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

Argentina/Chile Northbound Part 2

Oh... It's you again.. Back again eh? Not sick of me already? Thanks Mum!

So, erm, where were we??

Oh yes..

So we left the little town of Bariloche in Western Argentina and hit border crossing number One thousand three hundred and fifty seventh into Chile. We made a bee line for the town of Pucon home to spectacular scenery where they mix snow topped Volcanoes with snow topped mountains in a clever way.. Anyway, we were here to climb said Volcano. The name of the Volcano sounds like Billericay but it's not, it's something like that and it's definitely not in Essex, it's in Chile..like I said before... Are you listening? It's called Villarrica I've just been told by Sam who's sitting next to me reminding me not to forget bits as she does so well..
Now, you're sitting there thinking he was bangin' on about Glaciers in his last blog, now he's gonna be bangin' on about Volcanoes like some bloody do-gooder harping on about natural beauty and all that shit.. but no, the way they sold it to us was: YOU GET TO SLIDE BACK DOWN ON A PIECE OF PLASTIC LIKE SLEDGING!!!!!!!
I know. I know. AWESOME!
So we hit the Volcano early morning after being dressed up like astronauts. You get the ski lift up like a quarter of the way then you start trekking up slowly. They give you an ice pick to help you on the way but the guides are all well equipped, they cut a pathway in the snow for everyone and you follow them with little steps all the way up. It was frickin' hard work getting up especially when your digestive system is grumbling and you're farting like a night after 9 Guinness with Beans for dinner.. Anyway, long hard trek short we made it to the top and the view was incredible.. plus we got to look in the volcano that was still smoking after it last erupted in.. erm.. 1963 I think.. Sam? She's lost interest. Typical.
Then came the best bit.. the sledging! They gave us a small bit to start off with. You put the plastic under your arse and strap it to your belt which first of all seemed like a perfectly designed ball crushing device but turned out to be grand. Then you have to use your ice pick as a brake, the ice pick with a razor sharp edge willing and able to stab you in the arse. The first little sledge was fun but then it got epic. In was going so fast I had lost control and was literally flying down until the guides were shouting at us to use our breaks. It was great till I got stuck behind a really slow German woman who I had to kick in the arse to get moving. Anyway, as you can probably tell it was immense craic and everyone said it was the best Volcano they'd ever gone down on. I said: "You haven't tried mi.." Never Mind.

From Pucon we went further west and hit Santiago, Chile's capital. This was a sad little couple of days as it was where we had a change over in the group. 9 people were leaving and 8 were joining. So it was a sad goodbye to Karen and Chris, Lucy and Suzie, Harry and James, Aoife and Sinead and Tanin. Some great people that it was a pleasure to know and I am looking forward to seeing again when I return to real life. After a quick walk around Santiago to see the city quickly and a fruitless search for some stupid clothes shop we capped off our short stay here with a group meal and a killer Karaoke night, just in case there was any dignity that we had yet to lose in front of each other we made sure it was all gone.

Some of the gang

So I woke up the next morning still pissed as a parrot with a new group of people (I like to make a good first impression) and made our way, you guessed it, towards Argentina and the wine regions of the north. Our first stop was Mendoza, a large city that gets 315 days of sunshine a year. Unfortunately, we were there for those un talked of 50 days, but we didn't get rain continuing our tradition of great weather despite the season. The campsite we were staying at had a fun park next door with a large wavy slide and a bucking bull so we naturally attacked it like big kids and I bashed my arse really hard on the slide as I used the piece of carpet they gave us to slide down on the wrong way round so went too fast like an eedjit..

Anyway, we didn't come to Mendoza for slides and mechanical bulls we came for the wine my friend. The next day we did a wine tour by mini bus. We started off at the largest Winery in the region called Norton's. Here we had a civilised Steak lunch with lots of wine. We had lots of wine as Sam stole the half full bottle off the side and distributed it unfairly and mainly to our table mwuahahah.. After this we hit a small Organic winery who wanted to show us how the wine was made..?? We were like "Just let us taste it motherfuckers!" So we did and it was good. The last one we went to was a small little winery with a really nice old guy called Carmelo Patti who was quite famous in the wine world apparently. He still did things in the old way like bottling them by hand ect which was really cool. Needless to say we brought a few bottles and had a very merry evening sampling our purchases back at the campsite and playing spin the bottle..livin' the dream..

Steak dinner and wine obviously!

Birthday hats (It was Georgia's bday!)

The Organic Winery..

How they make it zzzzzz

All of us getting typsy

Kate enjoying the grapes!

The next stop was a little town right in the heart of the wine region called El Cafayate. This was a cute little town with 2 industries: Wine and Wine Tourism. We arrived late afternoon and took in two wineries as we arrived called Nanni's and Domingo's, just to start off in style. This was one place that I had been looking forward to immensely as it was where you could do a wine tour by bicycle. So, I went to bed early the day we arrived despite an epic game of 21 so as to be fresh for this ultimate being pissed on a bicycle. The next morning we were up and fresh and ready to attack. Got into town BOOM all wineries closed as it was the 1st of May and a huge holiday in Argentina.. :( Sad Face!!! Absolutely gutted about this as I had been looking forward to it so much. Instead we went out for lunch which took 3 hours cos the waitress was a mong and then had ice cream and beer for the afternoon in the sunshine which wasn't a total loss.. All in all a lovely little town with lots of character but still gutted about missing the tour..

Domingo's Winery

Good Shit!

In the garden...

 Last stop in Argentina was Salta. We had 2 nights here with 2 seperate campsites. The first was a campsite called Salta Rafting where you could, believe it or not, go rafting. As I was still buzzing from the immensity of Futaleufu I decided against this. However, you could also do Zip Lining. The campsite was in the middle of a large canyon which made zip lining a lot of fun. We climbed 600 metres up the side of the mountain and Zipped our way down. It was quite scary at first but once you got used to the controls it was great craic. The final bit ended right in the campsite. We then moved on into Salta and went for lunch out at this big old house on the outskirts of Salta where we had great steak and shit loads of wine included so we were pissed by 2pm. We camped that night next to a massive public swimming pool that unfortunately was empty and didn't sleep a wink cos of a concert that was going on in a football stadium next door, some shit Argentinian singer went on until 6am.

Kate and Kyle making us pancakes...Kyle loved his outfit!

The drive to Salta..

So, that's it. The next day we crossed the border into Bolivia with 9 million Argentina stamps in our passport but this would be the last one. Argentina is a great country witha  huge variety of things to do and is the most developed of the South American countries. You won't get the crazy shit and friendly people you see from undeveloped places but you get great food, wine and activities with fantastic natural beauty...

Next week, on Ben's Blog: Bolivia! See Ben's bum in all it's glory on the Salt Flats, Read as he visits a Silver Mine and will he survive the famous Death Road in La Paz?? Read all about it next week...

Chao for now, Ben.

Argentina/Chile - Northbound Part 1

Greetings greetings Greetings!

Thank you for not noticing my poor use of caPitals above, much appreciated! sO HERE we are again.. Ben's Blog, harping on about South America again? Would he ever shut up! Why am I reading this?? Well this blog will be the mother of them all, I suppose. It's all about Argentina northbound part 2 with a fair bit of Chile thrown in for good measure.. feck it, let's see how it goes..

Bored already?

Feck off then..

Now that that rude guy has gone I will begin.

You may remember that we had just left the ever breathtaking Torres Del Paine National park in the Southern depths of Chile? ...Never mind... So we had just left the truly spectacular Torres Del Paine National park in the Southern Depths of Chile an amazing experience but had left us all shattered.. We got the ferry back across the lake with Didingo waiting for us on the other side, dropped the equipment off, smashed a burger and chips, picked up the missing amigos and were off again! I know, what? Were you expecting us to rest? Back across the border into Argentina heading for El Calafate. This was a long, late drive day due to the amount of stuff we had to cram into one drive day and we were doomed to a long quite evening on the truck sure to be in late. Did we lie down and sleep? No! Not I! It was time for a truck party.. Imagine 20 over tired adrenaline filled individuals starting a spontaneous drinking session with wine and cheap rum.. There was a whip round for mixers, they were found and DJ Buckley took the floor.. Good debaucharous times with many pee stops were had by all.. much love..

The next morning with a slight hangover, we left for the reason we had come to this town: The Perito Moreno Glacier. On the way to the Glacier we stopped off at this little country coffee house for coffee that had goats everywhere: in the garden, in the courtyard, the car park, the living room, the kitchen, everywhere!! Very entertaining watching them fight over bread.. If you ever get the opportunity, throw a slice of bread into a shit load of mountain goats, best craic ever.. Anyway, I digress: Glaciers. Now I have an issue with Galciers. Are they spelt GlaciEr or GlaciAr?? Anyway, this Glacier was frickin awesome. The sheer size of it was difficult to comprehend it was mind blowing. Firstly we did a walk along a beach close by and got some good photos which was fun despite hiking being the last frickin thing we wanted to do at that stage. We then did a boat trip that brings you up close and personal with the Glacier and I went frickin snap happy like there was no tomorrow! After that we weren't done, they brought us to the visitor centre which had all sorts of walk ways and boardwalks that bring you up to give you better views off this thing. What we all wanted to see of course was a collapse.. They told us some ice collapses off the glacier every 15 minutes. We stood there for 40 mins and fuckin nothing my friends! Nothing! But after a while the ice palyed ball and I got some great videos off the ice collapsing. What a great day and an amazing spectacle of nature.

To see the videos of the ice collapsing click here

The boat gives it perspective..

A short way north we hit our next port of call: El Chalten. A little town with so much to do.. Day one Sam, Nat and I did a 12km hike around the surrounding area taking in two awesome look outs and a waterfall as well as an encounter with an Armadillo! A dam good day in my book!! Day two it was Galcier time again, this time the Viedma glacier, now forgive me if I'm wrong but this is the biggest Glacier in Argentina and the second biggest in South America (but then I could be wrong, I don't tend to listen..) what was good about this trip though was we got to go trekking on it. They gave us our crampons and a couple of hours trekking around. the best part was maneuvering through an ice hole and then they gave us a shot of Tia Maria to cap it all off. A nice, civilized touch I'm sure you'll agree!
We spent the rest of our time here indulging. The nice thing about El Chalten is there is a shop for everything and no shop does more than one thing if you get what I mean..? There's a Chocolateria, a Microbrewery, A Wine bar, A Waffleria, A pizza house.. Anyway, the little shops do what they do well and we had an awesome night in the Vineria with cheese platters and all very very civilsed I'm sure you'll agree...

Atop the view point

A view of El Chalten

Viewpoint No 2

The Morning view

In an ice Hole

Tia Maria on the Ice

Cheese and Wine!

Next day was border day and we were heading back into Chile. We camped in a place called Quelat which is home to the Hanging Glacier. I know you're probably sick of hearing me bangin on about Glaciers but this is the last one.. There was a hike you could do to get up close to it but Sam and I decided against it and got some snaps from afar but still very easy on the eye..

Our next port of call was still in Chile and we were in Futaleufu. We stayed in these lodges with wood fires cos it was freezing and they had pigs and chickens and James and Craig tried to catch a chicken and failed cos chickens are fast.. but that was nothing to the reason we were here: White Water Rafting! I'm going to go out on a limb here and say as far as activities go: this is the best thing I have ever done! The stretch of river in Futaleufu is one of the best in the world for continuous Grade 4 and 5 rapids. A group of us from the truck did it and we had to manouevre around rocks and avoid falling out as the water smashes into you and you have to paddle for your life. It is immense fun and we did really well until the big Grade 5 rapid that our guide told us they called Madaka. We were supposed to avoid a big hole in the middle of the rapid but instead went straight for it and flipped up spectacularly. By the miracle of modern technology we got it all on film!

Take a look at the video of us White Water rafting and crashing by clicking here.

We left the rafting absolutely buzzing it was an awesome adrenaline rush. So so good!

A picture of the offending Rapid: Madaka!

Me in my Rafting gear

The Pet pigs on the campsite

Movin' on again we were back into Argentina and a place I had been looking forward to: Bariloche. Bariloche is a little tourist town with shit loads of stuff to do and is a 'must-visit' if you're planning on heading to Argentina at any stage. We had two days there so we busied ourselves with a trip into town to indulge in the many chocolate shops that are here. The place is apparently famous for chocolate (who knew!?) and I can see why. I overdosed as usual to the point of being unable to move and being sick.. The next day we went on a ski lift up to a lookout and got spectacular views of the lake and the surrounding mountains and area. Take a look at the pics, bleedin' awesome. That afternoon the entire truck got together and did a major truck clean. We are getting new people joining the trip in Santiago and our leader Kate wanted it spic and span before that, kinda like when you have guests come over and your mum makes you clean your room haha. No it was a fun afternoon and Tanin our Thai companion cooked an tasty Thai dinner for us that took 2 days to cook and made all the hard work worth it!

Chocolate!

The accompanying Coffee

I forgot my sunglasses..

The Lake

Photobomb!

Ok so I will leave you there for now. Next week on Ben's Blog: Climbing Volcanoes in Pucon, Saying hello and goodbye in Santiago (Will Ben cry?) and wine wine and more wine in north Argentina (Wine tours by Bicycle.. Will Ben fall off?). Find out next week!

Adios Amigos,
Ben