Salty Goodness

Salta, ahhh Salta. Not only the name of my favourite seasoning, but a very beautiful city as well. Travelling from Bolivia to Argentina the differences in wealth are obvious. It's like travelling into Italy from Afghanistan. This is also made doubly true as there is a huge Italian population in Argentina, who seem to have made it their life's work to make it as similar to their home country as possible and let's face it who'd blame them. It makes for a pretty bloody nice place to stay, with lots of olive groves, vineyards, gelato shops, cheese shops, bakeries, cafes and bars and all of which is done with pride.

We crossed the border with our friends from the Salt Flat tour: Adam, Rhona and Natalya and stayed with them during our stay in Salta. It felt like time to celebrate and what better time to celebrate than Halloween. Not that we had any costumes, but we didn't care. We grabbed a load of booze, partied with the rest of the hostel and went out for some more fun. After a few hours, we ended up in a pool hall where the lady owner had a huge problem with us, but had the sweetest husband who would always apologise for her rudeness. We asked her for some empanadas, and she told us she had none, yet her long-suffering husband came over and offered us some to eat. The only thing she did offer us was a massive slice of dirty looks... it was quite comical really.

And, on the way home we saw a totally naked transvestite prostitute, so there!

Everything about this place felt like a breath of fresh air. After a month of spending time in pretty poor towns and cities, it was great to be back to European style civilisation again. It felt like coming home. I wouldn't say that Salta has a real draw to it for tourists, apart from the cable car ride to a park that overlooks the city. Salta is a charming place, with a warmth about it that makes you want to sit, relax, perhaps grab a coffee or a beer and contemplate nothing but the thought of having another one.

Having said that we did manage to drag ourselves away from our very comfortable surroundings to the elevated park I just mentioned, which again was very quaint. A few water features, some statues and a man selling ice-creams were all that greeted us, other than the misty view of a city I was becoming extremely fond of that is. Again it had a calmness about it that made you feel happy to sit and relax.

Although I obviously had a lovely time in Salta I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as a holiday destination, but perhaps if someone was looking into moving abroad I can't think of many better places. It's calm, relaxed, warm in Summer and has a homely feeling about it. Yeah, I guess you could say it was just what the doctor ordered.

ps

Ready Salted

Exciting times! We were travelling, but not on a bus, not a coach even, but a train! Sad isn't it, but after four months of buses, sitting on a train was very exhilarating... honestly. In fact it was doubly exciting as we were about embark on one of the number one adventures in South America, the Bolivian Salt Flats. The view from the train was of a stark landscape with nothing much but the occasional tree to break up views of dusty hills silhouetted by the setting sun.

We arrive at Uyuni station, grab our bags and head off for dinner and a hostel. Making quite a lot of noise whilst dragging our bags on the bumpy pavement Priya stops dead in front of me and in turn almost creating a luggage pile up. I'm not angry as I can see something's up, she looks petrified! I look around to see what could be the matter when I see something with it's head in the bin. Something BIG... and black. In the darkness I can't quite make out what it could be. All I can think is panther! It stops rummaging it's head in the bin and looks at us. It's not a panther, but a dog The biggest bloody dog we've ever seen! We decide it's ok to carry on, but due to the jack hammer style noise coming from our wheels this mammoth canine shadows us almost until we get to the hostel. It goes without saying we were more than pleased to get indoors, limbs intact and attached.

After the coldest, most uncomfortable nights sleep ever we made our way to our tour guide for the start of our two day tour of the Salt Flats. I won't go into detail about the previous night but to say that we were sleeping on squeaky beds was like saying that Conchord used to make a bit of a noise! Although possibly a little less than the beds we were lying on. When we arrived we were greeted by a very enthusiastic young man who as it turned out didn't speak any English. He was to be our guide. To accompany us were an Irish couple and an Aussie, who although were all very friendly, didn't speak any Spanish at all. This meant to get the full experience of the tour, thus to understand what was going on, the whole party of six were relying on mine and Priya's very basic knowledge of Spanish to get by. This was going to be a long two days...

The itinerary for the tour was as follows:

• Train graveyard

• Visit a salt village

• Walk on a coral island

• Sleep in a salt hotel.

The next day:

• Walk up a volcano

• Leisurely drive home.

I love a good bit of adventure, so this sounded amazing, I mean a train graveyard! To be honest if you put any word before graveyard i'd be up for it... tank graveyard, wrestler graveyard, cheese graveyard. They all sound worth a look i'm sure you agree. As it happens it was as good as I hoped. Lots of rusting, rotting trains in dusty dessert, we could have spent hours taking photos, but only had ten minutes unfortunately. Still there was plenty good stuff ahead and it was a great drive. There was nothing around, but the occational Alpaca family and dozens of dust tornados. Not dangerous of course, but still an awesome sight to behold.

After a quick stop off at the salt village, which I think was only added so tourists could buy souvenirs, we arrived at the coral island, Fish Island. A bizarre sight in a world of nothingness. A huge mound of land covered in the tallest cacti you will find anywhere in the world. Even stranger are the rocks, they are fossilized coral from when it was a sea. We stopped here for lunch and enjoyed basking in the glorious sunshine on this prehistoric freak of nature.

The salt flats themselves are very eerie and blindingly white as far as you can see. We all posed for the requisite weird photos and felt very parched in the baking heat.

All that was left for the day was the inevitable sunset and our first ever night's sleep in a room made from salt. Frisbee in hand we all left the hotel early for the sunset and we played as the sun burnt out in the distance and the stars began to come out. We felt like we'd found something very special, with only the flamingos in the nearby sulphur lake to share our secret.

The next day we woke up early and took a short ride to the Tunupa volcano. This volcano was sold to us without warning or concern, so we understandingly presumed that it would be a relatively easyish climb. As it turned out it was the toughest this I have ever done. If you combine all four days of the Inca Trail and the chuck in the Three Peaks Challenge and fit them into half a day you'd be somewhere close to how difficult this climb was. It was mainly the altitude that was the problem. The air was so thin that it was difficult to get your breath and thus claimed two casualties within half an hour. The second thing was after three hours of hiking you get to the last part, a steady half mile of sliding rock at 45 degrees. Imagine walk the travelator on Gladiators for half a mile! Every time I put my foot for my next step it would slide back almost to the beginning again. The views from the top were incredible though and it's an fantastic feeling when you finish something so vast. Would I do it again though? No, but I can say I did it and feel pretty bloody proud, I think!

Lapping it up in La Paz (not)

Our first venture into Bolivia had been nothing but pleasant, sipping cold beers in a lovely lakeside town and visiting the Isla del Sol...however as soon as it was time to leave this idyll and go to La Paz, we got a taste of the real Bolivia.

Having booked ourselves onto a nice comfortable bus, we trundled to the bus stop and tried to board only to be told there was no record of us having bought a ticket. No matter how much we argued with the driver and the travel agent, it seemed we were not getting on the bus we had paid for. The driver did take pity on us however and spoke to his mate who allowed us onto the last bus with available seats - it was CRAP.
There was literally no suspension and as we were sitting at the back, we literally felt every stone and rock that the bouncy bus passed over. We finally were on our way to La Paz and the landscape was pretty unforgiving.

Little did we know that we would soon miss this arid and stony landscape - La Paz and it's outlying areas have one overarching feature. They are GREY. Grey buildings, grey road, grey shops, grey mountains and most of all the grey sky. It was dirty, noisy and horrible and absolutely massive - our first glimpse of the city was when we were still high in the mountains. it's sitauted in a huge basin and is quite an astonishing sight as you drive around the mountain and in towards it.

We hurried to our accommodation, feeling a little bit worried about what we would find. We had been recommended the place by a few people but having seen La Paz, weren't holding our breath. You should have seen the look on our faces when we entered our hostel only to find a buzzy, fun, loud Irish Pub! We probably should have guessed from the name, Wild Rover. This was bliss - good food, a huge bar, loads of stuff going on and crazy parties.

We pretty much completely relaxed and forgot about travelling for a little while. Amazing what a pint of cider and a portion of sheperd's pie can do! We had not had a taste of home for a long time and a few creature comforts really make a difference. And who should we meet up with with Paddy and Aislene - good craic.

We did decide to venture around La Paz (we thought we probably should as we'd come all that way)and went to find the witch market. This was a collection of eerie shops that sold superstitious memorobilia, idols, items used for praying to the gods and various herbs and potions. A key ingredient in these shops were mummfied llama foetuses. In a word, yum (!) Most of the stall holders were also witchdoctors and read plams and fortunes for a small fee. I bought some protective stone idols for the family back home and also one for wealth and fortune - I'll let you know if we win the lottery when we get back home.

The only redeeming feature of La Paz was the enormous amount of works in progress around the town - they were in the middle of building loads of parks and recreation areas, and were updating lots of buildings. The city itself has all the mod-cons, but just needs a huge injection of cash to get it up and running properly. Strangely there was an abundance of brand new football pitches - nice to see they had they're priorities right!

La Paz is a strange place and there are only a couple of reasons that most travellers head there (everyone nose about this!) but i think in a few years time and with a bit more thought for tourism, La Paz may actually be on par with it's other neigbouring capitals.

Copa Copacabaaaana

If Lake Titicaca was a jewellery shop Puno would be the cheap nasty gold plated diamonique ring that only Elizabeth Duke would find appealing. On the other hand Copacabana would be the sparkling 24 carat knuckle duster complete with rubies, jade, sapphires and diamonds in the display cabinet by the window. If I'm honest we were surprised. We hadn't expected very much from this tiny town, especially as Puno had been so awful and we were entering Peru's poor sister, Bolivia.

Copacabana, the first town you arrive in after passing through customs, situated on the quite stunning Lake Titicaca is a small, but lively town with a buzzing yet relaxed atmosphere. When I say small, I mean it. There are only about four roads worth talking about and only one of which will you get in this blog post. The road in question is a sloping road only about 50 meters long, in which the locals and some ex-pat travellers have crammed in lots of little bars, restaurants and shops. If you walk down to the end you meet the banks of the great lake and on the way you are blessed with awesome views, particularly at dusk.

Here, sat sipping on a couple of cervezas, basking in the setting sun we met a lovely Irish couple called Paddy and Aisling who became very good friends of ours. Being a very small town, we were all staying in the same hostel and quite often were drinking in the same bars and eventually eating in the same restaurants together! The truth is we all got on instantly and it was great to have met some like minded people after a long time on the road and many, many introductory conversations... Where you from? Where you going? Wanna a jager bomb?! In fact we seemed to pass those conversations all together, it felt like we'd known each other for years.

The main reason for travellers visiting Copacabana is it's proximity to Isla del Sol. It's the most sacred island to the Incas as it was believed that the sun god was born here. This is obviously a very different story to Superman 3, so you can believe whoever you want! Being such a sacred place there are many ruins to be seen, including the sacred rock that is supposed to look like a panther. The panther is one of a few sacred animals to the Incas. I imagine that it probably looked more pantherlike back in the day, but due to erosion I had to use some serious imagination to see it in the same light. Having said that we were blessed with an absolute ripper of a day and honestly I can't think of a place I'd rather have been that day. Isla del Sol is a beautiful place with spectacular views from practically anywhere on the island and an even better view of the sunset than back in Copacabana.



Copacabana is a massive traveller trap, in fact such a trap that many decided to stay. I think that this adds to the calming atmosphere. Nobody is in a rush to do anything and as I'm sure this is probably a little detrimental to the day to day life of the average Bolivian, but it makes for a pretty damn good place to visit.