this is the stuff napoleon would have drank....if he was a bit strapped for cash...aaaand there was nothing else going.

why good afternoon. today is a very special afternoon as it is the last one that 2010 will ever see! hoorah! now most of you have already entered the future having already crossed over into 2011, but we are yet to have, so while i wait for the drinking to begin (or perhaps it has already????) i will attempt to inform and entertain you all of our christmas experience.

We left you as we were crossing the border into Argentina, and didnt arrive to Salta until fairly late that evening. we decided to hang out at the hostel, and basically fall asleep.

The next day we got up and went for a walk around Salta and ended up at the cable cars. the city is so vastly different to what we were used to everywhere else in South America, especially Bolivia. It was alot more modern and reminded me somewhat of some places in Melbourne, so it felt alot more like home than anywhere else we had been.
The view from the top of the cable cars made us realise how huge Salta actually was and the park up the top was so pretty with little fountains and so much green. it has been a while since we had seen so much green.
We walked down the mountain instead of taking the cable car, and being that we were alot closer to sea level than we had been for so long (yipee!) it became increasingly hot in terms of temperature. We walked around the city for a bit longer, stopped in at a mall (been a while since we saw one of those!) and sadly we got maccas for lunch...we couldnt resist, it had been a long trip and we were starving. We then went for a walk to the main square of town, and poor Aiofe on our tour fell off the curb and has sprained her ankle quite badly....seriously what is with people on this tour and injuring/breaking their feet so badly?? this was person number 4!

Emma, Sally and I got seperated from everyone and tried out our terribly spanish trying to figure out where we were and where we wanted to go. The policeman had no idea what we were saying, so we gave up and opted for icecream. what a healthy day so far! we made our way back to the main square and found the others having some wine, and decided to head to the markets to buy our Kris Kringle presents (we thought it would be fun for everyone to have something to unwrap on our fake christmas day).

We ended up going back to the mall and having some success in buying presents before retiring back at our hostel, and found the boys drinking by the pool. By dinner time (aka, 10pm) we were hungry again and headed out to find a nice resteraunt. we ended up at italian, and i was sitting at a table with Corry, Steph and Lauren. This provided so much amusement that i wet my pants...literally, but not in the way you are thinking....i have bladder control thankyou very much!

AFTER drinking a faaaaair too much sangria and ordering some ridiculous looking/tasting pizza we decided that the most mature thing to do would be to throw glazed cherries at each other... it seemed like a great idea at the time, and looking back on it, i still think it was a great idea. While Lauren pretended to be one of those carnival clowns with its mouth opened, Corry tried to throw cherries into her mouth from the other side. after many failed attempts he managed to get it down her top instead, she picked it out and threw it back at him in shock, and...... IT LANDED IN HIS MOUTH!!! he was laughing so hard that his mouth was wide open, and it went straight in. the beauty of this was that i caught it all on video also. o so funny, but perhaps it was a drunk "you had to be there" kind of moment.

So i had just poured another glass of sangria, and at that moment a bug flew straight into my face, i jumped and poured the sangria ALL over my self. thus making my dress and pants went...and my face....and pretty much every other inch of me. I am so so classy, you would be proud.
ALAS, there was nothing to be done except for to go to a place where everyone smells like booze. yep, we headed to the bars, soaking wet.

The first bar we went to we sat and had a couple of drinks (boy do they make the drinks strong here, 3/4 of the glass is rum, and 1/4 is coke..no joke) and we decided the best idea from here on out was.... KAREOKE!!!!
Off to the kareoke bar we went, sat and drank some more, and the boys got up for a rendition of "i come from a land down under" before the girls got up and we sang "girls just want to have fun". i beleive we will be receiving a grammy at any moment for our prize winning performance....aaaaaaaany moment now......... *awkward turtle*
There was a bit of a cat fight happening between the kiwi boys about the kareoke, but they kissed and cuddled and made up (minus the kissing and cuddling....or did they....???) and we ended up crawling into bed at about 4am.

We had to get up reasonably early, and slightly hung over to go horse riding on Christmas day (our celebration two days earlier). we went up into the mountains, all hopped on our horses and went for a ride. My horse this time was a bit wild at heart but not the one that everyone feared...his name was something like mostaza, but i decided he was called mofasa instead. the views were so pretty (as always) and this time there was alot more oppurtunity to gallop.....which i did....often....and managed to stay on the horse. woohoo. It was so much fun to gallop through the paddocks and around the mountains, and was quite freeing to be going so fast. however trotting was a tad uncomfortable...ouch for my boobs! hahahaha. too much info? nah, you love it.

We got back in the arvo and had a well deserved shower, and Lauren had gone to the supermarket and supplied us all with cheeses and dips and nuts and fruits and cakes, and it was oh so delicious. now this was starting to feel like christmas! We snacked on lots of goodies, and hung by the pool drinking our malbec (hey, when in argentina) and we were all in our sunday bests primped up for our groups christmas dinner...when i was pulled into the pool, clothes and all. ok true, i didnt really resist a whole lot, but i did end up wet again. So we danced and frollicked in the water for a while, before trying to find another dress to wear for the dinner. we managed it though, and once we were dry we drank some more wine, and all settled around the dinner table.
The hostel we were staying at put on a huge bbq and set the table for us, and gave us all a huge christmas dinner, with argentinian steak (which was yum, except i like mine well done, and this was medium so i didnt eat a whole lot of it ) plus other meats and salads and potatoes!! Potatoes became the funniest word for us that night, as we have an irish girl on the tour currently, and she provides us with all the best sayings, such as "oh christ on a bike!" "lets get wankered!" (meaning drunk) and anything about potatoes. for the night we decided that potatoes was her zweite forenamme...or however u spell it, hehe. she also speaks german for all of you playing at home.

AFTER dinner we sat and exchanged our KK presents, and i got some lovely earrings and forrero rochers (my favourite!) and sally received some earrings also and little local trinkets. other presents included toilet paper that declared love all over it, a spiderman backpack aaaaaaaand a nappy...boys will be boys, and always put so much thought into their presents, lol.
We decided since we were all dressed up that we would go out again to the dance clubs, and went with a few of the locals that our guide knew, and got our boogy on. Bit of salsa dancing, and swing dancing, and Vicki and Tim hooking up (did not see that coming)and more drinking, and finally falling into bed at around 4:30am and me having to get up at 7:30am to skype the family for christmas eve their time...yeah you better appreciate that, i hadnt slept much for two days hahaha. It was ok, because that day we had a bus journey to get to mendoza....a 20 hour bus to Mendoza, which i spent sleeping the entire way. yep, the entire way, obviously needed the sleep!
The next day was really christmas day, and we arrived around midday and went to our hostel....buuut no one was home. so we spent the day hanging out the front for a while, eating christmas cake, watching the boys play cricket...hey it kind of was like an australian christmas! we had to move to another hostel, and then spent the rest of the evening lying in the park, relaxing with fairy floss, and i bought a barney the dinosaur bubble blower which provided lots of fun...until i got bubble stuff in my eye...ouch :( and i thought barney loved me! We wandered around the night markets after some dinner and went to bed.

BEING boxing day the next day everything was still shut, so we went to thermal baths, and swimming pools in the mountain area. it was so nice, but so hot and we all got a little burnt, as we were there for the entire day, but it was relaxing. apparently over here you are not allowed to wear boardshorts...the girls arent anyway, we kept getting told off by the life guards, and they would be like ¨no shorts, bikinis only!¨so we kept swimming somewhere else until we got caught by another guard...silly rule really!!
We got stuck on the bus back to town though until 10:30pm as there was such bad traffic, and we didnt get to go out to dinner until midnight, but hey, in argentina, they dont eat until that late. most people got a big juicy argentinian steak, and ofcourse wine, and just spent the evening chatting and drinking and having fun. we didnt get home until about 3am, and crashed after a long day.

Our third day in mendoza was spent wandering around in the morning, and sally and i stopped for coffee in a nice part of town (seriously, i really love mendoza, i could live there!) and we then headed off to a wine tour in the afternoon. we went to a big winery and tried a few of their specialties (and played silly games with their giant wine statues, hehe woops), before heading to an organic, small family run winery which was so pretty, and the wine was so good, so we bought a bottle. our next stop was to an olive oil factory where we got to try some of the nicest olive oils, my favourite was one that was infused with rosemary, so i bought a small bottle (dont use it for pizza this time sharnee!). we next went to a chocolate/ alcohol/jam factory. it made some delicious chocolates, and jams (my favourite was a mango and orange one... YUM!) and got to ry some of the home made absinthes and other alcoholic drinks. i bought a small bottle of this delicious pink drink, and sally bought some absinthe! we then headed back to our hostel, packed our bags, and lauren had bought some more cheese and cracker platters and we sat in the dining area eating and drinking some of our new purchases before heading out to dinner on our last night with two of the people from our tour. it was sad to say goodbye to tim and emma as they both were wicked people, but they were to go to buenos aires and party it up.

The next morning was an early morning as we had to catch another bus to santiago, chile!
There was the usual such as customs, and passport checking and long windy bus rides!
We got into santiago in the arvo and a few of us who were starving headed off for a wander through town to find some food. santiago is such a big city, and we went up another cable car to admire the view and see another statue of a virgin. soooo many virgins! (i should also mention now that alot of "thats what she saids" happen on this trip.) we also found a really really pretty park that had old style palace-like buildings that we went for a walk through. there were fountains, and big trees and the park was pretty much full of couples having a snog-fest. clearly the romantic spot to be at sunset! we headed back to our hostel, and went out for dinner in a modern area of town before going out dancing at a local bar/club. many many creepy guys there that you had to avoid, and a few glasses being broken that night, and we made our way to bed at about 4am...so many late nights, haha.

We were then off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of oz.....oh wait...no that didn´t happen... my bad, now i have ruined the flow of this entire blog (bear with me, i saved the blog last night and have now come back after new years eve to write this in a slightly sleep deprived and hung over state. apologies...but more on that later)

Our second day in Santiago sally and i posted some things home and did a bit of shopping at hippy markets and made some new brazilian friends. yay for new friends. either way, we had a bit of a write off of a day and just wandered around the city a bit more, had lunch at TGIFridays (FAIL!) and had to say goodbye to some of our friends on the trip again. this was quite sad, but we will be seeing our sydney friends in march, so it wasnt goodbye, just see ya later alligator!
The hostel we were staying at had a bbq put on for us, so we ate lots of meat, drank more wine (wine from the bottom of the list...all the colours...well yellow) (actually it was red wine, i lied) and met the new people on our tour until buenos aires. so far we have now 5 original people, me, sally, the two kiwis and vicki from the uk, plus now two more families, a uk guy and an american lady. so we drank the wine and had good coversations before going to bed late again. beginning to get quite tired, but my wine drinking tolerance has doubled and i am not as much of a lightweight as i used to be. all is right in the world. you may now bow down to me amazingness. bow down, bow down, ok thats enough. :)

The next day we endeavoured to explore some of the museums in town, and an art gallery, however the place we thought was an art gallery turned out to be a theatre, and so we just went to the one museum. it was really cool with sculptures and photography, so i enjoyed spending time having a look at all the different photographic works by some chilean artists. unfortunately one of them was called Sammuel Shats. Shats...tragic name, but a giggle fest did follow, especially with the piece titled "Oh God - by Sammuel Shats"....hahahahaha. It was interesting see though in some areas that at funerals people take a big family photo with the coffin, professionally done. its defiantely a cultural difference as i would find that too depressing.

in the afternoon we went to the biggest mall in south america hoping to find ourselves a nice dress for new years eve (being that we were so sick of our clothes that we currently have). Getting to the shoppping center we took the underground metro system which sally was exceptionally excited for not having been on one before, and then a bus. the locals here are really friendly and they let us on the bus for free because we looked confused and then told us which stop we had to get off at. how nice! we managed to find a dress each but i beleive our shopping centers like chadstone and doncaster are way bigger than this one, which means the rest in south america are quite small.. we ended with thai food and then had to catch an overnight bus to Pucon.

We arrived in Pucon the next morning and that was new years eve. Pucon is really quite pretty and there is a massive snow capped volcano in our view of the hostel which we are going to be hiking up tomoro, oooh excitement! for our first day in Pucon we went for a walk around the town in search of yellow underpants. yes thats right, yellow underpants. random perhaps, but here in chile they all wear yellow underpants on new years eve for goodluck, so who are we to question the power of yellow knickers. we also had to stock up on some more booze, and then proceeded to tizzy ourselves up. which is where i left you yesterday.

The afternoon proceeded with a bit of drinking (shock horror!) and we all had a huge bbq at the hostel with the beautiful views of the mountains and the volcano (i should mention that it is actually an active volcano, and you can see lava when you are up the top and from here you can see the smoke coming out the top). we drank some more and then headed out to the beach (technically i think its a lake, but they still call it a beach) and thats where everyone gathers with their glowing things such as devil horns and light saber-like sticks (yep, i got both) and then we waited for the fireworks. Walking to the beach in a tipsy state i was discussing with some of our friends whether or not i would freak people out by randomly hugging them all that we passed....not thinking that anyone understood english i got a reply of "i think you should do it!" by one of the local guys, and it occured to me that this man was wise, so i gave quite a few people around me a biiig cuddle. the fire works were amazing, even better than some i have seen in australia, i couldnt beleive it. I got my happy new years kiss and cuddles from sally and the rest of the people in our group and there were plenty of hugs to go around. and at midnight we covered each other in glitter and such. Gabs (a girl from another intrepid tour who hung out with us) and tim went for a swim in their underpants and we all wandered the streets back to the main part of town to find a good club to go to. we got lost and seperated so we headed back to the hostel and waited for a bit and decided we would just go find our own place to go to, when two people came home and took us back to where everyone was. it was a pretty cool club with the main dance floor out on a bit balcony and we decided to have a boogy with some of the locals, and make some friends, and then the entire club out on the balcony turned into a gitna foam party, and we were covered from head to tow in bubbles and foam. it was so much fun. we stayed out until about 4:30am when we decided we had enough of the scary creepy local guys trying to feel us up and running away from them that we headed back to the hostel and fell asleep laughing about all the stupidity of the night and our escape attempts to run from creepy men. we are getting good at that now!

So here we are on new years day, having woken up looking like a my little pony (as sally put it since we were still so glittery...it doesnt matter how much you scrub in the shower, we are still covered in rainbow glitter) and we are hanging in the sun watching the amazing view from our hostel. thanks to vickis laptop i can enjoy the sun and chat to you all!

So i must sign off now, because i am so tired that i think i might have a nap! happy new years to you all, hope you all had an amazing time!

Love Ruby xoxoxoxoxox

New years resolution....stop drinking......bahahaha, whatever!
wish us luck for the volcano climb, hopefully we wont be burnt to a crisp by a giant lava eruption!



real christmas day at the park



fake christmas day drinking on the swings, classy


fake christmas!


i am on a horse...moo....cow.


spilt sangira all over myself...dang it!


but i like the wine!


wine tour


nye


nye


nye


nye


nye

Mmm...Salty Salty Goodness.

Hola senors and seinoritas, aren´t you all looking lovely this morning? Well, I´m going to assume that you are, or at least a lot better than Ruby and I, but don´t worry about us, we are just slightly delerious from self induced lack of sleep. Dont be modest, that colour looks great on you.

Anyway, I suppose I should continue retelling our adventures, starting from Potosi. Now Potosi is a very high city, even higher than La Paz! So, with Ruby´s history of altidude sickness, which you have all heard a lot about by now, she was sadly extremely ill, and spent most of the two days we spent there in bed glued to the warner brothers channel. However, I was able to do some sight seeing for the both of us, which I can tell you about now.
Before we left sucre, we went to the famous joyride cafe (we spent a lot of time there actually, they had really delicious coffee and hashbrowns) to watch a documentary about the silver mines of Potosi. It was called ¨The Devil´s Miner¨, and it is about this 14 year old boy called Basillio who has to work in the silver mines in order to support his mother little brother and sister. It was such a sad story, as silver mining, although it pays well, is probably the worst job you can have as a local living in Potosi; the conditions are terribly dangerous, their life expectancy is only around 35 to 45, and they sometimes have to work 24 hour shifts. These are horrible conditions for an adult to work in, so the fact that children also have to do this so that their family can keep their tiny houses on the side of the mountain and put food on the table broke my heart. Still it was a brilliant documentary and I highly reccomend you see it if youre into that sort of thing.
When we arrived in Potosi, most of the group was keen to go on a tour down the mine, including Ruby, although she decided that with her current sickness going underground where there was even less air to breath was not the smartest idea shes ever had (although she did do the inka trail haha). I was not interested in doing it at all, as I am not a fan of small spaces at the best of times. So we decided to spend the morning at the "Best Museum in South America". Now Im a bit of a fan of museums, so with a description like this, how could I pass it up? It actually was a great museum, which was converted from the old mint; they had paintings, exhibits of the first silver coins made right there in potosi, and the equipment used to make it, as well as a geology wing filled with pretty crystals and mineral deposits, and even mummies of spanish children, still wearing all their clothes, some of them even had hair. We found out later that they had been naturally mummified by the minerals in the ground surrounding the church they were buried in. I thought that was pretty cool.
Now in the afternoon we did what was probably the highlight of my visit to Potosi. Lupe, who is our new tour guide by the way, took us to visit the families of the miners who lived on the side of the mountain where the largest mine is set up. We took with us rice, noodles, lentils powdered milk,and apples for the children, which we had bought from the market that morning. They were such lovely people with such strong spirits, it felt so good to see how happy they were with our gifts and the fact that we had come to see them. There was this one family in particular that I fel in love with, this amazing woman called Amelia and her 7 children, they were all so lovely. I will never forget that afternoon.

The next day it was time to leave Potosi, much to Ruby´s delight, for Uyuni. This is a little Bolivian town on the edge of the Salt Lakes which has the BEST PIZZA EVER! Oh it was so good, and so cheap! We spent the evening eating Pizza and buying toys to take to the Salt flats- yes, that does sound a little odd, but stay with me, I shall explain later.
The next day we began our Salt Flats tour, which turned out to be pretty much my favourite part of Bolivia. With just a backpack of clothes each we all piled into three landrovers and set off for flats at around 11 in the morning, nice and chilled. We decided to go with a girls car, which had me, Ruby, Lauren and Steph, Emma and Vicky, and we had a great time for, much to our drivers dismay, we were able to plug in our I pods to the car radio. We started off with a bit of 90s pop (you know, the stuff you listened to when you were 12 year old girl. Trust me, its a strange and confusing place to revisit, especially if you were never a girl to begin with). On the first day, we visited the train graveyard first, which aparently is the same train line Butch Cassidy used to rob in his Sundance Kid hay days,before reaching the Salt flats around midday. It really is an amazing place, just planes of which that stretch on for miles, and you can the see the horizon so the mountains look like they are emerging from the sky. I loved it. We did lots of silly things here; Ruby and Steph had salt fights, which hurt a lot more than snow balls they discovered, we went hunting for crystals underneath the planes of salt, and took lots of crazy photos of our toys and ourselves(which are postest below). My personal favourite is the attack of the gingers. We also had a bit of a dance party on the flats while the sun was going down, courtesy of Snoop Dog (apparently I should drop it like its hot? Not sure what that means but I´m not going to argue with Snoop). It was a lot of fun.
We finished this action packed day at our hotel made, thats right, of salt! it was really cool actually, I had to stop Ruby from trying to lick the walls. Would have been nice if we had some tequila! Instead, there was red wine, and dinner was delicious courtesy of our travelling cook, Dora, and yes, she is an explorer :) We also set off some fireworks that Tim had bought from the black market in La Paz, yet sadly there were no churches around. It was still cool thought.

The next day involved a lot more walking and a lot less silliness; we were all pretty tired having to get up at 5 and all :( and man it gets COLD out there! we visited some underground tombs, a cave of stalictites that look like lace, lakes full of flamingos, which was really cool to see in person (animal science nerdgasm)an island full of cacti and the great red lake, which was my favourite part of the day; the sulfer had made the algae grow profusley so the lake was a rainbow of colour, and full of more flamingos (yay) and surrounded by llamas. It was really really pretty :). Our next place we stayed was a dorm room, so all us girls from the car and lupe shared, which fun, kinda like a sleepover, but we were in bed pretty early cos the next day we had to get up at 4 :( :( it was SO COLD!!!!! but it was totally worth it, cos we went to visit the natural geizers and mud springs (similar to those in rotarua, but much cooler in my opinion, sorry kiwis), as the sun was rising, and we finished getting all warmed up in a natural hot spiring, which was just bliss! it was so lovely, I really enjoyed that morning, minus the whole early start thing. After that we went and visited the Salvador Dali desert, the place where he spent three months trying to capture all the colours of the desert.

One moment, Sorry...I need to take a second, Im sitting in this really cool hippy-run hostel, and Octopuses Garden just came on the cd player...I need to take a little awkward dance break.


Ok, thats better :) thanks for your patience.

So yes, Dali did a great job of capturing the desert, you know being a great artist and all, but its nothing like seeing the real thing, theyre just as vivid as you can imagine!
We also visited the green lake, another sulfur induced algae swarm that made for many pretty colours! It was then time to trek all the way back to Uyuni, which we were xcited for because it meant more AWESOME PIZZA!!! it was a really great three days though, we had so much fun.
No sleep for the wicked though! When we got back, we had to take a train ride at 2 in the morning to get to Tupiza, which is just outside the Bolivian Argentinian border, where we would be stopping for the day before crossing over into Argentina. Most of us tried to stay up so that we could sleep on the train, yet that proved to be a very silly idea because the train ride was really very awful; most of us were put on bench seats (no reclining) surrounded by locals standing and sleeping in the ilses, no leg room and the lights on all night. All I can say is that this is the only part of the tour so far I really did not like, it was just bad. But it couldnt be helped and we made it to Tupiza in one frazzeled peace. Luckiliy there is aboslutely nothing to do there, so we just slept for most of the day, which was bliss!

The next day we crossed the border into Aregentina, which I shall begin to tell you about in my next blog post which will soon follow this one, I just need to give my fingers and you poor brains a little break so you are not overloaded with information. The border crossing was uneventful, expcept for a rude group of french boys (who would have thought?) who tried to push in after we had been waiting there for three hours. Needless to say, they felt the ginger wrath....not from me though, from our other resident ginger lauren. I was not happy either though.

But yes, I hope you have all had a wonderful christmas with lots of love and family, and I shall talk to you again before the new year.

Lots of Love
Sally xoxoxoxo

Prison bitches, black markets and mines

Hey hey to all of you again. welcome back to the wonderful world that is our blog. yep, i bet you are all just itching for the next installment...thats nice. ok bye then.


...ok i will tell you.
We last left you when we were about to cross the border of Peru into Bolivia. We hopped on a bus that day on our way to the crossing. At this point the little man in charge of the bus was trying to explain to us what we had to do when we got to the control point. he managed to do this with his minimal english which basically just consisted of "please, thankyou please, you must go into the first building, thankyou please, and then the second one for a stamp please, thankyou please." aaaand so on and so forth. so we did as we were told and got our stamp...hoorah!

We crossed the border and entered into Copacabana. sadly not the famous copacabana but it didnt stop us singing along about a show girl named lola. did you know she wears yellow ribbons in her hair and her dress cut up to there?? true story that.
There isn´t too much in Copacabana apart from some boats and some cute little cafes and such...well there was a walk, but we did not want to partake in it that day as we were quite pooped from all the other activities we had. plus i was exceptionally sick the night before (another thanks to altitude) that i didnt want to overdo it this day. We went for a wander around the town and found a cute little book swap cafe which yummy coffees...and then proceeded to be nerds and read books. it was nice.
That night we went out for dinner. the restaurant was quite shocking service, as it took all of us over 2 hours to get all our meals which were scattered...good thing the food tasted ok! as for the rest of the night we just went to bed, as we had another day of travel the next day.

When we woke up we had a bit more time to explore copacabana, bolivia. we went to get another book and as we were searching for some snacks for the bus trip we were caught out in a thunder storm. being so high up in terms of altitude the thunder was so loud, and the lightening so bright, we ran into a coffee shop close by...which happened to have books! yay! oh and chess! So sally and i proceeded to play a game of chess while munching on pancakes and watching the storm over lake titicaca, it was amazing.

We checked out the local church, and the confessional booths (excuse us for a minute...this may take a while..now where to begin the confession). our tour guide asked whether we were religious and i quickly stated that Sally was a scientologist...which he beleived, and i got an evil glare from sally who tried to deny it....aaaaand then ten minutes later oli our guide was like "so...are you really a scientologist?" hahahahaha.

We then left copacabana for La Paz which was another fairly long bus ride around lake titicaca and the andes. we had to stop at one point to take a boat across some of the water and watched our bus get brought across...we thought it was supposed to be on a ferry, but really it looked like a giant floaty, hehe. so once we were back on our bus, it was off to La Paz.

La Paz is such a huge city, and even though we decided to take some of the days here to relax we still managed to fit alot in. the first night we went out for dinner as a group, and sat there laughing at the english translated menu available...it seems like they just put the menu through a basic online translator, which then gave us the option of getting fermented hand grenade juice, or ordering a meal of male resentment...mmm, mmm, delicious. Don´t worry i took copies of the menu so you can all see its ridiculousness!

The next day everyone on our tour except for 4 of us, went on the death road bike tour. Sally and i decided not to do this, as riding down hill on the worlds worst road that goes straight over a cliff, seemed like a bad idea for unco-ordinated bike riders. the name death road isnt even a joke, people go over the cliff all the time...so instead... we chose life and went shopping at the art markets. yay. we managed to spend quite a bit of money (until we converted it back to dollars, and then we were pleasantly surprised) and went to the witches markets in La Paz.
The witches markets were full of talismans and dead baby llama corpses. apparently its good for the home if you put the llamas under your house as it brings luck and abundance etc. we took a few photos and bought little talismans (me for health etc) and went back to the hotel. we bumped into the other two girls who had opted not to do the bike ride, and they had booked a room at the Ritz hotel, and invited us round to go out tonight, and spend time getting ready eating cheeses and champagne, and strawberries etc. so we went over there to get ready for the night and left a note at reception for the rest of our group to meet us out later.

We had so much fun sitting in a fancy room overlooking the city drinking champagne and eating strawberries and just being girls, lol.
We ended up going out to the place we had told the rest of our group...and we waited...aaaaand waited...and then finally called the hotel to ask whether or not they had passed on the message....they hadn´t. so we thought we knew where they were going for dinner, so we rang there and caught them just before they were going to leave, and we organised where to meet up. We went out to a bar which was full of tourists and proceeded to have a few drinks. at this stage i was discovering that drinking at high altitude when i was suffering from altitude sickness wasn´t such a great idea, so i decided i would go home, and it turns out a few people were on that path also being that they were alsmost sick. so the taxi ride home was interesting sitting between two girls who might at any moment chunder on me, but i managed to avoid wearing tonights dinner and we got everyone home safe. Stayed up a bit later at the hotel chatting to vicki when our minds had gotten completely spazzy by that stage that many giggle fits pursued.
Sally ended up getting in at sun rise with the other guys from the tour, and we had a well deserved sleep in. we spent the first part of the morning craving hang over food, and managed to find by midday the local burger king (there is no maccas in bolivia)...i know its shameful of us, and we were gonna keep it under our hats until we bumped into Aussie Tim, and he wanted to come also craving a burger, and then on the way bumped into Kiwi Tim who also decided he wanted some hang over food. so we werent alone in our shameful cravings. we decided that on the way back we would stop in at the San Pedro Prison and have a look at it. Basially for all you playing at home its the big prison in La Paz. we didnt go in, because tours ¨dont exist¨on the records...they do though. the prisoners take you around the prison to show you around... sound safe? its an interesting story about the place tho. prisoners have to rent their cells and its more like a hostel inside apparently than a real jail. they pay for things and their families can live with them, and basically they make cocaine in there also. the cops there are corrupt too. we had heard some stories from the people we are with here about their friends/sisters going in on a tour, and getting locked in a prison cell until they bought cocaine or paid them all their money...and this is by the cops!! so we thought better of going inside, but we did go have a look at it quickly.
Two girls the next day ended up going for a tour and came out alive, but it cost them 400bs to get in, and then they had to pay another 200bs to get let out...

we also made our way to the black markets in search of some new livers and such but alas found none...i did however find a box of organ needles....suspicious?? instead i bought strawberry shortcake socks and hacky sacks to make poy...yay! we also had to say goodbye to some of our new friends but we were to make some new ones who joined our tour, and they are so much fun also. but it was so sad to say goodbye.
We were then on our way to go to sucre.
I have decided that i very much liked sucre, it is more of a university town, with its white buildings and uni students and such. to get to sucre we had to go by an vernight bus...a very uncomfortable overnight bus. they had the heater blarring all night right on top of us all, so it was hot and sticky to sleep and every 2 hours they kept stopping us to check passports and to make sure we werent smuggling large amounts of coca leaves to make cocaine...so pretty much it was crap and by the time we arrived in the morning we were ready for a shower and some sleep. we headed for a tour around the town for a while also, and a stray dog followed us the entire way...we named him paul! (joke from previous times)
we found lots of delicious choclate shops and went to book a horse riding adventure in for the next day. A few of us headed to a dinosaur park which we just mucked around at, while the guy tried to enthusiastically try and tell us about dinosaurs, but really we just wanted to play on the statues..hahaha my bad.
The next day we went horse riding through the mountains in bolivia. it was so beautiful. we got on the bus to the ranch (me, sally and the two new canadian girls) and got to meet our horses. they put me on the really tall horse who was apparently the gentle one. everyones horse had a spanish name except for mine. when i asked what my horses name was, they replied...benjamin. lol. or rather...gentle ben. the guide that took us around was actually an 11 year old boy, and he didnt speak any english, but he would enthusiastically try to explain the things we saw to us, so we would just nod and smile. the views were amazing and i absolutely loved it. He would randomly ask us if we wanted to start galloping...we got our canter on atleast. my "gentle" horse, was the horse that nobody would come near, as it would kick and bite everyone who came near...haha i always get the stubborn horse. love it.
once we reached the end there was a bbq lunch made for us, and some drinks, and there was the cutest puppies ever just cuddling up to us. loved it.
that night when we got back, Corry one of the boys on our tour managed to con me into cutting his hair...hahahaha what an idiot, we only had a tiny lamp of light, but with vickis help we managed to give him a new do, and apparently he is happy with it, and wants us to cut his hair again later when we get closer to brazil...fool him once, shame on him, hahahaha AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN!!
anyway, we moved on from there to go to Potosi, which i will let sally write about, as Potosi i was extremely sick both in vomiting and in flu, so it was a write off for me. dang it.

much love to you all, xoxoxoxoxox
Ruby

Hi ho Hi ho its off to work we go!

Hello to all you lovely people out there in the bloggerverse. I am here to tell you the story of mine and Ruby´s trip to....Lake Titikaka!!

First of all we shall start in Cusco! Here we spent the day relaxing in Cusco, as we were still recovering from the Inka trail...my calves have never felt so sore in my life! I never want to climb stairs again..which could be a problem later in life. Anyways, we did a bit of shopping, made a couple of new Peruvian friends, although the language barrier made it very awkward for conversation, and they somehow roped us into meeting them at 8 at the fountain in Cusco square....its safe to say we er..forgot to, but they were nice guys nonetheless. Then Ruby went home for some much needed rest, whilst I indulged my inner nerd and visited the Pre Columbian Art Museum. It was really great, very well set out with wooden and clay pieces from the primitive tribes of south america right up to the silver and gold of the Inkan empire. I could have stayed there for hours, but dinner and drinks were calling, so I had to leave.... after about two hours :P
That night I had decided was the night I was going to celebrate my birthday, and boy, did we celebrate! Ollie took us to this awesome restaurant called Los Perros or "The Dogs", dont let the name for you, it was really cool, very colourful and had lots of tourist friendly food (dont get me wrong, we are still loving peruvian food, but every now and then you just need a hamburger!) It was a great meal and great atmosphere, yet soon we were moving on to Paddy´s, cuscos one and only Irish pub :P yep, we were on the tourist trend. Paddy´s is just your standard Irish pub, a little classier than the Irish for all you people playing in the Eastern Suburbs, so it was very comfy, and Ruby and I shared some yummy cider. Corry kept getting harrased by these little children trying to sell him gum (this was at around 10pm mind you...children dont sleep here, seriously, its a little worrying), and finally wore him down. Unfortunatly, this kid was very cunning, and had left two pieces of gum in there, and filled the rest of the box with rocks! We all had a good laugh at Corry, but he thought it was pretty hilarious too so it was all ok. From there we decided to move on to somewhere with some tunes, yet as we were walking across the sqaure, the kids came back!! Nz Tim had bought a tshirt from the bar that said "No gracias", which really you need here in Peru because you cant walk down the street without being asked to buy something. Anyway, we got a group of these little kids selling gum chasing us across the square, which was crazy, BUT it got worse. Soon we found ourselves surrounded by club promoters, trying to get us into their respective venues, shout at us inconcievable amounts of free drinks! it was crazy, they were like seagulls picking at gringo chips!! Finally, we decided to just pick the nearest place in order to get away from them, which luckily turned out to be pretty awesome!!
The music was great, except they played a club version of BEIBER!!!! WE CANNOT ESCAPE!!!!!!! mind explodes there was lots of dancing, ass shaking (even right in peoples faces...TIM!), pretending to be boyfirends and girlfriends to avoid over enthusiastic peruvians, and drinks, but dont worry, we all looked after each other and made it back by the reasonable time of 3 :P

Next day was a right off, we took a 6 hour bus to Puno, where we were writing to you from now, and slept most of the way, and after Ruby and I got our fried chicken, we were straight to bed.
The next day however was much more exciting, as we began our adventures on Late Titikaka...ok guys stop your sniggering, it actually means The Great Puma, and has nothing to do with tits or cars. Geez.
Hehe our first stop was the floating Islands of Uros. They were unbelievable! They whole islands are made of reeds, even the houses, the boats, everything, they even eat them! Because of the elements, they have to rebuild their boats and houses every three months, and once their islands touch the bottom of the lake, they have to abandon them and start all over again! Talk about a tough life. But they were such wonderful people, so colourful and friendly, they showed us their houses and dressed us up in their traditional clothes and took us for rides on their boats, it was so much fun! The funniest thing was when we were leaving, they sang for us, firstly in quechuan, then an adorable redintion of My Bonnie, followed by "Row row row your boat", which finished with them shoulting "Asta Lavista Baby!" at us. It was too funny, they sure know how to pander to the tourists.

Fom there we made our way to the island where we would be spending the night with a traditional Quechuan family. Ruby and I were a little worried at first, because our spanish is poor and our Quechuan even worse, but we ended up staying with a lovely family who spoke spanish and even a little english, which was a relief. Our papa took us to the house, introduced us to his wife, who was such a sweet lady, and they had lunch all ready for us and everything. We tried having conversations with him, and we got along quite well depiste our language barrier, he didnt mind that we didnt understand him at times and just giggled at us. Our mama took us out to work in the fields for a little while, and Ruby and I became very handy with a ho (minds out of the gutter now please! hehe), but we spend most of the time playing firsbee and soccer with their littler grandson. He was so cute, he wasnt sure of us at first, and kept shooting us with his treebranch gun, but afterwhile, when we joined in on his game, he decided that we were ok, and even proceeded to share his chocolate buiscuits with us! It was so cute!!! We taught him how to high five, and how to say the word Yes, which he liked alot haha! Then it was time for dinner, but before we could go down, our mama dressed us up in the traditional clothing of single ladies (oops! sorry love) of Peru before sending us down for dinner. It was very nice, and yes! much to everyones surprise I ate a multitude of delicious vegetables! My stomach was probably freaking out or rejoiceing, Im not really sure.
After dinner, we were taking back by our families to sleep in our little house, our beds were really comfortable and warm, and Ruby and I slept like a log!

Unfortnatly, the next day Ruby woke up not feeling so good, damn altitude!! We had a lovely breakfast of empanada thingies made by our lovely mama, before it was time to say farewell. I had such a wonderful time at their house, and so did Ruby, it was so beautiful where they lived on the banks of the giant lake, and it was really interesting seeing things from the local side, rather than always being on the tourist side. Neither of us will forget it.

Today we made our way across the lake to another Island for lunch, which we had to walk uphill (no more stairs arggh!) to get to, but the views from the lake were spectacular! Our guide told us all about the people who live there, how they all work as one community, and nobody owns the land, because they believe that the earth is not a resource but a sacred being. He also told us that most people on the island get married at 18, and if you want to get married, you and your fiancee have to live together for one year...and youre not allowed to have sex during that time...hmmm...

After lunch we took the boat back to Puno, which is where we are now. Tomorrow we are leaving Peru (sadface) and we are crossing the border to Bolivia! We are sad to leave Peru, it is a really lovely country, and having to say goodbye to some of our new friends, but we are looking forward to starting the next leg of our journey.
Lots of love to you all, I hope youre all having a lovey summer and lead up to Christmas so far

Love Sally xoxoxo


Brogan and Vicki in their lovely outfits





Lake Titikaka :)

do the things that take your breath away....literally.

Hey all you wonderful bloggers out there in aussieland!

There has been so much happening on this end that i am trying to figure out where to begin this epic tale of dragons and slaying and princes in disguise.
I beleive where we last left you off we were about to go and see my favourite man on the big screen, yep thats right! hold onto your wizard hats, we went and saw HARRY POTTER!
First we decided to wander around town and try some of the infamous Cheese icecream...or Sally did atleast, i was too busy trying not to pass out. We decided that we should get some lunch also, as i was feeling quite faint, and went into a smaller resteraunt. cue ¨Donde estas el baño?¨before running off to the toilet for a quick spew....oh yes, charming info ey??
My lovely ginger decided that i was such a good girl that she took me to see the newest installment of harry potter. so off we hopped in a taxi to the only cinema in Arequipa. I was still feeling quite sick (something i am getting used to now...life is constant nausea for those who are on the hit list of Altitude). I was ioncredibly excited to see harry potter, and i thought the movie was sooooooooo good, but the cinema quality was epicly shithouse. it was like watching a pirated movie on the big screen (which is probably was) either way, i am not complaining because HARRY HARRY HARRY!!!
Anyway, we arrived back at our hostel ready to hop on our next overnight bus, and we couldnt find our tour guide, so we asked some of the others on our trip where he was. turned out he was at the hospital with one of the other girls on our trip. she had stepped off the curb funny that afternoon and had fallen to the ground and was taken off in an ambulance. she had fractured her ankle. geez feet are extremely sensititve, i should know!! the poor thing had to have surgery that night while we were all on the bus to Cuzco (another intrepid guide was at the hospital with her to make sure she was ok) and she had to have a pin put in, WHILE SHE WAS AWAKE. talk about traumatic, poor emma. we were all hoping she would be able to meet with us in a few days at macchu picchu after our epic hiking of the inca trail.
we spent the night on the shittiest overnight bus, and arrived in Cusco at 5:30am, all very tired. we spent the day wandering around and getting the last minute things we would need for the Inka trail like, more sunscreen, another tshirt, etc etc. we ended up finding a market and i spent lots of money buying woolen goods for the trip, and to Sallys delight (not) some pan pipes, oh yes, my musical talent will astound you all!! hehe.
We then had a meeting that night with the guides that would be taking us on the Inka trail in less than 2 days. By this stage i was EXTREMELY nervous and freaked out by the idea of the hike, only because i was still quite unwell from altitude and i knew i would struggle to breathe whilst hiking up so high. But, still determined to give it a go....eeep!
The next morning we got up and headed over to the sacred valley and stopped off in a small town where they gave us a demonstration of pottery making and chocolate making in the local communities. We also had lunch with a local family, (although again i couldnt eat much as my stomach was doing backflips...altitude must die).

Then we stayed in a hotel over night, before beginning our journey the next morning on the Inka trail.... (cue teeth chattering in fear).
We hopped on the bus the next morning to go to the starting mark. we got our passports stamped and we were on our way.

Inka Trail: Day 1!
The first day started hiking at about 9am, and we began our hike up hill. our guides called it ´training day´so that they could assess whether or not we would be ok to continue the hike after this day. I found it to be quite a struggle battling nausea and lack of oxygen but sally seemed to power on up. as we arrived at our lunch spot, all of our porters had set up this lovely lunch for us, and this was the moment that we realised how freaking amazing all the food was going to be on this hike. it was seriously first class food and so much of it. our love for our porters at that moment grew. we continued hiking, thinking that we were doing some massive up hill hikes, until the guides showed us a map of what was to come...the up hills we were doing today were tiny goosebumps compared to what was instore for us the next day...eeeep. During the hike we were able to stop off at some ruins which were really interesting and one of our guides, Fabian, told us all a tale about the inkas and these particular ruins. After about 7 hours hiking, we arrived in our campsite with all of our tents set up, and bowls of hot water and soap left outside each of our tents for us. god bless porters.
we played a particularly violent game of spoons and other card games with our guides (who are awesome) and we proceeded to have dinner (again, such good food) and proceeded to get all snuggled up in our woolen gear and thermals for the night. it was sooo freaking cold.

Inka Trail: Day 2!
This morning we were woken up at 5am by our porters with hot cups of coca tea...talk about room service. we were up so early because today was going to be the hardest day of all. It was also Sally´s Birthday! haha, happy birthday to you sally, now go hike up two bloody big mountains! We were all packed up and set off to go again at 6:20am and began our massive trek uphill. I was up the back with Vicki as she was unwell also, and we both had a struggle for the day to continue quite as fast as everyone else. Sally was up further with the ducks (the people in the middle group who had decided to call themselves the ducks...we were the galapogas tortoises...niiiiiice and slow, hehe, and Ilze up the front is a freaking mountain goat....crazy Latvian!) we spent 4 hours hiking up the tallest mountain until we reached ´Dead Womans Pass´.....quite appropriately named. Vicki and i spent that time talking to Fabian up the back of the group and we were talking about the smurfs and altitude sickness (because i turned blue) and from that point on he kept calling me Pitufina...the spanish name for Smurfette. When we finally got to the top of that mountain, Miguel (our head guide) was waiting up the top for us with a big hug and high five! yaaaay, now to go down hill. we were quite excited about the prospects of down hill, until we saw the downhill which was crazyily steep steps that were slippery and insane. And then there were porters running down them, man those porters are amazing!!! after a few hours of down hill trying not to fall on our faces we arrived at the lunch spot where the porters had our lunch ready for us, as the others were nearly finished eating (oh well, cant push your self more than you can go). All the meals on the trip were amazing, but as i had spent the day trying not to vomit on the side of the inka trail due to altitude sickness, i couldnt eat anything except random hits of sugar, which is a shame because all the food is amazing. Once we had a break we had to continue hiking up the next mountain....no rest for the wicked!! So we powered on the ducks going ahead further, and the mountain goats and crazy people even further in front. And the galapogas turtles slowly coming up behind. this mountain wasnt as tall as the last, but it was definately as hard since our muscles were already so sore from earlier that day, and the day before. We made it over the top, and had to go back down some more insane steps. They were incredibly slipperly that i nearly lost my balance several times (thankfully we had walking sticks to help with balance) but poor Vicki fell down several off them hurting her back and ass quite badly. so we took them even slowert than before (i not wanting to break my foot again, and her nto wanting to fall over again, since she already had a stair phobia). As we were hiking down, we had some of the most amazing views that are completely indescribable, beyond the patchwork green and brown and red mountains were amazing snow capped peaks with the sun setting over them, and the clouds dancing around them. it was the second biggest thing that day that took my breath away (aside from altitude and lack of oxygen hiking). We finally got to the campsite just as the sun was nearly down, and got a huge cheer from the porters. (did i mention i love them all, such sweethearts). We stood there for a while in awe over the amazing view that we had from our campsite. I gave Sally the last of my energy in a gigantic birthday hug and just stood wathing the view....really i organised that view for her birthday, so she should really be appreciating it muchly, hehe.
Sally filled me in that during the day she was hiking with her ducks and Miguel and they had now deemed him to be Dr Love, as he was a walking cosmopolitan quiz! hehe, we loved our guides, such fuinny buggers
We had another amazing dinner, and the porters came out singing happy birthday to Sally. They had made her a massive cake with her name written accross it in icing, and it was just so wonderful. It really was an amazingly tough, and rewarding day. But it was soooooo freaking cold, that apparently Sally woke up to me spooning her in the middle of the night, trying to get warm, hehe. Really i was just giving her cuddles in replacement of Kyle for her birthday, hehe. Your welcome Kyle! :P

Inka Trail: Day 3!
The next morning we had breakfast outside enjoying the amazing view that we still had. it was absolutely wonderful (you know except for the nasea that i still had that was keeping me from eating all the fabulous food) and we were introduced officially to our porters. When Sally was introduced to them, she told them she was taken, but Miguel translated to them that she had a boyfriend back home, but he wasn´t here so she was therefore single (thanks to Lauren a girl on our tour who spoke some spanish translated back for us, hehe, silly Miguel).
We began our hike again that morning with some up and downhills, all a struggle due to our aching leg muscles. we got to stop at some wonderful ruins along the way though which were amazing to see. As the tortoises were up the back with Fabian again, he would be behind us, and then suddenly as we would walk further he would be sitting there already, and he never passed us. he assured us that he could fly, we however reckon he knew of other shortcuts. just trying to mess with our minds. we arrvied at camp around 2pm, had some lunch (or everyone else did atleast) and were at a spot for a shower....omg...yes...a shower!!! THE BEST EVER!!! not that the showers were great at all, but any shower was much appreciated after three days of nothing. we then went on to another archeological site which was absolutely stunning and breath taking. i cannot even begin to describe the stories and the amazinging views of it all. my vocab just isnt big enough for it. all i can say is WOW!
Our Porters then made us some dinner and we had written a speach of thanks for them with some massive tips for them (trust me, the deserve a million dollars each), and they had organised a Quechuan song for us. I got pulled up to dance with one of the porters which was funny and fun, and we all said our goodbyes to them with big hugs. Miguel stood with the porters just so he could trick us and get hugs off all the girls, haha. it worked too, we couldnt recognise him in the dark :P.
We had to say goodbye that night as the next morning was a 3:30am start for us, so the porters could pack up and catch their train and so we could start our final leg of the hike. TO MACCHU PICCHU!!!

Inka Trail: Day 4!
The gates opened at 5:30 to let us through and we began the hike. up and down and up and down, and we finally reached these stairs that our guides called the ´Gringo Killers´. again appropriately named, it was DEATH! trying to walk up over those with sore legs was a nightmare, but we had to reach the sun gate. which we did. but there was so much cloud we couldnt see Macchu Picchu....Dag nabbit!! so we continued to the top of macchu picchu for the classic shot of it....WHICH WAS ALSO COVERED IN CLOUDS!!! DAM YOU!!!!
so we continued down to begin our tour of macchu picchu. the clouds cleared shortly and we took a tour around (sooo freaking tired though, i wish i had more brain capacity to take it all in. it was amazing though!!! i would go into more detail, but there isnt much i can say about it. its more just a feeling of accomplishment and wonder. We climbed back up higher to take the classic photo, which was an effort and a half with aching limbs, but we did it!!!
We went on the bus back to the town where everything in the last 4 days began to feel so surreeal. we had some lunch and drinks (none for me, still wanting to throw up) and headed back to cuzco by train, and bus. listening to Hamish and Andy podcasts to drown out other noises, and napped occaisionally on the bus. we arrived back in cuzco and had a nice long HOT shower and went to grab some dinner. we attempted to stay up for as long as we could, making it to midnight, but crashed soon after. we defeated the inka trail, but could not defeat a piece of Banoffee pie and stay awake. Fail!! Sally got free bday drinks and then we passed out from exhaustion in bed. we woke up early this morning however (sleeping patterns are whacked) and had some scrumptious breakfast before putting our laundry in for washing and here we are!!
I am still nauseas and tired, but happy to have accomplished the inka trail despite some bad altitude sickness (which just wont go away) and Sally thought it was wonderful, tiring and definately worth it (the Inka trail that is).

Must love you and leave you all, lots to do today before fitting in another nap!

Love to all of you, missing you muchly, hopefully when i am awake enough i will begin to insult you all again. nawwww love for you all.
p.s. i passed uni this semester! wOOOOOO hehe.

Love Ruby xoxoxoxoxoxoxox