Potosi to Peru

After Potosi, as promised I went on to Sucre, the legislative capital of Bolivia. The bus ride there contained much excitement. I was seated at the back of the bus, above the rear right wheel. It was getting dark and I noticed flashing orange lights coming from underneath and I thought to myself ¨Yeah! a Bolivian party bus. Go Bolivia!¨ However I was to be mistaken. They weren´t party lights...it was FIRE! I didn´t realise this until the bus had pulled over after multiple cars had flashed their lights at us. The fire was eventually put out by everyone´s drinking water, leaving us with none. Fortunately, the bus trip was only 1.5 hours more.

Sucre itself was a pretty town though I feel that Potosi was perhaps nicer. Sucre is well known for it´s white washed colonial buildings and there were a few of those but mainly centred around the main plaza. The rest was as per the rest of Bolivia. There was a textile museum which was quite interesting. It looked at the history of weaving in Bolivia and the museum raises money to teach locals their traditional techniques to prevent them from dying out. I also went up to a conventy thing which was a steep walk though was well rewarded by the views that greeted me at the top. The convent housed a whole lot of religious art (by Anon), and a cedar that was over 1000 years old. The actual church was beautifully decorated also.

That night I left sucre and my travelling buddy of the last couple of days (Bertram from Germany), heading to La Paz. Everything they say of this night bus is true. It was long, stopped many, many times and was FREEZING!!! A lovely Bolivian man who was sat next to me was kind enough to share his blanket with me. I might have died of exposure otherwise.

La Paz was a city to behold. I stayed at Loki, which I might never do again for reasons which will become apparent. On arrival, I booked my mountain bike tour of The World´s Most Dangerous Road and then wandered into the city for some lunch. It´s a huge city with steep, steep streets which are really slippery with stones that have been walked on for what I imagine would be more than hundreds of years. The markets were interesting but there wasn´t the bartering that I thought there´d be. Oh well. The next morning I woke to do the WMDR which was awesome. I was aprehensive at first because of the well known 400m sheer drops from the edge of the road, the gravel we rode on (instead of asphalt), and the deaths that were constantly being talked about. I eventually loosened up and our group ended up being one of the fastest that our guide Matt had taken, having finished around 1.40pm. I also managed to meet some lovely Perth peeps on the tour, as well as a Noosa boy and a Brazillian living in Sydney. I spent the next two days consequently hanging with them. The following day we did the San Pedro Prison, made famous by Thomas McFadden for his drug smuggling. This was an eye-opener to say the least and that´s about all I´ll say apart from ¨Read the book.¨ That night was just a chilled night chatting in Yelena and Chris´room, up until I went to my own to change into my PJ´s, only to find that people had been smoking in the dorm and that they had left their empty cigarettes in my clothes. NOT HAPPY JAN! Then, when I awoke the next morning and looked in my locked box in reception, the $1300 Bolivianos ($300AUD) that I´d put in there the night before to pay for my room, bus out of La Paz, etc was GONE!!! There was much cursing though surprisingly very few tears. Osgur (the guy who runs the hostel) was kind enough to reimburse me half as he felt given the security of the building, it shouldn´t have happened and he felt partly responsible...damn straight. But live and learn. I spent the afternoon therefore trying to forget about it. I watched the new Bond flic which was partly set in Bolivia so that was cool. The others all left that night and I then bussed on to Copacabana and Lake Titicaca the following morning.

Copacabana was a cute little town though not much to do there. I did a day trip out to Isla del Sol, Isla de la Luna and the ¨floating islands¨they have there. It was nothing too special but I´ve done it now. I also did the climb up the cerro to see the sunset and that was about it for Copacabana. Or so I thought. Due to some farmer turmoil in Peru, the bus we (me and an Irish dude I´d met) had taken to get to Puno to see the real floating islands wasn´t able to cross the border and so we were stuck in Copa for the night. I could think of worse places to be stuck. It was cheap and the company was good. Today though I´ve made it to Peru and am sitting in an internet cafe killing time til my Uros Island tour (aka the floating islands). Until next time...Hasta luego!