Robbery

It was bound to happen sooner or later; I got robbed on the bus! It seems to happen to every single backpacker I meet. Hours spent bumbling around a country with police-passport checks every hour or so on the road, in embassies pleading to be allowed to leave the country, trying to buy a new rucksack/coat/wallet that is even vaguely suitable and doesn’t have llamas sewn into it.

I am well annoyed. I thought I’d taken a good range of precautions; locking up my bag, wrapping it round my leg as I slept and whatnot. But there was one thing I hadn’t taken into account.

The bastards were willing to steal my sleeping bag bag, and blanket. Now where am I meant to put my sleeping bag? Buggers.

All By Ourselves

The time has come; I’m off by myself! Not everyone wants to go to Iguazu, so I’m being a big brave zebra and heading off on my lonesome.

It’s a good job I’ve got Mummy to keep me company, or I’d feel about as lonely as I look in this Salt Flats picture.

The Green Lake

We saw a lot of lakes on our trip to the Salt Flats with our utterly atrocious guide. Here is the Red Lake:

Here is the Flamingo Lake:

And here is the Green Lake:

Notice any salient feature which is missing?

Greg - Salar Uyuni, Bolivia

Life in the Forest

After our really quite tame foray into the river-networks of the Pampas, we decided to break from the Gringo Trail and actually see the proper forest. You know, the one with lots of trees and Tarzan vines and insects that will tear your flesh into little tiny pieces given half the chance?

It was… exactly as you would imagine it. In the evening the cyclical carcophany from the forest sounded just like the opening to Aqua’s Barbie Girl, and it continued all night long. There were random crashes and shrieks of unknown, unseen animals. During the day the entire place was plagued with butterflies of all colours and sizes which flopped about and refused to be photographed correctly. Giant ants came bursting out of logs if you tapped on them, and swarmed up your boots given half the chance. Everywhere were spiders, webs, tarantulas, and miscellaneous, unmarked bog lands ready to gobble up your shoes.

They’re quite protective of their jungle here, too. On the way in we were given a ticklist, where we detailed what we were taking in with us (within the pre-established limits, of course). You’re only allowed to take one book into the forest. And three T-shirts. And two batteries. They then check you on the way out to make sure you haven’t gone about (A) sprinkling your possessions over the ground, or (B) stuffing howler monkeys into your rucksack. Good fun, that one.

And, of course, you have to push your own boat upstream to get there in the first place. Someone forgot to make the river deep enough for it to simply sail up full of passengers. Thankfully, the sweltering heat is enough to dry you in but thirty minutes. Anyway, here’s a picture of Greg besides a very big, exciting tree. There were lots of big, exciting trees. They couldn’t escape from us, for one thing.

Saf - Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

On Piranhas and Pink Dolphins

It was only natural whilst in South America to hurl ourselves into the Amazon basin to see some interesting animals. Or not, as the case may be.

One of the big selling points of the Pampas tours (which go into the wet, swampy bits of the jungle, described as “the most biodiversity in the world”) is that you get to swim with pink dolphins. Yep, freshwater dolphins! Here’s a picture of us swimming with the pink dolphins:

What do you mean, you can’t see any dolphins? Of course there are dolphins! They’re just hidden in the brown, murky water. They’re pink, gov’nor, honest, and they’re there. Probably. It turns out that “swimming in a body of water recently occupied by dolphins, and now full of piranhas which have a playful nip every now and then” is a much better explanation. The dolphins are fscking hard to photograph, even out of the water. I have a lot of pictures like this:

And only one which actually shows a dolphin:

Of course, once the dolphins are gone the caiman (black, evil alligators) come to eat the tourists, so whilst paddling about in the water you may suddenly hear the guide shouting at you to get back in the boat now. Obey him.

Much more productive was piranha fishing (or, in our case, “feeding very slowly”). I only caught three sardines, and spent most of my time trying to hit them over the head with a stick to finish them off. Greg got the best haul by far, though!

Saf - Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

P.S. Don’t feel sad about the pink dolphins. Google for a proper image of them, and you’ll see that they’re bleeding ugly animals. Not fairy-tale stuff after all.

El Camino de la Muerte

I am writing this in a very grumpy mood, as I am angry at Mummy. Yesterday, she went on a big fun adventure and left me behind! Trapped in a locker for a whole day, just because she didn’t think Death Road is a very safe place for a little zebra!

‘Death Road’, or the Yungas Road if you want to Wikipedia it, as the kids inaccurately bastardise a noun, is a fairly long stretch of road in Bolivia that used to be the most dangerous in the world. Why? Well, have a look at this photograph I stole.*

The drop-offs are “at least 600m”, and the road is mostly single carriageway lumps of rock. According to Wikipedia, 200-300 people died a year when it was in use full time. Now the big lorries use the new bypass, but a couple of tourists still drop to their deaths yearly. Back in the good old days, it was the only road in Bolivia where you drove on the left, so left-hand-drive vehicles could get a better view of the wheel perched precariously on the cliff edge. If you want to read more, have a look at a very melodramatic BBC account here.

I think the main reason Mummy was so concerned was that instead of opting for the company recommended by the hostel, which had posh bikes with hydraulic brakes, full face crash helmets and their own mountain rescue equipment, which cost £57, she instead paid £22 to go with some other people. You got free breakfast and a T-shirt though!

She survived, needless to say, although the problematic neck means that she has spent lots of time lying on her back on the floor today. Oh, and drying her cothes, which got soaked by the waterfalls which pound down onto the stones at some points. She is trying to make up for it by taking me to the rainforest soon, so there might be a big break in writing!

Sadly, she couldn’t bring herself to tempt fate by wearing her “I survived Death Road” T-shirt from the very start of the trip, preventing the chance of a rather ironic corpse being repatriated.

Greg - La Paz, Bolivia

* _{Mummy’s photos will go up at some point, but are currently trapped for complicated reasons. This will do as a placeholder. Sorry to original owner.}

It’s Not All Armadillos

The Fiesta isn’t all armadillo-rubbing, you know. The Virgin did some miracles, or something, too. Most of them seem to be linked to cars. In fact, one of the major pillars of the festival is the dressing and blessing of the vehicles, which occurs down by the lake front. The whole shore is full of cars, lorries and buses covered in rainbow-coloured streamers and crepe paper whatnots, with little Virgin del Copacabana hats on, and with little models of what the vehicle normally transports on the bonnet.

A man then comes along with a brazier, shakes it at the car, pours some beer over it and the inhabitants and then sets off a huge amount of fire crackers all around it. It’s great fun to watch, although just looking at the dressed-up vehicles waiting for their blessings is pretty enough. Here’s a picture of a combi:

You can have this ritual done to about anything you want. Couldn’t bring your car with you? Well, the ladies on the street will sell you a tiny model of your car, and you can have that blessed instead! Your house and business obviously have to stay at home too, but there is a whole section of the hillside where you can recreate you world in minature, before a bit of beer shaking and explosives. Oh, and the armadillo-rubbing, of course. Only most of the ones in this section are dead.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to climb the hill to see the Virgin herself. We have seen no fewer than three Virgins during our time in the town, but the best one is up a huge, rugged hill where no one has quite gotten around to making a path any better than a big stack of boulders. You take your trinkets, which you bought from the women at the bottom, and join an enormous queue of people who touch them against the robes of the Virgin at the top. You are also expected to give her something, and offerings of money and pottery frogs are by far the best.

But just supposing you don’t want to part with real money, there are plenty of other options! Every street vendor will sell you a thick wadge of $100 bills for about £1, not massively-convincingly counterfeited, but they’ve made a pretty good effort. If dollars aren’t your thing you can pick from a range of currencies (Euros, but sadly no Stirling) with small frogs glued to them instead. Or what about a fake Visa or Mastercard? Then your offering is virtually unbounded!

The range of stuff on sale is utterly bewildering, and really rather exciting. There are, of course, pictures in the usual place, but I won’t imbed them all here. My favourite section by far, though, was the strange traditional healing/spirituality area in some scrubland at the foot of the hill. Here, you can have your fortune told in coca leaves, crystal balls with monkeys’ heads in, or little pots of molten silvery stuff. You can pay to feed one of the lucky caged birds, or have your household rendered in spun sugar with a variety of types of corn and other remedies imbedded inside. Or you can get hold of an armadillo foot (for safe journeys) or llama foetus, which you take home and bury under the porch of your new house to bring you luck. A very nice lady let me take a picture of her llama foeti, but insisted on putting her armadillo in the brazier for me, which is why the shot is so full of smoke:

That’s a dead armadillo, by the way. The Lonely P
lanet would not be pleased.

Saf - Copacabana, Bolivia

An Unusual Hat

It’s the Fiesta de la Virgin del Copacabana! For six days a year the imhabitants of Bolivia and Peru descend on the tiny fishing village of Copacabana to celebrate their Lady and have an enormous party. There are streamers and confetti and bands everywhere, figures of the Virgin processing through the streets as women in rainbow skirts dance and buses covered in rainbow crepe paper get in the way and sond their horns. The whole village is packed and alive and colourful, everything gets blessed and crowds of people swarm up the hill to set fire to countless candles and pools of paraffin and draw pictures of their houses in wax ont eh walls.

But you don’t want to see that, do you? What you want to see is a photo of Mummy being blessed by having an armadillo rubbed on her head.

Greg - Copacabana, Bolivia

_{As any good reader of the Lonely Planet will know, it is very bad indeed for tourists to have anything at all to do with the growing trade in dead armadillos, which are cut up or made into mandolins. Ever. So as a discerning reader you will be pleased to know that this particular specimen was alive and wriggling. There’s a better picture of it, doing a good bit of shoulder rubbing, in the photos section}

Not Our Best Border Crossing

So far, we’ve been doing quite well for border crossings. Granted, Zambia was shut, and the lady on the Namibian border broke my gin, but it’s all been relatively pain-free. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this is not the proper traveller experience. Luckily, the people at the Peruvian-Bolivian border, whilst they are many things, are not idiots.

We were settled down on another of our overnight buses, of which we are so fond, expecting a mere twelve hour journey. It was cold, yes, but I had my sleeping bag with me as we trundled (or, for a large part of our time, simply sat around for no discernible reason) over the mountain passes towards the border with Bolivia.

At 6:00 am, we stopped. At about 6:15, we moved a few metres. Then we stopped. This continued for a full five and a half hours, until the bus finally forced its way up to the border archway. The reason for the delay soon became clear; anyone crossing the border had to have an injection against H1N1. Thankfully we are too foreign for anyone to worry about, so were let through without being jabbed in the arm. Our other bus companions were not so lucky.

The border was a nightmare. There were stalls everywhere, cars and buses crammed into every space and policemen shouting things. We got waved along with a stream of people, inspected by the men in white face masks and coats, then saw a great big queue going into an official-looking building. However, this was not the building with ‘immigration’ written on it, so we went to that instead.

It took a long time to get forms, but we’re now expert at filling them in. Granted, I did misunderstand a question and listed the country I would visit after leaving Bolivia as ‘Bolivia’, but that’s not too great a worry. The man at the desk had other ideas, though. We hadn’t succeeded in signing out of Peru.

This often doesn’t matter (see our America-Mexico border crossing), but the man was quite insistent. It seemed that the police had pushed us straight past the Leaving Peru office (which wasn’t the one with the big queue!). We forced our way back across the border, having to push past the police who really did think the stupid gringas were going the wrong way, and found an office. We filled in lots of forms. Then we had to go to another office, where we got a stamp. I bought some confetti.

Back in the first office, a new man was very baffled as to why his desk already had my immigration form on it, and why it had been half completed by his colleague. We explained that we were idiots, he looked dubious…and gave me a stamp!

We got outside just in time to be told that our bus, having spent 5h30 getting to the border, could not spare 20 minutes at it to wait for its patrons, and had left, taking our rucksacks and whatnots with it. We looked at the empty road. A person offered to chase the bus for us in their combi van, so we got in.

We were left in Copacabana, our final destination, by a random little car park and told that the bus would be there soon. The man who was helping us then disappeared. We waited. Forty minutes later (we still don’t know where it had gone since leaving us and arriving in Copacabana) it rocked on up, and we got hold of our stuff! We didn’t leave a tip.

We’re now debating which country to enter from Bolivia; the one with the guards who confiscate all the “fake” dollars you carry, or the one where the entrance/exit points are 60km from the actual border in either direction.

Saf - Copacabana, Bolivia

Cocktails

The people of Peru certainly know how to make a good cocktail!

Greg - Miraflores, Peru