Saturday 31 May 2014

Bolivia

What a coincidence.. Fancy meeting you here! I know, right? What are the chances!?

Wanna hear about Bolivia?

Yeah, Nah..?? What does that mean?

I'll take it as a yes...

So, as a loose rule of travel  you can get an idea of the country you're going to based on the border crossing: it's quality, smoothness of operation and level of stress you encounter going through it generally depicts the level of development you will encounter on your travels. Basically, more than 3 goats and it's gonna be crazy. Now you can't take pictures of the borders themselves and the officials, but this is within a few meters of it.. speaks for itself really...


Anyway, so Bolivia, a poor country relying on tourism as it's life blood with some interesting social conundrums and some amazing sights and activities... First stop was the backpacker mekka of Uyuni.. Why so popular I hear you ask.. well it's all about the Salt Flats. This, if you're wondering is 10,582 square kilometers of Salt.It doesn't sound impressive when put like that but it is very very cool and one of the main attractions of South America. We did a tour and visited a Salt Factory!! I know, right!? We3ll they extract the salt and then refine it for sale. We then visited Cactus Island in the middle of it.. What to say about this? It's an island with a shit load of cactii on it as well as some Llamas placed there for the benefit of tourists. It's very beautiful in the middle of all the salt.. We then got to take a million photos on the salt plains which was a lot of fun. Me and Craig were the first to get naked without encouragement.. but man we opened up a gate everyone else got naked there we tits and willys everywhere, sadly no swinging occurred but plenty of funny photos... Finally we visited the Salt Train Graveyard.. all the salt is now transported by road around Bolivia so the trains they used to use to transport it are now sleeping in one graveyard.. apparently one of the trains was used in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid but no one knows which one...


Sam on Cactus Island with some Llamas

Prickly Cactus

NAKED!

Mmmm Boobies..

Classic jump shot

The Money shot.. Thanks Beccy!
That night we went to one of those taccy "Party as hard as you can till you look like an idiot" backpacker bars... And had a frickin ball!!! They served their cocktails in clay containers that look like genitalia, which in my opinion is awesome.. I was in Bolivia 2 days and I'd seen every girl on the trip drink Jungle Juice from a penis.. Bolivia is gonna be amazing..life is complete!!

Speaks for itself really...

Maddie showing her new hardware

Dennis and his lady mug...

Hmmmmm
 We then moved on, further up in altitude to the land of no oxygen: Potosi. Potosi, is a mining town way up in the mountains that is famous for its Silver Mine that no longer has any silver cos the Spanish took it and then sold it to Europe which then fueled the industrial revolution. Today, the mine still operates for other metals and is the main reason we visited here. The Mine Tour was shocking.. The mine in Potosi has been operating for 450 years and in that time approximately 8 million miners have died. Over that time the mountain has lost 300 meters in height and it has produced 60,000 tons of silver. The miners worship "Tio" a devil who protects them in the mine and keeps the mountain fertile and producing good ore. There are approximately 100 km of tunnels and has been likened to Swiss Cheese. We did a tour with a great tour guide.. Before you go you have to buy gifts for the miners that you give them as you walk around and basically jump out of their way. You can buy a bottle of 96% alcohol (which, let me tells you burns your throat like nothing else!), Coca leaves (The raw form of cocaine!), Juice or Dynamite! Quite a wedding list.. So obviously everybody bought Dynamite and we did a tour of the mine. It's horrific inside, there's no air, it's dark and the air that is there is full of asbestos. The men work all day manually with no machinery at all and boys as young as 14 work in the afternoons after school often leaving school early to start work. The only saving grace is the mine is run as a cooperative so the miners own the mine they work and although they get comparative peanuts, it is slightly higher than the average wage in Bolivia.. but it's one of those places you go and think "I am never complaining about work again" which will probably last a week.. For me, it's things like this that make travel so important for you as a person, making you realize how lucky you are...


This is Tio, the god the Miners worship..

Me in the mine

My Face after drinking the 96% Alcohol


The Gang ready to hit the Mine
Sam with her Coca leaves and Dynamite

Inside the mine
Moving on from town to town we made the long journey to La Paz; a big, bustling city and the capital of the country. The place is so busy, I have never seen so many market stalls in one place, spilling over into the
roads where you can buy anything off a stall on the side of the road from bags to Llama fetuses, which Sam did in outrageous quantities.. (not the Llama fetuses...)

The streets

Markets, markets, markets

A view of the city..
It was in La Paz that I did the famous Death Road.. Death Road is the most extreme downhill mountain biking route that you can do anywhere.. These days it's not as dangerous as it once was as a ne motorway has been constructed taking the majority of traffic of it. Today, it contains local traffic and tourist buses but is still an incredible experience with a nice hint of danger which makes it exciting.. The first hour or so is along a busy concrete road with huge drops down the side of the cliff and plenty of buses overtakking you as you go and plenty of slow buses that you have to overtake as well.. then you go onto a quieter gravel road through the rainforest, with huge, unguarded drops off the edge of the cliff of up to 600 meters.. This was, as you can imagine, immense fun..! We went with a tour company called Gravity who were very good, safe and professional and had an Aussie guy guiding us down. Overall we descended some 3,600 metres (that's 11,800 feet) and travelled over 69km.. At the end we got a beer and did a zip line for good measure and a shower at a monkey sanctuary... A massive tick of the bucket list...

Graduated Death Road

The edge!

Action shot

Just me modelling

An arty shot of the road
Ok, so a short one by comparison but that was 2 weeks in Bolivia in Blog format.... Bit of a crazy place, some sad social truths and some amazing sights and activities.. the dream continues next week with Incas, Lake Titicaca and Peru!! See you then amigos,

The Naughty boy,
Ben

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