Dinosaurs and Nestor Kirchner

Plaza Mayor Buenos Aires - we want our Islands back

We planned to have a couple of relaxing days in Buenos Aires before heading south. On the second day we had a look around the city and went to the giant Mausuleum in the city centre, full of over the top buildings housing family coffins. The most interesting was that of Eva Peron, national treasure and subject of Andrew Lloyd Webbers and Tim Rices attention writing the play Evita about her (don´t cry for me Argentina etc).  We heard that on the third day there was going to be a census count so nothing would be open so decided to stay an extra day.

On that day we woke up to find Nestor Kirchner had also died aged 60 - the countries previous prime 

Don´t cry for me Argentina....Eva Peron Grave

minister and also husband of current prime minister Christina Kirchner, so 3 days of mourning were also declared. That day  was really bizarre, the city was completely dead. We went into the city centre and found one cafe open in the whole city. Mcdonalds and Burger king were even closed! Consequently we had no lunch, and had to wait until 8pm when all the restaurants reopened.

On the day we were due to get the night bus south to Neuquen, we went into the plaza to see the huge gathering of Argentines that were waving flags and lining up to view the body of Kirchner. A woman approached us asking if we were German, when i said i was English she poked my chest and launched into some tirade about the Falklands, i couldn´t make out exactly what she was saying but it wasn´t friendly!! There was a falklands 

Fierce creatures (and Emma!)

demonstration also going on in the plaza nearby (amazing how any large gathering attracts nationalists with  flags, especialy when the nation is feeling a bit wounded....), and Christina Kirchner had recently been twittering away about the British being colonialists because we are practising Navel maneouvers in the Southern Atlantic, so i don´t think that helped the anti British mood any.......

The bus to Neuquen took 16 hours and wasn´t wonderful but fairly comfortable. Neuquen was another city like Santa Cruz a couple of weeks previously, it was a large functional city with no tourist facilities. The next day we took the bus to a village called El Chocon to visit the dinosaur museum and footprints. The museum was easy to find, and had some very impressive skeletons in it including a huge T-rex type creature. We went to a cafe and asked 

Dinosaur Footprints

where the footprints were, and it seemed they were some distance but we set off anyway to find them.


Dinosaur Footprints in the rock



Then the girl in the cafe came out and asked if we wanted a lift there!  We ended up on an ATV being driven around for a couple of great hours by the 12 year old son of one of the workers there. It was great, i loved the rules stuck on the ATV. No under 16´s. No passengers. Don´t go on roads. We managed them all.



He took us to see 2 sets of footprints that were really clear, set in stone on the edge of a beautiful artificial lake which were really amazing, over 100million years old and there was quite a few of them. We would have had no chance of finding them ourselves, there was  no signposts and they were miles away.

So it turned out to be a great day, however no thanks to the argentinian tourism industry.......!

Return to Buenos Aires and the return of the holiday curse

After a really pleasant couple of days in Foz i got a transfer over the border into Argentina to the town of Puerto Igazu. Its a small town and one that serves only as a base for Igazu falls, unlike Foz which is a large city (and a lot less safe and pleasant).

The site to visit the falls is alot better developed on the Argentinian side. There are several circuits that can be walked in the Jungle surrounding the falls so i spent a very pleasant few hours following the routes as they went in and out of the Jungle and regularly passed over and beside stunning waterfalls. The highlight was a very long bridge that crossed a river for half a mile before ending at devils throat, the area where the biggest volume of  water converges and crashes into the river below. It is truely spectacular, very difficult to get your head around the volumes of water that are passing through. There were huge clouds of mist arcing into the sky and giant rainbows when the sun caught it. Very beautiful.
There was also a huge amount of wildlife in the surrounding area, large lizards crossing the paths and invading the cafe stops, clouds of brightly coloured butterflies and also a lot of brightly coloured birds everywhere. It really is a wonderful place.

I then had to get the bus to Buenos aires, after my experience in the Chaco i was not thrilled at the prospect as it was at least 18 hours away. I treated myself to the more luxurious Cama option, where you get better seats that recline almost horizontaly, better meals and alcoholic drinks provided. It was great! Really comfortable, great cooked food, wine, champagne and whiskey handed out during the evening. I sat watching Mad Max on the TV, it would have been difficult to improve on!! Crossing the chaco and watching Transporters 1, 2 and 3 back to back at ear splitting volume while getting baked alive quickly became a distant memory.

Buenos Aires is a fantastic city, something i couldn´t appreciate as much last time as  i was jet lagged and only had a full day here before flying to Salta. I met an Australian couple Rene and Gerard on the first day went out and got fantastic steak with them, then took a city tour by bicycle. The tour was great, although we cycled through La Boca which is a tourist no go area because its very poor and violent. We cycled up to Bocas stadium and past the training ground where kids were spying on the team through gaps in the fences. Everybody were playing football in the parks. I loved the fact that the Coca Cola signs outside the stadium are black and white because their much hated rivals River Plate play in red and black and they wouldn´t allow them to advertise in those colours. 
The day after i went to San Telmo market which has a huge range of stalls selling everything from 100year old maps of Argentina, to antiques, to very old toys, to stunning oil paintings of couples dancing Tango, to vintage musical instruments, old old signs advertising tango bars. A guy was playing Tango on guitar, groups were standing in circles playing drums. Wonderful.

Boca fans top tier. Louder





I predict a riot....Boca vs Independiente

That afternoon i had booked to go and see Boca Juniors playing Independiente. I didn´t check the details too well as it turned out they played at Independiente! None of us realised as the stadium was very close to the city centre, it was only when somebody asked why the seats were red and black not the blue and gold of Boca that we realised we were watching the legendary side but away!! grrrr. It was an entertaining match, obviously a much higher skill level than games i´ve seen in the UK. The Boca fans created a great atmosphere on the far side of the stadium, the whole time chanting and playing drums. It turns out Boca aren´t the powerhouse they once were, sitting mid table alongside Independiente It was 0-0,  Independiente were slightly the better side.

Emma arrived today!! Very early might i add! I got to the airport for 7.15am, and she appeared looking very sleepy but very lovely 45 minutes later just as i was wondering if she had missed the flight.....shes having a quick powernap at the moment. I could do with one aswell, had a fairly late night (for an old person - midnight!) with Gareth and Lizzie who i met originaly on Lake Titicaca a few weeks ago. Another amazing steak of course, and it would have been rude not to drink a reasonable quantity of red wine........

Marvellous. My memory card has corruped and lost all my Igazu and Football pics, that is indescribably annoying. God damn my piece of shit camera. Will try and get some copies of the footy and stick them up later.

Paraguay And Igazu falls

The bus ride to Acuncion was about as much fun as i was expecting! The actual bus was ok, but the ride

Plaza in Acuncion

took 23 hours, it was over 100F even through the night and there was no air conditioning, so i spent the whole trip glazing out of the window with my tongue hanging out.
Whenever i looked out of the window the scenery was exactly the same - cactuses, shrubs, no hills or mountains just huge expanses of the Chaco passing hour after hour. There was a few ranches in the middle of nowhere, i assume run by Menomites.
There was a few Menomites on the bus - they originate from Russia, speak a form of German, and looked very much like the Waltons. Thats all i know about them, apart from i couldn´t help staring at them, they look facinating like something out of another age. 

I arrived in Acuncion and was not surprisingly exhausted - despite the lack of things to do i stayed 3 nights as i couldn´t handle the prospect of any more bus time for a while. It was like Santa Cruz in that there was no tourist facilities, just a fairly pleasant, friendly city. The highlight was a train museum where all the old equipment was made in England in the 1920´s. That and the fact that the hostal had its fair share of wierdo´s hovering around all the time making the receptionist really uncomfortable but entertaining me, i did wonder what type of people would be attracted there.....!

I took the far more reasonable 7 hour ride to Foz de Igazu in Brazil, and it was like a different world! Amazing hostal with pool, bar, giant TV, great breakfast - the first time i had decent bread for 2 months, they recycle, the buses are neat and logical, skype works, there aren´t dogs running around everywhere.....
Igazu falls was amazing - really stunning. On the Brazilian side you can get the full panoramic view, so i spent a couple of hours there. The pictures speak for themselves. Tomorrow i visit the Argentinian side, apparently there are a lot more walks you can do in and around that area so i will post more pics then.

Che Guevara

The flight to Santa Cruz was very straight forward i was disappointed / relieved to discover. I was called a military airline but looked and felt like a commercial one. The only difference was that there was no security procedures, no x-rays or searches, nothing! In the west we can learn from that, as it meant that queues were none existent.

The spot where Che´s luck ran out

It only took a 30 minute flight to get well and truely off the Gringo trail. I got into the city, and found there was no tourists, no tourist facilities and so consequently nothing to do. Santa Cruz is a big commercial hub, an attractive looking city that felt nothing like the rest of Bolivia. The chaos in the streets was absent, it didn´t look like a Bolivian town, it is obviously affluent and even the people looked different - more Brazilian than Indian.

I decided very quickly to head to Saimapata, a town a few hours away that i had heard you could book

Laundry table Che´s body was displayed

trips to the nearby Amboro National Park. I went out to eat and bumped into an unfortunate Irish girl (the only other tourist i met) who had been stuck there a week waiting for a road north to open.
The next day i took the Sucre bus which stopped in Samapaita on the way. I justified my decision to fly the reverse route because the bus was in an atrocious condition, seats missing etc, and the window next to me was stuck open so i was happy i wasn´t having to spend 15 hours on it heading all the way to Sucre.

Samaipata was a lovely little town, but i had the same problem that there wasn´t any tourists. Tours to the

Site of Che grave next to Vallegrande airfield

park would have run only for my benefit and cost 100GBP a day in spanish only, which i didn´t want to do. The only tour running the next day (i tried every agency) was a Che Guevara tour. Che spent his last days in southern Bolivia running from the CIA (who didn´t want him overthrowing South American governments as he had done in Cuba) and Bolivian army before being caught and executed for treason. I had the t-shirt a while ago and have read a couple of books by him, so i am pretty interested in him.

It was an expensive and a long day but very interesting. We visited the canyon where he was chased and

Site Che was executed

caught (large memorial marks the spot), the old school building he was executed along with a couple of comrades (full of messages down with imperialism / long live che / love letters to him from confused angry teens etc etc) and the grave where he was dumped anonymously in a military airfield along with several others before being exhumed 30 years later by a Cuban delegation.

There was a German guy with us called Stephan. I had discussed with him on the way my admiration for Germans and the way they travel so extensively so wasn´t surprised that the only other tourist in Samaipata was German, so imagine my amusement when i found out a girl named Tanya buried alongside Che was second generation German...........see! they get everywhere even south american revolutionary groups..........

Potosi and the Silver Mines

Outside the mine

Silver was discovered in Potosi in 1545, unfortunately the spanish found out and spent 2.5 centuries forcing the indigenous peoples to mine it, and using the wealth to support the Spanish empire. The mines are still used mainly by private cooperatives. Most of the silver has been mined - now its mainly Tin and Lead.

I was interested in visiting the mines, so i booked a trip. I managed to find an agency that had just opened, and so had no other customers so i had a 1-1 trip with an ex miner which was really facinating, but not sure if i would describe it as enjoyable!

On the way into the mine

First we visited a miners store where its traditional to buy gifts for the miners - I could have bought 96% alcohol and dynamite, but after tasting the alcohol there and nearly throwing up and taking the moral high ground i bought coca leaves and soda instead (to dilute the alcohol they have already - they drink it at 40-50%! lightweights)
We drove to the mine at Cerro Rico (rich hill) just outside Potosi, and walked for 1.5km into the mountain. It was damp, cramped and got increasingly hot the further in we went. On the way we passed miners working in various jobs - shovelling rocks into carriages and pushing the loaded carriages to the surface.


My first and last mining shift

 The mine front was seriously unpleasant. A group of 6-7 miners spend up to 12 hours per day blasting rocks with sticks of dynamite, breathing in poisonous gas and vapourised metals in unbearable heat.
They all chew huge quantities of coca leaves, drink diluted pure alcohol and work in medieval conditions. It really is amazing that anybody works like that, and it puts anybody elses complaints about work into perspective.
Most miners start when they are 13-14, and have a life expectancy of 40. I came away really admiring them, they had a dark sense of humour and real comradeship.

We left the mine as they finished a shift, as we got to the light they started shouting and running towards it and i very nearly joined them!

Cerro Rico

After the mine i was exhausted, but we went to a processing plant nearby. It was basicaly a huge plant for breaking down the rocks, mixing them with chemicals (i got to walk around huge vats of hot cyanide and giant crushing machinary! only in bolivia) and drying the resulting purer mix ready for shipment to Europe.

Yesterday i arrived in Sucre, only 3 hours from Potosi, another beautiful colonial town. Today i went to book a ticket to Santa Cruz for tomorrow, 15 hours bus ride away to the east. The ticket was 10GBP but i could fly for 30GBP, so i told the agent i would fly and went to get some cash.

Potosi plaza

When i returned they said the flight was full, but the agent said she has contacts at the airport so thinks she can get me on a Bolivian military flight instead so we are going to turn up at the airport tomorrow morning anyway! Brilliant.

Salt flats, red lakes and southern Bolivia

Salt island with flags (no british though!)



Salt flats from coral island

 I booked a 3 day tour to go and see the salt flats and lakes in southern Bolivia for the day after i arrived in Uyuni. I had seen desert in Chile and Salt flats in Argentina, but i really wanted to see the salt flats in Bolivia as they were are the largest in the world.

The first day a group of 6 of us headed to the salt flats about 2 hours drive away. On the way we stopped in a  small village for half an hour, and had a lot of fun playing football with a young lad in the street.
We drove onto the salt flats, and headed across them for about an hour, following the tracks of other vehicles. It was a spectacular drive, salt all around disappearing over the horizon in nearly all directions, broken only by distant mountain ranges.

We stopped first at a salt hotel, then eventualy arrived at an island in the middle of nowhere, that had toilets and a restaurant. We had lunch there and took a walk around. It was made of coral, as the salt flats were once a fairly deep lake. It looked bizarre looking out across the flats from the island, it was as if the the colours of the sea and sky had inverted leaving a dark blue sky and white sea. 

We then drove for a further couple of hours, eventualy reaching land again and made our way to a small village and to our hostal. The Hostal was made completely of salt, apart from a corrugated iron roof. It had salt beds, walls and  salt carpet but no heating or hot water! That night was pretty cold, but i slept fairly well. The owners had a hyperactive son who spent all the time throwing things around (called brian! doesn´t sound quechua to me.....!) which wore us all out. 

Distant mountains form the chile border

The next day we visited several lakes of various colours, the most spectacular was near the end of the day which was bright red and full of flamingos. It was bitterly cold, with an icey wind preventing us spending too much time taking photos outside the 4x4!
That evening we arrived at our hostal, and it was freezing cold! The only heating was a small wood burning stove in the social area, and none in the bedroom. We spent the evening around that and having very quick showers, and the electricity went off at 9pm so we all had an early night. I have never slept anywhere so cold. I had 3 layers of clothes on, and 4 heavy blankets. In the morning our guide told us it had dropped to  -20C outside!

Inside the salt hostal with devil child Brian

Day 3 we headed very early up to 5000m where we saw Geysers (not as spectacular as san pedro), stopped at some hot springs and a couple more lakes. The landscapes were very unusual, red desert with rocks scattered around that looked like Mars. We stopped at a Green Lake (dead, full of Lead and Arsenic) that had a volcano behind it that NASA had used to test the mars probes because the conditions were so similar - very little oxygen because of the altitude, very cold and similar landscapes.



Red Lake coloured with Algae



This was probably my favourite trip so far, because the landscape was so unusual and beautiful and the group i was with had a great sense of humour - 2 aussie guys, a bolivian girl who acted as translator as the guide couldn´t speak English, and a swiss and german girl. Also its not often you get to sleep at -20C......

Green lake and NASA testing area



Death Road and the last time i take a cheap bus overnight

The Death Road is the gringo friendly term for the Yungas road, A 38 mile road that is about an hour from

Leaving La Paz

La Paz. It descends quickly from 4500m to 1200m, winding through steep hillsides with drops into the ravines below of several hundred metres.
It got its name when a feasability study into building an alternative route found 200-300 people died per year on the road.
I wasn´t initialy going to cycle it as it seemed like a bit too risky, but Gareth and Lizzie persuaded me it would be a good day out so......why not?!


When i went to book i asked jokingly how many had died on that agencies trips. The lady said 1 in 6. I questioned it, yes really 1 in 6, no problems she said. I said i don´t think i´ll book it then, 1 in 6 is greater odds than i´m prepared to risk. She looked confused, then said oh!!! died, i thought you said guide! 1 guide to 6 cyclists, no nobody has died..........

The first part of the trip was on well paved roads, we cycled for about an hour down cool, mountainous

Top of the death road

roads. We pulled off this road onto what seemed like a dirt track, were given a few rules i was very happy to follow, and off we went. The first part seemed ok, despite the fact that we were pretty much cycling into cloud and visibility was reduced to 20metres. It soon became apparent why it was so dangerous. The road quickly thinned, and to the left hand side was a sheer drop, no crash barriers, with parts of the road no more than 9-10 feet across!
It would be very difficult if not impossible for 2 vehicles to pass on these sections.

The road would become steep quite suddenly so you picked up speed very quickly, then there would be a

Bit dangerous

steep right hand turn which you could easily misjudge especialy in a car or truck. We passed numerous memorials and crosses on the sides of the road that marked where vehicles had left the road, and also several where cyclists had also come off. It was foggy for the first 20 minutes or so which made it more difficult for us, but its not hard to imagine what it would be like dark and raining aswell.
The fog cleared, and it revealed itself to be a beautiful route, winding down and down as the vegetation gradualy became jungle and the temperature quickly rose. I tried to concentrate on the road however.
We finished in the village of Coroico, where unusualy there was hot showers, towels provided (first time in south america!) and a swimming pool.

The next day i went back to safe activities, to see the ancient remains of Tiwanaku, a series of buildings built

Unfortunate Israeli girl forgot to brake

between 500 and 950AD.
A lot of it was undergoing messy reconstruction work, but there were some spectacular remains in very good condition. The outer walls of the main temple were almost perfect, and there was a great sunken temple complete with dozens of stone faces in the walls.
The most interesting item was a decorated giant statue dating from 300AD, 3M tall that was housed in a museum complex nearby but sadly no photos were allowed so you´ll have to take my word for it.

Last night i took the bus from La Paz to Uyuni. I chose the bus that was half the price of the regular tourist bus, and what a treat it was.

It left at 7pm and was pretty cramped. There was no room for hand luggage above my head so it had to be under my feet. My seat reclined but this reduced my legroom further.

Statue at Tiwanaku

By 11pm the bus got to the desert, it started vibrating pretty hard. This continued through the night, at points it was so hard i was surprised it stayed together.
I woke at 4am for the 100th time, tried to look out of the window but it had iced up on the inside so i couldn´t. When it got light it was fairly obvious it wasn´t a proper road but a track that had been made across the desert. We arrived at 6.30am it was still freezing cold, so i headed to a hostal and fell asleep.

Tiwanaku sunken temple

Sunken temple detail

I had a look around, and spent the afternoon in a trance watching wall-e and jurassic park 2 in my room. I learnt the spanish for rogue robots is robots renegados and dinosaur is dinosauro, so not a complete waste of time. Definitely going for an early night.