Miss Maps Goes Solo

The bus ride over the border and into Bolivia was pretty straightforward. At immigration I asked for 30 days and got it, Jus asked for 90 days and got it, Pip asked for 90 days and got 30. It seems to depend on what mood they´re in and they love the power. The road hugged the edge of Lake Titicaca the whole way down, very picturesque.

Copacabana is said to be the folklore capital of Bolivia. There´s all sorts of crazy legends about the lake and the Catholic stuff is pretty big here too. The Brazilian Copacabana is named after this one because of the important Catholic shrine here. It´s a pretty, albeit run down little town at a very high altitude, the summit reaches 4200m. Initially we checked into a pretty basic hostel (non-flushing toilets) but when we realised it was costing us 60p per night we upgraded to one with private bathroom and a view of the lake all for 1.20GBP! This place is frighteningly cheap.

One of the first differences we noticed was that all the cars, trucks and buses were elaborately decorated with fresh flowers.

At first I thought it was a wedding and peered through the window as they drove past, oops. Then I realised they all had it. We discovered that people from all over Bolivia drive their cars up here to get them blessed outside the church (they even slosh holy water on the engines), crazy. This is a very religious country. Getting into the spirit, Jus and Pip asked a couple of nuns for a blessing as they´ve been quite poorly recently. It just so happened that mass that night included a blessing for health. Off they trotted in the best clothes they could find in their backpacks. I couldn´t cope with sitting through mass, it feels wrong as a non-believer, but I crept in at the end to watch them up at the front, covered in a cloth, being blessed. On the way out some guy dipped a carnation into a bowl of holy water and dripped it on my head, shoulders and hand.

We just happened to have rolled into town in time for the fiesta of abundance. This was wonderful. Everyone buys miniatures of what they want to achieve in the future and takes them up to the summit for a ceremony. We decided to make our own but the streets were lined with stalls selling the funniest things. Favourites were miniature wads of dollars or little houses and cars. It got pretty surreal though, some stalls sold little piles of bricks, sacks of coca leaves, mini tins of evaporated milk, ceramic bulls, all sorts. At the summit we observed how the locals did it then took part ourselves, we were the only gringos there. We bought our square foot of earth, flower petals and streamers to decorate it and beer to splash around. An old guy who seemed to be somehow in charge but was totally legless, gave us a certificate for our patch of earth then began the ritual. He said lots of very serious sounding stuff we couldn´t understand while splashing beer on our decorated miniatures then threw some beer over the edge and on to the lake below. He then took a pretty serious gulp of it himself as we watched on in bewilderment. This went on for quite a while, he even splashed some beer on my head at one point but he definitely drank more than he splashed. After he´d wobbled off to initiate someone else´s ceremony we did a bit of beer slooshing and well wishing ourselves and even slooshed on to some other people´s plots to wish them good luck.

It was a unique experience, great to get involved and no-one seemed to mind our presence, although they seemed a bit confused by our miniatures, we´d gone a bit Blue Peter, an empty toilet roll was used.

We found it hard to drag ourselves away from this little town, especially knowing we were headed for the big brash capital of La Paz.

I think Bolivia is the poorest, least developed country in South America. How then, can it have such a lovely, non-threatening capital? Compared to the likes of Guatemala and Nicaragua´s capitals it´s a dream. OK, it´s big and ugly in places. It´s set in a crater and the buildings cling all the way up the sides of it, especially the slums. It´s full-on, busy, loud and with horrendous traffic but it has a nice personality. The police and military presence is massive and they look terrifying. Some are done up like full on riot police, most of them have tear gas guns and canisters in their vests. Political uprisings aren´t uncommon and they like tear gas to disperse any rowdy crowds. However, this is a very good time to be here. In Copacabana we watched the brand new President on TV doing his first speech. This wouldn´t normally be big news, they get a new President almost every year but this guy is indigenous (the first ever in South America) and apparently not corrupt, yet. Bolivians are very happy right now. Imagine our surprise then when, innocently standing in the square, chatting to some friends and watching a military flag ceremony, 3 official looking vehicles screech to a halt in front of us and out hops el Presidente and about 15 bodyguards! We were dumbfounded. He waved at the cheering passers by (including us) and ran into the Presidential Place which we were unknowingly standing in front of.

Good god, how many crazy, wonderful experiences is this trip going to contain? I think I might pop.

So now we´re hanging in La Paz. I had a wonderful day of retail therapy followed by a hairdresser appointment (yes, the black is back). We´ve got some official stuff to do like flights and post and the girls will probably do this crazy bike ride down the most dangerous road in the world (I won´t be), then we´ll head south to the salt flats.

That´s going to be another crazy experience, I think I need to lie down.

Peru´s been a real eye opener. I think it may have just knocked Guatemala off the top spot for favourite countries so far. The landscape is awesome and full of surprises. I´ve never seen mountains or desert like it. The culture is everywhere and seems much more well preserved than Guatemala where indigenous people are seriously repressed. That´s not to say there isn´t poverty here. There´s heaps of it. So many people have such low standards of living, in mud huts with no electricity or water, seemingly just a few animals and potato plants. Often a young kid or student will stand at the front of a bus and perform magic tricks to get a few soles. Speaking of buses, we once got taped on a camcorder when boarding a bus, apparently for safety reasons!

The animal cruelty has been a shock too, I try to remember that in England we treat dogs as well as we treat our kids. Here they´re just dumb animals and besides, the kids often aren´t treated that well either.

I think Peru contained one of my best weeks, just after new years when we saw the sacred valley, Machu Picchu and of course the slightly life changing white water rafting. I still look at white water and want to be on it.

I´ve reached a point here with my Spanish where I don´t get anxious anymore. That´s not to say I´m brilliant, far from it, but I suprised myself with a torrent of decently formed sentences when I got into a shouting match with yet another lying bus company. Seemingly anger helps, alcohol definitely does.

I´ve decided whilst in Peru that I´m going to embrace my Englishness, because I really am bloody English. On the Titicaca trip were a couple of Brazilian families. Lovely people, so un-English. Two of the adolescent girls stripped off to very skimpy bikinis and jumped into the lake, followed by about 10 pairs of male Peruvian eyes. Their dad was right there and he didn´t care! One bikini clad girl sat back down with everyone and proceeded to bash a tambourine and sing in a shrill voice. Myself and another English girl stared on as we sat there, cross legged, very covered up and quietly reading our books. Next an Argentinian guy got up and started crazily waving a Peruvian flag around, then the super gay Belgians got up and started dancing topless in the style of party boy from Jackass. This was all too much for me to handle so I shuffled off below deck muttering about sunburm. I´m a prude and I don´t care!

I think Brazil might be a bit of a challenge for me. I might ditch my idea of dressing up and dancing in the carnival parade. I would probably be incredibly awkward and uncomfortable with all those g-strings and nipple tassles. I think watching will have to do.

Sorry, two updates this time so please read below first! I planned this trip so loosely that all I knew I wanted to do in Peru/Bolivia was Lake Titicaca. It´s the highest navigable lake in the world at 3800m. ... [Continue reading this entry]

I´ve done so many bus journeys recently that they´re all merging into one. So after some journey I can´t recall, we arrived in Arequipa, second largest town in Peru, at about 7am and slept for a few hours. Arequipa is ... [Continue reading this entry]

13 hours from Cusco to Ica, or so we were told by the bus company. At 8pm, we piled on to the bus, it was definitely not a 1st class one. The locals tend to buy 2 tickets ... [Continue reading this entry]

After white water rafting we checked into and out of our hostel at the same time. I hate doing that, but you have to when leaving at 5.30 the next morning. The train from Cusco takes 4 hours ... [Continue reading this entry]

Happy New Year everyone! During the day on new years eve we took a tour to the Sacred Valley, an amazing area between Cusco and Machu Picchu with fantastic scenery, great ruins and cute towns. We loved it, although none ... [Continue reading this entry]