La Paz (again)

Egads, is it the end of April already!!!
Well Valdivia and Pucon were a long time ago now.
Now I am in Bolivia, but how did I get here, I hear you ask.
Settle down grab a cerveza and I will tell you...
O.k. yes Pucon was busy in fiesta mode when I left, fabulous fun dancing in the streets, y´know how it is. I arrived in Valdivia which is a port city, and very German, it´s full of fabulous buildings, cool graffiti and really good chocolate cake. I stayed at this hostel down by the waterfront owned by a crazy French dyke, her Chillean partner and a couple of daschounds. A really lovely American couple were volunteering there and made American breakfast for us all every day, I got to try infamous ¨gravy and biscuits¨ for those of you unfamiliar with American food it´s a kind of dumpling, not bad at all. I spent a few days rumbling round the old ruins of a Spanish fort or two, we went on a Monday when indeed the fort was closed, but never fear we found a way to scale the walls and break into the fort. (we being Thurbid who is German and Yankee an Israeli who travels solo). Breaking into crumbling monuments is really easy. The wall we scaled was a tad close to the sea that´s all.

Then from Valdivia, I went down to Puerto Varas which had beautiful cobbled streets and again was very European, I went to the national park and hiked about which was beautiful, but a little drizzley. The mountains there are beautiful. I continued south to the Island of Chiloe which is a little, kind of grubby by Chilean standards, and saw the stilt houses and old wooden churches the seals accompany the ferries over to the islands splashing about in the wake and playing in front of the boat.
I then spent a few days in Puerto Mont, which is a working port without tourist attractions (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
I was thinking about Patagonia but I decided too cold and expensive for this stage of my trip so I headed back to Santiago, where I spent my birthday and a few days later saw Kraftwerk warm up for Radiohead, Great gig. Just don´t ask about the trip to the venue!!!

Then I headed north to San Pedro de Attacama, where I cycled around the valley of the moon ( a gruelling 64 km day). crawled through caves and canyons, climbed sand dunes, looked at rocks and even wandered about in a salt mine! I then headed north as far as Chile goes to Arica and saw my first geoglyphs and petroglyphs, very cool in deed, if you´ve see such things before probably not that special but for me, who has not seen them before it absolutely (and literally) rocked! (¨Quality¨ as my English companion said).
Then went to a little town called Putre and into Lauca national park, just give me a moment to open my superlative bag and I´ll get right back to you… Wow… If you really want to hike in nature with flamingos and vicunas, surrounded by amazing little rivers and majestic mountains, seriously you need to check this place out!!!

The border crossing into Bolivia from this direction is absolutely magnificent, though on the draw back side I arrived in La Paz after dark and after all the horror stories I had heard about La Paz and Bolivia generally I almost had a panic attack on the spot. But luckily I had met an English woman on the bus and together (with the help of a security guard we managed to secure ourselves a (safe) taxi to our respective hotels.

In the morning I discovered Bolivia is totally unlike Chile, it is really what I was expecting when I decided to come to South America, it´s very exotic and different. The percentage of ethnic people versus the obvious Spanish decendants is closer to 70/30 here (In Chile it's probably 80/20 the opposite direction). I was in La Paz at the same time as the Argentinian Soccer team, who had their ass whipped by Bolivia (much to everyone´s amazement and immense enjoyment 6/1. It was great fun, I went with a bunch of mad people, in fact most of the hostel I was staying at went. Stadium was packed and we all got sunburnt (except me) for a change, I had sunscreen, hat long sleeves but I did perspire a lot!!! It was really hot!
After several days in La Paz I headed down south to Potosi where the mines are and the altitude makes you completely breathless, fantastic views and the little cobbled alleyways and architecture is fab!
Then headed south to Uyuni and did the obligatory ¨salt flats¨tour which is three days of incredible lakes (more flamingos and vicuna) great volcanoes, rock formations, dehydrated lake beds and old coral beds, cacti, did I mention cacti, I keep expecting to see Snoopy's cousin with the moustache, (haven´t yet but if I do you´ll be the first to know!)
Then I arrived in Sucre or ¨the white city¨so named because of all the whitewashed buildings, it is an attractive city, very European architecturally (all the guys in colourful ponchos pissing in the street EVERYWHERE is decidedly uneuropean, not to mention smelly).
My Spanish lessons go well, I can conjugate many a verb now, but my listening and speaking really need a huge amount of work!

Oh and now even Sucre is a distant dream, yes I promise to post this today!!! From Sucre I headed to Smaipata and into Amboro National park, I hiked with an Australian girl and a lovely Dutch girl, The cloud forest was beautiful but it did rain a little (being a cloud forest this was about what I expected), the vegetation is much like New Zealand predominantly massive ferns, moss and lichens in fact I am constantly reminded how much like the green green grass of home South America is, the plants are very similar often you see plants which are obviously related to plants from home and it's the first place in the world where I have (happily) been able to find my favourite vegetable (what in New Zealand we call Yam a small pink variety of potatoe). Perhaps for this reason it makes me feel slightly home sick (or perhaps it's just the altitude).

Altitude is a funny thing you think your acclimatised then suddenly your gasping like a fish for a few breaths then it passes and you feel fine again, some people get headaches but for me it's a feeling not unlike being mildly high, slightly unsettling and disorienting but not painful.

Anyway from Amboro National park and Smaiapata I headed back to La Paz and a couple of friends from Chile were in town so it was great to catch up with Victor and Karina again, I headed to Tiwanaku.
Tiwanaku was amazing, the archeaologists currently working on the site suspect it may have been as important to the Incas as Macchu Picchu but at this stage they really are just digging bits of rock out of the ground and jigsawing the temples and structures back together. I arrived in town and went to find a hotel but the first was too expensive and the second locked up and abandoned. There are many, many new hotels in the throws of being built, it's a town that has great expectations!!! I was wandering around contemplating my next hotel when a little old chap on a bicycle hot off his bike and started chatting and walking beside me. He invited me back to his place and so i went. His son as it turns out is building a hostel on the side of their house and they showed me to a massive room for the princely sum of 15 Bolivianos a night (the equivalent of 3 dollars). There house backs onto the grounds of tiwanaku and my balcony looked out over the fence onto the grounds, perfect! They gave me some coca tea and I headed out to the museums, stuffed full of statues and cool suessian ceramics, (unfortunately they always seem to have a no photography law in these places but my camera has never recovered from the trip to Uyuni so it doesn't really matter, I will have to upgrade soon) I love the Inca representations of people and animals they are often just so bizarre. I ate Quinwha soup in a rundown, Ma and Pa store then and headed over to the first lot of ruins.

Puma Punku, I wander about the ruins and am thinking (perhaps meanly) it's just like a poor man's Egypt). the ruins here are barely excavated, most still lie (their shattered visage like Ozymandis amongst the sand) half buried, those they have excavated quite often now lie on their backs their ancient engravings exposed now to the sun wind and rain, it's crazy. Tourists can just wander about the rocks and willy nilly amongst over and around these ancient stones it's quite incredible, especially as most tourists are too ignorant to realise that these actions are damaging what remains, (we are programmed to believe if it needs protecting someone will have put a fence round it and erected a sign stating this... baa, baa). Anyway off my soap box now. I headed back to watch the sunset from my balcony.

The next morning I went early down to the market in town, Tiwanaku is a grubby little town and it had a grubby little market, although talked up by the local people it is nothing once one has seen the markets of La Paz and the giant sprawling mess of market similar to Bangkok's Chattuchak in Cochabamba. I returned to the main temple gates at Tiwanaku and waited for them to open, as I was the only foreigner in town I had the place to myself for the first two hours which was absolutely majic, again, huge sections of the compound have yet to be excavated and have a mixture of ancient Inca rocks sticking out of the mud and crumbling modern mud houses melting into the ground from which the latest inhabitants have been evicted when the sacred area was marked off. The semi-subteranean temple was my favourite it is dug into the ground and heads emerge from the brick work every foot or so in three or four rows. The Kantatallita or tomb area which is a new excavation area looks like it will be amazing once they have dug a bit more of it our of the ground and re-erected it's arched doorways and the like. The main temple area had evidence of recent rituals and the workmen appeared to just build their lunch fires wherever they like amongst the ruins??? Christopher (the son of the family who own the hostel I'm staying in) has during his excavations to build the kitchen and dining area of the guest accomodation come across great numbers of relics, mortars and pestels, broken crockery, even a piece of Inca drain, so he has his own little museum in the back yard too. In the evening he explained the significance of the various aspects of the temple and showed me photos of the last sun celebration, his Uncle is the high priest. "So" I said to him (having seen the impressive and old catholic church in town) "your not Catholic then?" "Of course we are Catholic" he hurried to correct me "but Pachamama is much older then Christ" Yes I thought, but decided it unwise to pursue this particular logic.
The next morning I saw the sun rise (in the vague direction of the puerto del sol from my balcony, and headed back to La Paz.

Then it was off to Rurrenabaque over the amazing Yungas and via the pretty little town of Corroico. First I did a pampas tour which was hot, and the mosquitos were biting, we spent many happy hours in a boat watching the millions of different types of Amazon birds, storks, cormorants, egrets, herons, spoonbills, kingfishers, macaws, vultures and small parrots and waders and I really don't know what all else so many it's amazing, we saw three different kinds of monkeys including squirrel and howler, three different kinds of snake, fished for Pirranha's and swam with pink river dolphins. I saw my first Toucan on the way back to Rurre and was really very happy with my whole trip. Then we went four days deeper into the amazon jungle where the mosquitos are joined by other manic biting insects and various members of my party got so many bites pieces of their anatomy swelled in quite hideous ways, we saw Cappybarris and trees and trees full of parrots and macaws, so many beautiful and huge butterflies every colour of the rainbow, their were also a lot of spiders and frogs we saw puma footprints in the sand but not the elusive creatures themselves.
We arrived exhausted back in La Paz yesterday and in a few days I will head for Lake Titicaca and the Isle del sol, apparently despite the name it's cold! Spot you later.
N.J.