Lori and the Llama

Lori and the Llama

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Things I miss today

Having people around me who aren´t Peruvian
Harry Potter 7
Frozen yogurt
Paying for things in dollars and not coins
Sleeping in a bed instead of a bus 3x a week
The English language
Missing the 4th of July this year :(
That´s it. Sorry. 3 months in the trip officially and just starting to get a little homesick...

Cuzco the second time around

I have a tendency to not want to visit places I´ve already been to.  There are places I would like to visit again one day because I loved them (like Paris), but not until I´ve been to all the places that I want to go to that I haven´t been.  That being said, when I was planning this trip, I planned on 5 months, 5 countries - Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. I didn´t think there was time for anything else, and didn´t even look into going to Peru since I´d already gone to Machu Picchu in ´09. However, a few things happened, including my best friend Caryn planning a trip to Machu Picchu that coincided with the exact timing I was planning on flying right past Peru to head up to Ecuador, and there was a big festival (the 2nd largest in South America after Carnival), Inti Raymi, the same week. I decided that even if it was a week-long detour, it was worth going to see Caryn, so off I went.

And so glad I did.  I´ve had a few places that I´ve loved so far, including the glacier in Calafate, Iguazu Falls, and climbing the volcano in Pucon. But overall as an experience, I have loved every second of being in Cuzco.  I don´t know if it was the group of people I was with that are just awesome, or the fact that we´ve done some really fun things like rented a llama to parade around the city, or bought the most neon happy pants we could find, or found a bar with a cover band that let us rock out to Bohemian Rhapsody, but I love it here. And for the first time since I´ve left home, I´m homesick for here. I´ve met so many amazing people, and it´s finally hit me that after we split ways, I might never see them again.  I was traveling off and on with Cassie and Kenzie for nearly 3 months now, and whenever we went separate ways we knew we were meeting up again within a couple of weeks. Now there´s no more meeting up, and I´m sad about it. On the other end of the sad spectrum, seeing Caryn made me miss her and people from home. I´m excited to come back, but also scared, because I have NO idea what I want to do when I get back. I keep toying with different options - moving to a completely new city and deciding if I want to stay in advertising or not. Coming home for a while and then heading to SE Asia for a few months.  Coming home and working for my dream company. Staying here forever because I can´t decide what to do. I just really don´t know.  I have 2 more months in SA, so hopefully something will happen that will make it all just fall into place...

But getting back to Cuzco.
Let's give a little history on the wonderful city of Cuzco (as learned from the Peru Lonely Planet that Cjap so graciously donated to me!)  Hundreds of years ago, the sun god Inti looked down on the earth and wanted to organize people better. He created the first Inca, Manco Capac, on Isla del Sol, and told him and his wife, Mama Ocllo to settle in the spot where he could plunge a golden rod into the ground until it disappeared. This would be the navel of the earth (Qosq'o).
So the first Inca felt something magical there, and centuries later I showed up and felt that same magical something. I remember getting off the plane after my first long-term travel experience (an overnight bus from Rio to Sao Paolo, flight to Lima, followed by a flight to Cuzco.) Rather then get out tired or jet lagged, I stepped out of the Cuzco airport and told Becca that I loved this place. She laughed at me because we hadn't even left the airport, but I saw the sign 'Viva Peru' etched into the mountain and just knew. Sure enough, not only did I fall in love with Cuzco, but it became the trip that changed my life. The one that made me realize how much of the world I wanted to see and never would if I didn't leave New York. I think I was nervous about coming back because what if it was changed in some way, what if I didn't like it as much? But thank god I did, because I was proven wrong and would have missed out in so may ways.
Despite all of everyone´s separate border crossing issues (worst I heard was Dan´s 5 bus, 36 hour journey over dead animal carcasses and rocks being pelted at his bus), we all made it in time.  The day before the festival was one of my favorite days in Cuzco. The day started out with breakfast at Jack´s, which is my new favorite restaurant.  I ate here every single day since I got to Cuzco, sometimes for multiple meals.  It was like my Moonstruck Cafe of South America.  After breakfast, David and Andrew wanted to rent a llama. I thought they were kidding at first, but no they weren´t - so off we went towards the plaza and they selected Pablo Picasso, their llama of choice. After a little bit of negotiating (thank you Rosetta Stone for teaching me the Spanish word for rent), we did indeed rent a llama for the going rate of 50 Soles for an hour and a half.  The Peruvian lady handed David the leash, and we had our very own llama to explore the city with! We had a great photo shoot, and were sad to see the llama go after the hour and a half was up.  We went down to the big market to get costumes for the Inti Raymi festival. We found THE most obnoxious, brightly colored happy pants that have ever been created.  After a shopping spree where I spent all of my soles, we came back to the hostel and Caryn and Mike were here!!  We all met up with the girls we had met on the Colca Canyon hike at Fallen Angel, a restaurant Becca & I had found and loved the last time we were here.  The restaurant is decorated with modern art of angels and other random things, and the tables are bathtubs filled with fish tanks.  The place was as good as I remembered it, and I even decided to be adventurous and try ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon juice). And I LIKED it! Seriously, South America agrees with me.  I´m way more experimental with food here. For dinner a few nights later I had alpaca, which made me a little bit sad since I love llama´s and their cousins, but it was really pretty tasty.  Still no guinea pig for me though, thank you.

The next morning was the festival.  Inti Raymi, which means ´Festival of the Sun´in Quechuan, is a celebration on the winter solstice to the sun god. We all woke up at the crack of dawn and headed up to the ruins at Sacsayhuaman, which used to be an Incan fortress.  We got there around 8 and got seats close up, and hung around until the festival started around 1. The ceremony was all in Quechuan and we didn´t really understand it, but it was still cool to be there since it´s so important to the Incas.  When we got back, after dinner (at where else but Jack´s!), we spent the night wandering the town and buying more llama gear. It´s funny how after running around for months, making sure to do and see everything a city had to offer, I could have such a good time just wandering around the same streets doing nothing.

On the last day in Cuzco everyone started heading out.  David and Andrew were already gone for the Inca trail and I didn´t even get to say goodbye because there were some super noisy people in the bunk which prevented me from sleeping at all, so I slept right through and started off the day cranky and refusing to speak to Joel because of that. Then little by little everyone started heading out.  Cassie and Liam left for their morning flights, then Caryn and Mike left right after.  Kenzie took off after breakfast.  Joel and I went to a new market where I couldn´t even find the urge to buy anything except for coconut water straight from the coconut.  I took off for the bus station in the afternoon to head to Nasca to see the famous, crop-circle like lines that no one knows why they´re there.  After this point in my trip I´m completely clueless about where I´m going.  The gringo trail is pretty common down in Patagonia, and even Argentina people are going east or west to specific cities.  Bolivia is small enough that everyone is going to the same places, but for northern Peru, Ecuador and Colombia I´m clueless about where I´m going and what I¨m doing.  From here on I´m taking it one day at a time, and we´ll see where I end up!
One thing I've noticed is that the farther along I'm getting in my trip, the more changes I'm finding in myself. I worry so much less about everything here. Even during the border crossing issues, I was of course frustrated by not knowing how to get from one side to the other safely, but I was surprisingly cool about it all. Every once in a while I stare out the bus window and feel like I'm in a dream. Did I really give everything up to come down here? Is this all for real? Have I really spent the last 3 months bussing my way up from the southernmost point in the world? Do I really wake up every morning with nothing to do on my agenda except what I want? Yes, yes and yes. It still amazes me, and I'm still so glad I stopped worrying long enough to book my one way ticket. What happens when I get back doesn't matter, as long as I make the most out of what I'm doing now :)

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Buses in Peru

Juswanted to note that I am writing this from the wifi on a Cruz del sur bus from Nasca to Lima. My last bus didn't have heat but now I have Internet. Go figure!

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Peru (finally!)

SO
Since the Bolivians and the Peruvians won´t stop protesting, I ended up doing the following.
Taking a 12 hour bus ride from Cochabamba to Arica, Chile.
Got out of the bus station, walked into the first building that resembled a hostel and slept there.
Woke up at 7 and walked right back across the street and got into a shared cab with 4 Chileans and a strange man that just told me I had to pay him $3,000 peasos to cross the border. I did think it was odd that I was getting put in a car at the bus station but I was too tired to question it.
An hour and a half later I´ve crossed the border, and am now in Tacna, Peru.  The car man brings me to a bus place, helps me buy my ticket, and I´m already happy to be in this country. 1)  I didn´t have to pay a visa. 2) The currency is relatively easier to figure out. 3) It´s HOT. I can ditch all my llama gear. 4) It´s not Bolivia!
I have another 6 hour ride to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru, which except for the 3 screaming children across from me was seamless enough. I absolutely love it here. The people are SO friendly. I can understand the Spanish. The food is slightly better (still not Argentinian food, but way better than Bolivia!) The town square, even though it´s a 40 minute walk from my hostel, is super cute. I found things to buy! Even the coolest Converse I´ve ever seen!
On Saturday, Joel came to meet up. We went to dinner in the main plaza, which had some awesome restaurants 4 floors up that overlooked the lit up square. Super pretty.  Joel ordered cuy, which consisted of a guinea pig that was stuck still screaming into a vat of oil and shoved onto a plate with its little teeth and claws hanging out everywhere. I completely freaked out, and the waiter had to take the damn thing away and cut it up and remove its head so I would stop screaming.

3:30 the next morning (yes, you heard me!) we set off for our tour of Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world!  It was a 3 hour drive from Arequipa to the starting town, Chivay.  We had a stop off at a viewpoint to look at condors, which I was only mildly excited about since I went to the condor park with Kenzie in Cordoba, but I was thrilled that I went because I ran into Caryn & Mike, who were finishing their tour!! It was brief, but I was so happy to see them!
After the condors we started off on the hike.  It was beautiful scenery, and cool to watch the oasis get closer and closer as we hiked down the canyon.  The first day of the hike was about 5.5 hours, stopping for the night at this random family´s house to sleep in huts. The kitchen had about 15 guinea pigs running around, which I was terrified they were going to serve us for dinner, but luckily they served rice and potatoes and I was safe.  On Day 2 we hiked for around 2 hours straight down to the very bottom of the canyon, which was harder than I expected. My calves were burning, and getting to chill out at the pool at the oasis and sit in the sun was much needed.  We all sat and played cards and took it easy, prepping for day 3.

Day 3 involved waking up at 4:40 am to set off on our hike, 3 hours straight uphill and out of the canyon.  I hated all 3 hours of this, since it was in pitch black, on an empty stomach, and steep and one of the harder hikes I´ve done. But at the top I was glad it was over, and glad I had done it, because the scenery was stunning and our group was  lots of fun and it was a great, unique hike.  We went to the hot springs afterwards in Chivay, then headed back to Arequipa where Joel and I planned on having a few hours to shower, relax, buy snacks and head on our overnight bus to Cuzco.

Of course the second we get to our hostel, we´re told that the bus was cancelled because the route Cruz del Sur takes goes through Puno, the same place where the rioting at the border has been taking place, so they won´t run the buses, or refund our money for the ticket.  After a mild panic attack and a few phone calls, we ironed it out and ran to the bus station to find a company that would take us on a different route.
So our anticipated luxury 9 hour bus ride turned into a 12 hour bumpy ride up the back roads. And no shower, or time for food.  And 2 crying babies of course, because god is punishing me yet again. But, despite this, we made it to Cuzco, a day earlier than planned, and are ready to start meeting all of our friends and play at the festival! Vive Peru!


Saturday, June 18, 2011

The rest of Bolivia

I´ve skipped over a few places, mainly Sucre and Copacabana, not because they weren´t worth mentioning but because my friend Melissa was traveling with me and I was spending less time on the computer and running around Bolivia with her for 3 weeks! Sucre was an okay town. It was very pretty, but the way I had heard it described I thought it was going to be amazing. When we got there, we realized there was very little to do. We went to a Jurassic Park-type place one day, where there was a giant stone slab that had dinosaurfiitprints that has been preserved since - well - the dinosaurs roamed the earth. It was a little cheesy but I thought it was interesting and we took some fun pictures with the giant dino replicas. The food was slightly better there than the rest of Bolivia (we found a place that had giant potato croquettes filled with spanish cheese and tomato sauce - delicious!) and there were lots of chocolate shops, but not nearly as good as Bariloche!
Copacabana was a really cute, relaxing town, but since it´s winter, the weather was awful. It got so cold at night that we had to wear THREE sweaters (I finally caved and bought another llama sweater, but in a giant size so it fit over all my other sweaters!) We met back up with Cassie & Kenzie and tasted delicious trout, which is Copa´s specialty.  One day we tried to do a hike but were stopped by a tiny dog that seemed to not want We went to Isla del Sol and hiked around the island and saw the Incan ruins, The whole island was so beautiful and it was a great hike, of which I´ve returned with my 4th sunburn of the trip. No, I haven´t learned my lesson and my sunscreen is still untouched in my suitcase waiting for the beaches in Ecuador.
We had a little hiccup that altered all the plans in Copacabana. We were on the way back from Isla del Sol when the friends we made from California, who are here on a med school internship in La Paz, told us their program director had emailed them that they didn´t have to work the next day because there was a transit strike in La Paz and there was no way to get around.  Well, we had to get to La Paz in the morning so Melissa could make her flight back home.  We get back to the island at 5:30, go to the internet cafe to see if we can find anything out (the people at the buses will typically lie to you to get you to buy a ticket and not care if you actually reach your destination or not). No one seems to know about the strike, not even the Bolivian newspaper La Razon that I´ve gotten pretty good at translating. We walk up to the buses to find out what time we can leave in the morning, and the man tells us there are no buses tomorrow until 6:30 pm because of...the strike. Now it´s 5:50. The last bus out of Copa to La Paz is 6:30. Our stuff is all over the hostel (which we already paid for), so we have to RUN back to the hostel, THROW our stuff in our bags and run to the bus. We both are almost out of money, we have just enough to pay for the tickets and buy ´dinner´, which consists of Pringles and Twix since we can´t afford anything alse and have about 6 minutes to spare.  We do make it back to La Paz successfully, and Melissa makes her plane and I hang out for the day until taking a bus to Cochabamba, which I was planning on skipping but have no choice now since I still can´t get to Peru quite yet. I´m going to take the long, 4 bus 2-day route on Friday to get to Arequipa, unless a miracle happens and I can get a flight for under $200 (they´re currently pricing around $500).

Oddly enough, I found my new favorite food in Bolivia that turns out to be a Dutch snack.  Bitterballen, most common in the Netherlands and Belgium, are little balls of meat, beef broth, flour and spices served with a little bowl of mustard dipping sauce. There are a surprising number of Dutch places here, and I´ve had it 3 times and am kind of obsessed!

On to the last stop (sorry for skipping around, this entry has been in progress for over a week): Cochabamba. Now, I was going back and forth about coming here, and once I decided I´d had enough of Bolivia I was trying to get out and move along to Peru and the warmer weather, nicer scenery and less crowded streets that come along with the crossing of the border. However, that didn´t happen as I´ve been incessently complaining about, so I took an overnight bus to Cochabamba instead. This town is known for having the world´s largest statue of Christ (bigger than the one in Rio!), and that´s about it.  But I heard there were also treks in the area around it, and it´s the paragliding capital on Bolivia, so either way it would give me something to do.
The one thing I didn´t realize was how much of a non-tourist town it was.  I wanted to climb to the christ statue, but couldn´t because there´s danger of being robbed. I can´t walk anywhere past 9 pm, and I definitely heard gunshots from my room before.
That being said, the weather is great, they call it the City of Eternal Spring, and I´ve found better food here (corn and cheese hornitos!) than in most of the other places I´ve been.  I did get to go paragliding, which was raelly cool although not as much of a rush as I was expecting.  I guess after going bungee jumping and sky diving, biking death road and walking down the street in La Paz everything else can seem much tamer.  It was really fun regardless, and I had a great view of the whole city.  I spent 2 days wandering, retreating to my hotel (yes, I checked myself into a hotel. I even did a great job at negotiating the rate down to nearly half what they were charging, AND checking in at 6:30AM without paying for the extra night! I´m learning!), and the highlight of my time was finding a bracelet with Bolivia´s flag´s colors and a little icon of my boy Che. For only 3 Bs (that´s about 43 cents).

Paragliding was awesome. I´m glad that I waited to do it instead of going in Argentina where it was more than twice as expensive. Here it was $50, overlooked the giant Jesus statue and I loved every second of it. I´still have an awful fear of heights that wont go away despite doing things like sky diving and paragliding, but I will keep trying!  This was a little different than jumping out of a plane, because when I went sky diving I was attached to someone who just pummelled us out of the aircraft.  With this, I had to run with the guy until my feet weren´t touching the floor anymore.  Then I sat down (the backpack has a seat in it!) and enjoyed the view.  I begged him to do tricks, but he said that doing tricks makes you come down too fast so he just did a couple little turns to appease me.  It will still cool and I´m SO happy I went.

My trip here was an even bigger success when I found out I could bypass going back to La Paz, and take a bus straight to Arica, Chile tomorrow to begin my journey to Peru. From there I spend a night, take a bus or train over the border to Tacna, Peru and continue to Arequipa, where I´ll be climbing into a canyon that´s twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.  I´ve heard it´s amazing and I´m so excited to get to Peru and see for myself!! Fingers crossed I get over the border this time!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, into the Potosi mines we go

When I was about 12 years old and my brother was around 6, my parents took us on vacation to California. I remember a lot of driving, a lot of complaining, because even though we were going to Disneyland and fun places, we were children and complaining is what children do best. My father decided it was a good idea to take us across the Mexican border to Tijuana, to show us what poverty was like so we could appreciate the vacation we were on and all that we had that came along with being a child from middle-class America.
All I remember from the trip over the border was annoying children surrounding us and begging us to buy chiclets, which I learned fairly recently was not chiclets but chicle, the Spanish word for gum. I didn't feel privileged at all, if anything I felt annoyed at my father for wasting a day of our trip to nearly get us robbed by pesky mexican children.


Today, the point my father was trying to get across to me finally happened.

Melissa and I took a trip 3 hours South from Sucre to a town called Potosi. Potosi is both the  oldest town in Bolivia and the highest town in the world (4,070 meters above sea level), established in the 1600s when mines containing silver, zinc and other minerals were located. I'd been going back and forth about coming here, because while taking a mine tour is extremely interesting, I've been told how it's also extremely depressing, dirty, in a dark tiny tunnel (I am majorly chlostrophobic) and there's nothing else to do in the town besides the mine tour. We realized we had an extra day that could have been spent here or in Sucre, so we decided to get on the bus and give it a shot.  The mines are located in a mountain called Cerro Rico, which is 4,824 meters above sea level, which is about 15,800 feet. That's not even a number!


I will start by saying this. It was the most depressing, interesting, eye-opening and slap in the face reality check I've ever had. The path into the mines is pitch black, short so you need to walk hunched over, with drastic temperature changes as you go into the depths of the mountain. You can't breathe at all. Aside from the lack of oxygen from the height, there is little air and a lot of chemicals inside. The men in the mines work 8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and make the equivalent of about $12 a day. The work they do is insanely hard. They take dynamite to blow up spots to dig for more materials. They load the minerals into primitive carts that weigh a ton, and then have to shove the carts down terrible tracks that the carts fall off of. Its more strenuous manual labor than I can describe, and the conditions are so bad that most miners die around the age of 45.  All I could think about while I was down there was how insane the monetary scale is in comparison with everything I know. I mean, the millions of dollars I've helped spend on advertising while these people kill themselves a little more every day for tens of dollars. I feel like seeing what I did today really puts so many things for me in perspective, and makes me not want  to care or complain about half of the things i do on a regular basis. Once we were outside, there were 3 stray dogs. Two were asleep on top of piles of garbage, the 3rd was scavenging through the trash for food. There was no food in sight, so the poor dog took comfort in playing with a dirty wad of cotton. This topped off what I'd just seen in the mines, and tears rolled down my face for all these poor people and defenseless animals who will never be in a better position in their lives, no matter what they do.



After we left the mines, we did of course have a few amusing occurrences to lighten the mood of our few hours in Potosi. First the engine died on the cab that was taking us to the bus station. The cab kinda glided it's way there since the streets were all downhill. Then we get into the bus station, where it's negative 10 degrees, and we have 3 hours to sit at a restaurant where we're surrounded by people howling like zombies on the floor below us the entire time. I felt like I entered the seventh layer of hell sitting there in that terminal. Although hell would have been way hotter than this. The bus ride was tolerable, but we arrived in La Paz to find it just as cold as the place we left, with a 2 hour wait for the bus (the earlier one doubled booked their seats and took off without us). While we were waiting for the bus i was interviewed by a Bolivian news station about the border crossing. I couldnt understand what he was asking me so i think i lied and told him we were going to Peru (we were not going to Peru). We ended up paying twice as much and then getting shepherded out of the bus station and two blocks away, to stand on the side of the road and wait for a makeshift van to cram us and our backpacks into a space that could accommodate about half the number of people and bags. A woman got on the bus to let us know that we might have trouble getting there because of border issues, and asked us for our email addresses in case of emergency. If our bus got attacked by rocks hurled by protestors I'm not sure where exactly I'd have email access, but we spent the next 4 hours looking for signs of trouble. Luckily, the only problem we had was when were told to get off the bus and the bus went on a raft across a lake and no one had any idea where we were crossing or why, but we all followed on a $0.30 ferry and continued on our way.
We made it to Copacabana, only to be rushed back to La Paz a day early due to yet ANOTHER Bolivan strike. Plans had to be shifted, and now I´m heading to Peru a few days later than planned.  Instead I´m off to Cochabamba.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Welcome to the Jungle

Next stop was Rurrenbaque in northern Bolivia, the jumping off point for tours to the jungle and pampas near Madidi National Park. This was easy to book, because our friend that had lived in La Paz had everything written out for us. Only downside was that the prices all DOUBLED 2 weeks ago, so the tour went from around $120 to about $250. But it was why it was, so we opted for the 1 hr flight on military airline over the 22 hour bus ride on an unpaved road and were off.
We landed on a field where there was no airport, and a line of men motorcycles surrounded by cows trying to bring you into town. Weirdest non airport ever. We knew we were in trouble when we got to the room and me and Melissa both freaked out over a tiny lizard sighting in the bathroom. The jungle was going to be an interesting experience!

In the morning we set off with 2 girls from South Africa, a couple from Ireland, and our Bolivian Tarzan boy guide Victor. After a 3 hour car ride and 2 hour boat ride (nothing is easy to get to in these places), we were there. It was such a cool, strange, dirty, mosquito-ridden experience. Our group all got along great which was awesome. Caiman (alligators) line the riverbank, along with these animals that look like giant guinea pigs, 6 foot tall birds, and monkeys dangling from the trees. It was amazing to see these animals in their natural habitats like this. We had no idea what we were going to come across next.
The lodge was kind of gross, we all slept in one room on dirty beds with our only protection being a mosquito net, but we were in the jungle and not at Animal Kingdom so I really couldn't expect too much in terms of hygiene. The first night we watched the sunset, and after dinner took a night boat ride to find more gators in the dark. They look so eerie at night with their heads sticking out of the water, watching you with eyes that glow orange by dark. When we got back to the lodge, I spotted snakes by the dock, which turned out to be cobras. I jumped out of the boat as fast as I could, despite our guide telling us that they aren't dangerous.

The next morning everyone was getting up at 6 for the sunrise, but I'd seen my share on the salt flats and early morning buses so opted out. Well, when I woke up after they all left to stampeding on the roof, beastly howls from the window and the fluting of wings INSIDE the room, I wished I had sucked it up and gone with them. Turns out the noises and footsteps were howler monkeys on the roof, and the fluttering was a bat that someone got inside. I was protected in my little white coffin of a mosquito net, which I'm surprised u ever got out of. Day 2's activities including anaconda hunting in swampland wearing raincoats since the mud came up to our knees in 100 degree humidity with thousands of mosquitoes attacking. I've never seen this many big bites in my life and the aftermath is not pretty or the least bit comfortable. And we found 0 anacondas. The night activity was more successful, piranha fishing, where nearly everyone caught one except me of course, and we even got to eat them for dinner although I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to eat piranhas. Our guide's mantra was "todo es possible", all is possible, so we went along with it. I only had one bite, there's very little meat on it but it tasted very similar to white fish.
Day 3 includes hanging around on hammocks, my favorite activity by far, making fun of the boatload of Japanese tourists who showed up on Day 2, and swimming with pink dolphins! We were all terrified to jump in the water since it was filled with piranhas and gators, but Victor swore all was possible and safe so in we went like dumb little tourists. The dolphins came pretty close and it was awesome to be that close to them without being in a giant pool in the Bahamas. We celebrated our return to Rurrenabaque by all going out for dinner and blue drinks at a bar, appropriately called Mosquito bar (not to be confused with Monkey Bar up the road). The jungle was an awesome experience, although to be back in a place without bugs, dirt and showers is much appreciated.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Bolivia - La Paz & the Death Road

After my experience in the salt flats, I decided I needed a few days in a big city to chill out for the first time this vacation before Melissa got here. I took an overnight bus from Uyuni and checked myself in to a private room with my OWN bathroom and TV in the room. Its crazy to imagine that just 2 months ago I had my own apartment in Manhattan and now I'm beyond excited to sleep in something that's not a bunkbed. I hadn't slept for days and was beyond exhausted when I got there, but I found SIX friends I've met along the way at breakfast! I explored the first day, revelled in the fact that everything in Bolivia costs under $10, and watched 100 episodes of 2 1/2 Men on my own private tv. On Sunday, I was reunited with my travel friends Cassie an Kenzie, and a few hours later Melissa arrived!

We all signed up to do the death road bike ride on Tuesday. Death Road is a 64 km downhill bikeride to Corioco on a narrow, steep dirt road with drop-offs that if you go over the edge, well... That's it for you. The road got it's name because there used to be more deaths on this road a year than any other in the world. The road used to have cars on it too, which meant more deaths, but now it's only open for the bike riders. We went with one of the reputable companies which are known for having good guides and equipment. If you have bad brakes, or no knee pads - there were a lot of things to decide before signing our lives away on the contract. The ride was the hardest and most incredible bike ride I've ever been on. The scenery was amazing. You start out at 4,700 meters above sea level, so the winding narrow road is above the clouds and in a layer of mist which made me feel like I was riding in Jurassic Park. We had a training ride on gravel for the first 30 minutes or so, and then went on to the main road. There were rocks everywhere that I knew if I landed on the wrong way I was going over. Me, Melissa and Kenzie decided to ride our breaks the whole way down because I was convinced if I had the tiniest bit of speed I was losing control of that bike.
We were the slowest ones, but had a personal escort, Oscar, who got us down after about 4 hours to safety. Web we got to the bottom we found out a girl that went with one of the junky companies had a bike whose breaks failed, and she fell over the edge and died. It was the first death on the road in about 2 years. Our friend Diana, who rode with a different group, also fell and cut open her chin and knocked out 2 of her front teeth and had to cut her trip short and flu back to Brazil to recover. At the end of the day, I'm so glad I did it because it was amazing, but I'm even more relieved that nothing bad happened to me or my friends I was there with (minus Diana of course).
In all in was in La Paz for almost 6 days, which is the longest amount of time I've spent in any city so far. It was a busy, crowded, dirty city with a lot of bright colors and poor people, which sounds terrible but I did really like it there. Not enough to want to go back, but I enjoyed my time there. Some of the things I found were interesting (plantains and fried chicken on every corner at night - replaces my drunken empanadas after a night out) and a market that was bigger than some towns in upstate New York that sold everything from sewing machines to cotton by the kilo to used clothing. And I finally did some shopping, and am now the proud owner of a Che Guavara t shirt and $0.40 bootleg DVDs!