Aug and Sept update

Well its been a while since I updated this blog, so here goes with a few pics from the past couple of months. Apart from a little more spanish study and following Argentina in the Rugby world cup (and the Wallabies too of course), I've taken a few overnight bus trips to regions in the country that I've never been to before. Firstly we went to Cordoba (9hrs on the bus) which is the geographical centre of Argentina and the 2nd biggest city after Buenos Aires. One night a friend of Marcela's was doing some folklore dancing at a peña (traditional music and dancing event) in a church with a lot of old, tragic and weird people - but all doing some fantastic traditional Argentine dancing. And we were served beers by 10 year old girl guides!!?! What a strange and fun night. Here's a pic:


Another weekend and we went up to Marcela's home town of Corrientes (12 hrs by bus) where I was assured we would escape the rain and cold of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately we were greeted by unseasonal rain and cold and only saw a glimpse of the sun at the end of the weekend. Nice little town by the river, with a lot of history that Marcela's dad was telling me all about while we were driving around town - none of which I can remember.

Speaking of pics (was I?), here's some of an interesting bookstore just a couple of blocks from me in Buenos Aires. It's an old theatre where you can have a coffee on the stage, or read a book in the private booths - pretty cool huh?



I've just got back from a week and a half in Bariloche (mid/southern Argentina - 19hrs by bus!) where I caught up with a best mate from home who has just started his 4 month trip of South America. Was really good to catch up over many cervezas and scotches which helped curb my homesickness a bit. By the way this bus trip was my longest so far but not as bad as it sounds - I paid extra for the luxury seat with hot meals and drinks (wine and scotch even!), and the bad movies even helped me get a little bit of sleep.

Of course my plague of bad weather in Argentina continued to follow me and we had mostly windy, rainy, overcast and cold days in Bariloche, but that just justified our desires to watch the Rugby world cup all day. We did venture up to the mountains for a little bit of snowboarding for a couple of days, but the conditions just never quite worked out right for us. We did get a bit of fresh snow one day though. I'll let the pics and captions tell the rest of the story, as I have to get ready for my quick trip back to Oz for my best friends wedding now.

Brendan on the one morning when we had fresh snow and a hint of sun. That all changed by the time we got up on the mountain though - blizzard/white out conditions with no visibility and cyclone-like winds!

Same morning. Yes the clock says 11:20am, so you could say we were a bit tardy that day, but after struggling out of bed with hangovers, then waiting for and catching a public bus for 45min with hundreds of other skiiers (standing with all our boards and gear while the bus hurtles up a winding mountain road isn't too much fun!), we didn't do too bad. The blizzard conditions are just approaching on top of the mountain in preparation for us to start our snowboarding...

Brendan pretty happy to be in Argentina (and to finally see some sun here).

The Llao Llao Hotel - the most famous hotel in Argentina apparently. It's perched on a magnificent spot surrounded by lakes, forest and mountains. Unfortunately it was about $US390 out of our price range (it was $US400 a night)...

... but that didn't stop us acting like rich and famous travellers for half an hour. Although our clothes and shoes were covered in mud from our mountain biking, and security/concierge had to make us wait for 5 minutes to decide whether we could even enter at all, we got in and carried ourselves with a high air of decorum while the penguin-suited butlers served us our usual bottle of 40 year old Moet champagne (actually it was just orange juice, but at the price of champagne in most other places in Argentina). The decor in this 5 star hotel was amazing - swiss chalet-style architecture rich in timber logs, huge fireplaces, fur covered chairs and deer-antler lamps.

The next few pics were snapped as we mountain-biked through a route known as the Circuito Chico (Small Circuit) - lucky we didnt take the grand circuit as this day really knackered us and we didnt get back to the bike rental place until 7:30 at night. Beautiful scenery full of lakes, mountains and thick forest - and even though it was overcast when we started, the sun poked out for the afternoon which was great.

Nice place over the other side of the lake there - the colour of this lake was unbelievable.

Stop for a breather.

We left the bikes here and took a steep track up to the top of a hill for a bit of a looksy... lets just say the hike looked a whole lot shorter and easier on the map!

But the view was worth it in the end. We were even walking through some snow to get to this lookout point. This is my mountain hiker/rock climber/tv adventure reporter pose.

Peru Part 4 - the journey back to Lima

I had about 4 days to get back to Lima from Copacabana in Bolivia. So I caught three buses back to back (about 22 hours all up) and passed through the popular tourist spots of Puno, Arequipa (I'd been to both of those places a few weeks prior), Nazca (I wasn't too interested in seeing the Nazca lines) and chose to stop at Ica for my last couple of days. Ica is surrounded by desert - the classic sand dune type desert that you learned about in primary school. Massive, rolling dunes that go on forever in all directions with no sign of life or water whatsoever. Except for Huacachina - the oasis in the middle of the desert. Synonymous with sand deserts is the dream of a tropical oasis that is so often just a mirage in the eyes of a poor lost man in the Sahara. But Huacachina is a real oasis - I stayed a couple of nights there just to prove it wasn't!

Huacachina is an oasis formed by a natural spring, and is a popular resort town for Peruvians in the summer, and for backpackers at any time of the year. Unfortunately you can't swim in the lake like you once could due to pollution, but most of the cheap hostels and hotels have a swimming pool to relax by.

There wasn't much to do there after you had walked around the lake, except relax or take a dune buggy / sandboarding tour. Both were extremely rewarding. The dune buggy tour was doubly great because I bumped into Pete from England again (who I had been on the ill-fated Salar de Uyuni tour with a couple of weeks earlier) - its a small world when your travelling on the gringo trail in South America!

The dune buggy tour was amazing - within minutes of hopping in (and with no safety precautions or warnings) we were absolutely flying up, down, over and around the biggest sand dunes I've ever seen in my life - it was pure exhiliaration, with a hint of danger, as the buggy wasn't the safest looking vehicle I'd been in recently. But it certainly tackled the dunes with aplomb and was faster and more thrilling than any rollercoaster I've been on in my life.

Then we would attempt to sandboard down some dunes (with plenty of stacks on everyone's behalf), and luxuriously be driven back to the top to do it all over again. Even though it took days to get the sand out of all the crevices in my body, it was great fun.

The wax on the base of the sandboards was essential and made for a fast first ride, then progressively slower each consecutive ride until you almost got bogged, even on a steep dune. Then you'd get the driver to "wax 'er up again" and hold on for the fun first ride.

After the oasis I stayed a night in Ica with a local Peruvian in his very humble, basic home. He lived with his mother in a 2 room house with many other families within the same building. There was no running water in his home, nor a toilet, and I slept on the concrete floor. All the families shared a non-flushing toilet and a sink down around the back. His mother ran a small cafeteria inside the immigration department of Ica and she cooked us a beautiful lunch two days in a row. Milton was very generous and took pride in showing me around his town, to his friends birthday party, his English school, and the nearby bodegas (wineries) where the national drink pisco is produced. Since I was at end of my trip and I still had a few gifts from Australia in my backpack, I gave Milton everything as well as some clothes and books that I no longer needed that I think he appreciated. I even gave him a Wiseacre cd and shirt as he played the trumpet - I bet it's a bit different to the type of music he is used to here though!

So another overnight bus and then straight to the airport in Lima for a few hours sleep and the redeye flight back to Buenos Aires, which marked the end of an amazing trip in Peru and Bolivia. I couldn't wait for a nice comfortable bed and a hot shower though!

Bolivia Part 5 - Copacabana and Isla del Sol

After some ups and downs in Bolivia over the past few weeks, it was time to move on back to Peru, but not before a stop on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca for a day or two. I was looking forward to a nice bed and shower after dossing on the floor of the flat of a couple of French girls I met in Peru who were working in La Paz. While it was great to hang out with some people who knew La Paz well, and save some money for a night or two, unfortunately there was problems their shower and toilet, and one night I didn't have their phone number or key and waited outside in the cold with no shoes for a few hours... So when I arrived in Copacabana (in Bolivia, not the famous beach in Rio!) I checked into the Hotel Mirador (Spanish for lookout) and had this fantastic view of the lake, for just $AU9 a night!

The view from my hotel window.

The Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca is far prettier than the Peruvian side. Copacabana is a quaint little fishing-type village that makes you feel like you are by the side of the ocean somewhere in Mediterranean. But much cheaper - a 4 course dinner cost about $AU2.50! There was even a singer/guitarrist playing in the restaurant, but most people were watching over his shoulder to the tv where the Copa America soccer was being shown.

Isla del Sol

Crystal clear water - but damn cold!

The next day I caught the world's slowest boat to Isa del Sol (Island of the sun), where according to Inca legend, the first Inca was born. There was a few interesting ruins and some spectacular scenery - the water was crystal clear and looked so appealing, apart from the fact that it was absolutely freezing. It was a nice day to spend walking around the island and soaking in the rays and the beauty of Bolivia on my last day in the country. I'll let the pics tell the story:

The ruins on Isla del Sol where legend says the Inca empire began.

Looking back from Isla del Sol to the Bolivian mainland and the Andes mountains.

A small fishing port - check out the size of the reed sailing boat on the beach!

My last sunset in Bolivia - a beauty!

Bolivia Part 4 - The World's Most Dangerous Road

So I was in La Paz again for just one more day before making my way back towards Peru for my return flight to Buenos Aires in just over a weeks time. I had been in and around La Paz for over 2 weeks now and, with valid excuses, hadn't had the chance to do one of the most tantalising and controversial adventure activities in Bolivia - to ride a mountain bike down the World's Most Dangerous Road. Most other travellers I'd been talking with had been raving about it, while many others chose to not take the risk.

A section of the road on a better day - this was all cloudy on our day.

The facts aren't pretty - built by Paraguayan prisoners during the war back in the 1930's, the road is a narrow gravel strip of varying quality chiseled into the side of enormous cliffs that drop hundreds of metres down to the Coroico river below. It joins the tropical Yungas region (elevation of approx 1000m) to the capital of La Paz (elevation 3800m) via La Cumbre - a high point of 4700m - by barely hanging on to the side of an Andean mountain. Many of the prisoners perished during its construction, thousands of Bolivians since, and now the odd tourist as well.

Some pics from the net...

A long way down...

Last year a new, safer, paved road was finally opened (after 20 years of construction) which means the "death road" is now only used by local traffic and mountain bikers with their support vehicles. Unfortunately it also means what little road maintenance there was, is now even less (landslides are common in the wet season), despite a tax payable by each mountain biker to go towards keeping it open.

Anyway, onto those facts... while the road was the only link between northern Bolivia and the capital, it is estimated between 200 and 300 people died each year. In one year alone, 25 vehicles plunged off the road into the ravine below - thats one every 2 weeks! Many of these were large trucks and buses whose wreckages were too large to safely remove, so they still lay where they fell (we saw many of them on the ride). One bus had 60 passengers and there were no survivors. The nearest hospital is 2 hours away and rescues here are extremely dangerous and often not very successful.

Wet and cloudy - our group on one of the dangerous corners.

The same corner from a wider angle on a better day.

But probably the most startling fact is that 8 mountain bikers have died since organised tours began 5 or 6 years ago. One Israeli died just a few months ago. Amongst those 8 were 3 guides! When I asked how this could be, the answer from our guide was that they ride the road every day and therefore their exposure to the obvious risks is much higher.

All the South American guidebooks advised to choose your tour company wisely and to be wary of cheap operators, as this was one activity where you don't want anything going wrong or any corners to be cut. One company was consistently highly recommended and proudly boasted "the safest record", but was by far the most expensive, and although my funds were getting low I was reluctantly prepared to go with them. But then some guys I was chatting to in my hostel earlier said I have to go with another company named Freebikes, who offered all the same services as the other company (and more), but with a smaller group and at half the price. I checked them out and was pretty impressed, so the next day I was off on the most dangerous thing I'd done in a while with a small cheap tour company that my guidebook had warned against...hmmm!

The group turned out to be excellent and I would thoroughly recommend them. The bikes, gear, guides, food and transport were all top notch and it was much better to be in a small group of just 4 (plus 2 guides), compared to the 15 or so in the other more expensive group. A whole days fun with everything included - lunch, snacks, drinks, all equipment, showers, a t shirt and CD of pics - was just $US39 with Freebikes. Pretty cheap but still the most expensive daytrip I did in Bolivia!

The Ride - 68km distance and 3650m descent:

It seems strange that a road that links the highest capital city in the world to the low lying tropical jungle should rise at first, but it does - to a chilly 4700m, where our support bus drops us and we start our downhill ride. The first 20km are on smooth, paved highway with snow-capped mountains as backdrops, and cars and trucks as obstacles. It's freezing as we hurtle round the swooping big corners and long straights at top pace. Keeping to the right of the highway we pass some buses as if they are standing still, and then we get passed by some cars as well.

On the fast paved section. That's me in the front.

After passing through a police check, a tough uphill section (its hard to fill the lungs at 3000m!), the pavement ends and the gravel begins. We have descended 1600m already and are in the cloud forest region where, appropriately, it is very cloudy and misty. Unfortunately the clouds and rain didnt lift until the very end of the ride which is rare for this time of the year (dry season), but it did make for a great, muddy, wet (and sometimes slippery) ride down the death road.

The strain on your hands as you clutch the brakes, and the concentration in your mind and eyes on staying on the road is pretty exhausting, so the regular breaks came as welcome relief. We would stop for photos (unfortunately the rain and clouds didn't help much), drinks/snacks, and to observe dangerous points where accidents had occurred or wreckages were still visible. Consistently along the entire road were countless crosses, plaques and memorials to lost ones, which was a constant reminder to focus and concentrate.

After riding under waterfalls, through streams, and over bridges we finally got down into the jungle area and could take off some layers and have fun going down the dry tracks a bit faster. One of the other guys took it a bit quick round a hairpin turn and came unstuck, but nowhere near a cliff edge, fortunately. The adrenalin was constantly running for the entire ride and as gratifying as it was to reach the end safely, it was also a shame for it to end. Definitely a highlight of Bolivia!

Muddy, sore and dirty but happy!

Bolivia Part 3 - The Amazon Jungle

Nothing beats travelling by river to your lodgings

After a few days rest and recouperation in La Paz I caught the next available flight to Rurrenabaque (Northern Bolivia) - a tropical jungle town on the River Beni where the Amazon basin meets the foothills of the Andes. The flight from the highest international airport in the world (La Paz at +4000m), through the Andes and down into the jungle (at about 200m altitude) onto a grass runway in a tiny 20 seater airplane was worth the $75 as a joyflight alone! A couple of days relishing the low altitude (I could finally breathe easy again!) and the boardies-and-thongs climate and then I was off on a 3 day jungle tour.

The 20 seater plane, grass runway, and "airport". The pilot is in front of the plane after just zooming up and down the runway on a motorbike (I have no idea why - to check for potholes??)

2 hours in and our first 4WD was rendered usless by the unforgiving off-road tracks. 1.5 hrs later and our 2nd 4WD had arrived to rescue us (surprisingly quick given our guide had to walk almost to the horizon just to get mobile phone reception). Unfortunately 2 hrs later and the Bolivian "roads" had claimed another victim - this time the suspension was totally rooted and the rear wheels were pushed firm against the chassis. Stuck halfway between our origin and destination, the situation looked grim.

So the guide started walking back to where he got mobile phone reception, and our new driver set to the task of "fixing" the suspension with what little tools and materials he had at hand. This consisted of 2 jacks (one to jack the car up and the other to pry the axle off the chassis - this 2nd one remained permanently in this position!), and a rubber tire inner tube which was cut into long thin strips and tied around the suspension leaves in order to restore some flexibility to the rear axle. It was difficult to watch this painful process over the course of a couple of hours, as all 9 of us were sure that with 11 people in the van this stop-gap solution would fail miserably on this terribly bumpy road. But, somehow, our driver was sure he had completed a perfect job and invited us back in to continue our journey (without our guide who had not yet returned from his walk).

The driver sitting(!) under the precariously propped van tying strips of inner tube around the suspension!!

5 minutes in and a huge pothole beautifully struck in the middle of the rear wheels almost sent the whole ship over on its side, and the nervousness of all on board was clearly evident (I don't think I was this scared even on the Worlds Most Dangerous Road!). The driver reduced speed down to a slow walking pace and was clearly not going to admit defeat just yet, despite voiced concerns from the pasengers. 20 harrowing minutes later and our guide reappeared from behind us, this time in another 4WD with yet another new driver. Needless to say we all literally jumped ship and were so grateful to be in another vehicle, and with all our fingers crossed we finally arrived at the river (only about 5 hrs late) to continue the rest of the journey by canoe. Thankfully that would be the last 4 wheeled vehicle we would see for a few days as our only means of transport from now would be our 10m long, leaky, wooden canoe.

Another perfect sunset!

Our lodgings were basic wooden huts on the muddy banks of the river - 9 of us in one dormitory hut (the beds had mosquito nets luckily!), a dining hut to eat in, basic toilets and a hammock hut overlooking the river where most of our spare time was spent.

This is honestly the un-zoomed view standing next to the canoe which was in front of our lodge - the resident gators were peaceful enough during our stay.

The next morning, after a nice cruise along the river spotting many alligators and caimen basking in the sun, we set off on a walk across the pampas (flat wetlands/plains) for a few hours in search of the harder to see wildlife - anaconda, cobra etc. It was a pretty tough hike for me, mainly because I didn't have knee-high gumboots on like everyone else (they didn't have a pair I could fit my big hoofs into!) so I had to wade through the knee-deep swamp/mud/river with my hiking shoes and bare shins! My legs were pretty cut up and my shoes took days to dry out - I later threw them out as the mud was impossible to get rid of!

We had no luck with anaconda but our guide did snatch a pretty big cobra from its hiding place in the reeds and swung it round his head for a few minutes (to wear it out apparently - not sure if animal rights activists would have approved!) before grabbing it behind the head to show us its fangs and tongue - pretty impressive. Later that day we swam with pink river dolphins (in the same part of the river where we later saw alligators!), which are the only freshwater species of dolphin and are native to the Amazon river system. The water was pretty brown and murky (but refreshing nontheless) so you couldn't see the dolphins until they came up for air - apparently they are the only practically blind species of dolphin in the world.

The next day we baited up small handlines with raw beef and fished off the canoe for piranhas. The little terrors loved it as soon as the bait hit the water, but were pretty tricky to land. I didnt catch one but the half-dozen or so that were landed were fried up for lunch. They were pretty small so didn't have much meat on them, but they tasted ok.

All up we saw countless species of birds, tons of alligators and caimen, cobra, monkeys, dolphins, turtles, capibaras (like a docile big rat the size of a dog) - so it was a pretty good 3 days.

There are 5 turtles and an alligator in this pic - really there is...

...and there are 3 monkeys on top of a woman's head, a hand, and a banana being devoured in this pic.