Bolivia

Being the poorest country in South America, Bolivia is by far the cheapest country we visited. It also came at a good time for our well worn wallets! We arrived into Copacabana...not the best introductory town to Bolivia. It did have nice views of the lake but like many border towns it was bit of a dump. There was plenty of jostling amongst agents here for doing island tours off Lake Titicaca, (largest high altitude lake in the world). The island most people visit here is called Isla del Sol (island of sun) and it did exactly what it said on the tin...absolutely roasted me! Liz cancelled on this trip as a combination of altitude sickness and bus fatigue caught up with her, lucky for her though she dodged the cherry treatment.




Local "cholita' woman selling various corn snacks





Main Street at Isla del Sol looking out at Lake Titicaca





Essential Llama "toe" socks for the alti-plano



It was a full day trip out to an island in the middle of a lake. The views were terrific here as one side of the lake looks out onto the snowy mountains of Bolivia and the other onto Peru. The island tours’ first obligatory stop: a little museum that is basically a room in a shack. Here there were some artefacts discovered in the 90's just off the island in the lake... no great shakes just standard llama and puma terracotta pottery. I began the hike across the island with a stop off at a sacred ground where the Spanish guide gave us a low down on all the Incan beliefs here. Alot of ancient ruins but after Peru I was starting to switch off at the mention of the word Inca.




Isla de Sol



When we got up to the island, we were walking up to the first little stop when I got talking to Dilan, a Sri Lankan/Toronto native. Normal conversation resumed: he asked where I was from and after I told him,  he gave me a "No Way, I studied in Ireland in NUIG for a few years!" I was like deadly and then he unzips his jacket and reveals the maroon of the tribesmen...for the un-anointed amongst ye..... what was he wearing but a proper Galway GAA Jersey with the Aer Arann sponsor jumping off it. I couldn't believe it. On an island in the middle of a lake in Bolivia!




The Galway Man of Isla del Sol!





Picturesque shots of the Bolivian side from Isla del Sol





Our Isla del Sol Trek crew



I ended up trekking right the way across the island and having the craic with himself and his travelling buddy, Max and two girls from New Zealand. We finished up agreeing to meet up further down the road. When I got back to Copacabana, thankfully Liz was feeling better and we went for some grub with our two new Zealander friends and a German lad. The hospitality service was atrocious here and I reckon the Bolivians haven't really got the whole "hospitality" industry.

La Paz

We belted on to La Paz and the views of the city coming in here were pretty immense. It's the highest capital city in the world and it nestles right in a bowl. Coming from Lake Titicaca didn't leave us with too many high altitude worries as we were now in Bolivia and on the altiplano (high Andean plains) where basically the Andes are widest and cover a huge flat land expanse.



La Paz - a city cradled in the heart of the Andes



From the centre
you can see the city's suburbs climbing the mountains

Llama and Alpaca wool street shops

The Witches Market in la Paz

The items hanging from the roof outside the shop are Llama Foetus!

In La Paz there's a ton of stuff to do. We first of all signed ourselves up for The Death Road.  This is basically a very narrow road that runs right around a series of mountains. Back when they had two lanes of traffic on it something 200-300 people used to get killed on it a year. There's no traffic on it now, or actually there was two or three trucks we met but that was more because there had been a landslide on the main road. Today it's a bit over hyped as although its a bit dangerous in parts you can rally the bike with a good degree of confidence knowing you're not goin to end up flying off a 600 metre drop.

Death Road



Preparations under way to tackle Death Road

Our trip down was pretty easy, to be fair we had a good recommendation of a company called Vertigo. The bikes were top notch and the lads checked them at each safety stop. I did get a burst tyre on the way down at one stage but the lads from the company were all over it in seconds and I was back rallying over rocks in no time. Liz was just short on a basket at the front of her bike with a carton of milk and a loaf of bread stuck into it, talk about taking it easy down the road, which to be fair to her, was to be expected!

Go Team Extreme!

As you drop down from altitude the sun starts to bake you and the supply truck coming behind was great for picking up the shedding of layers. I didn't really get to check the sights, only really on the stops as your solely focused on the next three metres in front of your tyre that are coming at you fairly fast!

Livin on the Edge!

 

That night we went back into the city to meet up with an Irish couple we had met the night before at the Ireland-Sweden game. We had found out the same night that the pub we were in were celebrating a one year opening the following night so luck would have it they were laying on some free drink and food in the same bar! We pulled ourselves together after Death Road and hit La Paz. I had also arranged to meet up with the two Canadian lads: Max and Dilan from Isla del Sol here. As we walked in we were greeted by the Irish couple and we were both handed a free cocktail. Next thing Max and Dilan appeared with randomly one of the lads I had made friends with on The Death Road who turned out to be their mate. At this stage I just knew it was going to be a belter of a night. Sure enough we ended up having a great night and we celebrated the anniversary of the Old English Pub with jelly shots and with a great bunch of new friends.

 

After recovering from that big night we did a city walking tour. This was quality and nearly all capital cities in South America are worthy of one. Our meeting point on the tour was at a central park just in front of a prison. This prison was one of the most famous prisons in the world called San Pedro. In here the prisoners had the run of the place and if you ended up here you would have to rent a room. How do ya pay the rent and make cash????? I hear you ask.....well the lads would basically get some of their mates on the outside to rob a car and being in cahoots with the coppers......When the victim would report it to them, the cops would pass on a phone number. At which point the person would ring in and the person on the other end of the line was one of the bosses in the prison telling them to bring a load of cash into the prison the next day or so and they will get their car back. This is honest to god truth, apparently this happens loads. Anyways they go inside the prison and hand over the dosh and are handed a map of where their car is.

Learning from Marcelo about larger sacrifices than Llama necessary to make by locals before building
new buildings. The larger the building...the larger the sacrifice....I'll let your imagination work that one out!





A mural of a La Paz shoe shiner.Street shoe shiners are
looked down on and for their shame they wear a balaclava

The entrance into the infamous San Pedro prison, security on the door would not let me
take a photo up close

All sorts of other mad stuff happened in here - a British guy got thrown in here a few years back and wrote a great book about it called Marching Powder.

After this we chilled in the city and had heard about this "Cholita Wrestling" from a few fellow travellers, this was basically local ladies wrestling against each other. It was on every Sunday and was on a bit out of town but having the Spanish, we navigated the local collectivos fairly handy to what looked like a community centre. What unfolded next was hilarious. The little local Bolivian Andean women with the short dresses and bowler hats with long pig tails were in a wrestling ring getting thrown around by the local wrestling baddie. They even had their own local "Vince Mcmann" who would grab the mic and just randomly appear in the ring during a bout much to the ire of the locals.

 

Me with one of the stars of the show!



One of the Cholita's baring the full force of a "blow" to the head

Liz feeling the agression

Cholita coming at ya!

A lot of the time I just started to look at the stands and the local ladies reactions. Some of them were losing their minds at the sight of some big bad-ass goone double crossing and slying into the ring or the dodgy ref sneaking in a few "digs". One of the auld wans in the stand kept throwing orange peel at the ref and when he started to give her lip, she started to wield around this big two litre bottle of coke like she was gonna throw it, everyone was loving it.

Local lady swinging that big bottle of Coke!

Each bout went on for about 20 minutes and after a eight bouts and a series of dramatic storylines which all seemed to be linked to one corrupt ref, the lights went down on it. The local kids were absolutely transfixed and were screaming every time a "watch out behind you" type bad guy revealed himself. A very funny experience!

After this, we met up with our friends Elaine and Dan and enjoyed a table quiz in the Wild Rover. They had just flown in from the Amazon that evening. I was looking forward to the week ahead as I had just learned Ecuador were playing Bolivia in a World Cup qualifier in La Paz on Tuesday and tickets would be handy to come by. They had planned on heading on south to Sucre the next day but once they got a sniff of the match happening and that there would be a an all day session going on in the Wild Rover, they shelved their plans and signed up for the game.

A thumbs up for our team at the tie-breaker at the quiz night

The tie breaker was decided by being the first one to down a ridiculous shot of three types of toxic drink

Enjoying a night out at The Dubliner with Elaine and Dan

Followed by a VIP night at the cinema that cost $7

The match itself was grand. Playing at altitude must suck for any team coming to play in La Paz and Antonio Valencia(Manchester United winger) made about two runs the whole game after which he was left sucking in some big ones. The Bolivians scored first and everyone went mental. The Ecuadorians equalised quick enough after with a dubious pen. But the locals probably deserved full points overall. After we followed the atmosphere back to the Irish Bolivian hostel and had a good night.




Soaking up the atmosphere and adding to the
local support at the national stadium in la Paz




Ecuador scores a peno in the World Cup Qualifier against Bolivia



The night continues apace!

Salud! Toasting a baby Guinness at the Wild Rover with friends

We then belted south to Sucre which is a beautiful white wash-walled city and a little cultural melting pot. There never seems to be an end to marches and festival here nor a shortage of brass bands blasting and marching around the city. We were lucky enough to arrive in here for the annual famous local festival of "The Virgin of Guadalupe". There were huge marching and dancing bands of people taking part in this festival on the streets of Sucre and it lasted the whole weekend. This was again pure luck to land into town around the same time this was going on. 

Making new friends with Manon and Bart

The festival continued all weekend

Enjoying local treats at the street party

Meeting a brother of a young miner

Visiting Cretacious Park, home to the world's largest
collection of dinosaur footprints 

On the side of the hill, there are over 5,000 dinosaur tracks from 65 million years ago.
The local government made a dinosaur themed park beside here

Myself and Dan making the most out of the kiddies area!

An Unexpected Trek through the Andes in the Dark

We chilled here for 2 days and moved further south to Potosi. On the way here the bus pulled up early in the middle of the mountains a good 45 minutes outside of Potosi. Initially we didn't know what was happening and getting off the bus it became clear that the bus was going no further. What we didn't realise was that there was a local dispute between villages about the building of a new road. The villagers took to organising a road block. This involved scattering a load of large rocks on the road. We were told we would have to walk through the road block to reach the far side and catch a ride to Potosi. What we hadn't been told was that the road block was for 3km! We packed up our bags and started walking. 

 

After a while I noticed Liz struggling. She was carrying about 17kgs. I knew she wouldn't be able to hold it for much longer so I switched bags with my small carry bag and put her big bag on my front, on my back I was carrying my 19kgs. For three kilometres I carried both bags dodging the big rocks with nothing more than the moonlight to guide us. It was so surreal, there was no one else on the road. Here we were on the side of a mountain in the middle of no where in Bolivia carrying our homes on our back in the dark. We trekked on and after passing a disgruntled bunch of locals arguing amongst themselves at..what looked like a town meeting, we reached the end of the blockade. On the other side, traffic was backed up for miles including busloads of tourists making their way from Potosi to Sucre. We caught a taxi into town and arrived into Potosi weary from our unexpected night trek but glad we survived a more than dodgy situation!

Descending into The Devil's Mine in Potosi

Potosi is the mining capital of Bolivia. It is also home to Cerro Rico: this is a massive mountain that was once 70% silver. This town proved very interesting for when the Spanish colonised the mine, they industrialised the extraction of silver. They extracted so much that they could have built a bridge made out of silver all the way from US to Europe! Apparently 8 million people/slaves died in this mountain (that´s more than the Holocaust!) and its grimly called "The Mountain that Eats Men".

Cerro Rico towers over everything in Potosi



Liz enjoying the comforts of a radioator at the highest city in the world




At the famous national Mint in Potosi




With presents for the miners: Liz and dynamite...not a good combo!




Myself with beer and Coca leaves....better combo!




Cerro Rico





Miners pushing rock out of the mine 




With "Tio" after making our offerings of beer and cigarettes


 There are now 15,000 men working in the mines here in fairly wretched conditions and 800 children. We visited one of the co-operative mines which I wasn't too sure was a good idea beforehand but it was an interesting tour. We bought dynamite and beer for the miner and made some offerings to the Devil (Tio). The miners are all christian but they believe once you enter the mine, its the devil´s fate as to what happens them so offerings to appease Tio are a must. The miners did seem to have a good attitude to working here and their camaraderie was admirable. I had expected the worst after watching a film called "The Devil's Miner" which tells the story of a young boy trying to support his family as a miner. But overall the experience proved a lot less depressing than I imagined. The lonely planet does alot of scare mongering about these trips but we found it very interesting. It was uncomfortable but with alot of these harsh realities that you almost come to expect of these very enduring people of the Andes it was something neither myself nor Liz felt we could pass by without ignoring. A visit to the mines might not be the safest idea as a touristic trip but for us it was a necessary one. 



Our guide, Johnny and one of the miners packing
up some dynamite before lighting the fuse in the mine



Potosi was very bleak, its the highest city in the world and the people all look very dreary and seem like they´ve had a tough life. We stayed here for a couple of days and visited the old national Mint which has been converted into a fantastic museum. The history behind the mint was that the Spanish mined all the silver from Cerro Rico ("rich mountain") and then minted it and sent it back to Spain.  The guide on the tour here told us that they uncovered one of these ships off the Florida Quays that had been carrying coined silver from Potosi across the Atlantic during this colonial period. They estimated that one ship was carrying (in today´s currency) $450million! A few of these shipwrecks found and we could sort out our national debt! This place was an amazing spot and our guide also told us the mint was home to the actual creation of USA's dollar symbol.

After this we returned to Sucre to meet up with friends for the All-Ireland final. What can I say class win by the lads and a memorable day was had, aided by the fact that the session kicked off at 8.30 in the morning. Commiserations to the Mayo contingent, you will get there....one day! The Dubs did great and I made sure to enjoy the celebrations even from afar.