Potosi and Ojo del Inca

Potosi, Bolivia

Our first stop in Bolivia was the highest city in the country and one of the highest in the world: Potosi, at 4,090 meters. It's cold, windy, and quaint - reminded me a lot of Cusco, Peru. But the altitude took some getting used to. We spent the first day throwing up in our hotel, and watching movies in bed while chewing coca leaves and drinking coca tea. We continued to have headaches for several days and got winded so easily. Seriously, I had to sit down and rest after getting dressed in the morning.

Potosina: "the highest brewery in the world"

Ran into some miners setting up their dynamite

Potosi was founded as a silver mining town and some mining still goes on, even though the working conditions are terrible. They say the average miner dies within ten years of starting, either from accidents or health problems. We took a tour of the mine, which was cool but probably not something I would do again. There were a few too many steep drop-offs and random explosions for my comfort.

The mine was full of superstitions. We passed several little nooks where idols
 like these two were lavished with gifts: cigarettes, booze, and coca leaves,
to appease the mountain and protect the miners from accidents.

We camped one night at a natural hot spring called Ojo del Inca, outside of Potosi. Supposedly Incan kings used to visit it for its curative powers. It was a beautiful place to camp and get a break from altitude sickness.

If you go to Bolivia, go by plane.

The border crossing from La Quiaca, Argentina to Villazón, Bolivia marked our first miserable experience of the trip.  We took a night bus and got to the border at 8 am. The customs line stretched 300 meters from the small building where one man stamped passports for the hundreds of people waiting to cross the border. We sat in line for several hours, getting up every ten minutes to move our bags five feet ahead. At one point the line didn’t move for almost an hour and when I went to investigate I was informed that the power went out so the customs desk was closed until it came back on. I’m not sure why you need electricity to stamp passports…

We finally got our Argentina exit stamps at around noon, but the short bridge to Bolivia was completely blocked by a local protest and police officers. So we had to walk a couple hundred yards to a spot where we could crawl through a hole in the barbed wire fence. A shallow river separated the two countries and a line of people fumbled across the stepping stones, half locals, half backpackers. This brings me to an issue that has been the biggest point of contention between me and TK this entire trip. I overpacked. Not only did I pack too much, but I used a big roller bag instead of buying a good backpacking backpack. Roller bags are of course ill-suited for travelling around South America, where flat, clean surfaces hardly exist. I’m barely strong enough to lift the bag, much less carry it upstairs or across small rivers, so TK ends up carrying it a lot. And he’s got a pretty heavy load himself, because even though he’s the world’s lightest packer and only owns about five shirts, he’s coming straight from Paraguay so anything he wanted to keep had to come with him on this trip.

Anyway, we luckily met a friendly Michigander in line, who helped me get my things across the river. Then I wheeled it through a trash-filled field, up some cobblestone streets, and to the end of the line for the Bolivian customs desk. And the same process repeated, inching along the sidewalk for hours. One pleasant surprise was our discovery that Bolivia has delicious street food.  Ladies were selling tucumanes (like spherical tamales) for about 20 cents a pop, so we ate well.

When we were within ten minutes of reaching the front of the line, a customs guy brought us the forms we needed and asked if we had Bolivian visas. Nope. But we brought enough Bolivianos to pay for it. The guy informed us, however, that we had to pay in American dollars. So I ran down the street, asking store owners where the closest ATM was. This led me to a less pleasant discovery about Bolivia: Bolivians give directions just like Paraguayans do – they say “two blocks that way” even if it’s actually ten blocks, or if they have no idea where it is. Half the people I asked told me there was no ATM in Villazón and half said, “two blocks that way.” So I jogged two blocks, and another two blocks, and another and another, until I reached a little bank about 15 blocks from where TK stood in line with our bags. The teller said there was no ATM but I could take out money with a credit card if I had my passport and got in line. My passport was with TK! So I got to know that 15 block stretch of stores quite well, jogging back down to get my passport, up to get the money, and back down just in time to reach the front of the line. We eagerly handed over our passports, our forms, and our 300 US dollars. After looking everything over for ten minutes, they told us they can’t make change in dollars – they needed exactly 270. We said, “no problem, give us the change in Bolivianos.” But of course that wasn’t allowed. So Tk ran out to find a money changer to break the $300. Then more waiting. How long does it take to glue two visas and stamp two entry stamps? Forty-five minutes.

At 4 pm we officially entered Bolivia, after spending eight hours moving a distance that could otherwise be walked in ten minutes. Thank you, South American bureaucracy, for ruining our first day in Bolivia.

Saltared through Salta

Maybe I'm not so good at this blogging thing... Now that we've been in Bolivia for two weeks, let me tell you about New Year's in Argentina.

We breezed through Buenos Aires and Cordoba to reach Salta (in northern Argentina) for New Year’s Eve. Our bus arrived at 11 pm, so we rushed to our hostel, dropped off our bags, and quickly made ourselves somewhat presentable, despite having not showered in I won’t say how many days. (I passed on the cold bucket showers in Cabo Polonio – swimming in the ocean counts as bathing, right?)

Happy New Year - alone in the rain in Salta : /

The hostel owner said that festivities would be going down at two main plazas. We walked to the closer one and found the deadest plaza I’ve ever seen. Everything closed, lights out, except for one fancy restaurant hosting a private party. We strolled by the entrance a couple times, wondering if we could slip in unnoticed and drink champagne with the fancy people. We decided they were boring anyway and raced through the rain to the next plaza, about ten blocks away. We didn’t make it in time for midnight. At 11:59 we stopped by a gas station, on a dark, empty street and watched the clock on TK’s ipod usher us into 2012.

Champagne for me, beer for him

Within five minutes we found the crowds celebrating outside of bars and setting off fireworks in the street. Families were also releasing huge paper balloons with candles below them, so the sky was filled with these glowing lanterns in addition to fireworks and rain.

Around 4 am we wandered back to our hostel, exactly two years since we spoke for the first time... 

How things have changed in two years :).

Lots of mountains

Here's a few more pictures of our time in Salta: 

 

Salta means "jump". The name probably refers to the salt flats pictured here...
but we'll interpret it as we wish.

At our finest.

Tried llama - tastes like beef

A national park dedicated to preserving cacti. Never seen so many in my life.

Christmas Vacation: Uruguay

Montevideo

Sorry for the delay! The trip has been great, but internet has been more scarce than I anticipated. Here's our ten days in Uruguay:

We spent our first couple days at a fancy hotel in Montevideo and then switched to a hostel with a couple peace corps buddies.

In Punto Del Diablo we amassed a group of nine people, mostly PC folks. We stayed in an awesome house and spent our days playing on the beach, buying fresh fish, cooking amazing meals, and hanging out with locals and other travellers. Here's some pics of our time there:

Successful retrieval of TK's wedding ring, which fell under the porch

This is Stefi and Phil from Colorado. TK met them at the border crossing and couldn't quite part ways. They camped in our backyard. In the background David's singing a love song he wrote for his girl in Paraguay.

Christmas morning 

Fish fry. This may have been Christmas dinner...I can't remember. There were several fish fries.

When our time was up at the lovely Casa del Arbol, the whole group packed up and moved to the remote beach town of Cabo Polonio. We hitchhiked, bused, and dunebuggied several hours to get there, and showed up with no reservations because we hoped to camp. Turns out Cabo Polonio is a national park that strictly prohibits camping, and the few hostels were booked or expensive. We found this cozy little gem, with an attic of wall-to-wall mattresses where we all nine slept. We were a little weirded out when we realized that the guy who rented us the place actually lives there too. We returned from the beach on our first day to find him “showering” by the well, with buckets of water. My uneasiness dissolved, however, when he cooked us the most delicious fish I have ever tasted. We gathered around a campfire at night, because there was no electricity (and because we love campfires). We had vague intentions of making salami sandwiches for dinner, when our host, Dani, started cooking up these fish –corvina?- over the fireplace inside. So delicious. We devoured them.

After a few hours of drinking, talking, playing guitars, and eating fish after fish, Dani announced that we must come see the bioluminescent plankton. We followed him to the sea, with flashlights off at his demand, to appreciate the brilliance of the stars. I had never seen bioluminescent plankton before and was thoroughly amazed. We had to agitate the water to light them up, and then it was like bathing in Christmas lights. Even the sand at the water’s edge shimmered with glowing footprints where we stepped. Most of us frolicked knee-deep, and TK stripped down and ran full speed into the black ocean. Unfortunately no photos of that night.

Sea lions! Cabo Polonio became a national park in order to protect one of
the largest colonies of sea lions in the world.

Don't let that face fool you - these guys were so hostile. Lots of fighting,
shrieking, biting, and zero cuddling.

The next day we celebrated TK and Kevin’s birthdays.  We caught a beautiful sunset from the sand dunes, then found an amazing restaurant where one little old lady cooked up delicious meals by herself on a tiny old oven. Stefi and I had planned to bake a cheesecake and a carrot cake for the boys, but couldn't figure out how to do it without an oven or a refrigerator. So Stefi found some kind of pastry cake in town and snuck it into the restaurant.

Here's our album cover..now we just need a band.

Tk and Kevin awkwardly clap for each other as we sing Happy Birthday
in 5 languages - English, Spanish, Guarani, Polish, & Portuguese. The
Portuguese came from a lady at a nearby table who was pretty drunk. 

The whole crew, sans Kyle. Was he taking the picture? I thought the drunk
Portuguese lady was...

After Cabo Polonio, we all parted ways. TK and I headed north through Argentina, the Yancey brothers south on the way to Antarctica, Jonny back to the states, Kevin back to Paraguay, Phil and Stefi to Argentina, and Kyle back to Punto del Diablo. It was a wonderful group to spend Christmas with and we'll hopefully see everyone again, if not in Bolivia then in the states.