (getting complacent!), and I went mental buying tings from the famous Witches´market which sells inca clothes, bags, trinkets, musical instruments, jewellery, antiques and hidden goodies. I now have a holdall full of treasure and I hope it makes it home in one piece. Dave was a lot more stringent with his purchases but didn't hold back on the partying, and we had several immensly fun nights, one of which was seen through on election day dressed as a naked jester (yes, that was Dave) and Harold Shipman (distasteful, didn't see the nametag when I got the blood-splattered lab coat out). We also recruited a really nice girl called Georgina who found a sort of tinkerbell princess type costume, and Dave has had to endure my drunken, growing and ridiculous infatuation ever since. We partied hard and actually missed the key part of the election, which we'd fought tooth and nail to have put on against the wishes of the apathetic, too-cool-for-school bar staff. I did note a series of co-ordinated "Hurrahs" from a bunch of jolly private school chaps, which I realised must have meant a Conservative victory.
Leaving La Paz was sort of sad because I made a friend or two that I wanted to see again, but we pushed on to Copacabana. Isn't that in a song? it might as well have been the Balamory song, because all the lakefront buildings were multicoloured and the place was filled with street vendores selling popcorn, Inca-themed junk and sweets. Unfortunately there was no ATM, and we had to wait for the bank to open (one hour a day. They do have it easy! I wonder what their alternative income is) so we could get a cash advance. Afterwards we booked our next bus and got involved with a boat trip to Isla del Sol, supposedly filled with ruins but in reality just a load of hills and broken rock mounds. We met two English couples who we tagged along with, and they helped us to endure the annoyance of numerous "admission fees" situated at three points along the trail, where we had to pay people just to get back to our boat. There were lots of cute slave children forced to drag llamas around with a string by their parents in an effort to generate lucrative photo opportunites from tourits. No gracias. The end of the trip also ended in failure; Dave went out to scout for cheap food while me and the other guys stayed on top of the hill for a drink... Dave went back to the boat but I waited for him to come back to us, both of us assuming we'd meet the other until I had to run back to port in fear of missing the boat home. I was looking around in ditches and peeping into cottages thinking Dave had been taken captive by an evil childcatching sweetselling lady. I got back right at the departure time but the boat crew had everyone else on board early and had decided, oddly, to make a break for it... there was Dave on the boat, jumping up and down, screaming "EL STOPPIO, GO BACKKIO" and me crapping myself, facing the prospect of being stranded with the llama children while my boat chugged away down the lake. In hindsight it was hilarious but at the time we both massively panicked and went mental.
We got out of Copacabana that night and had to eject the bus at a freezing, gloomy 5am where we are now. Peru! Our mission to find any hostel succeeded, but bizzarely where we are currently staying is occupied 100% by Israeli people, so as my vast linguistic talent only covers "Shalom" and "La Chiam" we're on our own until we move into the party hostel tomorrow. Cusco is my favourite town already. It's beautiful, surrounded by steep hills coated in terracotta houses, and has hundreds of cobbled streets which house art galleries, souvenier shops, little bistros, bars and restaurants. As always, there's an Irish pub and a famous Western cafe called "Jack's"; we usually frown at such gringo establishments and go for local food 'El Cheapo' but the menu blew us away and an hour's queuing later I was eating avacado, grilled cheese, scrambled eggs on toast, Mexican-style spicy beans, herby potatoes. All I can think about is going back and having the guacamole tortillas, or possibly the homemade triple-decker chorizo, olive and tomato salsa toasties.
It's an amazing feeling knowing that after 6 months of having not enough money and constantly needing bail-outs, I am now easily self-sufficient on my New Zealand wages and brithday savings until I'm home and in a position to get work for the summer. But considering I can now do whatever I want, the only thing I want to do is finish the Macchu Picchu climb, go home and see my family again. 7 months has been a perfect time for us. We've achieved all that we wanted to achieve, grown up a lot, seen a lot that we didn't ever expect to see, learned far too much about each other and decided we are ready to come home. I didn't think I'd EVER be ready to come home. A lot of people we meet have no desire to ever go back, and I can even name a few people who have decided not to. I suppose it was inevitable, knowing us, being so commited to this gap year, the saving, the working... that we'd also be committed to coming home, going to university and grabbing the next 3 years by the horns as well as this one. The past 7 months havn't made me want to run away - rather they've equipped me with the skills to slip back into life, a slightly more resourceful and hardy person.
12 more days until we are home. I am extremely excited. It's not an end to anything. Me and Dave will still party hard... I'll still be poor... There will be no end to bus journeys as I'm planning a massive northern tour to Sheffield, Durham and Nottingham to catch up with the old wolfpack... and I'll still be a traveller. I can't see my desire to see new places and get myself into awkward, embarrassing, amazing, legendary situations diminishing.Next time we write we'll be sitting at home. What does my bedroom even look like?
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Dc´s entry - Santiago to Cusco
Hello guys, hope life is treating you well and that you can muster the energy to read what is likely to be our penultimate blog and the last outside englands shores.
So South America, the great unknown, it´s certainly been a fascinating place to travel. The first thing we noticed after prior warnings was that 0.05% of people speak english, making the last month a charrades filled adventure. Ranging from simply demonstrating eating to the most basic and neccesary of human needs, el Bano, the infamous south american toilets. It´s been great fun, testing, frustrating, hilarious and refreshing. It´s also proved to be a great choice for our last stop as after 6 weeks here I think the appeal of home comforts will be calling loudly.
We landed in Santiago, Chile and have been making our way up north through Boiliva and finally into Peru where a 6 day trek to the peak of the mysterious and marvellous Macchu Picchu awaits before the boys are back in town (before we fly home).
As we always seem to when we turn up in new places, we landed ourselves smack bang in the middle of the "dodgy" part of Santiago and if it wasn´t for a kind young lady helping us with directions we might have found our wallets much lighter than expected after only drawing pesos out from an atm an hour before. The wallet inspectors in SA are notoriously shifty so we hear! Santiago was a cool place, we occupied our days by going out and seeing the sights as apart from this there didn´t seem to be too much else going on. We were both amazed by the gothic style architecture which has been a theme prevalent throughout the rest of our travels here, plenty of pictures were taken and occasionaly just occasionaly we would stand in front of a building and then take the photo, just for a bit of variety.
Moving upwards from Santiago our next stop was Chile´s main port town of Valparaiso. Once again with dwindling funds and a lack of apparent activities we played our old favourite game of getting a free map and wandering about town, most of the time totally lost, looking for things to see of note. Luckily we managed to strike a bit of luck with the only other person occupying the same hostel as us being a nice Aussie girl, Tamara who formed a trio with us, aptly named the Grey Squad due to us all donning grey hoodies. It was nice to bump into some good company and for the three of us to exchange travel stories and tips. The next day we saw a few more sights, notably Pablo Nerudas house which had stunning views out over the surrounding area and out to sea which was worth the long upward hill climb during which I wondered as to wether it could ever be worth such strain and effort.
That evening we boarded what was to be a 24 hour bus journey to make it up the length of the country to the town of San Pedro De Atacama. As i´m sure you can all deduce from the name it is the gateway town to the Atacama desert and the wonders that lie within. We spent a couple of nights there with the main highlight being the full moon sandboarding experience. The atacama desert is spectacular throughout the day, blisteringly hot during the day, beautifully serene at sunset and simply magical under the lighting of the full moon and the southern hemisphere stars. The sandboarding was great fun, its effectivly just the same concept as snowboarding but on sand obviously, the only real drawback was the mammoth sanddune that had to be repeatedly climbed and storing enough sand while repeatedly falling over to ensure a good few days of shaking the clothes out every morning. Even waking up with sand in the mouth for consecutive mornings couldn´t make me regret the decision to ride the sands, it was such good fun, even more so when you see your best mate faceplanting downhill at good speeds. It´s only fair that at this point it wasn´t just Bambi kopping some head in the sand time but me too as we both struggled to gain any control over our motions.
Whils´t in San Pedro we booked our 3 day tour through the Desert, into Bolivia, accross the salt flats and into the small border town of Uyuni. The tour was spectacular, even being placed in a jeep with a courting german pair couldn´t distract from the spectacle. 99% of the photos you will find from anyone who has done the tour is of perfect blue skies, glistening desert and glaring sunshine. Bit of a suprise and an honour then that we, a rare few got to see the desert in a totally different setting. For the first two days of the tour, aside from a few hours of sunshine we were stuck in a blizzard, one unlike any I have experienced before. Far from being frustrating though it was utterly amazing, endless white horizons where snow met skies filled with more falling snow. Along the way, prior to arriving at the salt flats we saw Volcanos, hot springs, lakes that change colour based on wind direction and speed, lakes red like the very fires of the earths core, flamingos, alpacas, small nomad communities, germans kissing and a collage of other spectacular sites. The first nights accomodation was, at best, extremely basic. Imagine a stone hut, with a thatched roof, with one table, two chairs, one bench, one fireplace, four stone beds and a shower that resembled something from the dark ages and your basically going to have a picture of something slightly more luxurious than we landed ourselves in. Despite our bleak surroundings and the freezing cold temperatures generated by the altitude and snow we persevered through mega altitude headaches to reach the light of the morning, we lived to see the break of day. Glad we did too because otherwise we wouldn´t have been able to stay in the salt hostel the next night, which despite being fairly basic again was a real novelty and a life box ticked. On our way through the villages we were constantly befriending the very sweet little children who always ran over to us once sighted to give us a welcoming hug or handshake. One little lad was kind enough to give us the tour of his village including a visit to the pig pen and the local church which was no larger than the size of a large shed. The communities we passed through on the tour have to be the most basic places I have seen in my lifetime, they really put us westerners to shame when we start complaining about our own lots. It´s such a cliche to say that these people are happy, thats what we all seem to be shocked about whenever we come accross people living in poverty but maybe it shouldnt be such a shock. Maybe they have realised something we who live in relative luxury haven´t, that there is far more to a life than the walls and items that surround it. I certainly learned a most valuable lesson from those endearing folks and one that hopefully will serve to rearrange my priorities even when I find myself back in home comforts come the 21st of May.
We rose early the next morning to watch the sun rise over the endless salt flats, it´s a paticularly surreal enviroment and in addition to being able to take crazy, perspective trickery photos it has alot more to offer. Similar to the endless white of the snow, the endless white of the salt flats made us realise the grandeur of nature and the beauty of true wilderness, true quiet and true peace. We drove for the morning accross the length of the flats, stopping frequently to take photos of bizzare settings and cactus dominated islands in the middle. The journey took us all the way to the town of Uyuni and to a lunch of traditional rice and LLama steak, good stuff I tell you.
Once we arrived in Uyuni we wanted to leave as soon as possible. It´s not often that I find nothing positive to say about a place but it really was shocking. Everywhere there was rubbish strewn, stray dogs roaming, half built houses. The nicest thing I can say about it is that the people were pleasant, beyond that, nothing. So we hopped on a bus that same night and made our way for La Paz (The peace - a nickname bestowed based on the origin of the citys name, The city of our lady of Peace). The bus was awful, it´s definetly been the worst since the good old day of 30 hour air time travels in Asia. The main drawback was the bus being distinctly overcrowded with hoards of locals sleeping in the isles, under the seats, wherever they could find a spot basically. I was so pleased to be off the bus and in La Paz that even the 6 hour wait for a room at the Wild rovers hostel didnt bother me a great deal. We did a few bits in La Paz, mainly exploring the city and investing in loads of cool things at the backpacker famous witches market, which is a huge collection of similar South American style touristy merchandise, still better than Meopham farmers market though I would suggest. I say we did a few bits but in all truth much of the time was spent nursing hangovers and sore heads after having a good few parties at the hostel. We haven´t really been able to let our hair down as such for while due to funds so we decided to splash out while it was economical and have a good time, which we certainly did. Our drinking funds were boosted by the nature of our eating patterns which saw us eating from a nearby Burger and Salchipapas stand nearby for the grand total of 3.90 over our duration. 30p a burger, we were his best customers I would think.
Leaving La Paz with a roaring headache from the fancy dress, vodka filled antics of our election night party the previous night we headed up towards the Peruvian border to the town Of Copacabana. The very same one featured in some song which I´m pretty sure just goes, Copa, Copacabana or something of the sort. The main reason for visiting was based on reccomendations about a trip that was available out to the Isle De Sol in the middle of the gigantic Lake Titicaca. Inkan ruins were promised, stone walls were found. It was good nonetheless though to have a 3 hour trek in the middle of the day, pick up some Isle de Sol sunburn and generally prepare ourselves for the coming 6 day hike up to Macchu Picchu. We struck up a friendship with a fellow gang of English people and talked at length about university etc ect, all things we shared in common. Our busy schedule didn´t let up as we had to move onwards towards Cusco and hopped straight off the boat onto a 14 hour bus which would take us to the beautiful town of Cusco and to the foot of Macchu Picchu.
So now we are here, with 3 days to go until our trek and only 12 days to go until we land in England. It´s so strange that in some ways our journey feels like a lifetime and in others feels like it has flashed by in the blink of an eye. It´s certainly been an adventure, an unforgettable collection of experiences, I have a feeling the one coming up in the next few days might just rank up there with the best of them.
As one adventure ends so another one begins. I´m going home to a new adventure, my journey isn´t over, as the first words in my first blog say, "All of life is a Journey". This has been a life shaping, enriching, uplifting and inspiring part of it. I have seen things I can never forget, good and bad, but it is all a part of something that has been spectacular. In addition to all the incredible settings, amazing activites and unforgettable stories I believe something else needs to be mentioned. A man once said, "A journey is best measured in friendship rather than miles". After 28,000 miles, I can firmly say that the man quoted was indeed correct, undoubtedly correct because true happiness is shared and I have had a fantastic, hilarious & loyal companion to share my experiences with for the past year of my life now.
"We didn´t travel to escape life, we travelled, side by side, for 7 months, through ups and downs, so that life didn´t escape us. We achieved our dreams."
This one is for you mate, thankyou for a very special journey.
I´m coming home to an english summer filled with cricket, family & friends, life is wonderfull.
Dc
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