I guess I lied about updating this every week or two, three is definitely becoming standard. Ah well!
The week after Brid left was a relatively quiet one. I got some more salsa dancing in, Jen (just finished at Balliol) and Laura (my second Bolivian sister, after Brid) arrived and hung about in Sucre for a bit, and instead of another Folklorica night in Amsterdam on the Thursday Rohan had a vege dinner party (which was fantastic! It was the first and only time I felt I could have actually coped without meat for a significant period of time - quite imprssive!). I think Potosí opened up that week (it was relatively shortly after it made European headlines), but nothing has been resolved and there was talk of it shutting down again in September. They had had to open the roads for emergency food and medicine supplies earlier though, so everyone was probably just a bit too tired, hungry, and out of booze to keep blockading.
That weekend we sent out 3 treks on the Saturday, a big trek to Tarabuco with me and Sam as the volunteers (with Romina, Sam's girlfriend coming along too) and Nienke and Rohan finally coming on a trek! The other treks were a one day for Randall and the 3 day for Patrick and Franz with Jen and Laura.
The Tarabuco trek was absolutely stunning, and nice and easy too. You get a trufi (that's the phonetic spelling in Spanish, so think 'trooffie' and assume I spelt it wrongly) to Tarabuco on the Saturday before you walk for 2-3 hours with the guide (a good 3 including lunch) to Pisili, the village he's from. When you arrive, his mum lets you have a shot on the weaving board before you go and play with the local kids and his mum gets cooking. The food's great (I had extra and earned the nickname 'the Hoover' from Sam), then you camp in the garden. The next day there's a massive breakfast (where Sam put me to shame by eating more than I ever could) before trying on the local indigenous clothing to much amusement for Humberto the guide, and then it's a quick walk back to Tarabuco for the market. The best thing is that everyone in Pisili is really happy for us to be there, happy for us to take photos (normally kids ask for money if they see a camera) and everyone can see exactly where some of the Condortrekkers investment is going, which is really cool!
On the Monday I decided to clean the apartment (the floors were muy manky), but I had to get out to the supermarket first for some food. I ran into the Belgians while I was there, and they'd just left a message at the office for us to say they wanted to move in (I always run into them when they want to see any of us, it's as if it's fate!), so I told them to just come round at 3. Cleaning the floors and dishes did my head in enough that I went for a random wander, but it got done and I got back in plenty time for us to have new housemates again!
Nienke was leaving on the Wed, so we had been planning to do the quiz at Amsterdam and karaoke on the Tuesday night (this is day 55 by now), but on Monday evening I found out I was doing a 3 day trek the next day with a Swiss German girl called Camilla and a French guy called Thomas. That meant trilingual trekking - Camilla is fluent in English, French and Spanish so I could avoid relearning my German for quadrilingual trekking! Still, I'm willing to miss a brilliant final night party for an awesome trek. I also missed salsa dancing on the Monday because I was busy doing the trek prep (lots of shopping, getting stuff out and ready, and chopping of vegetables - I left before the cooking of stir fry and salsa because I kind of wanted to get a ton of sleep), but there was always Friday and the next Monday.
It started off a bit odd, Ruben (he was the only guide I went with in my entire time at CT other than my first trek and Tarabuco, which can only have Humberto) had some stuff to do that morning so was going to meet us at the roadworks. This meant my backup plan in case he didn't turn up was to do the easy 3 day, because I didn't quite know the camping one properly myself. Anyway, he did arrive, but not before phoning Randall saying that his bag was too heavy ('he wasn't a donkey', was the phrase used I think, although mine was heavier and Camilla's wasn't far off - I think hers was heavier than his by the end because he kept giving her stuff!) and he wanted more money. Still, he was placated enough to come and meet us (not with the offer of money, mind. None of the other guides say we pay too little!) so the tour happened as planned. He did mention that it was his last tour with CT though.
Day 1 was cool as always, didn't eat til we got to the river because the guy whose house we wanted to eat in was out, and I was surprised to see both Camilla and Thomas taking a wash! Needless to say I couldn't be bothered, you're meant to smell after 3 days of trekking... We got to the campsite half way up the hill (to avoid a steep climb first thing in the morning) just before it got too dark to put the tents up easily, then had a muy tasty dinner. On day 2 we got away pretty early so decided to take quite a long break at the waterfalls and caves. Camilla followed me on my waterfall rockclimbing bit, and luckily there was a much easier way to get up for her - there were handholds that work for shorter people. I fell asleep just after the tough climb in baking sun to get out of the crater before we had lunch, but despite that we still made it to the good campsite by the river where we had stayed the previous time. This was kind of lucky because the previous week Sam's group had had loads of trouble from a local guy when they had camped within range of his greedy eyes - normally all the local people are friendly, but this guy was just taking the piss and trying to extort money in every way he could think of. Anyway, Camilla decided to wash herself AGAIN in the freezing river, before we had a great fire and I aired my feet to save Ruben from suffocation. I also had to fix both Camilla's and Thomas' backs, meaning I got a decent massage by the fire in return. On day 3 we did the quick walk down to Telula and just jumped in the thermal pools for an hour (meaning Camilla managed to wash on every day of the 3 day trek, probably a CT first) while we waited for the camion, which was small, took ages and I was sitting up on the front for more than half the journey!
When we got back, Camilla decided she'd change her flight and stay in Sucre for a bit longer to get some karaoke in after our excellent entertaining of the entire camion (she'd already changed it once to be able to go on the trek - it only costs GBP3), but it turned out the flight had left without her already (she'd managed to rebook for the same day the first time), so she had to replan everything the hard way. It was Thursday, so Folklorica night, so I told Camilla and Thomas to go there. I found out that the Spanish lesson I'd tried to arrange with Rita was going ahead when Patrick turned up to the office and told me she was waiting for me (after talking to some Guatemalans about the tours for about 20-30min in Spanish), so I arrived at my lesson both mentally and physically exhausted! We just went through loads of vocab stuff because it's easier to look at again when you didn't get your head round things perfectly, and arranged another lesson for the next day.
That night at Amsterdam I ran into the Belgians, Jen and Laura (who pointed out very correctly that Camilla looks just like Uma Thurman!), and a guy called Max who was driving to Ushaia from Quebec. It was all v good fun, but we were kind of tired so everyone went home at 1. However, we'd decided to do a Belgian dinner party the next night, so when we were passing the karaoke place 150m up the street from our house, the Belgians and I decided to go in and see if it was any good for the next night. We had to get a beer to see the song menu, which meant we had to sing Enrique Iglesias - Heroe (in Spanish), which meant Bolivian people started cheering and giving us more drinks. Dries (Belgian guy) and I stayed quite a while after Kim (Belgian girl) went home, and we were plied with more alcohol while I was told one of the Bolivian girls liked the look of me. She said she was 23, looked more like 16, but I kind of wanted a dance anyway. They dragged us out to Nanos afterwards for more dancing, and Dries and I grabbed the first girls who seemed to want to dance and started salsa-ing and merengue-ing like maniacs! It was great, quite impressive, but despite that the Bolivian girl I was dancing with decided she preferred Dries and I could barely stop laughing every time she tried to drag him off somewhere quiet! The unplanned night out did make the Spanish lesson the next day a little tricky though...
Belgian dinner party happened the next day [Day 58] as planned despite everyone being a little borracho when it was talked about (and I think it was Jen's final night in Sucre, cue lots of wine), and the cooking was well above the standard anyone would have expected (i.e. somehow it was even better than Rohan's)! Rohan had to go home early in the end, so the Saturday was his final night in town (as well as Sam and Romina's final day - so cue a large lunch at a chicharía, and lots of chicha - another difficult Spanish lesson ensued but I learned about mate de boldo - excellent for the liver!) which meant karaoke was a necessity. Especially because the trek the next day was only 1 day!
Patrick and I both went on the 1 day with a couple of Aussies, 2 English sisters and Uma Thurman, and it was a fairly quick walking pace so we spent ages at the waterfalls. I think almost everyone took a swim, and when people were sunbathing I decided to do a bit of a barefoot rockclimb/scramble up to the final waterfall that's kind of hard to take clients up to (because the rockclimbing bit is just a bit too technical). On the way back we ran into Max again, and it turned out he possibly wanted to drive to Tupiza on the Wednesday or Thursday after he'd spent a few days in the countryside near Sucre climbing and camping. I told him to tell the office when he got back to Sucre if that was happening, and I might jump in for a lift. That night I finally got to catch up on sleep properly, because I went home after seeing El Origen (Inception) again and had a massive lie in.
Michelle from the States moved in as a couch surfer at some point while I was on the 3 day trek, then I barely met her before she went on her trek with Franz, but I met her properly at some point on the Sunday or Monday. Monday was my final Spanish lesson, and as homework I had to write out the condor story about my chin scar! It was the first time I'd written a full sentence in Spanish, so a full page was tough, but it came out pretty well! At salsa class that night my teacher made it very clear she wanted me to stay for an extra lesson on the Wednesday, even though it didn't really fit into my plans, but it's really good fun, very cheap, and she was quite attractive so I was quite tempted!
On the Tuesday [Day 62] we had been going to try to go to the campo and do all the bits in the communities we were trying to help: Chaunaca wanted us to paint a door; Socopampa wanted their solar electric system fixed; Irupampa wanted a composting toilet; and another village wanted 1000Bs worth of dynamite (it's good for shattering hail stones before they destroy crops, and you can pack dust on top of it in a tube before you detonate to make the rain come out of a cloud - the water nucleates around the dust particle). Unfortunately the guy with the toilet couldn't do Tuesday, so it didn't happen, and Laura had been going to come along because she has money she wants to give to a good cause and she'd love to see how it gets spent. Anyway, it'll happen soon, I just won't be there, but Laura's probably going to return to Sucre for it.
Alternate plans for Tuesday were made. I decided to have a pizza party as my 'final night leaving party' (if I was going to salsa on the Wednesday I wouldn't want to have my party then anyway!) and Laura, Camilla and I decided to go to a house my upstairs neighbours were building near Yotala. It was an epic construction (better than anything you've seen on Grand Designs), and they also had workawayers (www.workaway.info - what I used to find Stilts last year and had been going to use this year for a Venezuelan jungle lodge. That guy was bad at replying to emails, but one of the volunteers at this house had been there and he's very good at replying to females! Apparently not a great guy to work for though) doing the buildings that would eventually be a hostel/restaurant etc - stuff to do while vaguely retiring. Johnny and Kathy (who I'd met after my 4th trek on the camion) were still working there after a month, and we just had a good catch up in the sun. The party was a laugh, but unfortunately we had to move it to our house from Randall's because there was trek prep going on there, and our oven is much worse, which kind of put a downer on things because everyone got hungry waiting. Anyway, Laura was pouring my drinks, and despite not feeling too bad that night I realised I should have been when I saw how much of everything was drunk in the morning.
I did feel kind of rough on the Wednesday, but it just got worse and worse and eventually I realised it wasn't a hangover - the Belgians, Patrick and Camilla had all felt or been very ill in our house in the past few days, and I'd finally managed to get the bug that was going round. Wednesday night leaving/salsa never happened due to illness, and I was going to try to leave on Thursday morning to Potosí with Michelle (there had been no word from Max, and we'd spend the day there before catching a night bus to Tupiza) but just felt too ill to get up and pack my bags. I eventually managed to leave Sucre that evening for Potosí - the Tupiza bus was sold out - and I got a bus the next morning to Tupiza. Still feeling horrendous with the joys of diarrhea, I met an English girl called Roz in the bus station waiting for the same bus with the same plans, so after the journey we decided to go to the nice hotel that runs a tour company that goes to the Salar, has its own pool etc. For GBP9 per night for a twin room with a good hot shower, breakfast and access to a pool, it seemed reasonable enough, and we met an English couple (James and Paul) there who wanted to do the same tour as us the next day, so everything got going nice and quickly and losing a couple of days in Sucre with illness didn't matter.
The Southwest Circuit tour (or Salar tour as everyone calls it) was brilliant. The first day out of Tupiza you don't see an awful lot, which suited me nicely because I was still feeling rough, and actually puked out the window after lunch. That didn't stop me trying to play football (for the first time in over 2 years) at 4200m with some kids in the village where we were spending the night. The second day was REALLY cool. There was loads of driving, which meant an early start, but you go to an old abandoned mining town, some hot springs (the only wash I've had in the last 4 days) a bright green lake (due to lots of crazy minerals including arsenic which stops anything living there), more lakes with flamingos, some mud geysers (not the kind that send water tens of metres into the air, just mud a foot or two and some powerful steam vents, but still cool!) and you see tons of volcanoes. The night was utterly freezing, but at least I could eat a little more by this stage - I'd had 2 rolls in 2 days after Wednesday afternoon - and cold nights just mean you wear loads in bed. Day 3 had a red lake (coloured by the bacteria, and it's probably the one that started the myth about flamingos getting stained by the water), the stone tree (that EVERY Bolivian tourism book has a picture of, despite the other rock formations around it being just as cool), and there were loads of lakes as well as a good look at a volcano with a smoking fumarole. The evening was spent at a salt hotel on the edge of the Salar, where some of the guides' kids were waiting (cue cute photos), I played cards with some Brazilians and we taught shithead to our guide (I had to explain it all in Spanish), before we taught the Brazilians - one of them in Spanish and the other in English. Today, day 4, was a shorter one, we saw dawn from some random point on the Salar de Uyuni, went to the Isla del Pescado (which is covered in cacti, one of which died in 2007 at over 1200 years old and 12.03m) and met Max there! He'd known Roz would be going there in the next few days (he met her in Peru and again in Sucre) so he'd driven out to spend a couple of days there and have a bit of a quiet time in the middle of nowhere (after breaking down in the middle of the world's biggest salt flat and having to camp there). I also met Michelle while I was walking about on the island, and then played football with an English guy, a couple of French and a couple of Bolivians at 3653m on a desert... I was panting for a full 15min afterwards. We took a bunch of silly photos with Leo the Lion (who we found in the village where we spent our first night) and generally just had a bit of a laugh on our way to Uyuni, where I booked my bus to La Paz tonight!
Anyway, things seem to be on schedule ish and according to plan (apart from my lack of a solid shit in almost a week, although proper appetite returned today), so I'm looking good for having a fun cycle ride, trekking on Lake Titicaca and going to Machu Picchu before I fly off to Quito in 9 days.
I am also beginning to wonder if I'll have a house to go back to when I finally return to Edinburgh in December...
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Day 48 - Dinner Parties to Brid's Abandonment
Ok, so it's been a good three weeks since the last post, and some family members might think I'm dead. There is good reason for this - my liver probably thinks I should be. As a result some bits of the last three weeks are a little hazy, it's been pretty hectic! Note that this may not be entirely suitable for grandparents.
Back on evening 25, Stacey (South African from the ear group) and Kathrine (Dutch girl from my third trek) did indeed do the dinner party on their last night in Sucre. It was great, but a little bit lacking in meat for my liking, so I decided to have another one the next day (which they were gutted they were missing!) based on chicken satay and egg-fried rice. Easy enough at home, but peanut butter here is so lacking in flavour that the sauce wasn't one I'm proud of. It still went down well though, despite the portions being a bit big. Turns out it was even better re-fried for lunch. :D
Obviously dinner parties mean lots of wine, so on evening 27 I was going to have an early-ish night. However, I saw Randall in a bar 50m from our house so I thought I'd go in and see what was up, so ended up playing poker with him, Tom who was an ex-volunteer at CT, and a bunch of Tom's mates who he was meeting in Sucre to travel with later. After poker I kind of felt like karaoke, so we went to a place called Nanos. When I was at the bar I said 'hola' to a girl called Clare and she immediately asked if I could salsa, so I had to quickly finish off my cuba libre before dancing the night away. I saw Tom an hour or so later and he started complaining to me that after 5 minutes in the place I was dancing with the only really attractive girl in there. I just told him it was the scar, and that there was nothing I could really do about it!
I can't remember if an awful lot happened for the rest of that week, I just know I didn't have any treks, and I probably slept a lot for the next night or two to make up for everything. I will have gone to the Folk music night at Amsterdam (really cool non-profit Dutch bar) on the Thursday, it might have been that week that we had a massive sing-a-long with George afterwards (he's an English guy who learnt guitar to go busking in Spain a few years ago), and it could well have been that week that we met Rohan and Nienke (some Dutchies) who are dinner partying it up this week. It could also have been the week before, but I'm assuming it was that week because otherwise I can't remember what I was doing! Anyway, lots of going to Amsterdam, because that's been happening for the last 4 weeks. One thing I do remember VERY well is that after what was presumably a big night out on the Friday, Brid and I had the biggest brunch ever of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and tumbos (like unripened passion fruits) before heading up to the Mirador (excellent view point over Sucre) for sunset (yes, it did take that long to get up, eat and clean the dishes), then we went over to Randall's cinema (we stole a projector from a German guy, and he has since stolen it back. GRR!!) to watch what might well have been District 9 or How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. We made good use of that projector, so it's hard to know exactly which films were which nights.
I do remember the next week surprisingly well, however! Patrick moved in with us (sharing my room) on day 34 after getting evicted from his 250Bs/month room for being too messy and arguing back when his landlady shouted at him unreasonably. She was a bit mental to be fair to him - she told him to scrub the walls when he left (so he said she was 'loca', check your Ricky Martin tunes). Evening 34 was a great night out at the Amsterdam pub quiz, despite the fact I had a trek the next morning, had told people not to give me beer (didn't work), and ended up winning a tequila pinky bet over what the biggest city in the world was (it's Tokyo, the guy who argued that it was Mexico City lost us the quiz, and therefore more beer!). After the quiz things got really cool though. George got out his guitar, and I started drumming along for him with some empty plastic water bottles while everyone at the table who knew the words to the songs sang along.
Day 35 was a 1 day trek (hence me not wanting to drink much the night before - but the countryside air does help a lot the next morning!) with Patrick leading the way, and a couple of French Belgians and two Aussies. After going to the world's most important dinosaur footprints site (because it proves the 4 main types of dinosaurs coexisted in the same place on the same day), and getting the necessary photos of clients sitting on my shoulders so that they could reach up to the anus on the life-size argentinosaurus (one of the sauropods - bit like a brontosaurus I think) model, we went off for a great wee trek to some waterfalls. Luckily Patrick got us slightly lost - he thought the road would go a different way so we hitchhiked for a few kilometres - so we got an extra hour of walking along a beautiful ridge. When we got to the waterfalls I decided I fancied a bit of a rockclimb before swimming, but got a bit stuck and it took me so long to get back that there was only enough time for a quick paddle and a dunking of my head in the waterfall. When we got back, the Belgians (who had been going to leave that day) decided they'd stay an extra night (on our sofas) and ended up helping out loads with the trek prep for the next day. The plan had been to meet the Australians at a salsa place, but preparation took to long and we ended up going to Nanos after picking Brid up (I'd guess in Amsterdam) because I'd had such a good salsa night there the week before. However, at Nanos you always do the thing you weren't planning on doing, so we did karaoke instead! It was a great night, and I ended up joining up with a bunch of English girls when the others went home because I wanted to sing more and unlike Patrick I wasn't having to get up early the next day to help send the trek off, unlike Brid I didn't have Spanish lessons, and unlike Marie (the Belgian who stayed out with us) I didn't have to faff about buying a bus ticket in the morning.
The next night was the Thursday folk music night at Amsterdam, always great fun, and I ended up joining up with a bunch of volunteers who worked for Nanta (one of the organisations we support). With them being from Quebec, and their leader being French, I knew it wouldn't be simple English for the night, but I reckoned I could handle a bilingual night. Unfortunately it was trilingual, because one of the Quebecois was drunk and refused to speak anything but Spanish to me! Still, it was good fun, and I got a good taste of Mitos - the club that Ruben (one of the Bolivian guides) had been telling me about. I think Delphine (the French one) took pity on my crap Espancais (I was mixing them up pretty badly!!) because she spoke a reasonable amount of English to me.
Friday was dinner party night again, Brid's turn to cook this time, and my liver was starting to feel the pain after 3 late drunken nights in a row. Still, some wine, beer, tequila and rum later I was drumming along for George again (this time I had one real drumstick and a hand on a soft chair - was a good sound!) before leaving at a not-too-unreasonable time of 12.30 on a Friday night. We still had a couple of complaints to our landlord though... Anyway, it was another night in Mitos, but I just needed my bed and had to go home at what was beginning to seem the early time of 4am.
I'd stupidly promised to meet up with the Quebecois and Delphine again on the Saturday, but by the 5th night out in a row I could only cope with a small amount of alcohol and needed a relatively early night. The next day I was lucky, Randall decided to sober me up by sending me on a three day trek with a Dutch couple and a Swiss French girl, so Ruben and I had another good trek together and I was able to avoid having a Sunday night out!
The trek left last Monday, which must be day 40. The first day is so much less rushed than the 2 day (it's all the same route for the first day, but you stop earlier and camp), which was great because we got a campfire and kind of did a bit of singing along to songs Ruben and I had on our phones! The second day is just brilliant on the 3 day trek. You climb up the last bit into the crater, then see it in the full light of day (and the views from the north and west sides and from near the middle are just so much better than from the south side which is what you get on the 2 day! I took a bunch of photos but won't bother uploading anything til I'm home or find a really good internet connection and a computer that works with my camera). You've got time to visit the caves and waterfalls (well, you can see the caves if you don't get stuck rockclimbing down the waterfalls... This will be a recurring theme for my last few weeks I think!) which are pretty stunning, and then once you've climbed out over the top of the crater (about 3500-3600m ish, it's not easy when you're suffering from a cold that you've not bothered to rest enough to recover from!) you go through some incredibly weird and colourful scenery towards some dinosaur footprints that are on a suitably inclined rock plane that they won't slide off and crush the tourists (unlike Parque Cretacico on the one day), so you can actually go over and touch them. After a couple more hours of walking (and yes, we were pretty tired already!) through a few Quechua communities where we can offload unnecessary extra food, we camped down by a river bank on a wee beach. Day 3 was quite easy in the end, we got to where the camion/'bus' stops after only about an hour of walking, and Ruben said we could either go to where you're meant to get the bus from a couple of hours down the road, or dump the backpacks and check out the gorge and hot springs. Was quite an easy choice!
I got back on the Wednesday for another quiz (hosted by the Quebefrenchies), and needed plenty of sleep that night. Having woken up a little early to get some breakfast, I just went back to bed until 4.45 on Thursday afternoon. Thursday was the Nanta people's last night, so obviously I had to join them for more trilingualism after the folk music, and by Friday our house (other than Franz, who was at some Bolivian student party) all had a very much needed night off.
Saturday was Brid's last night in Sucre (and she has left a void that only another crazy Irish woman could fill! Although a Belgian couple are hopefully moving in at the weekend and the girl likes making chocolate brownies...) so it had to be more karaoke, more Nanos, and more Toto - Africa. Sunday afternoon was spent up at the Mirador again (biggest and best fruit salad in town!) and she left in the evening on a night bus. Unluckily for her, Potosi is blockaded, has been for ages, and things are getting worse, so she had to go along the worse roads to Cochabamba on her way to La Paz for a 20h+ journey, and we still don't know if she arrived ok because she had no time to spare once she got there - she had to meet friends in a nearby town who were leaving on a 5 day trip to the jungle this morning.
Sunday and Monday were relatively quiet, so I'll just say a bit about the Potosi thing to give people an idea and myself a reminder about the social issues in Bolivia. Potosi was a town founded by the Spanish way up at about 4300m altitude because they found an excellent silver seam there, and ever since millions of slaves and local workers have died in the mines while all the wealth was redistributed to almost anywhere but Potosi and the local countryside (Spain and Sucre both benefited a lot). There's always been a bit of angst there. More recently, in the 1950's, the government gave Bolivian people the right to the land they lived on, but didn't give them papers. Now, rich city folk are using dodgy methods to get papers saying they own land in the countryside, leading to some fun territorial disputes (and mineral wealth or suspected mineral wealth may also be involved). Obviously this has pissed off the campesinos, who started blockading roads and going on strike.
This was a bit of a cue for everyone else in the city and surrounding area to go on strike and block roads/railways etc if they had any gripes with anything, particularly with the people who were already blocking roads. There was talk of a 100,000 people demonstration in Potosi (the largest in Bolivian history), there was a Molotov Cocktail thrown in Oruro which burnt down a sizable area by the looks of the photos in the papers, the mayor or Oruro appears to have been kidnapped or something, and large swathes of the country are now practically inaccessible. Sucre is still perfectly safe, despite a couple of small demonstrations that started yesterday, but the only places it is possible to get to from here are Cochabamba (and from there La Paz), Santa Cruz, and you can also fly south to Tarija (and from there you can get to Argentina). As a result, I might be unable to do the salt flats tour (Bolivia's Machu Picchu - by far the most popular tourist thing in the country), but that would mean I could stay longer in Sucre, so I'm not sure I'd mind all that much!
Anyway, don't worry about me, Sucre's safe and I'll be sensible. If things get dodgy I'll fly out to wherever I can get to before they block the airport (they did that in Potosi, where it sounds like there might be a bit of a lack of food after a good two weeks of blockades, but I did hear about an American guy who got out in a media helicopter). The situation is pretty localised, and is exceedingly unlikely to spread to La Paz AND Santa Cruz (and not likely to reach either of them, to be honest) due to the extremely different social makeups of the cities. I shouldn't have any difficulty making it to Peru with enough time to visit Lake Titicaca, Machu Picchu and still make my flight to Quito on time!
Back on evening 25, Stacey (South African from the ear group) and Kathrine (Dutch girl from my third trek) did indeed do the dinner party on their last night in Sucre. It was great, but a little bit lacking in meat for my liking, so I decided to have another one the next day (which they were gutted they were missing!) based on chicken satay and egg-fried rice. Easy enough at home, but peanut butter here is so lacking in flavour that the sauce wasn't one I'm proud of. It still went down well though, despite the portions being a bit big. Turns out it was even better re-fried for lunch. :D
Obviously dinner parties mean lots of wine, so on evening 27 I was going to have an early-ish night. However, I saw Randall in a bar 50m from our house so I thought I'd go in and see what was up, so ended up playing poker with him, Tom who was an ex-volunteer at CT, and a bunch of Tom's mates who he was meeting in Sucre to travel with later. After poker I kind of felt like karaoke, so we went to a place called Nanos. When I was at the bar I said 'hola' to a girl called Clare and she immediately asked if I could salsa, so I had to quickly finish off my cuba libre before dancing the night away. I saw Tom an hour or so later and he started complaining to me that after 5 minutes in the place I was dancing with the only really attractive girl in there. I just told him it was the scar, and that there was nothing I could really do about it!
I can't remember if an awful lot happened for the rest of that week, I just know I didn't have any treks, and I probably slept a lot for the next night or two to make up for everything. I will have gone to the Folk music night at Amsterdam (really cool non-profit Dutch bar) on the Thursday, it might have been that week that we had a massive sing-a-long with George afterwards (he's an English guy who learnt guitar to go busking in Spain a few years ago), and it could well have been that week that we met Rohan and Nienke (some Dutchies) who are dinner partying it up this week. It could also have been the week before, but I'm assuming it was that week because otherwise I can't remember what I was doing! Anyway, lots of going to Amsterdam, because that's been happening for the last 4 weeks. One thing I do remember VERY well is that after what was presumably a big night out on the Friday, Brid and I had the biggest brunch ever of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and tumbos (like unripened passion fruits) before heading up to the Mirador (excellent view point over Sucre) for sunset (yes, it did take that long to get up, eat and clean the dishes), then we went over to Randall's cinema (we stole a projector from a German guy, and he has since stolen it back. GRR!!) to watch what might well have been District 9 or How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. We made good use of that projector, so it's hard to know exactly which films were which nights.
I do remember the next week surprisingly well, however! Patrick moved in with us (sharing my room) on day 34 after getting evicted from his 250Bs/month room for being too messy and arguing back when his landlady shouted at him unreasonably. She was a bit mental to be fair to him - she told him to scrub the walls when he left (so he said she was 'loca', check your Ricky Martin tunes). Evening 34 was a great night out at the Amsterdam pub quiz, despite the fact I had a trek the next morning, had told people not to give me beer (didn't work), and ended up winning a tequila pinky bet over what the biggest city in the world was (it's Tokyo, the guy who argued that it was Mexico City lost us the quiz, and therefore more beer!). After the quiz things got really cool though. George got out his guitar, and I started drumming along for him with some empty plastic water bottles while everyone at the table who knew the words to the songs sang along.
Day 35 was a 1 day trek (hence me not wanting to drink much the night before - but the countryside air does help a lot the next morning!) with Patrick leading the way, and a couple of French Belgians and two Aussies. After going to the world's most important dinosaur footprints site (because it proves the 4 main types of dinosaurs coexisted in the same place on the same day), and getting the necessary photos of clients sitting on my shoulders so that they could reach up to the anus on the life-size argentinosaurus (one of the sauropods - bit like a brontosaurus I think) model, we went off for a great wee trek to some waterfalls. Luckily Patrick got us slightly lost - he thought the road would go a different way so we hitchhiked for a few kilometres - so we got an extra hour of walking along a beautiful ridge. When we got to the waterfalls I decided I fancied a bit of a rockclimb before swimming, but got a bit stuck and it took me so long to get back that there was only enough time for a quick paddle and a dunking of my head in the waterfall. When we got back, the Belgians (who had been going to leave that day) decided they'd stay an extra night (on our sofas) and ended up helping out loads with the trek prep for the next day. The plan had been to meet the Australians at a salsa place, but preparation took to long and we ended up going to Nanos after picking Brid up (I'd guess in Amsterdam) because I'd had such a good salsa night there the week before. However, at Nanos you always do the thing you weren't planning on doing, so we did karaoke instead! It was a great night, and I ended up joining up with a bunch of English girls when the others went home because I wanted to sing more and unlike Patrick I wasn't having to get up early the next day to help send the trek off, unlike Brid I didn't have Spanish lessons, and unlike Marie (the Belgian who stayed out with us) I didn't have to faff about buying a bus ticket in the morning.
The next night was the Thursday folk music night at Amsterdam, always great fun, and I ended up joining up with a bunch of volunteers who worked for Nanta (one of the organisations we support). With them being from Quebec, and their leader being French, I knew it wouldn't be simple English for the night, but I reckoned I could handle a bilingual night. Unfortunately it was trilingual, because one of the Quebecois was drunk and refused to speak anything but Spanish to me! Still, it was good fun, and I got a good taste of Mitos - the club that Ruben (one of the Bolivian guides) had been telling me about. I think Delphine (the French one) took pity on my crap Espancais (I was mixing them up pretty badly!!) because she spoke a reasonable amount of English to me.
Friday was dinner party night again, Brid's turn to cook this time, and my liver was starting to feel the pain after 3 late drunken nights in a row. Still, some wine, beer, tequila and rum later I was drumming along for George again (this time I had one real drumstick and a hand on a soft chair - was a good sound!) before leaving at a not-too-unreasonable time of 12.30 on a Friday night. We still had a couple of complaints to our landlord though... Anyway, it was another night in Mitos, but I just needed my bed and had to go home at what was beginning to seem the early time of 4am.
I'd stupidly promised to meet up with the Quebecois and Delphine again on the Saturday, but by the 5th night out in a row I could only cope with a small amount of alcohol and needed a relatively early night. The next day I was lucky, Randall decided to sober me up by sending me on a three day trek with a Dutch couple and a Swiss French girl, so Ruben and I had another good trek together and I was able to avoid having a Sunday night out!
The trek left last Monday, which must be day 40. The first day is so much less rushed than the 2 day (it's all the same route for the first day, but you stop earlier and camp), which was great because we got a campfire and kind of did a bit of singing along to songs Ruben and I had on our phones! The second day is just brilliant on the 3 day trek. You climb up the last bit into the crater, then see it in the full light of day (and the views from the north and west sides and from near the middle are just so much better than from the south side which is what you get on the 2 day! I took a bunch of photos but won't bother uploading anything til I'm home or find a really good internet connection and a computer that works with my camera). You've got time to visit the caves and waterfalls (well, you can see the caves if you don't get stuck rockclimbing down the waterfalls... This will be a recurring theme for my last few weeks I think!) which are pretty stunning, and then once you've climbed out over the top of the crater (about 3500-3600m ish, it's not easy when you're suffering from a cold that you've not bothered to rest enough to recover from!) you go through some incredibly weird and colourful scenery towards some dinosaur footprints that are on a suitably inclined rock plane that they won't slide off and crush the tourists (unlike Parque Cretacico on the one day), so you can actually go over and touch them. After a couple more hours of walking (and yes, we were pretty tired already!) through a few Quechua communities where we can offload unnecessary extra food, we camped down by a river bank on a wee beach. Day 3 was quite easy in the end, we got to where the camion/'bus' stops after only about an hour of walking, and Ruben said we could either go to where you're meant to get the bus from a couple of hours down the road, or dump the backpacks and check out the gorge and hot springs. Was quite an easy choice!
I got back on the Wednesday for another quiz (hosted by the Quebefrenchies), and needed plenty of sleep that night. Having woken up a little early to get some breakfast, I just went back to bed until 4.45 on Thursday afternoon. Thursday was the Nanta people's last night, so obviously I had to join them for more trilingualism after the folk music, and by Friday our house (other than Franz, who was at some Bolivian student party) all had a very much needed night off.
Saturday was Brid's last night in Sucre (and she has left a void that only another crazy Irish woman could fill! Although a Belgian couple are hopefully moving in at the weekend and the girl likes making chocolate brownies...) so it had to be more karaoke, more Nanos, and more Toto - Africa. Sunday afternoon was spent up at the Mirador again (biggest and best fruit salad in town!) and she left in the evening on a night bus. Unluckily for her, Potosi is blockaded, has been for ages, and things are getting worse, so she had to go along the worse roads to Cochabamba on her way to La Paz for a 20h+ journey, and we still don't know if she arrived ok because she had no time to spare once she got there - she had to meet friends in a nearby town who were leaving on a 5 day trip to the jungle this morning.
Sunday and Monday were relatively quiet, so I'll just say a bit about the Potosi thing to give people an idea and myself a reminder about the social issues in Bolivia. Potosi was a town founded by the Spanish way up at about 4300m altitude because they found an excellent silver seam there, and ever since millions of slaves and local workers have died in the mines while all the wealth was redistributed to almost anywhere but Potosi and the local countryside (Spain and Sucre both benefited a lot). There's always been a bit of angst there. More recently, in the 1950's, the government gave Bolivian people the right to the land they lived on, but didn't give them papers. Now, rich city folk are using dodgy methods to get papers saying they own land in the countryside, leading to some fun territorial disputes (and mineral wealth or suspected mineral wealth may also be involved). Obviously this has pissed off the campesinos, who started blockading roads and going on strike.
This was a bit of a cue for everyone else in the city and surrounding area to go on strike and block roads/railways etc if they had any gripes with anything, particularly with the people who were already blocking roads. There was talk of a 100,000 people demonstration in Potosi (the largest in Bolivian history), there was a Molotov Cocktail thrown in Oruro which burnt down a sizable area by the looks of the photos in the papers, the mayor or Oruro appears to have been kidnapped or something, and large swathes of the country are now practically inaccessible. Sucre is still perfectly safe, despite a couple of small demonstrations that started yesterday, but the only places it is possible to get to from here are Cochabamba (and from there La Paz), Santa Cruz, and you can also fly south to Tarija (and from there you can get to Argentina). As a result, I might be unable to do the salt flats tour (Bolivia's Machu Picchu - by far the most popular tourist thing in the country), but that would mean I could stay longer in Sucre, so I'm not sure I'd mind all that much!
Anyway, don't worry about me, Sucre's safe and I'll be sensible. If things get dodgy I'll fly out to wherever I can get to before they block the airport (they did that in Potosi, where it sounds like there might be a bit of a lack of food after a good two weeks of blockades, but I did hear about an American guy who got out in a media helicopter). The situation is pretty localised, and is exceedingly unlikely to spread to La Paz AND Santa Cruz (and not likely to reach either of them, to be honest) due to the extremely different social makeups of the cities. I shouldn't have any difficulty making it to Peru with enough time to visit Lake Titicaca, Machu Picchu and still make my flight to Quito on time!
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