Boliviaa

My dear followers,Firstly can i put forward the usual sincere apologies regarding my intense laziness in keeping you informed of my movements around the world,I can only put this down to having simply too much fun.I am in La Paz at the moment (capital of Bolivia),we´re at about 4000 metres altitude,which consequently means that i´m hideously out of breath after walking down the street and feel like a decrepid old man, but I´m sure it´s good for me! It´s a pretty amazing city,nestled in a huge bowl of mountains with buildings seemingly built wherever possible,some on impossible gradients (look at a pictures,it would probably do it alot more justice..)I left you last in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was noticeably different from everywhere else we´d been in Argentina,everything on a rather different scale and alot more colonial and high rise buildings.It seemed alot more like a European city to me,perhaps a little more hectic,but nevertheless one of those places where you can just walk around all day without getting bored just seeing the sights. Our pretty mainstream,traveller hostel was just a 5 minute walk away from the widest avenue in the world which provided alot of immature amusement for both us and the argentine public in watching 4 boys race each other across the avenue before the lights turned green.Cheap thrills...Went to a really nice area called La Recolecta and went to the La Recolecta cemetry (which was eerily similar to the Pere Lachaise cemetry in Paris) which housed all the famous various Argentine celebrities and politicians if yesteryear.It´s not like a typical British cemetry,it was like a miniature town,oddly serene and quiet in the centre of this loud,bustling city. Their are no graves,just family mausoleums which were like sets of small houses. The big attraction there was the grave of Eva Peron (Evita) which was a bit liek Oscar Wilde´s in Paris in how tokens of adoration had been left by the Argentinian public. It was pretty hard to get near because it was so popular,but a good thing to say you´ve seen. Also went to the art gallery there which was full of alot of rubbish and some hilarious modern art but I´m sure Mum will be relieved that I´ve done a little bit of culture...!After a week in BA we took a monstrously long bus to Iguazu falls,which were INCREDIBLE. I had nowhere near prepared myself for the actual scale of the falls,about 2.7 km long.It was also nice to be in a more tropical climate,and the park was set up really well so you could stroll through jungle canopies and then ended up on walkways above the falls.I realise this hasn´t been a great description but try if you can to look at pictures..But yeah it was definitely among the highlights of the trip and worth the journey across half of Argentina...In a rather non-sensical route we then almost retraced our steps in an even more ridculous set of bus journeys to the Argentine-Bolivian border. Then from there we crossed the border on foot surrounded by the typical old women who seem to have the ability to carry the most amazingly huge heavy bundles on the back with no effort at all,bolivians are hard.From there we finally arrived in Uyuni,a dead base town for tours to the salt flats. Our tour was postponed a little due to me cleverly contracting a chest infection (which i thought in the middle of the night was anything from a heart attack to a collapsed lung,I was in fact just being rubbish.)We embarked on our 3 day tour with two dutch girls(who as all dutch seem to be were ridiculously nice and laughed alot at our jokes,which is always a rare novelty...) and an argentinian couple who´s english was amazing which was lucky because the driver couldnt speak a word of english,soo i resorted to the old standby of grinning like a lunatic and pointing,god my spanish is awesome. The salt flats were insane in the membrane,it´s basically a massive expanse of nothingness and is twice the size of the english channel but made entirely of salt,and you have to wear sunglasses aswell because you can get snowblindness,weird.We stayed the first night in literally the middle of nowhere and played football with the ridiculously cute kids in the sunset.Our ´hotel´was really odd,made entirely of salt,salt floors salt beds salt chairs,did i mention there was loads of salt?And it was absolutely freezing i slept with 5 layers on,stupid.We had to get up at like 4 and 5 in the morning which was painful...but then we went up to the mountains (about 5000 feet) and saw some awesome scenery and also had a blissful half an hour in this thermal pool next to a massive lake,kind of like an infinity pool but all naturally heated by the sulphur in the ground which was ace.especially as i hadn´t felt my feet in two days...After a nights recovery after the 3 day tour of the salt flats we went up to the highest city in the world,Potosi,which is a pretty cool thing to say i guess. The city gates read " I am rich Potosi,treasure of the world,king of all mountains,envy of all kings", and indeed once Potosi was the richest city in the Americas due to it´s silver deposits,but also has one of teh worst slavery records in history,10 million slaves are reported to have died in Potosi..There was alot of classic heavy breathing,and generally feeling unfit and after a day spent experiencing quite how averge England are at football, we booked a tour down the Silver mines. It was a bit of an eye opener,because the conditions there are horrendous and its not touristy at all,bent double and breathing in nocious gases. We went with a guide called Daniel who was a bit of a nutter,basically we just explored the mines and chatted to these miners for about 2 hours,regrettably they chose to share their drink with us,which was 80 percent poison.brilliant.So yeah after 5 hours in the airless pitch black mine we wobbled out later,with Daniel twisting our arms into going with him to the local ´discotek´ later on.This proved to be h.i.larious.It turns out that daniel is a sex obsessed adulterer,which was great.The club was funny aswell,they are all really old fashioned and the men and women keep an odd one yard rule from each other which i thought was jolly encouraging..And from Potosi we dropped into Sucre which was quaint but not much going on,and arrived in La Paz. We are currently in an irish hostel called the Wild Rover which is famous all over South America. It basically specialises in getting everyone very very merry,but its stacked with irish,which i love as you can imagine and everyone´s so friendly,we´ve met more people here probably than the rest of the trip put together!So yes spending my days with any number of eomaghs,padraigs and siobhans,the problem is the hostel is quite addictive and you can easily spend days just in the hostel (we spent 2 days without leaving the hostel,oops.sorry mum) But have done things aswell!We did the Death Road a few days ago,which is teh most dangerous world in the world,about 150 km of mountain biking along 3 metre wide roads with 200 metre precipices on your left side. There have been I think 30 cycling deaths in the last 10 years?It was pant-wettingly scary,especially considering I haven´t ridden a bike in a good 3 or 4 years.But it was so so worth it,me Rich and a guy called Jack,a young lad from Tipperary (spelling?) whoworks at the Wild Rover did the road with a few others. The weather wasn´t too great up top which made things a little more disconcerting,cycling through fog and not knowing how steep the drop is isnt the biggest comfort...But as we got lower down and a little more confident (I think i might even have let go of the brake once or twice,remarkable.) the weather opened up and we were dwarved by the amazing valley and scenery in the distance. The ride finally ended rather calamitously with me in a moment of bravado serenely careering into a rock in the last 10 metres of the ride,I can cycle down the most dangerous road in the world but not along a flat country track,not sure if that´s a good thing...And at the end we were treated to a buffet next to a pool in tropical temperature where everyone suceeded in getting bitten to death by mossies but were too tired to care,it was more the mental concentration of trying not to be an idiot and keep safe that takes it out of you....La Paz is a wonderful city,so vibrant and colourful and full of those indigineous bolivian women carrying impossibly large bundles. We´ve visited all the locak markets including the Witches market which focuses on anything made of llama but also sells llama foetuses which are pretty bloody rank,but are meant to provide good luck,not sure what british customs would have to say if i strolled through customs with a llama foetus on my shoulder...We also went to the wrestling aswell,which was very very amateur,and very very funny,all the wrestlers were over the age of 40 and indulged in some hilariously fake and rather long-winded warfare.They threw people into the crowd etc which was entertaining,i missed the midget fight aswell which i´m still aggrieved about.So yes,as i am nearly at the end of my 2nd week in La Paz and the Wild Rover,we´ve decided to leave our wonderful group of friends and head to Copacobana tomorrow and Lake Titicaca and then onwards and upwards to explore Peru.
Missing home loads but only 45 days or something silly so we better get our move on and stop enjoying ourselves so much...
Love to everyone xxxxx