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
No comments:
Post a Comment