Bombing Bolivia

With our bags packed it was adios to San Pedro and Chile.  Hello Salar de Uni salt flats and Bolivia.  It was a short minivan ride from San Pedro to the Bolivian border for our change over to the four wheel drives that would take us through the salt flats.  Cold weather was the call of the day and a nice steady wind helped cut any tolerance anyone had to the cold.  Lucky the fourbies were warm and comfortable.  The first night we stayed in a hotel made entirely of salt!  Yes salt, the floors were salt, the walls were made of salt bricks with salt mortar, the tables and chairs were solid salt etc, etc.  It was amazing! 

Yep, it is salt!

The cactus's are big in these parts

The Salar de Uni salt flats are one of the most amazing places you could ever see.  Truly,  I really have no way of describing them so let the pictures talk….

Yep, definitely cold.  Note the snow

The drive.  Nothing but space

 On this part of the salt flats there was a thin layer of water which produced the most amazing reflections and really blurred the horizon.

More big cactus's.  This time these were on a little island oasis in the middle of the salt flat.  Some of the cactus's were nearly 900 years old and 9m high!

After 2 days touring we arrived at our second nights’ accommodation where the scenery was action packed.  We had a volcano, lamas, flamingoes, mummies, amazing sun sets and more…..  Absolutely amazing.  Here are more photos to do the talking.

Flamingos by sunset.

 

Near the volcano crater behind our second nights accommodation

Dids on top of the world

 Lama.  There were heaps.  They are cool and oh so soft!

The only hiccup of the whole trip was when our four wheel drive pulled up on the second day with no brakes at all.  Cool, way cool.  Even a night time backyard repair job performed by the guide could not fix it. To his credit we still drove on without any incident.

The trip finished up in Unyuni where we soon booked a 10 hour overnight bus ride to La Paz.  What a bus ride!!  I truly believe it is physically impossible to sleep on that trip and I think there were another 30 passengers who could attest to this.  In La Paz the goal was food and sleep and that is what we did.  Later we booked two tours, one to mountain bike the world’s deadliest road and a second to do a spot of canyoning.  

Well the world’s deadliest road is amazing!  Mountain biking it is fun as hell as well.  It is not so bad on a bike but when it was open to traffic you can easily see why it claimed between 200 and 300 lives per year!  The ride started at about 5000m and finished at about 1500m.  That is a whole heap of downhill!  Actually it was something like 78km of downhill.  There was one spot of uphill on the way where the guide challenged one and all to a race for beers.  The group was at a disadvantage though with heavy downhill bikes while the guide zipped along on a light cross country bike.  So sneakily I tried to even the score with a little local help.  With the guide far enough in front I flagged down a local driver and asked him if I could hitch a ride holding onto his door.  No problems and with this I made up a fair bit of time.   I love the people here, they are sooooo cool!  I did chicken out at the end and decided not to let the guide see me do this in fear of him kicking me off the ride for being “too careless”.  Baaah!  So he won.

The entire ride was excellent and Dids got a good feel for what mountain biking is like.  The smile on her face meant she enjoyed the day thoroughly.  There was only one injury in our group of 10 and that was a broken collar bone for the nice Dutch dad.  This was a big bummer for him because next he was to trek the Inca trail and complete the remaining 2 weeks of his trip with the family.  This is what you get when you push too hard though.   (Update: we later found out that the dad broke 3 ribs and his collar bone in 2 places.  A little surgery later....)

 This was a pretty standard drop along the road.  Some were 600+m straight down!

This was one of the many monuments for the people who had died along the road.  This particular one was placed at the sight of the murder of six political opponents to the then ruling party.  Apparently, the ruling party was looking like losing the election, so kicking your opponents off a 600m sheer drop was one way of regaining power. 

  A little vid of the day.  I'm number 2 past the camera, Dids is number 7 in the blue.

Dids and I said good bye to the group and stopped for the night at a local animal refuge where we got to meet some local monkeys, Macaws and even a Spectacled Bear.  Unfortunately the guy running the joint was all too interested in getting money out of us and this soured the experience.   I think the description getting around was that he was a “right tosser” (Dids speak).

The next day we were met by our friendly local canyoning guide Lucio.  He picked us up from the refuge and took us to the local town where we grabbed our provisions, a second guide Marcus and headed off for the mountains.  Well if we thought the worlds deadliest road was bad, the roads we were driving to the canyon we were to trek were waaaaay worse!  We were slip sliding up some very wet clay roads in a taxi van.  Dids was in the back with me losing her stuff at the driver and generally getting quite worked up.  The local guides were just kicking back and chilling in contrast to this.  Well we pushed as far as the taxi could go before we had to abandon it and trek by foot.  We passed through Marcus’s house on the way to the canyon.  Here we got shown the coca plantation and the ancient Incan terracing which was still being worked by his grandfather.  

Near the river we were kitted up with our wetsuits and other abseiling gear.  Then it was down to the river and “quick jump down that water fall”.  We abseiled down nine waterfalls in total as we made our way through the canyon.  The two guides were awesome even though they spoke absolutely no English.  The end of the day was spent jumping off rock ledges and being carried down river by some small rapids.  Way cool. 

At the end of the day we were dropped off at the local minibus terminal where our guide stuck by us to fight the local crowds for tickets to get us back to La Paz.  There is no etiquette here for buying these tickets either.  It goes like this….When the bus shows up you rush to the ticket office and kick, punch, bite and in one guys case cry your way to the front for the few limited tickets.  One French guy started on our guide for cutting the line and not playing fair.  Bloody idiot, I hope he is still there playing fair and waiting for a ticket.  Haha! 

The minibus ride back was interesting.  Foggy, wet roads, landslide wash outs very, very limited visibility, a maniacal desire to speed and overtake……Oh my god!  But we got back, that’s all that matters.

Next it is chill out time in La Paz.   Deserved I think, the life of an adventure traveler is hard!

Che Che Che Chile!

South America at last!  11 hours in a bus, an 8 hour layover in London and a 17 hour flight to Santiago……Whoa!  The traveling part of traveling really sucks.   But we have arrived.  

The first day was basically spent doing as little as possible and trying to catch up on some well needed sleep.  The next day however we reverted to exploration mode and with the help of a simple map (no GPS haha!) we decided to tour the town.  Problem….Chilean’s don’t like street signs….very big problem.  That made things interesting.  Using our whits and some local landmarks we made our way to our first hostel.   It was a friendly place with opportunities for meeting lots of other travelers, each with their own stories to tell.  Pretty cool.  There was also a nice representation of Kiwis too.  Hell, they are almost Australian.

Santiago is cold though!  Really cold.  We decided not to hate but appreciate the cold and made a prompt two day ski trip booking at one of the local ski resorts called El Colorado.  Picking the snowboarding option over skiing, we were chuffed with the deal we got.  After leaving the shop we thought it a good idea to grab a bite of lunch.  Holey moley!  I ordered a pork leg with side dish for $10, and did I get a pork leg!  All 2 plus kilos of it!  I had to order a separate plate just to fit the meat I carved off!  Pork poisoning is awesome!  We decided to skip dinner that night for obvious reasons.

The next morning we left Santiago at 8:30am for the mountains.  Arriving at the resort we were delighted to see only a few people and some pretty good looking slopes.  With Dids as my instructor we set about learning the basics.  I think I did pretty well for the first day but I did crash a fair bit.  Apparently my face likes snow…..  I had one really good crash in particular that had me seeing stars for the next couple of minutes. This ended my day on a bit of a downer.  But the next day, nursing some aches and bruises it was back to the slopes and back to it.  This day was far more enjoyable and with less crashes I found it far more relaxing.  By the end of the second day I was able to turn however I wanted, easily traverse some nice steep slopes and even do a couple of little hops.  I was well chuffed.

El Colorado ski lift to 3,300m

Personalised equipment

First day snowboarding

First day snowboarding video

The end of the first day.....broken

Exhausted and broken we hoped back on the bus to head for home.  Little did we know though, there was a big soccer match on that night and the bus driver was keen to get back to watch it.  With the radio up full volume, the horn tooting like mad and the driving etiquette dialed to friggin maniac we made it home in a ridiculously short amount of time.  People talk about the crazy drivers in this country but it is something to see it.  Back in Santiago, the streets around the hostel were crammed with people chanting “Che Che Che Chile!” as they ran amuck.  The passion is amazing but seriously, come on guys, it is only soccer…..  You wouldn’t say that here though, they gladly proclaim to kill for their team!  

After deliberating a bit on our travel itinerary we decided our goal should be to save some money.  For this, Chile was not the place as it is the most expensive country in these parts.  So a plan was formulated to travel to Bolivia where we had heard you could live very comfortably for around $20 per person per day.  To do this we decided to travel from Santiago to San Pedro in the north of Chile.  With a bus ride taking something like 26 hours we thought it wise to break this journey up.  Our first stop was Valparaiso, 2 hours out of Santiago.  Here we got to see some trademark South American housing, murals etc.  Next it was on to La Sarina where we lay over for a night before moving to San Pedro. 

 Valparaiso hillside shacks

Some of the many murals all around Valparaiso.  These led up to our hostel.

 More murals

From one bearded man to another

Even the stray dogs are trendy

Easter Island statue in La Sarina

San Pedro was quite an experience.  The town itself seemed like it had been lifted straight from a wild west movie with dirt streets, dusty lane ways and so on.  It was a town however totally devoted to tourism which made the experience a little disappointing.  It was a good place however for us to book a trip across the Salar de Uni salt flats into Bolivia.  Unfortunately, unseasonal snow falls in the driest desert on earth (the Atacama Desert) meant that the tour itineraries had to be modified from their usual configurations.  This meant a different, less trodden route which we were quite ok with.  So tomorrow it is into some four wheel drives and onward ho into the great desert.  Giddy-up, time to wrangle us some lama and pat some cactus's.

 In San Pedro we rented two mountain bikes and road around the local desert canyons.  Here a friendly local dog who we dubbed "Pete" followed us around for a happy half days adventuring.

Dids and Pete in a canyon

The Cost of a Danish Pastry

Well I guess there are a few ways to describe Denmark.  I think the most appropriate is the “coin slot” of Europe.  Everything here costs.  Everything!  This is unfortunate for the budget conscious traveler as it makes Denmark a hard nut to crack.  I took the approach of just having a good time while trying to minimize the damage.  Hopefully I don’t achieve financial ruin.

So to the start of my adventure.  My journey began with a nice long car ride up around the top of the Netherlands and Germany before I entered Denmark.  I stopped for the night at a neat little hostel in the smallish city of Odense.  It was here I found out my first three things about Denmark.   It is expensive as sin, everybody speaks english and absolutely nothing happens on a Sunday.  So needless to say, this Sunday night was not much of an experience.  I was up early the next day eager to complete my drive to Copenhagen.  The trip was full of exciting firsts.  Most notable were the following:

1)      I was lapped by my first hearse on the motorway, and I was doing 130!

2)      I crossed the longest bridge I have ever seen.  It was 15km long!

3)      I paid $40 for my one way crossing of the bridge!

This is just a portion of the bridge.  Apparently it is the third largest suspension bridge in the world and a fair bit larger than the Golden Gate bridge.  It was Denmarks largest ever construction project.

Arriving early into Copenhagen, I picked up a room at the cheapest inner city hostel I could find.  This was a good move because everybody was here, making it a fun kinda place.  From here I walked the town exploring the sights.

The local canals

They let you have fun here at the pool.
Impressions of Copenhagen?  Well it is like someone dialed in blonde hair, blue eyes and hit the grow button a few too many times.  The people here are huge!  With the way they dress it is like being in a designer city full of one million Sven lookalikes, it is just that surreal.  This is the first place I have ever been where I am the average height.  Far out.  Another observation is that the general populous is very well behaved here.  You would not expect to see anyone stealing, shouting or even tending to an inappropriate itch in public.  Though they do tend to litter which is odd.

Hiring a bike, I managed to traverse the city and see a whole heap of public sights.  I also managed to get my butt handed to me by a heap of 6 foot women cyclists.  I take solace in the fact that they are more like urban yeti’s than women and what man wouldn’t get done by a yeti?

Teeing up with another fellow backpacker the next day, I travelled in the little red rocket to a local deer sanctuary just north of the city.  All fed up with city living, we took the opportunity to go a little off the beaten track in search of hoards of deer.  Well it didn’t take long before we were up to our eyeballs in deer.  It was really cool and had I been in hunting mode it would have been criminal how many you could have bagged.  We joked that it would have been a good idea to knock a few over because it would have gone someways to solving our issues regarding the expense of food.

Sneaky deer

There were way more bucks to see than we thought.  There was also an albino one.

That night we took to the streets with a six pack of beer (because it is legal here to drink in public) and wondered around talking to the locals.  When we ran out of beer we bought more.  It was awesome.  They charge you an upfront recycling fee for your beer cans though of 20 cents per can.  When you return the can, you get your 20 cents.  This meant the bums here were in the money if they collected cans.  We were approached by some of the most well mannered bums I have ever seen for the “donation” of our cans.  Hilarious.

Having our fill of beer and random stuff we walked back to the hostel only to get a little lost along the way.  As fate would have it we took the wrong street back and ended up in a red light district of sorts.  It was here we soon came to see there are many ladies of the night in Copenhagen.  You shouldn’t make eye contact with them either otherwise you are in for some haranguing!  I had 3 African women literally jump on me for just saying hi back to them, which I can’t help but do since it’s quite Australian to say g’day to someone if they say it to you.  I had all sorts of offers coming left right and centre and seeing their aggressive fashion, I thought it a good idea to break free and high tail it.  Funny stuff.

The following day I took to leaving Copenhagen for the Lake District in the hope of a bit of kayaking.  Unfortunately the weather set in and I was forced to hold up in a hostel at Arhus.  Arhus is Denmark’s second largest city and not as chic as Copenhagen.  Talking to some others at the hostel I managed to meet up with a lady called Amily who told me about a sculptures by the sea exhibition that was happening just nearby.  This is the same exhibition as back in Australia.  It was apparently brought to Denmark by the crown prince who has married an Aussie gal and hence got to know about it.  So trading my wheels for directions, the next morning we both set of to see the sculptures.

Amily and some sculptures hidden in the parklands

After running around the sculptures having a good old time I said goodbye to Amily and hopped in the car for my drive back to the Netherlands.  Wasn’t the drive fun too!  3 hours of standstill traffic in Hamburg as the whole city came to a gridlock leaving you nowhere to go.  Impressions of Hamburg….I’m never going there again!  So 10 or so hours later I was in the Netherlands, exhausted but happy for a fun time in Denmark.  I really think I would like to go back that way to visit Sweden, Norway and Iceland.  I will just have to save a bit of money to afford it first!

But now I am packing up my gear, selling the car back to my cousin and boarding a bus to London to connect with my flight to Santiago.  I am sooooo looking forward to South America, from all accounts when talking to other travelers it is my kinda place.  Beer, food, adventure sports and beer.  Hell yeah!