It's so strange to be back in Australia. I could have easily stayed in South America for another few months - there's so much to see and do, and I would have loved to work on my Spanish a bit more. I had a bit of a rude introduction to Australia - for some reason I always get hassled by the border guards (i.e. immigration, not customs/quarantine) whenever I try and enter the country. The guard decided to play what seemed like 50 questions with me over such things as me not supplying an address (I'm temporarily homeless) despite vagrancy having not been a crime for over forty years.
It's the type of thing that really annoys me - I questioned the border guard as to the relevancy of his line of questioning and got a very curt response about myself being a "high risk traveller" and Santiago (in Chile) being a "high risk port" and so on. On his first point, I'd like to know exactly how the Department of Immigration defines high risk, but his questioning was (in my opinion) irrelevant as at the end of the day, I can't, as an Australian citizen, be denied entry to Australia. The officials don't really like it when you point this out - perhaps they're used to most people in this country being sheepishly compliant when dealing with authority figures.
Anyway the guard eventually relented, so I caught the Skybus into town then took the tram for the short hop out to Richmond where I'm staying with Mike for a little while until I get myself sorted out. After a quick shower and some coffees on Bridge Rd (not to mention vegemite on toast, I couldn't help myself!, and to any British people watching yes it is different to (and better than) Marmite), we met up with some of the usual suspects to catch the tram down to St Kilda for the St Kilda Festival. On such a sunny day it was a great re-introduction to Melbourne, although we didn't really get to see any of the live music there because we kept bumping into people and stopping to chat. Nevertheless a great day and it was great to see so many friends again after the year away.
So it begs the question, what now? I've been back a week - I've stopped having to stop myself from speaking Spanish to waiters/waitresses in cafes; and have taken care of much of the administrivia of being back. I've finalised my enrolment at uni - classes start in about two weeks, so I'll have something to do until I find a job and so on. Finding a share house is proving slightly more difficult, as the market is really tight at the moment, but I'm hoping to having something more permanent than Mike's couch sorted soon.
As for this blog, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. I might post musings and observations from time-to-time but I guess for the most part my life will start to settle down into a routine before too long - so there might not be much of interest to write about unfortunately. I'll probably use the blog again to write about my travels in the future. I'd love to go to India for a few months at the end of the year and maybe tack on a trip to Jordan at the end of that, but whether or not I go depends on so many variables (money, job, uni timetable etc) so nothing is locked in.
I will though be posting photos with some sort of regularity to my Flickr photostream so feel free to check that from time to time. Since I've been back in Melbourne it's mainly photos of friends and so forth, but I'm hoping to get some proper camera hardware again soonish so I guess I'll post some more creative type stuff at that point. Until then, ¡Hasta Luego!
N.B. The photo of the Kangaroos is by пан Бостон-Київський used under the GNU Free Documentation Licence.
- Location:Melbourne
I went down to Pichilemu on the recommendation of a friend and I definitely haven't been disappointed. It's a (not so) little fishing and surfing town about three hours south-west of Santiago and has been the perfect way to cap off my time in South America and my trip in general. It's a small enough town to walk around but they also (for tourists, I guess) have what New Yorkers would call "handsome cabs" being your standard two horses and a carriage type arrangement. I think the drivers must pride themselves on giving the horses a proper full-fibre diet, because apart from the general sea smell and fishing smells there is also a pervasive horsey earthiness to the town (and especially its streets).
Yesterday I left my guesthouse at night to go and get some food and have a walk around and I realised about two hours later that I'd left my lanyard with my keys on it inside my room, so I figured I should return and sort it out while everyone would still be awake. I explained to the (old and somewhat frumpy) landlady what had happened and she made a shrugging gesture and for a while continued her sweeping up. After about five minutes she sprang to life, went rummaging through the kitchen and returned with a large jar completely full with keys. Given that I had lost the keys I had to find the match - I got it down to about twenty "possibles" and then went upstairs to try and get into my room, but of course absolutely none of the keys worked. This didn't seem to bother the landlady (Elsa) too much. Then someone, I think her grandson, but possibly another guest showed up with a ladder so without too much difficulty the grandson scaled the ladder and got into my room (I offered to do it, but he thought he'd be better at it - I must really look uncoordinated too) and retrieved the keys.
Having sorted the problem out I was free to go out again (this time with the keys!) but I made a point of explaining (in Spanish) that I always keep the lanyard, forgot it this one time, thanks and sorry and all that. Elsa stopped her sweeping for a second, looked at me, smiled and said "todo es salvado" (all is saved) - which was good because I don't think her locksmithing skills were up to scratch.
I returned to Santiago to begin the last week of my year long tour (as such). The weather was at least a bit warmer than Mendoza. I think the combination of going rafting, to be fair a bit too much vino tinto, and air conditioning in my hostel that was turned up way too cold; all came together to make me a bit sick so I didn't really do much. I caught up with my folks who were passing through Chile on their way home after spending most of January checking out Brazil and Perú. It occurred to me after they left that I didn't take any photos - which is a bit redundant I guess because my mum went a bit nuts! The only other thing I did was organise a bus ticket down to Pichelmu - much easier than it says in all the guidebooks (there are direct services) where I'll spend my last few days by the beach before returning to Santiago to go back to Melbourne.
I missed out on going to Mendoza when I was in Argentina back in November and December, so it was an easy decision to jump on a bus there out of Santiago de Chile - it's only a six or seven hour bus ride (and a very scenic one at that). Mendoza is the primary wine growing region in Argentina and has lots of other (mainly outdoorsy) stuff to do as well. I was in town for five days in total and still don't feel like I gave the city justice - on a few of the days I went on excursions out of town and the remainder of the time I was mainly up at night getting stuck into some of the local wines and eating like a king (on a minor duke's budget). 
One of the highlights was going white water rafting (well more of a muddy brown really) down the Mendoza river. It was great fun, if not tiring and cold. I think we got a really bad day for it, it was cold and overcast - and I was expecting Mendoza to be "scorching hot" based on reports from people I've met along the way. It could have been a lot more hairy - there was a massive storm in Mendoza that afternoon that caused every single drain in the city to overflow - just crossing the street involved wading through water half way up your shins. 
I also went on a winery tour organised by the hostel - the tour was OK but not great but the wineries themselves were pretty good. Wine in Argentina, for the quality, is ridiculously cheap. I picked up a bottle of '95 cab-sav for what you'd pay for a "nice" one that was maybe two years old at home. It only occurred to me after a few days that it might be a bit difficult to get the bottle home given that you can't take bottles/fluids onto planes any more for (cough, cough) security reasons.
It was only a short two hour bus ride from Santiago to Valparaíso but the two cities have a very different vibe to them. Valparaíso (or simply Valpo as the locals call it) is a port town, home of the Chilean congress and has a buzz (but not a sense of importance) about it that I found lacking on my first visit to Santiago (keeping in mind I was there on a weekend etc). There's been a dubious sort of music festival on for most of the time I've been here in the Plaza Sotomayor . It's pretty cheesy sort of stuff and for the most part ridiculously loud - but the locals love it and will seemingly dance to pretty much anything.
My bad run of luck with cameras continues - my little Olympus pocket camera (the one I called "trusty" a few posts back) gave up the ghost after two years, five continents and somewhere in the order of 7-8,000 photographs - so I spent about a day and a half researching a suitable replacement which I'm still learning how to use. It wasn't the best timing for the old one to fail this late in the trip - I had wanted to cash in my insurance, tax rebates etc when I got home and get myself a "proper" dSLR camera, so the last thing I need to be spending money on is another pocket camera, but these things happen I guess.
Both yesterday and today, I hopped on Gran Valparaíso's brand-spanking-new metro system (the trains are exactly the same as the new ones in Melbourne - at least the ones on the old "Hillside" lines) to go out to the nearby town ofViña del Mar (Vineyards by the Sea) which made for a nice change. It's the part of this area that is more or less exclusively people relaxing rather than also a working port likeValparaíso proper. It reminded me a bit of Port Macquarie or even Torquay except without the bogans. Some of the early German immigrants built little castle type forts - Castillo Wulff isn't really the type of name you expect to see in South America!
I think I can now safely conclude there isn't much to do in Santiago on Sundays - it's awfully quiet. Slightly foolishly, I decided to stay an extra day here to see what goes on during the week - although a lot of the interesting stuff is closed on Mondays, so I've had a rather unproductive day. Luckily, I'm going to be passing through Santiago a few times so hopefully I will get to see some of its other sides before I return for the final time to catch my flight home.
I'm staying in the Bella Vista district - it's a nice little area where there are numerous really low key bars where you can sit on the street, in the sun drinking beers and watching the passing parade. The other thing to see in this barrio (district) is the Parque Metropolitano which is home to the zoo, two pools, places to eat etc. I decided to walk up to the top of the Cerro San Cristóbal to see the view and the statues. At the last minute though I decided to catch the funicular railway back down to ground - but at least I can say I got some exercise today if nothing else!
It was so nice to get back to sea level and to see the beach again after about six weeks at some sort of altitude. I didn't see much of Iquique except for the beach - the coffee wasn't great in town so there wasn't really any other place to hang out. It was also good to be in a city (well, a country even, after Bolivia) that has proper supermarkets and be able to cook a bit of proper food - washed down with a bit of Chilean wine of course! Iquique made the perfect spot to relax before braving the 27 hour bus trip down the coast to Santiago.
...I turn 28 tomorrow. I'm beginning to think my life is not as rock-and-roll as I'd like to think!
It's come to the point of my trip where I have to start heading south again in order to fly out of Santiago in a few weeks time. I don't have enough time unfortunately to see too much more of Perú, so for the time being I'll have to leave it at Cusco & Machu Picchu and the rest can wait until my next visit to South America.
So I'm on my own again and back in La Paz, Bolivia for a few days. My original plan was to come here and then try and organise to do a jungle tour/safari type thing out of Rurrenabaque, or to go to Cochabamba (also in Bolivia) before going off to Chile. I haven't been feeling too well though since going to Machu Picchu - a few days in a row of not much sleep, being quite active and getting rather wet and cold led me to finally succumb to the cold that has been doing the ranks of the group of people I've been hanging out with for the last month or so (though feeling much better today - cold pills and sleeping pills do wonders!).
With this in mind, I've decided to skip seeing any more of Bolivia too - it isn't the best time of year to see the Amazon either. Tomorrow I'm off to Iquique in Chile and from there I'll make my way south towards Santiago and Valparaiso. It'll be the first time I've seen the Pacific ocean since I left Hong Kong, back in June. I imagine it'll look pretty much the same as it does from Australia! (i.e. blue and ocean-like).
I have managed to tick off one thing I missed out on the last time I was in La Paz, which is to go and see the freaky cholita wrestling (aka Lucha Libre). This will be familiar to any of you that have seen the Jack Black film Nacho Libre - ridiculous costumes, ridiculous stunts and dubious sporting value, but entertaining nonetheless. Many of the contestants are actually women, most of whom are dressed in traditional Bolivian cholita get-up complete with long platted hair and bowler hats. It was a really entertaining afternoon - the locals get really into it, they throw plastic bottles and rubbish at the wrestlers or even throw flour and water on them.
I can't work out whether or not it is for real or staged - you could hardly call the umpire fair and impartial - he'd step on the hands of contestants or throw them to the ground in most of the bouts. Normally he would side with the crowd favourite but often it was against whomever gave him the most lip. The most comical part of the night though was when one of the midget contestants got tied up to the ring by her platts. I wonder, is it wrong to laugh at midgets in pain?
So I'm on my own again and back in La Paz, Bolivia for a few days. My original plan was to come here and then try and organise to do a jungle tour/safari type thing out of Rurrenabaque, or to go to Cochabamba (also in Bolivia) before going off to Chile. I haven't been feeling too well though since going to Machu Picchu - a few days in a row of not much sleep, being quite active and getting rather wet and cold led me to finally succumb to the cold that has been doing the ranks of the group of people I've been hanging out with for the last month or so (though feeling much better today - cold pills and sleeping pills do wonders!).
With this in mind, I've decided to skip seeing any more of Bolivia too - it isn't the best time of year to see the Amazon either. Tomorrow I'm off to Iquique in Chile and from there I'll make my way south towards Santiago and Valparaiso. It'll be the first time I've seen the Pacific ocean since I left Hong Kong, back in June. I imagine it'll look pretty much the same as it does from Australia! (i.e. blue and ocean-like).
I have managed to tick off one thing I missed out on the last time I was in La Paz, which is to go and see the freaky cholita wrestling (aka Lucha Libre). This will be familiar to any of you that have seen the Jack Black film Nacho Libre - ridiculous costumes, ridiculous stunts and dubious sporting value, but entertaining nonetheless. Many of the contestants are actually women, most of whom are dressed in traditional Bolivian cholita get-up complete with long platted hair and bowler hats. It was a really entertaining afternoon - the locals get really into it, they throw plastic bottles and rubbish at the wrestlers or even throw flour and water on them.
I can't work out whether or not it is for real or staged - you could hardly call the umpire fair and impartial - he'd step on the hands of contestants or throw them to the ground in most of the bouts. Normally he would side with the crowd favourite but often it was against whomever gave him the most lip. The most comical part of the night though was when one of the midget contestants got tied up to the ring by her platts. I wonder, is it wrong to laugh at midgets in pain?
- Location:La Paz, Bolivia
Once in Aguas Callientes it was fairly straightforward to organise tickets/entry etc for Machu Picchu itself but a bit of a nightmare to organise train tickets back to Cusco for the same night - so when we finally got tickets, at the absolute last minute on the night before our visit to the park, it was a huge relief - there's absolutely no reason to stay in Aguas Callientes for any more time than necessary - the whole town is organised entirely around tourism to the park and is quite expensive (at least by Peruvian standards). It actually made Cusco feel more like a real city!
The next morning we got up at just before five in order to catch the first bus up to the gates. The plan of seeing the sun rise through the sun gate didn't happen though. About 10 minutes after arriving and seeing the ruins for the first time some clouds blew in and then the rain started in earnest so for the most part it was a very wet experience. As the rain started to ease we checked out the old Inca drawbridge - it's amazing where some of the original paths were placed so messengers could bring news to the Incas from all corners of their empire.
With the weather beginning to clear we made a decision to climb Waynu Picchu - a hike taking a bit over an hour and most of it straight up. For me (and I think quite a few of the others) this totally made the day. By the time we got to the top the rain had well and truly stopped, most of the clouds had cleared granting a clear look at the site - it's really, really impressive! I think you have to wonder though why the Incas built the site where they did - surely they would have had equally good vantage points over enemies etc from less inhospitable and moreaccessible surroundings. I found Machu Pichu impressive mainly for the scale of it and its surroundings rather than the buildings themselves.
Procrastination, disorganisation and too many coffees at Jack's Café in Cusco meant that our rag-tag group of travellers didn't set out from Cusco to Aguas Callientes (the town at the bottom of Machu Picchu) until late on Monday night. Our plan was a hastily scrawled list of bus connections on the back of a post-it note - confidence plus! The first leg was fairly straightforward and was basically a six or so hour bus trip on a fairly modern and clean bus to a small town in the middle of nowhere - Santa Teresa from memory. There, in the dark (about 3:30am) with the sound of a river flowing we met our next bus, which didn't leave for another hour or so. The next bus was a smaller, older, clapped outeconovan type affair, but modified to fit in the most number of people possible - fold out seats in the aisle etc.
The start of the trip was fairly straightforward but the bus soon got stopped and the driver was told that the road was impassable, so he needed to do a U-turn on a dirt road on the side of a hill next to a river, with the road being only marginally wider than the bus itself. At one point I think all of us in the back were convinced that the driver was about to back the bus off the side of the cliff (this happened several more times actually). One guy couldn't take any more - I think he was trying to say "Pare!" (stop) but it came out as "Perro!" (dog). I was just glad the driver didn't turn out to be afraid of dogs, become startled and hit the accelerator by accident!
As the sun began to rise for the day we all realised how perilous the road actually was - if you looked out the window the ground was generally about 1,000m below. As we began to see local people standing by the side of the road, the driver started to stop and pick them up - they all rode on the roof, at the peak there would have been perhaps 15 extra people on the roof of the bus, including babies and old grannies, with only a cheapo tarp as protection from the wind and rain. At one point we had to stop for about 20 minutes while we waited for a bob-cat to clear arock-slide from the night before, when we were allowed to go the driver took the muddy hairpin turns at speed (then again I guess he had to so that we wouldn't get bogged).
It was a relief to arrive at the hydroelectric plant at about 7:30am, by which time it was a bit warmer. As we all were planning to see Machu Picchu the next morning we decided not to catch the train that runs on the branch line from the plant to the township and instead walk along the tracks - it was supposed to take two hours but in the end it took about 4½-5 hours, but we stopped for a coffee when it started to piss down rain. The walk itself was really nice - the weather had started to warm up and after the bus trip it gave the day a real sense of adventure.
The start of the trip was fairly straightforward but the bus soon got stopped and the driver was told that the road was impassable, so he needed to do a U-turn on a dirt road on the side of a hill next to a river, with the road being only marginally wider than the bus itself. At one point I think all of us in the back were convinced that the driver was about to back the bus off the side of the cliff (this happened several more times actually). One guy couldn't take any more - I think he was trying to say "Pare!" (stop) but it came out as "Perro!" (dog). I was just glad the driver didn't turn out to be afraid of dogs, become startled and hit the accelerator by accident!
As the sun began to rise for the day we all realised how perilous the road actually was - if you looked out the window the ground was generally about 1,000m below. As we began to see local people standing by the side of the road, the driver started to stop and pick them up - they all rode on the roof, at the peak there would have been perhaps 15 extra people on the roof of the bus, including babies and old grannies, with only a cheapo tarp as protection from the wind and rain. At one point we had to stop for about 20 minutes while we waited for a bob-cat to clear arock-slide from the night before, when we were allowed to go the driver took the muddy hairpin turns at speed (then again I guess he had to so that we wouldn't get bogged).
It was a relief to arrive at the hydroelectric plant at about 7:30am, by which time it was a bit warmer. As we all were planning to see Machu Picchu the next morning we decided not to catch the train that runs on the branch line from the plant to the township and instead walk along the tracks - it was supposed to take two hours but in the end it took about 4½-5 hours, but we stopped for a coffee when it started to piss down rain. The walk itself was really nice - the weather had started to warm up and after the bus trip it gave the day a real sense of adventure.
So I'm still in Cusco...it's a very sticky place in the sense that it's rather hard to leave. I'm looking forward to getting out of here, to go up to see Machu Picchu, which I'm determined to see independently and not on a tour. Organising train/bus tickets up there is proving difficult though - all the agencies here are only really interested in selling tours and not just the transport there and back. Yesterday (Saturday) I trekked down to the Perú-Rail office to try and get tickets only to find the office closes at midday on a Saturday, so again I missed out on tickets by about twenty minutes - very frustrating!.
It hasn't been a complete waste of time though. I went to see some Incan ruins near the city - not as grand or famous as Machu Picchu but impressive nonetheless. We caught a bus out to the ruins at Tambomachay, about seven kilometres from the city and walked back, past Pukapukara, then through some villages and past one more set of ruins at Q'oqso and ended up at the Saqsaywaman ruins just above the city. I wish I'd done some reading on the sites before I went - it would have been nice to have a little context. I was also a bit disappointed in the information available online - only the Saqsaywaman ruins have an (very limited) entry in the wikipedia.
In most places I've celebrated New Year's before, the city provides the fireworks, but here in Cusco at least, it's a BYO affair. We all left the bar where we were drinking at about 11:30 and the crowd had already started letting off all sorts of fire crackers, bangers, rockets etc into the air (and across the main square). Every few minutes an old lady, or often even a child would try and sell you more fireworks out of a box they wear around their bodies like the pie sellers at the MCG. It was more impressive, in a perverse way than any other new years celebration I've seen elsewhere. Just after midnight, nearly everyone converges on the actual road to run a lap around the square all the time dodging exploding fire crackers. Crazy only begins to describe it - I think the most common comment I heard from other gringos went along the lines of "this would be so illegal back home!".
From La Paz we (still travelling with the Irish) set off to the original Copacabana, in Bolivia on Lake Titicaca for a few relaxing days over Christmas. It's a nice little town, but there isn't terribly much to do. We arrived too late in the evening to sort out any food for Christmas so the plans of getting a few chickens and doing a Christmas cook-up fell through. Luckily, the town is geared up for tourists so there was no problem outsourcing the food - but any designs we might have had on a roast quickly evaporated, so I think for the first time, Christmas dinner consisted of steak and chips. I didn't bother asking for lumpy custard - the tradition will have to skip a year. We did play a round of Bad Santa (hello Steve if you're still watching) during the day though which was fun, and ended up attaching fire crackers (the small type used for Chinese new year) to a toy car to keep it all a bit silly.
I was there for four days in total, so apart from relaxing, on one of the days most of us climbed to the top of the Cerro Calvario to see the sunset (rather impressive). It was a fairly steep, yet still do-able climb past the stations of the cross. The scenery was amazing - you can see the other (Perúvian) side of Lake Titicaca.
The next day, five of us set out early in the morning (before the coffee shops open) to see the Isla del Sol (Sun Island) which has Inca ruins and also some (more) amazing scenery. The boat, a rickety old boat that seemed to go slower than some of the kayakers took two hours to get to the island. We didn't realise we had brought a transport+tour package (for the princely sum of $3), so we ditched the tour (no great loss), went for a coffee and a bit of breakfast before setting off around the island. I think we may have taken a bit too much time, because we had to cover the island in just under four hours, which when you include taking time to actually see stuff was a bit of a push. The circuit itself though was not that difficult, but with the time restraint was a little exhausting - climbing hills at altitude really takes it out of you - not to mention the sun which is fierce this high above sea level.
I've been in La Paz for a week or so now - I think I've finally started to adjust to the altitude - the lowest point in the city is about 3,600m above sea level, so taking it slowly, especially when walking up steep hills (with shitty pavements) seems to be the order of the day. It's a very busy, perhaps even hectic place - lots of people crammed together in a fairly small place. Its name is perhaps a misnomer, because there's no way you could describe La Paz ("The Peace") as peaceful.
I haven't been doing particularly much here - I think travel fatigue has definitely started to kick-in, in the eleventh month of my trip (which means I'll be home in under two months - a slightly scary prospect). The other day we (i.e. me + some Irish people I've been hanging out with for a while) went to the Mercado Alto which is the highest market in the world. It was really disappointing - just the usual junk you see in markets and a heap of old car parts being sold on the street. The ride up was interesting enough though - the main form of local transport here are clapped out old vans (like a Tarago or similar). As they drive past the conductor hangs out the door shouting in rapid-fire Spanish where they're going, at which point you jump in and the ride begins (when it's full).
Otherwise, I've been hanging around, relaxing, drinking coffee and eating food. On the last point, I have been pleasantly surprised by the food here - it tends to have a rubbish reputation from both guidebooks and other travellers I've met, but the quality and variety have been awesome. In some ways the food is better than Argentina, which plays the big steak card valiantly but there's nothing really to mix it up.
Tomorrow we're off to Copacabana, on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca where I'll spend Christmas and then it's on to Perú (Cusco, specifically) for New Year's, after which I'll have a think about how exactly to tackle the Machu Pichu site. I think I've left it too late to do the Inca Trail (not to mention being incredibly unfit!) but there are some alternatives that I can investigate when I get there. ¡Feliz Navidad!
I went on a day trip from La Paz out to see the (pre-Incan) ruins of Tiwanaku going towards Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. The ruins themselves are still being excavated, which was kind of disappointing as I was expecting a more impressive display as the brochures would have you believe. It probably would have been more impressive if the weather had been kinder too - as the guide was explaining this and that huge black clouds were rolling over the site, so it was off to eat more llama for lunch then the bus back to La Paz.
From Tupiza I hopped on a old clapped out bus without air conditioning to Uyuni to see the Salar de Uyuni, the world's highest, and largest salt flats. The ride was interesting enough - smooth isn't a word I use to describe it though. It's amazing where the Bolivians have put roads - narrow cuttings on the sides of mountains with barely enough room for two cars to pass, let alone trucks or buses. In La Paz many people ride bicycles down the "death road" or alternatively "the world's most dangerous road", which from what people tell me is very similar - narrow and no guard rails, but at least there are only cyclists to overtake and not semi-trailers. I think I'd quite readilly bungee again but the death road in La Paz doesn't really appeal.
So, back to Uyuni. There isn't much in the town, which is to say that it has more than Tupiza and is completely organised around tourists coming from around the world to see the salt flats. By the time we (i.e. myself and the Irish) arrived it was late afternoon so we organised a tour and ate some grilled llama (very tasty, I must add), then left the next morning.
We didn't actually spend that much time on the salar itself - perhaps two or three hours. It was a very surreal experience - like a moonscape almost. It was also incredibly bright, so much so that I found myself squinting even with sunnies on.
The tour we went on was for three days in total. The remainder of the time the landscapes changed from the salt flats to the desert, quite a few rather impressive mountains and some interesting lagoons too. The last stop on the way back was the train cemetary just outside of town which was also pretty cool - I'm wondering though if the trains just broke down up in the mountains or were actually brought here to rust away.
- Music:Cheesy pan-pipe music
Bolivia is noticeably poorer than Argentina - you notice the difference the second you walk across the border: dirtier streets, dirtier buildings and dirtier stray dogs. Having said that, the country must have by far the friendliest border guards I've ever encountered - all smiles, no surliness and they wished me a pleasant stay after all the formalities were completed. If only the same could be said for the American border guards who seem to go out of their way to be rude and unpleasant. The bus station in Villazon, the border town, was more of a kerb than a bus station - crowded with lots of Bolivian women in their traditional-ish dress and nearly all of them sporting bowler hats and long platted hair. The ride up to Tupiza was rather bumpy to say the least - I'm guessing they could have charged more by pitching it as a theme park ride rather than a way to get from A to B.
I liked Tupiza as soon as I arrived. It is a small town set in the hills (just under 2,000m above sea level) that doesn't see much in the way of tourist traffic yet at the same time obviously makes a decent chunk of its income from the gringo trail. It reminded me a little of Vang Vieng in Laos. There wasn't a great deal to do there but it was a good place just to hang out, and also purely by chance I ran into some people I met in Punta del Diablo - so it was good to see a familiar face.
The main thing I did in Tupiza though was to go on a seven hour horse ride around the surrounding countryside - up into the hills and down into the valleys, which were more like canyons than anything else. Amazing scenery - which completely made up for it being really hot and the really sore butt that was the result of spending seven hours on a rather temperamental horse. I think every time I've ever been horse riding I always gets a horse who is determined to do whatever the hell he/she feels like. My horse, Apache, was reasonably cooperative in the morning but on the way back decided he just wanted to gallop despite me nearly choking him with the reins and having my heels dug firmly into his sides.
The next day I slept in so ended up spending a third day in Tupiza - which on a Sunday is rather dead. There was a thunder storm that lasted only half an hour or so, after which the sun came out again. They don't really have any drains though so the main street briefly became a river - smelly brown water above your ankles is never really nice, but I guess it's par for the course in these sorts of countries!
Oh yeah, and internet access here is painfully slow, so it will be a while before I get to upload more photos - stay tuned!
Yesterday I had a very up and down day, both literally and figuratively - I went on a tour to see the Quebrada del Torro (Gorge of the Bulls) and the viaduct at San Antonio de los Cobres. This involved going from Salta, at just under 1.2km above sea level, to just over 4kms above sea level at the highest point of the trip at Abra Blanca. It was a very atmospheric (pun intended) day - travelling in a pressurised "Oxy Bus", with lots of fantastic scenery and interesting stop-offs at amongst other things the pre-Incan ruins at Santa Rosa de Tastil.
The trip left at 6AM which meant getting up, getting ready and leaving my hostel by 05:40 at the latest - it was still dark when I left. In my foggy "it's far too early" state I hadn't closed one of the zips on my day pack properly. I was a bit shocked when I walked outside the hostel, and on the very next corner was a "working girl" (who for the rest of this story will be called Señora Skanky ). As I walked past her I heard a thud sound, took a quick look around and didn't see anything, so kept walking. I figured that it was some sort of distraction to rob me. A few doors down the road I heard another thud sound, looked down and saw some fruit that I had bought the previous day on the ground. At this point, I checked my bag and realised the bottom section was wide open, and then had the realisation that I'd dropped my (big) camera on the corner with Señora Skanky . I ran back, and in the minute or so of this round trip, she had gotten into a car (with a punter, I'm guessing) and taken with her my camera. Already late, I returned quickly to the hostel, cursing at a level so as not to wake up others (although there were still a number of people awake), grabbed my pocket camera and hoofed it back to the tour office (just) in-time to make the bus.
I'm still quite pissed off about this incident - I was getting heaps of use out of the camera (I got it while I was in Japan back in May) and learning quite a bit in the process, but I guess at the end of the day there's not much I can do about it, other than "get on with it" and make an insurance claim when I get home in February. If I was superstitious, I'd think that this was bad-luck incident #2 and would wonder what #3 will be....
I've been thinking also that perhaps this happened not because I was too trusting, but too cautious. If I'd stopped for just an extra ten seconds when I heard the first noise rather than assuming I was going to get robbed, I would probably have realised that I'd dropped my camera, and Señora Skanky wouldn't have taken off with it. I guess also she'll have a bit of trouble selling a "only sold in Japan" camera in Argentina - it doesn't have an español option. 
- Location:Salta, Argentina
After a brief stop-over in Buenos Aires where I caught up with some old (well pre-Uruguay, at least) friends again, I caught the overnight bus up to Argentina's second city, Córdoba for two days. The city was important Jesuit settlement in the 17th and 18th centuries but today is above-all a university town. Apart from the many chuches around the city, and the recently uncovered Jesuit crypts near the centre (which were OK but not great) there hasn't been too much to see here. Today I went to the Mercardo Centro which must have about 50 butchers stalls and only one green grocer - a metaphor perhaps for the Argentine love of meat, which I must add is insanely cheap here: 270gm fillet steak for 3 pesos (about one dollar).
Tomorrow night I'm going to catch the bus to Salta, the biggest city in the far north. I was going to stop at Cafayete along the way but it involves numerous changes so I've decided to go straight through. I'll hopefully still be able to see the ruins at Quilmes and take in some of the Andes before hitting up Bolivia early next month.
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