Brazil and Bolivia - a lengthy update!

(Update from September 23, 2010)

Salutations once again from South America! Hope everyone is well and that all is going smoothly back at home. Prepare yourself for a long update, because I have time to kill and plenty to write about!

Today is our first day in Peru - we crossed into the town of Puno from the Bolivian border this morning via bus, so I will do my best to update you on our activities in Brazil and Bolivia. Brazil was absolutely fabulous; filled with vibrant people, interesting sights and great music - and best of all we got to spend some quality time with the lovely Angelique and Vini! We caught up with them on the coastal island of Florianopolis, and after the chilly weather in Argentina and Uruguay it was fantastic to be back in the warmth and to spend some quality time lounging on a beach with good friends. We spent the weekend in Florianopolis before embarking on the very long drive back to Sao Paulo, which is where Angelique and Vini live... in a very luxurious apartment! Sao Paulo is, without doubt, the most enormous city I've ever been in... having Angelique to show us around was fantastic, as we got to see a huge number of things we never would have discovered otherwise. A big highlight for Marco and I was going to visit the food markets in the Centro district. The markets were incredible... towering mounds of fresh fruit, cheeses, meats, olive oils, sweets and chocolates, and store keepers falling over themselves to give you free samples! What could be better?! We had to be quite careful in the area as Sao Paulo does have a lot of poverty and if you wear nice clothes or jewellery - or appear wealthy in any other way - your chances of getting mugged go way up. We were also lucky enough to be there for Brazillian Father's Day, and spent the day enjoying an amazing BBQ with Vini´s entire family. It was wonderful to experience something so traditionally Brazillian, not to mention all the delicious meat we feasted on! There was an entire piglet on the BBQ, and every other kind of meat you could think of.

The cities in Brazil are peppered with no-go areas known as 'favelas', which are where the poor people with no jobs live. They are usually built on hillsides, and consist of ramshackle brick buildings half crumbling down (if you do a wikipedia search on 'favela', you get some good pictures). Apparently they are absolutely bristling with weapons and drugs, and the favela-dwellers have a kind of uneasy truce with the Brazillian police: they will stay out of the wealthy areas of the towns as long as the police stay out of their favelas. It was all quite fascinating to learn about, and Vini somehow managed to get us invited to a dance party held by one of the favela communities. It wasn't actually inside the favela, but was held in a kind of warehouse up against one of the back walls and everyone who was there lived inside that favela. It was amazing - I've never seen such incredible samba and salsa dancing! There was a traditional samba band playing, the beer was flowing a-plenty, and the Brazillians danced their hearts out and were singing along at the tops of their lungs. Their feet moved so fast you could barely see them... and not just the young ones either, the fat old men and women were getting into it with just as much gusto. It was truly brilliant, and Angelique - being the dancer that she is - joined in in about 2 seconds flat. However we weren't allowed to forget where we were... we were given strict warnings not to adjust our waistbands incase anyone thought we were reaching for a weapon! Crazy!

Of course, no trip to Brazil would be complete without a visit to Rio de Janeiro... and visit it we did!!! Only for 3 days, but none the less we managed to squeeze a good deal into the time. We were lucky enough to have sensational weather for our visit to the Christ the Redeemer statue that overlooks the city. It is one of those things that you've seen a million pictures of, but still doesn't prepare you for the real thing. It is huge beyond all reckoning, and the statue has a wonderfully sombre and impressive expression that you could look at for hours. Also, there is a stupendous view of Rio itself from the statue, and lots of nuns on pilgrimmage which adds to the general atmosphere. I also learned very quickly why people rave about Brazillian beaches... we spent plenty of time lounging on the famous Ipanema Beach, and I have never seen so many beautiful people in such tiny swimsuits in my life!!!! The beach are filled with vendors wandering along selling everything you could imagine: swimsuits, beers, jewellery, icecream, cigarettes, you name it you can buy it! And lots of people playing music and beach sports so there is plenty of action everywhere.

Another HUGE highlight of our time in Rio was going to see a soccer match in the famous Maracana stadium (where the next World Cup will be held). There are no words for how football-crazy the Brazillians are... a home team from Rio was playing, and naturally the home crowd worked themselves into a frenzy that defies words. They were screaming, jumping up and down, singing songs in Portugeuse that (apparently) are extremely rude and insulting to the other team, and waving flags that nearly reached the roof of the stadium. It was impossible not to get caught up in the thrill of it, and we found ourselves jumping up and down with the best of them! Luckily, the Rio team won 3-0: I can't imagine what would have happened if it had been a loss!

SO, after a very happy time in Brazil, we bade fond farewells to Angelique and Vini and got on an extremely long bus ride to Corumba at the Bolivian border, crossed, and then got on another extremely long train ride to the first proper town in the East of the country. Bolivia is truly beautiful, despite being (by far) the poorest country we have encountered yet in Sth America. There are lots of traditional 'Cholita' women everywhere, and they are all so vibrant and colourful that it almost hurts your eyes to look at them. They wear full, heavy long skirts and brightly coloured knitted cardigans, their hair in two long black plaits joined together at the bottom with brightly coloured tassles, and enormous bundles on their backs wrapped in the most vividly colourful fabrics you can imagine. These bundles can be filled with wares, food or babies, and they also wear bowler hats on their heads cocked at the most outrageous angles. They are fantastic to look at, and I could watch them for hours if I didn't feel so rude for staring!!

Losing a fight with a toucan in a Bolivian hostel

Native Cholita women in La Paz

We bused it across the East of Bolivia and stayed in several hot and dusty towns (Marco sustained a nasty bite from a TOUCAN, of all things, in Santa Cruz!) before reaching La Paz, which has the distinction of being the highest capital in the world. Coming from sea level you really notice the altitude... even walking up the smallest flight of stairs leaves you puffing and exhausted as there is markedly less oxygen in the air. The city itself is quite amazing though. It sits in the base of a valley in the Andes mountain range, and you can see snowy mountain caps from everywhere in the city, and the buildings stretch away up the mountainsides. As I had to go through the process of applying for a long term tourist visa for the USA, we ended up spending about 3 weeks in La Paz while I jumped through the various hoops at the US Embassy based there. So in the meantime, I took a job working at a bar at a backpacker hostel: no money, alas, but free accommodation for us both and some free meals, so it was good to be able to spend that amount of time in the city without it costing us anything while I waited for the visa to come through. It was an interesting experience, but I got to see first hand that Bolivia has a chronic problem with alcoholism: the international backpackers would usually stay for a couple of drinks before heading off to bed or out into the city, but the Bolivian employees of the hostel would stay and get absolutely blindingly drunk every night without fail. Sadly, it's a trait we saw much of in Bolivia.

Working at the bar in La Paz

One of the most popular things to do in La Paz is to go mountain biking along the 'Death Road' that leads out of the city... I suggest you go into Google images and do a search on 'Death Road La Paz', because it's one of those situations where a picture is worth a thousand words. It is a narrow road that winds through the mountains and has a sheer drop of what looks like miles off the edge, with no barrier or anything, and it earned it's name because of the number of cars that fell off the edge when the road was in frequent use. If two cars travelling in opposite directions met each other, one would have to REVERSE until they reached one of the very few points on the road where it is wide enough for 2 vehicles to pass one another. The road is covered with shrines and memorials to the people who lost their lives there... and aside from the morbid factor, there is immense and awe-inspiring scenery of the mountains as you ride down.

The Death Road, Bolivia

Marco also went on an expedition to climb Huayna Potosi Mountain, which is just outside La Paz and over 6000m high, and he spent 3 days ice climbing with crampons on his boots and ice picks. Unlike many in his group, he made it to the summit - but at a terrible cost! He was so terribly, terribly sunburnt by the time he got back from the sun glare on the snow that he could barely smile or eat for several days, and just had to lie in bed applying cold cream while his poor face healed. Ouch!

Another incredibly interesting thing I did was a tour of the San Pedro prison in La Paz. It's basically a prison with no guards... the police patrol around the edges of the prison to ensure that no one gets out, but inside the prisoners have free run of the place and there are shops, and restaurants, and many of the wealthier prisoners have their wives and children living with them. None of the cells have locks on the doors as the prisoners roam where they want, and they have their own systems of law and order. Apparently there is a lot of violence that goes on inside between prisoners, and most people are in there for either murders or drug offenes. You pay the 'entry fee', which is actually just a big fat bribe to the police outside who then set you up with a priosoner to act as your guide, and another one to act as a guard, and they escort you around. The areas of the prison where the wealthy people live are quite nice... large 'cells' with beautiful gardens, pool tables, plasma screen TVs, basket ball courts etc, and the areas where the poor people live are tiny, cramped and stinky with loads of people living in the one collapsing cell. And the ones with no money at all who can't afford a cell are forced to sleep in the hallways and on the corrugated iron rooftops. There is also a HUGE issue with drugs inside the prison... apparently (though we didn't see any) there are loads of cocaine labs run by the prisoners, and you can tell that lots of people in there are addicted, as they just sit on the floor bashing their heads against the wall or swaying from side to side. Very sad, but an amazing experience.

So, after our lengthy stay in La Paz we headed down to the mining town of Potosi. Potosi is at the base of the mountain Cerro Rico, which used to have the richest deposits of silver in the world. The Spaniards discovered it centuries ago and brutally exploited the mine and miners, literally working thousands of indigenous Indian and African slaves to death; keeping them underground for months at a time. The stories were quite heartbreaking. Nowadays the silver is all but gone, and the mountain is mined for tin, but although the Spaniards are gone the conditions are still terrible, and many miners die from rock falls and uncontrolled dynamite explosions due to a total lack of safety regulations. Outside the mines there were lots of widows who were begging because their husbands had been killed, and their sons were still too young and weak to be able to mine enough ore to support their family. Heartbreaking. We spent several hours going for a tour through the mountain - we were decked out in overalls and hard hats with torches attached - and in this glamourous attire splashed our way hunched almost double through the dirty, cramped, muddy tunnels of the mine. We took some dynamite as gifts for the miners who work there as they are all so desperately poor, and they all have huge bunches of coca leaves crushed up in their mouths bulging out in the sides of their cheeks to give them the energy to work. The insides of the mountain was absolutely riddled with tunnels, and the walls were glistening with different colours from the calcium deposits. In the very heart of the mountain is a shrine to the miners' Earth God, who has devil horns and (for some reason) an enormous erect phallus. He is covered with bottles of alcohol and cigarettes: offerings from the miners who are hoping to stay safe and find a good deposit of tin to support their families. I can honestly say I was never so glad to see daylight as when we finally got out of those tunnels - I couldn't possibly think of a worse way to earn a living.

Marco exploring the mines in Potosi

From Potosi, we were on yet another Bolivian bus to the tiny town of Tupiza, spent 2 days there doing not much, and then headed west to Uyuni. Uyuni is famous for the 'Salar de Uyuni' - the largest salt flats in the world, visible from outer space. We spent 3 days in a jeep doing a tour of this natural phenomenon; I've never seen so much salt! Glaring white stretching for as far as the eye can see in every direction, and the sun reflects off it shimmering so that the mountains in the distance look as though they are rising out of mid air instead of the earth. For one of the nights we stayed in a 'Salt Hotel' - you may have heard of the ice hotels in various parts of the world where everything is made of ice... this was the same, except made of salt! The walls, beds, tables, bars, chairs... everything was constructed out of salt or salt bricks. You nearly had to wear sunglasses inside it was so bright. There were also lots of fantastically coloured lagoons with flamingoes, stupendous rock formations that looked like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, and islands of cacti rising above the ocean of salt.

On the Cactus Island in the salt flats, Southern Bolivia

After the Salt Flats, we prepared to cross to Peru by heading back up North to Lake Titicaca, one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World. It is an enormous high alititude lake, and is so large that when you stand on the shore you would swear you were looking at the sea, except for the fact that there are no waves. We stayed at a charming little town called Copacabana, and went on a day trip to the Isla Del Sol, an island in the middle of the lake where I saw my FIRST EVER INCA RUINS!!! The island was just beautiful, and made even more so by the fact that it was incredibly important to the Incan civillisation as it is where, according to their beliefs, their creator Sun God was born. The island was covered in ancient Incan terraces, which you can still see really clearly, and lots of little clusters of ruins of their old temples and villages. I had no idea the ruins would still be so INTACT... you could walk through the doorways and halls of the buildings, many of the windows were still in place, and you could see the building layouts really clearly. One of the old Incan villages still had a working irrigation system, and the well they built was still filled with good, fresh water centuries later. It was just amazing to sit there in the sun among all those ruins and imagine their society all those years ago. Sth American history is just fascinating, and I know we're only going to see more and more as we head into Peru!

We are presently in the fairly unremarkable Peruvian town of Puno, and are killing time before getting on an overnight bus to Cusco, which I am very excited about. We will do the obligatory pilgrimmage to Machu Picchu, then head North to visit the Amazonian town of Iquitos, and do a boat trip out into the Amazon Jungle. Can't wait!