CH1 – Baby steps in Buenos Aires

“Please step this way,” said the Asian looking Delta official. It was Saturday morning, June 20th at Heathrowe airport. I was carrying a large backpack with a four seasons sleeping bag strapped to the side, clutching my flight itinerary. We went through the predictable questions: where was I going? What was I doing? Was I carrying any home-made explosives (seriously), and so on. He asked to see my passport, and another form of identification, as passports aren't trustworthy apparently. After studying it for a while, he asked “is this address in the UK?”

“Err yes. It says so in the address.” You retard, I added mentally. He went away to confirm with a colleague that the Wirral really is in the United Kingdom. I reckoned that getting through US security on my way to Argentina was going to be.. slow.

Twenty four hours later I wandered out into the arrivals hall of Buenos Aires' Ezeiza airport. I disposed of my surgical face mask (which prevented me from bringing swine flu into the country). There were people everywhere. I was approached by a few shady looking men in leather jackets.

“Taxi amigo?” No thanks. I was supposed to have transport already arranged for me: I searched round the many people holding signs with names. Mine wasn't there.

After waiting for an hour, I wandered into a locutorio and established in broken Spanish that I wanted to use a telephone. Now, public telephones in South America don't wait for you to finish entering an incorrect number before politely telling you you've got it wrong. Why waste time? They schreech a beep at you as soon as you get a digit wrong.

In short, I eventually established that my transport had never been arranged in the first place. It finally was and three hours late I finally left Ezeiza airport for my first homestay. I had also passed my first South American transport crisis, and managed to use a public telephone.

Buenos Aires is a large, sprawling city. During my taxi ride from the airport we passed large shanty towns, the tin houses often brightly coloured. More towards centre, giant election posters covered walls and buildings. It was election time in Buenos Aires, an event that important a round of the Apetura football championship gets postponed for it.

My first homestay was with Gustavo, a music teacher who worked from home and lived alone with his two cats. Apart from being a keen River Plate fan Gustavo was also a huge fan of The Beatles and had even been to Liverpool. He also spoke more English than I spoke Spanish and looking back, was precisely what I needed at the time. The living room of his flat, besides containing three pianos, was lined with music books and cassettes.

Gustavo welcomed me in, and we shared a mate – a strong herbal tea drunk out of a handleless vessel through a long silver straw. He also gave me a tour of his neighbourhood – Caballito. I was still a way from centre, and would have to take the metro to language school in the morning. We walked past the metro stop, and round some local shops.

“Beware of food cooked on the street” advised Gustavo. “If you have not seen it be... how do you say... cooked? It may not be safe.” I nodded. If I'd have known how much I would violate that advice later in my trip I would have laughed.

I got up early to get the tram for my first day of language school. It was still dark, and very cold. Shop owners were opening up, often hosing the pavement outside their store. Gustavo had explained to me where I needed to go, and I had the address written down. Suipacha xx. I bought my diez viajes without much trouble and boarded the train.

The trains on Buenos Aires' Subte A are old. They were made in England and donated to Argentina after World War I, for a reason I can't remember. The decadent wooden interiors certainly provide character. Not that that matters much when you're being crushed.

I fell out of the tram at Piedras, brushed myself off and emerged into the daylight. I desperately tried to remember Gustavo's directions. Up the escalator, straight ahead for two blocks, then right. Or was it one block, then left? Sod it, I couldn't remember. I walked for two blocks and turned left, quickly realising I had no idea where I was trying to get to. I asked an old woman if she knew where Suipacha was. Her response largely passed me by, but at least she understood the

question! I smiled and walked back the way I had come. After asking three more people I almost stumbled across the entrance to the language school.

Housed in the impressive xxx building, it was actually pretty hard to miss. I was due to have an entrance exam at 8 to determine what class I should be in. I wrote my name on it, and left to go sightseeing for two hours.

The language school was actually very helpful. I was in a class with three other Brits, also beginners. By the end of the two weeks I was, if nothing else, less inhibited by speaking bad Spanish.

View of a Buenos Aires street from our classroom.

Spanish in Argentina is a bit different from other South American countries. Vos and tu are used interchangeably, regardless of circumstance. The vosotros conjugation of verbs just doesn't exist, and ll's and y's are pronounced as a shhj sound. Bizarre but interesting.

My first few afternoons I spent eating steak (Argentine steak is very good) and doing touristy things. I went to the Plaza de Mayo (Mashjo, remember?) and saw the mothers of xxxx march, got bothered by pigeons and the Buenos Aires equivalent of Big Issue sellers. I saw the bizarre recoleta cemetary and walked down calle Florida (nothing like Florida!) watching street tango. I mentally laughed at the people walking round in surgical masks because of the H1N1 epidemic. By Thursday, it was time to do something slightly different.

I had heard some horrific stories about Buenos Aires taxis. Tourists being robbed, given fake notes and so on. The bar crawl started in an area of Buenos Aires called Palermo, so it was with a pang of trepidation that I flagged down my first South American taxi. I needent have worried. Driven by a bald, burly driver, we soon started to talk about football – a subject I was rapidly becoming adept at discussing in Spanish. He turned out to be a fan of San Lorenzo, and spent much of the journey telling me how he hated River Plate, Boca Juniors, Indipendiente, and about five other clubs who play in Buenos Aires. I tried to explain that Liverpool versus Manchester United was like a 'superclassico'. He laughed.

Of all the things there are to criticize about Buenos Aires, the nightlife isn't one of them. The bar crawl was a lot of fun, and quite a few other people turned up to it by themselves. Particularly funny were the Brazilians. Brazilians to go Buenos Aires for only one reason – to party, and party hard. And I thought Brits have a bad reputation!

The following morning at school was... slow. Stupidly after the class I decided to go to the

zoo. I must still have been drunk, I don't even like zoos particularly and Buenos Aires zoo is nothing special. Still, I wandered round for an hour or so and threw 'authorized' food at an elephant. Elephant.

Feeding an elephant.

I think that without speaking Spanish beforehand, the two weeks in Buenos Aires was an education. Not only do you have to learn how to do everything again, you have to learn how to do it in Spanish. Menial tasks such as paying at the supermarket, taking clothes to the laundrette or taking a city bus suddenly become major ordeals. Every time I did something new I would be desperately trying to think of the verbs I was going to need. 'When can I collect my washing?' How the hell was I going to say that? All these things become routine and easy after a while, but it was difficult at first.

The weekend saw me take my first baby steps in venturing away from the capital – a day excursion to Tigre, a short train ride up the coast.

I could barely go wrong getting there – at the Retiro train station tickets to Tigre are even sold from a separate window. Tigre is a touristy town about 35km north-ish of Buenos Aires, and sits on the confluence of a number of rivers. It is possible to take a boat cruise and see the getaway houses of the rich, and bars that are only accessible by river taxi.

A river junction in Tigre, and one of the more bizarre houses!

Along the river front in Tigre are numerous restaurants selling excellent steak. I ordered bife de lomo, a litre of Quilmes (beer, which is also excellent) and a side salad. Never thought I'd say that eh? The steak was like tucking into half a cow.

My second week of language school passed quickly. Buenos Aires is an interesting, bustling place with a lot of history. It is not, however, a pretty city. I'm sure it once was, but many areas are now decidedly faded. There were however two things I wanted to do before I left...

River Plate were playing at home that weekend and Jamie, a friend from language class, knew a football agent in Buenos Aires and had managed to get us free tickets. Which only left time for a stadium tour of La Bonbonera – the home of Boca Juniors. As someone who as a teenager used to record and watch Channel 5's coverage of Argentine football (shown at three o'clock on Friday mornings), it was particularly important for me to visit the stomping ground of Carlos Tevez, Martin Palermo and Juan Roman Riquelme, even if I didn't get to go to a game. Like all stadium tours it wasn't quite the same, although it was interesting to see Madonna's box where prior to becoming Argentina coach he would drink, wave his shirt around his head and lead the chanting.

River Plate versus Estudiantes was two days later, my last night in Buenos Aires. Estudiantes had a good team (including Juan Sebastian Veron, who didn't play) and were resting players for the Copa Libetadores final the following week – the South American equivalent of the Champions League. We (four of us) met early in a bar in Palermo famous for its empanadas.

The word empanada seems to mean something different in pretty much every South American country. In Peru they are normally flaky pastries with meat in the middle. In Ecuador, an empanada is a sort of folded pancake with a sweet jam in the middle. In Bolivia, it is possible to buy an empanada blanca, made from the jam of a local squash with frosted egg white on top (very good). In Argentina, an empanada is basically a small meat pasty, often meat with chopped olives.

Anyway, we loaded up on empanadas and beer and took a taxi to the ground. Now, going to River Plate is strange. You can't walk around the outside of the ground, and large parts of the surrounding neighbourhoods are closed off. So unless you communicate exactly where you want to go to your taxi driver, you end up walking bloody miles. Which is exactly what happened to us. At one point we have gone that far away from the ground we couldn't see the floodlights anymore!

We got in five minutes after kick off. A steward showed us to our seats, for a two peso tip. Jamie's football agent friend had, it seemed, got us very good seats! One amusing difference at South American football games is the amount of crap people try to sell you. Souvenirs, colas, popcorn, candy floss. At later games I went to in Ecuador it was beer, ice cream, and sun hats made from folded cardboard.

The game, if anything, was an anti-climax – last game of the season with neither side having anything to play for. Estudiantes won 2-1.

The next morning, I woke in plenty of time to watch the Federer versus Roddick 2009 Wimbledon final. The match started at 10am Argentine time, and I had a bus to Puerto Iguazu at three. Plenty of time...

At about seven all in the fifth set, I decided I had to leave. I caught the final few games in the bus terminal on a screen about three inches square, surrounded by about thirteen other Argentines. Good timing I feel!

MAP to Iguazu

CH2 – Winging it through Paraguay

Bus travel in South America varies considerably, roughly corresponding to how close you are to Bolivia. The closer to Bolivia you are the worse the bus journeys are! The bus to Puerto Iguazu was

long – about 18 hours, although was one of my more comfortable bus journeys. Full reclining seats, meals served periodically, I even slept a bit! I arrived in Puerto Iguazu and quickly found my hostel, a nice place about five minutes walk from the terminal.

What immediately hits you about Puerto Iguazu is the heat: the sight of tropical plants and the sound of crickets was a far cry from Buenos Aires. After checking in I decided to head straight to Iguazu falls. **more background on the falls?** I had read and heard a lot about Puerto Iguazu before I went, almost to the point where I wasn't expecting too much.

After entering the park a small gas run train takes you to the first set of waterfalls. The magnitude of the place quickly hits you, you walk past an amazing waterfall, turn a corner and see about twenty more all lined up. The place literally has water everywhere! The park's largest fall, Garanta del Diablo, has to be seen to be believed. Four times wider than Niagra, the 30m cloud spray rising above it can be seen from half a kilometre away. The noise from the water crashing down is simply incredible.

Some of the many falls, and Garanta del Diablo.

The next day I was up early to head into Paraguay. There isn't a huge amount for tourists to do in Paraguay, but I needed to get to Bolivia and hell, why not?

Paraguay map

The Paraguayan border at Ciudad del Este is simply chaos. Ciudad del Este is the biggest duty free shopping nightmare in South America. The border with Brazil is fairly informal, you don't need border stamps to enter Ciudad del Este for the day, and the bridge over the xxx river to Brazil (known as the 'friendship bridge') is jammed with vehicles, pedestrians and 'mototaxis' all day long..

After inching across the Friendship Bridge, the bus dumped my (and my baggage) just over the border right in the middle of shopping hell.

“Camera amigo? DVD? Taxi?” No gracias. I needed to get my passport stamped. I lugged my stuff onto my back and began to wade my way back through the crowds to the border.

Paraguay is a country that clearly doesn't get very many visitors, I had to ask directions to the immigration office twice. Two guards were sitting in the office when I got there.

“A donde va?” None of your chuffing business. “Errr. Asuncion.” Easy answer. They stamped my passport and I was officially in Paraguay.

All I had to do now was find a hotel. I had picked one out of my guidebook, and reckoned by looking at the map I could probably walk there. I also needed some guaranis, the Paraguayan currency. I went back out into the chaos and started walking.

South America is a continent of hard selling, and nowhere is this epitomized better than Ciudad del Este. If you have something to sell, shout it louder and more often than everyone else. A lone backpacker wandering in the crowd attracts taxi drivers like bees to honey.

“Taxi amigo?”“No, gracias.”“A donde va?”“No.”“Taxi?”“No.” And so on. I wandered into what looked like a casa de cambio, a currency trader, who

didn't understand me. I frantically waved some Angentine pesos at him and made a swop gesture. No, it appeared I couldn't change currency here. This was simply the first of many communication problems I had in Paraguay.

Paraguay is unique in South America as the only country where the local indigenous language (Guarani) is still spoken ahead of Spanish. Everybody speaks Spanish, but mostly as a second language. This brings other quirks, for example the letter S does not exist in Guarani. So when Paraguayan people speak Spanish, no s' are pronounced.

I almost stumbled on the hotel by accident. I sorted a private room for the night, which set me back 70,000 Guaranis (that I didn't have). I explained with great difficulty that I would like to pay later.

I went out and successfully found a casa de cambio that would change dollars to guaranis for me. Not only is Paraguayan currency ridiculous (70,000 is about £x, so it's easier to work in thousands), but Paraguay was the first of many countries I went to that had a gross shortage of change. Take a 50mil note (mil is thousand in Spanish) into a shop and they will probably tell you to go away. It reminded me of trying to get on a bus at home with only a twenty pound note. With the exceptions of Argentina and Colombia this was a common recurrence throughout my trip. How so many countries can function with so little change in circulation is still a mystery to me.

The main reason I stopped in Ciudad del Este was to visit the Itaipu dam, one of the biggest hydro-electric dams in the world. **more background on dam** The dam is shared between Paraguay and Brazil, and it is possible to visit it on either side of the border. I asked my hotel owner how to get to the dam. I didn't fully understand what she told me, but I did understand that I needed to get a bus to a place called Hernandarias, something I had already read in the guidebook. I wandered out into the street. How hard could it be to find a bus that said 'Hernandarias' on the front? I started off by heading to the main road that leads to the bus terminal, two lanes jammed with buses.

Once you get away from the main shopping strip, people in Ciudad del Este are generally friendly and helpful – as are most Paraguayans for that matter. They are however, with only a basic grasp of Spanish, almost impossible to communicate with. After unsuccessfully trying to ask three people if the bus to Hernandarias passed this way, one woman indicated that it did. I waited for a while, watching the buses. Paraguayan buses, while being essentially tin cans with an engine and seats bolted inside, are lavishly decorated by their owners. I never confirmed this, but I think the buses are owned by the drivers rather than a bus company. There would nearly always be a driver, and a ticket conductor who would hang from the side of the bus shouting incomprehensible destinations. Buses also rarely stop, merely slowing down to deposit passengers and let new ones clamber aboard. Unhelpfully, many simply have a letter on the front, rather than a destination. After a while I decided it was time to start stopping random unmarked buses.

Stopping unmarked buses and shouting “Hernandarias?” or “Itaipu?” at the driver proved unsuccessful. One time I mistakenly shouted “Iguazu?” instead of Itaipu, the town in Argentina I

had arrived from in the morning. Before I could shout “No NO, Itaipu!” the driver started talking to an international bus in the next lane and pointing to it. Frustrated, I shook my head and wandered off.

The Itaipu dam is one of Paraguay's best tourist attractions, and after two hours I was no closer to finding the bus. I asked about fifteen people including bus drivers, shop keepers and people in the street. Most of them I could not understand. Some people gave me conflicting information. It was also an early lesson that unless you pronounce words exactly as the locals are used to hearing, there is a decent chance you won't be understood. Say 'Itaipu' instead of 'Itaipú' (without the stress on the u), and it won't get understood. After three hours of trying, I eventually found the Hernandarias bus with the help of an elderly man, just round the corner from where I had initially started. Another highly decorated tin can job, I gladly paid my 2000 guaranis to the conductor.

Once on the bus, getting to the dam is easy – it drops you off close to the visitors entrance. Unlike visiting in Brazil, a tour of the dam on the Paraguayan side is free, and good. From the visitors centre buses drive you to the dam itself.

One side of the dam... then the other.

A handful of Americans and Canadians were also on my tour, pretty much the only place in Paraguay I ran into other tourists. After leaving the dam I went and found the same bus I had came on, going the other way. However rather than taking me back to where I had came from, I was taken to a bus terminal. To this day I still have no idea where that bus terminal was. We arrived and everyone got off, so I got off as well.

After walking up the road, I realised I had no idea where I was. I was in a busy market area, where every sort of food imaginable was for sale in the street. I stopped a man and asked him where the centre of town was. He didn't understand the question so I pulled my guidebook out, found the map of Ciudad del Este, pointed to my hotel and asked “donde es?” He studied it for a minute, before handing it back to me and shaking his head. Shit.

Still clutching the map, I approached a motorbike taxi. He too studied the map and shook his head. He also told me to get on, and keep the map to hand. I paused for a minute and weighed him up, a bit like a dog tilting its head in thought. What other option was there? I donned the helmet and off we went.

He really did have no idea where I wanted to go, so we cruised round for a while while he asked some of his friends if they knew where I wanted to go. Eventually of course, I got back. My taxi adventure cost me $15, an extortionate amount by Paraguayan standards. I was too relieved to be back to negotiate!

That evening I decided I wanted to buy beer after the day's transport trauma. I went into a local shop and took a litre of Brahma to the counter. The shopkeeper smiled at me and shook his head, saying something I didn't understand. He explained more slowly in Spanish that Brahma is

Brazilian beer. He pulled out a litre of Budweiser from the fridge and handed it to me. Not Brazilian beer, I could drink that instead. He also asked me if I wanted a plastic cup. I smiled, shook my head and paid up.

The next day I was up early and headed to the bus terminal. I had days in hand, and had decided to travel down to Encarnacion, a city xxxkm south of Ciudad del Este, to visit the nearby Jesuit settlement ruins. Compared to the difficulties of the day before, finding a bus to Encarnacion was easy.

One thing I miss about South American bus journeys is the people that come on to try and sell you things. Before we had even left Ciudad del Este, a woman came on clutching a huge basket shouting “Chipas! Chipas!” The driver bought one, so without knowing what a chipa was, I decided to buy one. It turned out to be a sort of crusty cheese bread, and this one was still hot. I ended up buying a lot of chipas in Paraguay.

The journey to Encarnacion, about four hours, offered a good chance to see some of the Paraguayan countryside. The soil here is noticeably bright red due to clay in the soil and the road passes through many small communities where more people get on to sell you chipas, fruit and sweets. Encarnacion itself has relatively little to offer a tourist, and I was quite happy to simply wander round for an afternoon. I found a hotel for 35,000 guaranis called xxxxx, which inside was reminiscent for the prison in The Shawshank Redemption.

A decent guidebook is essential for travelling around somewhere like Paraguay. They are however only useful as a guide – timings and exact details should not be trusted. I was up early the next morning to go to the nearby Jesuit ruins of Jesus and Trinidad, and while Jesus is 10km off the main road my guidebook had recommended a direct bus to Jesus at 8 o'clock. I was at the bus station in plenty of time to ask around for it. I enquired about a bus going to Jesus and was told that the bus about to leave was indeed going to Jesus. It didn't say so on the front, although the ticket they had written out for me was for Jesus. I shrugged and boarded the bus. The driver and a man near the front of the bus were sharing a mate which the passenger kept topping up from a flask. They spoke rapidly in guarani. Drinking mate in Paraguay is taken very seriously; if something was to rival football as the national sport it would be drinking mate. I think they may drink even more than the Argentinians!

I sat near the front of the bus, in the hope that it would be easier to see where we were. Not long after we left (while the driver was still drinking mate), I asked the man next to me how far it was to Jesus. He gestured that we had a way to go.

Buses in Paraguay aren't like buses at home. There are no bus stops, buses stop anywhere for anyone, and competition for fares is generally fierce. Once we got out of Encarnacion the bus quickly became crowded with people clutching babies, sacks of potatoes and various other belongings. A group of soldiers also got on (they didn't pay). Amongst all the bodies it was now nearly impossible to see where we were. Eventually I asked the man next to me again how far it was.

“Pasado, pasado!” He told me, gesturing backwards. Shit. The bus wasn't going to Jesus at all! I got up and scrambled through the bodies to get off the bus. I stood at the side of the road for a minute, watching the bus disappear. I was still on the main road to Ciudad del Este, so visiting the ruins at Trinidad first now made more sense. As I didn't know how far back it was or where to get off, I decided to walk back. I had also had enough of buses for the time being!

After walking for about an hour, I reached a large sign saying Trinidad, with an arrow pointing up a dirt track. As I walked up the track loose chickens crossed my path. The Paraguayans certainly don't make their tourist sites easy to find! After a kilometre I came to a fork in the path. Two small children were playing in the street, so I asked them where the ruins were. The smaller one gaped at me open mouthed. The older one pointed to the right, “derecha” he told me.

The ruins at Trinidad (and perhaps even more so at Jesus) are very much what you would expect at the ruins of an English monastery. The Jesuits spent over xxx years teaching Christianity to the local Indians, and you can still see where the Indians used to live, go to school and prey.

**more background on jesuits**. The ruins of a central chapel still dominate. I paid my 5000 guaranis to go in. There was very little information at the site to speak of: a giant map by the entrance was about all there was to go on, so I took a photo of it on my camera. I was the only tourist there.

One thing I feel about the Jesuit ruins is that while the history of the jesuits is interesting **background on settling in Paraguay**, they could do a lot more with the ruins. Information as you walk round is, to put it mildly, limited!

The main chapel at Jesus, and the graveyard at Trinidad.

After an hour walking round, I decided it was time to go and find the other ruins at Jesus, ten kilometres down a rough path on the other side of the main road. A bus was stopped by the start of the track, with a few people waiting by it. Of all the buses I took in my trip, this one was the most basic. Which is, I feel, significant. Inside were about eight wooden seats bolted to the floor. I'm fairly sure there was something growing from the roof, and some of the windows even had plastic glass in them. Eventually, the driver wandered over. He asked me where I was going, and I told him the ruins at Jesus. He nodded and said “vamos.”

Jesus is a small community that sprung up around the Jesuit settlement, and is only accessible by the dirt track. A baby cried on the bus as we bounced along. Flat out, we reached a top speed of around ten miles per hour.

The ruins are at the back of the community, set in a pretty backdrop of rolling Paraguayan countryside. If it wasn't for the bright red soil and occasional tropical plant, I could well have been in England. The community at Jesus consists of a handful of homes set along a rough street, a plaza and a small church. Almost without exception, all the tiny communities I visited (or got stuck in) on my trip all contained a plaza – normally well maintained and containing enough benches to seat a small town, and a church. Jesus was no exception. As I got off the bus at the ruins, the driver shouted that he would be returning in an hour. Better not be late, I thought.

The ruins at Jesus are a similar affair, although the main chapel is larger and more intact. It was still under construction when the Jesuits abandoned it.

Having got there, getting back was relatively straightforward, and I mentally congratulated myself on surviving another Paraguayan transport adventure.

The next day I took a six hour bus ride up to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. I was expecting another colonial city, something like Buenos Aires. What I found was pleasantly different. After a bumby taxi ride from the bus station (Asuncion has a ridiculous number of potholes), I was dropped at the the address my guidebook had said my hotel was at. **addy**. Looking at the building you would never have guessed it was a hotel – you even had to ring the doorbell to be let in. It was

actually fairly good, and even had a hot shower – a commodity that had become rather scarce since leaving Argentina. The hotel owner asked me if I was hungry, and recommended a bar nearby called Bar Lido – famous for its fish soup.

While being very popular, there is something unpretentious that I like about Bar Lido. It could easily pass for the setting of a Paraguayan version of Cheers, or the cafe in Friends. Rather than tables a large bar winds around, so people tend to perch at the bar on tall stools. After a few seconds panicking trying to think of the word for 'fish' in Spanish I ordered a sopa de pescado, which was indeed very good.

While Asuncion is interesting, you don't really need to spend much time there. **Bit on Asuncion tourist stuff.** Near the historic centre is an area called Chacarita. Chacarita is a shanty town, but what is interesting about it is how close to the centre it is, and the fact it starts not ten metres from the presidential palace. **plaza uruguay?** No matter where you go in South America, poverty is never too far away.

I ended up taking a lot of city buses while I was in Asuncion, without really knowing where most of them are headed. I think without actually living in Paraguay for a while, buses in any city are almost impossible to understand, not least because the drivers are virtually impossible to communicate with! More than once I ended up studying a map in a far flung part of Asuncion. I also think that of all the capitals I went to, Asuncion is somewhat relaxed. The streets round the centre are not gridlocked, and in the afternoon on the xx plaza you can often see people playing chess.

Chacarita stretches away from the steps of the palace, while people play chess in the xx plaza.

After two days in Asuncion it was time to move on. I already had a bus ticket to the Bolivian town of Villamontes, an epic journey of fifteen hours across the Paraguayan chaco, booked that evening. As I waited at the bus station I considered my week in Paraguay. Worth going to? Absolutely. Would I go back? Probably not. A small child had crawled under my seat and started gently kicking my ankle. Darkly I willed the seat to break..

Doing the journey through the chaco in the dry season turned out to be remarkably painless, although every time I fell asleep I was woken up by an immigration formality – be it to leave Paraguay or enter Bolivia (the border controls are about six hours apart, with no guards at the actual border frontier). Paraguay and Bolivia had a bitter war over the chaco between 193x and xx, and as a consequence the Bolivian border formalities are carried out in a small military outpost called xxxx (Ipiales?). Which is fine, as long as you like soldiers and guns and stuff like that. After being carefully searched by a soldier, we waited in line to be questioned. I was asked if I could speak Spanish, to which I said “Si, un poco.” He smiled and said “Welcome to Bolivia”, in English. I was ushered off to a small barracks style building to have my passport stamped by a chubby soldier in

an office. He grunted at me and handed back my passport. I was in Bolivia.

CH3 – Buses, Bolivianos and other chaos

(Bolivia map)

The bus dropped me off in Villamontes, a hot dusty town on the edge of the chaco. After exchanging my remaining Guaranis at the border I had just over 130 Bolivianos – about 13 pounds. My goal was to get to Tarija, xx km west into the andes. Other than the bus I had just got off, there were no buses at the bus terminal, and most of the offices were shut up. It seemed that not many buses left Villamontes! One bus office was open however, and a bus to Tarija was leaving that night at six. Importantly, I did not insist on buying a ticket there and then.

I left to find some food. Villamontes has very little to do (as I was to find out), but it is however famous for its fish. I'm not exactly sure where they get all the fish from given how dry it is, but they do! A few small family run restaurants grill up fish in the afternoon, so I sat down at one and established that I wanted a fish.

At the time that restaurant was a bit of an eye-opener, but it was to become the norm in rural parts of Bolivia and Peru. A bunch of patio tables had been hastily spread across a dusty floor, with a television in the background. The mother cooked in the kitchen while the children, not more than eight (although age is difficult to tell with Bolivian children), served. I asked one of the children where the bathroom was, he pointed out the back. I walked over a small yard, a few chickens ran out of the way. The toilet turned out to be in a small hut with no running water. A full bucket of water stood next to the toilet pan for flushing. If you stood up fully you could still see the restaurant through a hole in the wall. Walking back to my table I stole a glance in the kitchen, where the mother was bent over two huge pots, ladle in hand. Everyday, this family transform their house into a basic restaurant for a few hours in the afternoon. Lunch being the main meal in Bolivia means this is a daily ritual for many families.

True to its reputation the fish was indeed excellent. I shared my table with a Bolivian trucker, who decided he wanted to practice his non-existent English. In Bolivia and Peru, lunchtime restaurants often do not have the same etiquettes as in western countries regarding tables – it is quite normal to take a seat wherever there is one, regardless of who is already sitting at the table. I also spoke to a few French lads who had been on the same bus as me. They were also going to Tarija, and had already bought their bus tickets. Still, the warning bells did not jangle. I relaxed and bought a beer.

When I returned to the bus station at about four, it had transformed. Offices had opened up, and chaos had erupted. People were carrying boxes everywhere. There was however still only one bus to Tarija, and it was full. No more tickets until tomorrow. I swore out loud at my own stupidity and counted my remaining Bolivianos. About eighty five, and the bus to Tarija would have been fifty. I had also seen no banking facilities, although I did have a lot of dollars. I lumped my stuff on my back and trudged off into town to try and find a hotel.

I had a hotel address written down from my guidebook, yet I still had to ask about ten people where it was, including a girl working behind a cashier in a restaurant. After walking past it twice, I eventually found the hotel xxx. I walked to the desk and asked how much a room was for the night – 140 Bolivianos. Which by Bolivian standards is very expensive – the least I paid for a room was thirty. I pulled out a bunch of dollars – could I pay with these instead? Yes, I could... I let out a big sigh of relief! The lady pulled out a calculator and told me it would be twenty one dollars. I gladly handed over the money.

For my twenty one dollars, I did actually get a decent room. Not only did it have a hot shower (never something to be taken for granted in Bolivia), but it also smelt like a hotel room. Not that all the other hotels I stayed in smelt bad, it just reminded me in a small way of a travel lodge. It even had a swimming pool – albeit an empty one. This was all good of course, until four in the

morning when the cocks started cocka-doodle-dooing. In hindsight one of the best things I took on my trip was a large supply of ear-plugs! Whenever you ended up in a vaguely rural location (as in, a lot), you would pretty much always get cocks – and the stupid things always start shouting hours before dawn comes.

After some ear-plug aided sleep, I was up early to go and buy my bus ticket, which I this time managed to do. This left me with another whole day to kill in Villamontes, where I was quickly learning there really was very little to do. I managed to find a bank that would change my dollars for Bolivianos, and an internet 'cafe' where I discovered the joys of Bolivian internet connections. Considering that my bus to Tarija was due to arrive in Tarija at about four in the morning, I eventually decided to ring a few hotels to see if they would take me in at that time. (This would be the first and last time I did this – I quickly learnt that most hotels would gladly take you in at any time of day or night.).

Almost without fail, every time I tried to use a public telephone in a new country, I failed. Every country seems to have its own unique system of local dialling codes, so often you have to leave off a zero, or include a zero, add a random area code (depending on where you are calling), and so on. Talk about a system designed for locals! I tried to ring from at least five locutorios. Eventually, one man took pity on me and asked where I was trying to call. I told him Tarija, and he crossed off some of the numbers I had written down and added different ones. The phone started to ring...

Now, after only learning Spanish actively for just over two weeks, conversations with people I met were extremely difficult. Telephone conversations were (and still are) virtually impossible. I'm still quite proud of the fact that I both gave it a go, and that I deciphered out of the confusion that to arrive at four in the morning was indeed, normal. Other than 'buenas tardes', it was pretty much the only thing I understood in the whole conversation. Afterwards the locutorio owner came over to me and asked me where I was from, and if he could practice his English. As usually happened in these situations we spoke mostly in (broken) Spanish, but it's reassuring to think that somewhere in a small town in Bolivia there is a man with my email address and 'www.tranmererovers.co.uk' written down on a piece of paper.

I turned up forty minutes early for my bus, and there were already people both on the bus and milling around near it waiting to put bags on. I joined those milling around. Unusually for a Bolivian bus journey, the bus left on time – that is to say under twenty minutes late. The bus was jammed. Remember that on South American buses, you pay for the seat only. What you then do with that seat it up to you – if you can get yourself and four children on it then good for you. So not only did the aisle resemble a crib, but people who had failed to buy a seat in time stood or kneeled in the aisle for the entire length of the twelve hour journey.

The journey was a bumpy, winding journey over mountain roads. As it got late, those standing in the aisle resorted to crouching or sitting. Small children also populated the aisle, making moving about treacherous. Sleeping was almost impossible due to the combination of crazy driving and the Bolivian dance music pumping out – presumably to keep the driver awake. Eventually I did fall asleep and dropped my mp3 player into the crib, something I did not retrieve until I got off the bus. I was beginning to worry that a Bolivian child might have eaten it..

Just before six in the morning the bus pulled into Tarija bus terminal, and I staggered off with Bolivian music still ringing in my ears. I wondered into a nearby hotel that overlooked the bus station, checked into a room and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Overlooking the bus station the hotel room was noisy due to traffic noise, but with earplugs it was fine. I made the most of the warm-ish shower.

Later that morning I wandered into the centre of Tarija. While being essentially a pretty city, Tarija is famous for its fruit and wine. My guidebook listed a few places that organise vineyard trips, and with a little hunting I found one based in a hotel that could organise an afternoon of wine tasting for me. It cost me a fair bit, but I eventually arranged for an English speaking guide to drive me round vineyards for the afternoon.

My guide (sadly I cannot remember her name), was an American who had married a

Bolivian, and was very interesting. Before we set off for the first vineyard we stopped at a pharmacy to buy face masks in order to enter the first vineyard. H1N1 stupidity had struck Bolivia too. We visited three vineyards, all very different. Bolivian wine is, in my opinion, quite good - they just don't produce enough of it to export. The first vineyard was very much a modern affair, with huge stainless steel fermentation tanks and other modern technology. One of the things that struck me about Tarija was that it doesn't look like a wine making area. The area is dry for much of the year, and wine making is only possible due to a vast irrigation network. As I was there in winter, the vines were out of season and almost blended into the background.

Miles of vines, and la casa vieja.

The Tarija vineyards are also famous for making singani, pretty much the Bolivian national drink. Singani is a grape liqueur, and comes in various degrees of quality. The Bolivians often mix it with lemonade to make a chuflay, which can be quite good.

The last vineyard I visited was by far the smallest (and oldest). La casa vieja is run by a large lady helped by her twelve or so daughters, whose family have been making wine here for years. The grapes are still crushed by putting them in a barrel and standing on them. The wines were more varied here than at the larger vineyards, and generally sweeter. Like every other South American country, Bolivians have a very sweet tooth - and many of the very cheap wines are sweetened with cane sugar to make them more appealing to the local market.

After the vineyard tours I was taken round some of the other local areas. We went first to xxx, where there are a number of outdoor springs. Late in the afternoon in winter though there was nobody swimming here. Around xxx there were planty of xxx trees, the fruit of this (a sort of squash) gets used to make empanada blancas.

The Bolivian land reforms of the 1950's are very much evident here, with plenty of old, large houses dotting the countryside (bit more here on the reform). Also evident here is the huge disparity between rich and poor. It is normal for the richer residents of Tarija to work in the city during the week, then move out to a second home in the nearby countryside at the weekend. This demand for real estate has pushed up the price of land considerably in an area where most of the land is owned by peasants. This gives people a dilemma, as they are entirely dependent on their land in order to live (most families are largely self sufficient), yet can sell part of their land for a relatively large amount of money. It is fairly common to see a luxurious weekend home – probably empty – and next door see a family sowing crops on a relatively narrow strip of land. Unlike land in England where you will have a whole field of a particular crop, here you may well get a row of cabbages, a row of maize, and so on.

Although an expansive holiday home is absent from the picture, you can see the rows of individual crops behind the man working in the field.

Another spectacular sight are the bakeries. Women bake bread in huge wood fired ovens, and at the time we were passing in late afternoon an assortment of vehicles ranging from carts to trucks would be waiting outside to take the bread into Tarija for the market the following day. Sometimes a crude white flag would be hanging outside, indicating that fresh bread was available there. With hindsight I think I would have liked to have gone in one of them. A giveaway sign of a baker would be a huge pile of firewood stashed outside for firing the oven.

The following day in Tarija, there was a protest. Crude roadblocks made from branches and other bits of local shrubbery prevented cars from entering the city centre. Protesters manned the barricades, chanting and setting off fireworks. This, I would come to learn, was a normal occurrence in Bolivia. This particular protest was to do with the government's energy policy.

Inside the barricades red and white banners had been erected, and the only cars driving around sported the same banners and beeped their horns. (The significance of the red and white I still do not know). The police watched on from the side, but did not interfere.

One of the street barricades leading into town, and one of the banners in the centre.

The protest was over by the afternoon and in truth I would see better later on during my stay in Bolivia. I felt glad I had visited Tarija though, somewhat off the tourist trail it had provided a real

insight into Bolivian life with the expansive weekend homes, the rows of cabbages and the protest. And of course, the vino! That evening I took a night bus up to the mining city of Potosi, the highest city of its size in the world.

The bus to Potosi left over an hour late, which I was to learn was nothing unusual. As I waited to board the bus I watched the indiginous people taking blankets on board, and unstrapped my sleeping bag from the side of my pack. As the sun set and the bus climbed into the hills high above Tarija this turned out to be an inspired move.

The bus arrived into Potosi at three in the morning, possibly the worst time to arrive into a new city. At 3xxx metres above sea level it was, additionally, freezing. Potosi is very much on the backpacker circuit, and I had already jotted down a hostel address from my guidebook. I climbed in a taxi and we set off.

After the second knock the hostel manager groggily opened the door. Despite the time he did indeed have a bed for me, and welcomed me in. I don't mind staying in hostels and it can have social benefits, but I do also miss having my own personal space – especially when private rooms are so cheap. Earplugs are, in my opinion, essential, and you can't wander round in your pants. Although it has to be said that people do.

I was up early the next morning to explore the city. Potosi is, I think, fascinating. Famed mostly for its mines at Cerro Rico (the rich hill) which towers over the city, the Spanish first discovered silver deposits here in the 1600's. While the silver has now largely gone, other minerals are now mined with the mines going deeper and deeper under the mountain. There seem to be only two professions in Potosi, law (abogado signs hang almost every other building) and mining. Many people have little choice but to work in the mines.

Still feeling groggy from the bus journey, I left the mine tour until the following day and headed to the casa de moneda, the oldest money factory in Bolivia. The Spanish pressed a lot of the silver mined here into coins and shipped them back to Spain. Ironically, Bolivian currency is now made of nickel and manufactured in Spain. Beneath the casa de moneda are two huge rooms where mules used to push giant bars that worked the steel presses, and you can still see the ruts in the floor left by the machinery. Afterwards in one of the main squares I sat down and bought ice cream from a man pushing an ice cream cart. Because of the altitude, it is possible to burn in the sun, then step into the shade and freeze. A boy on the far side of the square was bent over polishing a man's shoes wile he read a newspaper, polishing furiously. Another boy ran up to me and pointed to mine and I told him they were already clean. He didn't agree.

ICerro Rico towers in the background. Above the fotocopias sign hangs a sign saying 'abogada'.

Even the women are lawyers!

That night I went drinking with an Austrian guy staying in my dorm. One thing that quickly because clear in Bolivia was that eating your main meal in the afternoon was the way things were done. Not so much in the cities but in small towns and rural areas if you relied on a large meal in the evening, you risked not finding much. We ended up in a bar largely full of gringos drinking chuflay (made with the singani I saw being made at the vineyards). I slept well that night.

I had a mine tour the next morning which ran from the hostel. A bunch of us climbed into the jeep and we were taken to a building to change our clothes – full overalls, boots and a miners hat. We then went to a mine shop to buy gifts.

The way the mine tours work is actually very effective. Besides paying for guides (you have to go with guides as it can be dangerous, and all the guides are former miners) tourists buy the miners gifts. These include coca leaves, pop, gloves, dynamite and alcohol (what a combination!). The mines now run as a broad co-operative, so what the miners earn effectively depends on what they produce, and gifts from tourists are highly sought after. Because of this miners will completely stop what they are doing to come and talk to tourists, so really everyone benefits. The alcohol the miners drink is incredibly cheap, is available in plastic bottles and it literally called alcohol potable (drinking alcohol). It is 96%. We took a bottle in with us.

Left: tasting the alcohol potable. You have to pour some on the floor first to the mining gods, your family, and your mujer – woman.Right: Me standing in front of the entrance to the mine we went down.

Even though it was a Saturday we soon came across two miners, the smaller one carried a huge sack of minerals slung over his back.

“Helllllooo. Hellllloooo!” He shouted. He smiled and approached us. Hello was one of two English words he knew. The other was 'good bye'. It soon became apparent that he was too drunk to say an awful lot in Spanish either. His friend laughed at him, and told us he had been drinking since the morning. We chatted for a while with our guide translating; it turned out he usually worked seventeen hour days. He laughed with us some more, accepted a gift, and disappeared down the mine.

The small drunk miner with the sack of minerals over his back, while the other miner holds the bottle of pop we gave him.

The deeper into the mine we went, the harder it became to breathe. A vast network of tubing ran along the tunnel walls to pump air – for the machinery, not the miners. This was made for Bolivians, not tall gringos, so I was also glad of my hard hat! To get to the deepest point that we went down to (the mine went a lot deeper) you literally had to climb down an almost vertical passageway blown out of the rock with dynamite. Only two of us made it down, myself and a girl from Dublin. Everyone else, to paraphrase my words at the time, 'pussied out'. Near the bottom we met another group of miners who we gave the alcohol, and our final bottle of pop. Without hesitation they bust open the alcohol, and using the pop as a mixer offered us some. As a general rule I never say no to alcohol, and this was no exception. Another miner offered me some of his coca leaves we had just given him.

The miners here have without doubt one of the hardest jobs of anyone I have ever come across. Yet the banter between the miners is incredible, and seems to be one of their ways of dealing with the job. As does drinking and chewing coca leaves. In the breathless air a few of the miners lit up cigarettes.

Left: going deeper into the mineRight: Drinking with miners

Before leaving the mine we visited one of the 'tios'. While tio translates as uncle, the tios in the

mines are statues representing devils, originally put in by the Spanish to frighten the local people into working harder. They were instead perceived by the miners as 'gods' of mining, and while miners now do not take this literally, miners are superstitious and it is perceived as very bad luck for a miner not to respect these traditions. Hence the importance of pouring a bit of alcohol on the floor. Every Friday the miners have a fiesta by a tio statue, and decorate it with gifts of coca leaves and alcohol for good mining luck.

One of the tios, decorated with streamers, coca leaves and (empty) bottles of alcohol.The tios are definitely male...

Coming out of the mine I felt like a bear coming out of hibernation. The air gradually gets cooler and more breathable, and the tunnels gradually get lighter as the sunlight filters through. We emerged into the sunlight, blinking. In the distance, our guide pointed out some of the mineral processing plants which purchase what the miners produce.

Minerals image?

We had saved a stick of dynamite to blow up ourselves, and we walked up the mountain to a safe distance. The guide held the dynamite between his legs, and lit the fuse. A look of fear appeared in his eyes, then he shouted and started to run. We all did likewise, and the other guides fell about laughing. Every tour group must fall for that one. The stick blew up with a loud bang and a puff of smoke. In the mines, it is common for a miner to line up about twenty sticks of dynamite, light one fuse, then run round them all lighting them as this saves on the cost of further fuses.

Travelling in Bolivia, you hear a lot of horror stories about travellers becoming ill. Almost everyone you meet seems to have had parasites, food poisoning, or some other food and water induced illness. On my last night in Potosi, I woke up in the middle of the night desperately needing the toilet. I was in a shared dormitory, I wasn't dressed, and I was on the top bunk. The relief when I eventually made it out of the dorm and across the courtyard was incredible.

While I never became properly ill in Bolivia, I wasn't quite right for a few weeks of it either. I simply put it down to being in a new environment, and running round mines at high altitude.

It was a Sunday, and as always in Potosi in July was clear and sunny. I sat in the main plaza for a

while feeling sorry for my stomach, then went to find a bus to Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia where I was doing my next stint of language school. Sucre is relatively close to Potosi, sits at a lower altitude, and was originally founded under the name of xxx (Bolivar?) as a place for the rich mine owners to live in a more pleasant climate. To get to Sucre you can either get a bus, which takes about four hours and costs almost nothing (about fifteen bolivianos), or a colectivo (shared taxi) which cuts the journey to about two and a half. As I had just missed a bus I took a colectivo.

Speed limits in Bolivia are basically governed by two factors: the state of the roads and the state of the vehicles. It was fairly common to be on a bus that would break down, in which case the driver would hop out and climb underneath with a jack and a spanner.

The road between Potosi and Sucre is winding but remarkably good, and our driver was, apparently, Michael Schumacher's Bolivian cousin - often driving on the wrong side of the road to get a better angle into the next corner. I felt my stomach groan as we went round each bend...

We arrived in Sucre in record time. Another benefit of a colectivo is that they will take you basically wherever you want to go at your destination. Unfortunately my driver didn't know Sucre very well, so we drove around for a while. Eventually we passed what was obviously the main plaza, and I asked to get out. The driver gave me a quizzical look, “seguro?” he asked.

“Si”. Two ladies in the car urged me to stay in, saying it was dangerous. In the middle of the afternoon in the main plaza of what is largely regarded as Bolivia's safest city, I didn't agree.

I found my homestay relatively easily. This time I was staying with a family called the Zamoras, and the father, Milton, welcomed me in. The house also consisted of the mother Silvia, the son – Gustavo, and Scott the dog. They told me they had two other sons away at university.

I think that by Bolivian standards, the Zamoras were well off. Milton was some form of structural engineer, while Silvia worked in a local hospital. And while not big by our standards, their house was certainly spacious. They even had a maid who came in in the afternoons to cook and do their laundry. My room, complete with en-suite, was far bigger than my room at home. They seemed pleased when I told them this.

Scott lived in the passageway downstairs, and was never allowed upstairs into the house. Scott was also, unlike most dogs in Bolivia, extremely friendly. It's just a shame I never saw him outside the house. Dog walking in South America is very much the responsibility of the dog, and that responsibility includes breaking out of the house in the first place.

My routine with the Zamoras was pretty similar during the week. At half seven we would have breakfast – which being Bolivian they would be late to. I would then go to language school, then come back at one for lunch. The lunch would always be a soup, with some sort of meat in it, then more meat and carbohydrates to follow. With my stomach not right I found this difficult. At lunchtimes friends of family would also come round, making lunches sometimes hectic. One person talking spanish slowly to me I could deal with, but ten people cracking jokes at the same time became impossible.

Unlike Gustavo in Argentina, I found the Zamoras difficult to talk to. They were never rude, just often uncommunicative, and my questions would often receive fairly short answers. I don't think this was just me, they were like this with everyone. I suspect it may have been a class thing – poorer people in Bolivia will talk to you for hours about nothing.

Sucre is a pleasant city, slightly warmer than Potosi, and is known as the 'white city' as a lot of important buildings are white. It is also technically the capital as the constitution was signed here. In July, the weather is crisp, bright and sunny and in the afternoon it can get hot. Every morning my language teacher would complain about “Hace mucho frio...” (it's cold). It really wasn't.

The language school was a well run school near the middle of Sucre. This time, I managed about two pages of the entrance exam and ended up in a high beginner class with Lennie, a girl from Holland. Some people had a teacher to themselves, although I always preferred being in a class with someone else as it made the conversational parts of the lesson more fun. These parts of the lesson would generally end with me being opinionated about something, but not knowing how

to properly explain it in Spanish.I think Sucre is, in a way, a good place to stop as there isn't a huge amount to do there. There

are impressive dinosaur tracks nearby uncovered by a cement plant, however otherwise it's basically a good place to relax, eat saltenas (little meat pasties) and learn Spanish. Like in Buenos Aires, my Spanish classes would be in the morning, then I would have the afternoon to explore. One of my favourite things to do was going up to cafe mirador up overlooking the city, sit in the sun and waste the afternoon there. Mirador was, by our standards, cheap, but being in Sucre it was a haunt of gringos and rich Bolivians. And while the food and drink were undoubtedly good, the service was definitely Bolivian. Which made it even easier to waste time there.

One day I was sitting in the viewing area behind the cafe, and was approached by Denis. Denis was selling a trecking tour in the countryside that weekend. I said I wasn't interested in the trecking because I was going to Uyuni, however we soon started talking. Denis pointed to the various groups sitting in the cafe garden, and offered me the benefit his opinions.

“Son Argentinos” he pointed to a small group. “Se dice Como te shhhama...” He said mimicking the Argentine accent. “Argentinos no le gustan trecking” he said darkly. He pointed to a couple sitting under a parasol holding hands. I already knew what he was going to say.

“Ahhhhhh. Amor! Hahaha.”We talked about women for a while, with Denis explaining that he didn't have a girlfriend

because Bolivian women made his ears hurt. He soon became interested in whether I was travelling with any tall, attractive foreigners. I explained that I wasn't, but I was currently living in a shared apartment with a Dutch girl called Kim.

“Hmm, me gusta las holendesas,” he said. “Tienes much sexo?”I laughed, and said no. Denis eventually wandered off to terrorise more tourists and continue selling his under-

subscribed trecking trip.

I also met Pedro in cafe mirador. Pedro was a Kechua, or an indiginous. He was there playing music one afternoon with two of his daughters, and afterwards he came up to me and asked me if he could practice his English. We spoke for a while in Spanish. He told me that since his wife had died, he and his daughters went out and played music most afternoons. He pulled out a childrens colouring book. We opened it, and he pointed to a colour.

“rrred?”“Si. RED.” He opened another page containing a diagram of a human.“Los brazos,” he smiled. “Arrrms.”Pedro eventually left me, and said he would like to meet me again during the day sometime.

I said I would keep an eye out for him.

Cafe Mirador was also a good place for people watching. Or more commonly – tourist watching. Tourists vary hugely, and while I generally like the majority, there are a small minority that I hugely dislike. From now on we're going to refer to them as 'jebs'.

Jebs come in all shapes and sizes, and enjoy nothing more than bullshitting (loudly) about their travel experiences. Most enter a new country about every ten days, somehow thinking that they have 'done' the last one. Because they are shortly going to 'do' another country or continent, jebs have no interest in learning any Spanish other than 'una cerveza por favor'.

A jeb's favourite activity, by far, is going out at night. Not that this is a bad thing, but this is all a jeb wants to do. Because of this, your best chance of avoiding jebs is to do whatever you want to do in the morning, when they are still passed out in the hostel. Unfortunately in Sucre, the first thing a jeb will do in the afternoon will often be to go to cafe mirador to talk loudly about last night's exploits to anyone who wants to hear.

Fortunately, I also met a lot of interesting travellers in cafe mirador. I met one couple who had lost their jobs in England, come to latin America, and didn't intend to return until they absolutely had to. They had been travelling for six months, and reckoned they would be able to

carry on for another seven or eight. Their favourite countries so far had been Mexico and Colombia, which was something I heard frequently.

Behind Cafe Mirador stood two huge hills, and at the end of my first week in Sucre I decided I wanted to climb one of them. I left on the assumption that there would be a fairly clear route to the top, and I could see a road running round the side of the hill. Unfortunately, getting to this road proved rather more difficult. I cut through the side of a quiet, run down estate, and after about an hour got to the roadside. The road itself winded round the hill without actually climbing at all. The hill towered over me to my left. At one point the high wall on the far side of the wall dropped, and I clambered up. As I walked up the hill it got steeper and steeper. And while I'm not one to cry about the altitude, it certainly made it hard going! I eventually arrived at what was pretty much a vertical rock face. Climbing it would have been possible, but stupid. Still, I had come this far already...

I zig zagged slowly up the side of the hill. While not being a climb, it was what my grandad would have called 'a scramble'. I finally arrived near the top, sat on a rock and took in the view.

You can see the road below winding round the side of the hill, and the route I had taken up. I've circled in red Cafe Mirador, Sucre's more conventional viewing point.

After the effort of climbing up, I stayed there for about three hours. I saw nobody else on the hill that day.

During my second week in Sucre I saw another protest, this one bigger than the one in Tarija. Groups of protestors marched the streets singing in a sort of parade, often holding banners. Often a group would quickly disperse, quickly followed by a loud bang as a firework exploded in the street. The group would then re-form, and the singing would continue. Now, everything in the guidebooks tells you not to follow a protest, but then the guidebooks are just that. A guide.Even through the fireworks, old ladies would push through the crowds to try and sell you an ice cream.

Eventually the various groups congregated in the plaza where what appeared to be the organisers were standing on a balcony shouting into a megaphone. The words La Paz was repeated a lot. Then for a minute, all the singing and fireworks stopped and everyone sang the Bolivian national anthem. As it finished, a cheer went up and the fireworks and chanting started again. To me, this was completely bizarre.

At the end of my second weekend in Sucre, I had arranged a visit to the salt flats of Uyuni, a good nine hours away by bus. I had to get two buses, one to Potosi then another to Uyuni – which I had already paid for and was the last one of the evening to Uyuni. I had my last almuerzo with Milton and his family, and set off. Now, a taxi to the bus terminal is fairly cheap – about five bolivianos. However I insisted on taking a bus. Local buses in Bolivian cities are cheap, very frequent, but follow crazy weaving routes meaning it takes forever to get anywhere.

I caught my bus to the bus station going the wrong way. Whereas in England you can catch a bus heading west and chances are it IS going west, these rules of logic don't apply. I ended up by the cemetery – completely the opposite direction to what I was trying to go in. So I caught a bus going back the other way. On local buses it is often possible to sit next to the driver, and after what seemed like an eternity of weaving round back-streets he pointed to the terminal. It was about half one, and my bus from Potosi to Uyuni was due to leave at six. Plenty of time. Instead of taking a colectivo, a bought a bus ticket for a bus that supposedly left at half past. Climbing aboard, I was the first one on – not even the driver was in sight yet. I glanced back questioningly at the woman I had bought the ticket off, who nodded.

We eventually left about two, with a handful of people on board. However the driver had no intention of leaving Sucre just yet, we drove around for almost an hour looking for more passengers, picking up a large number of indigenous people. Something you learn quickly on buses is not to give up your seat to anyone, under almost any circumstances. You do it once, but instead of receiving gratitude people just look at you like you're crazy. Old ladies here, it seems, have no problem with standing in a crowded bus aisle for hours on end with a child or two on their back..

With the sun getting lower in the sky, we finally left Sucre. The road to Potosi rises well over a thousand metres and our bus, packed with people, was old. Additionally, most of the indigenous people we had picked up weren't actually going to Potosi, but would get off at mile intervals in the middle of nowhere. Every time we stopped, by heart sank a little further...

The taxi drivers in Potosi looked at me like I was crazy when I told them where I wanted to go. After a short exchange, we settled on a price (really they told me a price, ganged up and refused to budge, telling me how lejos (far) it was). One thousand five-hundred Bolivianos – about £130 pound. To us that probably isn't too bad for a six hour overnight ride down horrendous roads, but in Bolivia that is a huge amount of money. A bit shellshocked, I agreed.

I was driven to a cashpoint to withdraw the 1500 Bolivianos, which I spread over my cards, and got

back in the taxi with it firmly in my pocket. I would be paying for the journey at the end. We stopped for the driver to pick up a friend for the journey, which given the 12 hour round trip ahead seemed fair enough. I was actually glad there was someone else in the car – I didn't fancy making conversation all night and he clearly thought I was crazy.

We soon climbed the hills that surround Potosi and the roads became notably worse, until it seemed like there was no road at all. Every now and then we would go over a huge hump and the bonnet would bounce up and down – even sometimes stalling the car. I resisted the urge to fall asleep. On the radio, the horrific music of Bolivian Friday night radio streamed out. After a while I was offered a cup of pop. I don't really drink fizzy drinks, but it seemed rude to turn it down.

At about three in the morning - after an age of bouncing up and down, the lights of Uyuni finally appeared in the distance. It was, by now, freezing, and I had long since covered myself with every item of clothing I had thought not to put in the boot. As we pulled into Uyuni the town looked like a ghost town, with only about half of the streetlamps lit and most of the buildings in darkness. While I tried to read the map in my guidebook to identify a hotel, it became clear that neither of my drivers knew how to get to one. I paid him the 1500 Bolivianos, which was taken and counted without a word, and got out.

Of all the places I went, Uyuni at night was – I think – the coldest. In a small town not only was it bitterly cold, but entire streets were in darkness. Occasionally you might see someone move in the shadows, and dogs howled in the distance. Still reeling from the amount I had just spent to get here, it was genuinely the only time in my trip I felt genuinely concerned for my own safety. After walking down a few very dark streets I found a hotel with lights still on, and the owner welcomed me in. I collapsed on the bed in my room and went to sleep fully clothed – including my jacket and kagool. It was that cold. I had however made it to Uyuni.

Despite my arrival time I was up early the next day. Uyuni by day is completely different – dogs no longer howl; small hunched over ladies swarm round the small town market, and a few shops had appeared. As a former mining town not much goes on here anymore, and much of the town's economy is now based around selling tours to the nearby salt flats. Wrapping my River Plate scarf around my face, I went out to explore and find a cheaper hostel. Uyuni is centred around a central plaza (like almost every other town and village in South America), with a slightly bizarre clock in the middle that looked like a giant grandfather clock. It also has a train station (about two trains a week), some tour agencies, an not much else. I found a cafe with a log fire – I was still wearing about five layers of clothes...

Left: Welcome to Uyuni. There really isn't much here.Right: There are however, still quite a few lawyers!

The tracks disappear towards Chile. Sadly this would not be part of my adventure. Notice the dog on the left of the shot.

My salt flat tour left later that morning. Being limited by time to the one day tour of the solar (tours of up to four days are available), we left – by Bolivian standards, fairly on-time.

I climbed into the jeep along with three girls from England, and three Peruvian women talking excitedly in Spanish. They were from Arequipa just over the border, and were on a two week holiday. The English girls had all just left school and were on a gap year before going to university. They told me they had been in Australia, but had had to go home for a few months to “get more money”. I immediately hated them.

First stop on the tour is the railway cemetery. Uyuni used to be an important junction on the line to Chile, and many of the old engines had been abandoned here and now served as a sort of gringo play-area.

Gringo playground or not, one should never pass the opportunity to climb on a train!

Next stop was a small mining community, where for the seventeenth time that day a local tried to sell me a hat. We were also herded towards a number of shops also selling hats, as well as other tourist crap. More interestingly, large piles of salt were built up around the village.

Looking back, it's hard to even call it a village. Somebody definitely didn't play with lego when they were small.

After that we headed off into the solar, where very quickly all you can see in any direct is brilliant white. With no point of reference, you quickly lose track of how far you have come and how fast you are going. The sun was now fully up, and the glare of the salt was fantastic. It was also becoming warm, and soon I had stripped most of my seven layers and was down to a T-shirt.

The English girls, along with a horde of other tourists doing other jeep tours, spent much of the day taking 'cool' photos. The ones that are only possible when there are no buildings or people behind you to provide perspective. So for example one would sit on the floor with her hands out, and the other two would walk 30 yards back and pretend to be falling off them. Which I admit has quite a good effect, but they spent the whole day doing it.In the afternoon we stopped at Isla del Pescado, a coral island raised up from the salt covered in huge and ancient cacti. It was now the 1st August, which is a day when the locals celebrate a god of nature (whether it was an Incan god or otherwise, I can't remember). A small monument in the centre of the island had been covered with coca leaves and other gifts, and the locals were singing and drinking. To me, it looked far more fun than taking silly photos.

The views from the top of the island are spectacular (although getting there also reminds you of the altitude!), and you really get a feel for how it must have looked hundreds of thousands of years ago before the lake had dried out. The solar is now one of the driest places on earth, and it got me thinking about how a change like that happens – over a time-scale far longer than I can really imagine. If you look at a map of Bolivia the solar is huge!.

Left: The decorated Plaza 1 de Agosto, and the view from the top.

As the afternoon drew on, your shadow becomes very long on the salt, and as soon as you step out of the sun it becomes very cold. We stopped on the way home to see some flamingos, perched on one crazily thin leg. The Peruvian women became very excited about the Flamingos, making the “oooooooooh” sound that all women seem to make when presented with a new animal.

That night back in Uyuni I randomly bumped into Lennie, who had been in my language class in Sucre. I was becoming quite used to travelling round by myself, so it was quite nice to go for a beer and actually talk to someone in English.

I remember sitting in my new, cheaper hotel room that night writing a blog post. The ceiling was made of polystyrene, and I was once again wearing all my clothes (I would find out in the morning that the shower was completely cold – one of the coldest shower experiences I have ever had). Was I happy with my salt flat experience? Yes. Was I still shocked at how much I had spent to get here? Definitely. If nothing else it's now a fairly amusing story of a stupid taxi journey. There would be many more to come.

CH4 - Volunteering with Kids

After an eventful journey back to Sucre (on which one bus broke, then the following only took us halfway), I moved out of the Zamoras' house and into an apartment of other volunteers. My apartment, which I shared with a Dutch girl called Kim (other volunteers came and went throughout the two weeks), was owned by a doctor who lived in a huge house next door, who seemed to own nearly half of Sucre. Kim was also volunteering at the Betania centre and had been there a week longer, and was far better at it than me!

For the next two weeks I would be volunteering at the Betania children's centre on the far side of the city in a poor area. The centre essentially acted as a homework class for children in the afternoon when their parents were working. My role there was to oversee one of the homework classes (the kids were split up into different age groups), and maybe run some kind of activity afterwards. My day started at about one in the afternoon, and lasted for only a couple of hours. Easy right?

We caught the bus – line G – from the corner by our apartment (there are no bus stops – buses basically stop wherever people want them to) and paid our 1.5 Bolivianos. Like in Paraguay, the bus was an ancient, yet lavishly decorated bus at least 40 years old. There were a few around town, and I wish I had taken a picture of one. Although it was a long way to the centre, the bus took over an hour. First we would weave a bizarre route through the city centre, doubling back on ourselves numerous times. We would then head out past the football ground to the Mercado Campesino - much bigger and poorer than the central market, and in itself an eye opening experience. The streets were crowded with people, and unlike markets here you would get eight or ten stores – all selling the same thing, laid out in the same way and at the same prices – right next to each other. Nine (always indiginous) women in a row would all sell onions, five shops in a row would sell tyres, six in a row would sell prams. Absolutely crazy. And then, seeing you were a gringo, they would still try to rip you off! Ten Bolivianos for four apples? No thanks. Maybe I'll go to one of the other eighteen women in a row all selling apples. I suspect that given enough time you could actually buy everything you could ever want in that market, you would just never find it all.

After inching through the market the bus would climb some very steep hills (poor areas always have the best view), and every time I was convinced we would have to get out and push – especially after someone had decided they wanted to get off halfway up the hill.

We were welcomed in by xxx, who ran the centre along with her more jovial and less scary husband. The centre – with it's bright yellow painted walls – was on two levels, with an open air yard in the middle. When we walked in the children were still playing, and the noise was tremendous. We went and sat at the side of the yard, and a few of the smaller children came over and hugged Kim. I was introduced as a new profesor, and would be teaching the older children who were about eight or nine.

The day would start with xxx – in a booming voice calling playtime to an end. All the children would then gather round and sing a number of songs. I don't think I ever learnt his name, but often xxx's husband would come and get involved in the singing. Most of the children seemed to genuinely enjoy this, and while I didn't understand most of the words it reminded me of singing 'everywhere we go' when I was very small in beavers. After a short prayer (with half the children peeking through their fingers) they ran of to various different classrooms, and would take at least five minutes taking out their homework. Most got on with this, but for some this would be a daily war of minds. They would claim they didn't have any homework, and I would claim I didn't believe them.

Even though I had the oldest group to look after, being Bolivian they were still very small. Homework time was still, in general, a noisy occasion, although occasionally xxx would come in and yell SILENCIO!! - and there would be quiet for about twenty seconds.

Helping with homework was hard. I couldn't really help them with their Spanish, and many of them were doing maths such as long multiplication and long division. Now, my long multiplication skills are... rusty, and I'm pretty sure I've never been able to do long division! So, I used to spend my afternoon struggling with maths that a ten year old can do. After their homework was done I used to try and teach them bits of English – days of the week, numbers and so on. I also tried to teach them bits of Geography, which was fun but hard. A lot of these children will never actually leave Sucre (if they do it won't be to far away), and when I first started one girl told me I didn't sound like I was from Sucre – and asked if I was from La Paz? Anything further than La Paz was incomprehensibly far away, so drawing a map of England in relation to Bolivia was fun!

At the end of my first day, xxx announced that because it was Bolivia's independence day on Thursday, there would be no class until the following Monday – and this went for me too. Independence day, and the week or so around it are like a national party where nobody seems to work or go to school.

For the following week then, I had nothing I had to do and nowhere I needed to be. In the context of my trip this was actually quite nice; normally I would be trying to do and see quite a lot, but this gave me an opportunity to relax, and actually explore a city properly. I even got on the cheesy 'dino-truck' and went to see the dinosaur tracks on the outskirts of town. Many of my days would start with a hungover stroll up to cafe mirador for breakfast, where I would sometimes spend an hour or two writing or going through my Spanish notes. In the afternoon the parades would start, so if I couldn't think of anything better to do I would go and follow the parades round town and eat cheap ice cream.

If I didn't go to cafe mirador in the morning, another of my favourite activities was to go to the market and buy about three salteñas – small meat pasties that are unbelievably tasty. My guidebook recommended not eating salteñas, as you haven't seen them being cooked. Sometimes, the guidebook doesn't know what's best for your tastebuds.

In the evening, we (me and my flatmates) would often head down to a 'Dutch bar' called Floren where at the start of the evening you could get good half-price cocktails (which made it about 70p a cocktail). A few messy nights out started with a cheeky Floren happy hour cocktail. It was on one of these nights we met Alex, who was – lets say – friendly – with one of our volunteering friends. An advantage of staying in Sucre for so long was that it gave us a chance to meet locals like Alex, who you wouldn't have a chance to get to know if you were moving around a lot. Alex introduced us to a bar called Planeta Tierra, which was a smaller bar generally unknown to passing travellers. Planeta Tierra was run by Dorito, who remembered your name everytime you went back. Three nights a week they would have live rock music on, and it was regular to see people dancing on tables or on the bar. We were normally the only gringos there, so we would have to Spanglish our asses off talking drunken bullshit to locals.

One evening we went down to one of the parks, where literally hundreds of people were preparing for an upcoming streetdance. A few people had turned up with stereos, and about twenty people at a time would perform a synchronised dance behind them. I wasn't brave enough to go up and join them.

Independence day came and passed in a drunken haze spent in many bars. At midnight everyone shakes hands with each other and sings cumpleanos feliz (happy birthday Bolivia), and it capped

what had been a pretty good week of celebration. It made me slightly jealous that we don't have an independence day, or anywhere near the same number of public holidays. One of my Spanish teachers in Sucre couldn't believe that we didn't have any national holidays between August and Christmas, and that we didn't even have an independence day (independence from whom??). In Bolivia there is a national holiday about every two or three weeks, although for much of the population this doesn't necessarily mean a lot. Because I was in Sucre for a while I got to see the beggar who 'couldn't walk' lying on the pavement with his hat desperately held out to people walking by (funny that he turned up 'lying' in a different place every day!). I saw the man who simply sang (badly) in the street. I saw a child scream at passers by with its hand outstretched. I saw about a thousand indigenous women look at me pityingly with their hand outstretched. And I got approached by about five thousand children wanting to clean my trainers. I didn't mind the shoe cleaners, or the singer, but the beggars could be annoying. Something I did do was buy bunches of chamomile from women in the street. I didn't particularly want the chamomile (it actually made pretty bad tea), and usually put it in the bin – the reason I bought it was because I wanted to give them a Boliviano, because they had actually gone into a field and picked some chamomile – and weren't lying on the street with their hand outstretched making a stupid noise.

One day outside the central market a local man started pointing to me and waving. I didn't recognise him at first without his kechua clothes on, but it was Pedro – my friend with the colouring book. We exchanged a friendly como estas? and he asked me how my language school was going (I was amazed he remembered the conversation). I told him about the voluntering, and showed him the ball I had just bought. He looked at me knowingly, “por los ninos.” I tried to say that I was a bit worried about how the ninos would react to a new ball!

We walked round the market and pedro would point to things and say the name in Spanish, and I would say it in English. “Medias...” he would say, pointing. “Socks...” and so on. I asked Pedro if he was hungry, and bought us lunch – we went to the food area upstairs were there were rows and rows of tables, where women would try to tempt you to sit down as you walked past. We perched on the end of a row and had chorizo y ensalada, with the compulsory hot sauce that sits on every restaurant table in Bolivia. I drop in the story because I think it illustrates that despite my little rant about beggars above, not all Bolivians are like that. Most will go out of their way to be friendly and talk to you.

The ball was an unbelievable success, half of the children seemed to have spotted it before I had even taken it out of my bag. And they ALL wanted to play with it. So, wrestling 30 children at the same time for the ball became my activity for the afternoon. I'm not sure xxx approved!

Another thing I did with the children was show them my collection of coins I had amassed. They looked at the Paraguayan coins like they were from Mars, and traced the queen's head from my 2p into their notebooks. They would pass the coins around between each other and run off with them, but I would always get every single coin back at the end – even my stray pound coin!

Something that amazed me was that if the children knew you had something – even something as simple as a few sheets of paper, they would all want a sheet of paper. I would give them one, and you would have thought I had given them a cheque. They already have stacks of bloody paper!

Another of my afternoon activities was swinging children round. Which is a slippy slope, because once you've swung one child, you have a job for the afternoon. Occasionally, I would swing a child round and the rest would run in, and one of them might get kicked in the head. Now, I'm sure you can image what would happen here if that happened. I'd probably get sued, and need a mop to clean up the tears. Not there. They don't even cry, because if they cry the other children laugh at them. They might disappear to the side for a minute, but a minute later they're back wanting to be swung

round again.

The volunteering in Sucre was, I think, the hardest thing I did during my trip, or at least the thing that put me most out of my comfort zone. The teaching was hard, and the whole thing was generally unstructured. I was basically given a bunch of children for a few hours, and left to it. At the same time though it was amazingly eye opening.

Left: Pre-homework song time.Right: Ready for a hard afternoon wrestling children.

CH5 – On to Peru

After a month in Sucre I was both happy and sad to move on. Lots of friends and good times, but other than getting drunk I really had run out of things to do! After my adventures getting to Uyuni I was keen not to cause myself any similar trauma getting to La Paz. I packed up, said my goodbyes and pulled over a taxi. This time, I was there in plenty of time.

A few things always worried me about long distance bus journeys. One was that often you would have to check your bag into the bus operators office and they would load it onto the bus, sometimes even strapping bags onto the roof. It always worked out okay, but I was always relieved to get my bag back at the other end..

Another was the timing of the buses. Often the latest a bus would leave on an overnight journey would be five or six in the evening, which would often mean that you would be arriving at your destination any time between four and seven in the morning. On top of this, unless I was getting off at the terminus I would constantly worry about where I needed to get off, occasionally asking other passengers the names of the towns we were passing and trying to find them on my map. This was particularly bad on overnight journeys where you couldn't fall asleep, and would have no idea where you were.

My bus to La Paz was one of the better ones – a semi-cama service. This meant the seats had enough space to recline right back, although to say that it was like a bed would be a large exaggeration. Typically I would eventually fall asleep, and end up snuggling or dribbling on the person next to me. The sleep on buses was also never refreshing, I would never sleep heavily enough to dream – it was more like passing out.

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, and our bus stopped halfway there in a small town. This happened regularly – you would just start to fall asleep through the crap Hollywood film

dubbed into Spanish, then you would stop in some freezing, dark town consisting of a shop and about two cheap restaurants. Hordes of street vendors would then magically appear, selling all sorts of things imaginable. It always felt like you were taking your life into your own hands when you bought something – especially when it was some kind of grilled meat on a stick. This time we had stopped at a small dark town where a lot of buses seemed to pull over. Many of the other passengers disappeared into a restaurant. I rarely plucked up the courage to do this for fear of being left behind, and would only do so if the driver did. If the driver eats it's probably a good idea, and when the driver leaves – get back on the bus!

After a few hours of pass-out, I woke up as we approached the outskirts of La Paz. La Paz is a city built in a giant crater, made by a meteorite millions of years ago, and to get into La Paz you pass through a rough suburb called El Alto – actually now a city in its own right. The view in the morning from El Alto as you decend into La Paz is truly spectacular.

Decending into La Paz. You can see snow-capped peaks in the background.

At this stage of a bus journey I would normally enter the next stage of stress – figuring out where you were going to go when you got off the bus. In big cities it is always sensible to establish an initial destination from your guidebook, even if you end up going somewhere completely different because it makes you a difficult target for fake taxis and other con-artists. As much as I would worry about it, it always ended up being relatively simple. In amongst all the bus terminal chaos there was an official looking taxi queue, while men looked to take you to other cars parked down the road.“Taxi amigo?”“Taxi?”“A donde va?”“Taxi?”

No gracias.I decided instead to get in the official looking taxi queue like everyone else was doing. Pretty simple really, you just have to be a bit careful.

Something that bugged me about many of the countries I visited was the chronic lack of change, and Bolivia was no different. I arrived at my hotel – not an upmarket hotel by western standards – but upmarket compared to some of the places I had been staying. My taxi driver announced that my short journey would cost be ten Bolivianos: expensive for what it was but not too bad. I had in my wallet four Bolivianos and a 100 Boliviano note. Was the driver willing to change my 100? Of course he wasn't! I went into reception and explained that I needed to change my 100 to pay the

driver, and a look of panic spread across the man's face. Eventually, by coppering up 20 Bolivianos in change he managed it. 100 Bolivianos is about £10. How a hotel can operate with just £10 of change in the till is completely beyond me. This situation is far from unusual though – whole countries seem to operate their monetary system like this.

I had arrived at the xx Hotel where I was joining a tour run by a company called Toucan Tours, however I wouldn't be meeting anyone until the evening which gave me a day to explore.

La Paz is a city where you start off in the morning wearing all your clothes, and end up in just a T-shirt by the afternoon. Steep hills rise in all directions, and I can easily see how visitors less foolhardy than me struggle with the altitude.

One of my regrets is not having more time in La Paz. There's a lot to do both in and around the city, including mountain-biking down the self-proclaimed 'world's most dangerous road', scaling peaks, going to Inca ruins, and amazingly even visiting the jungle. Sadly I didn't have time for much of that. I did walk round a number of museums – including the cocaine museum. I also visited the 'witches market' where amongst other things llama foetuses are sold to keep away evil spirits. I decided against buying a llama foetus. La Paz is a much bigger, much brasher city than Sucre, and colectivos swarm the roads competing heavily for passengers. In amongst the colectivo chaos it's fairly common to see market stalls set up in the street, street dancers, shoe polishers and more. By the street dancers there was no police escort or interference, traffic simply beeped and swerved round the dancers as they went through their routine.

Left: Huge hills are never far away!Right: Check out the llama foetuses.

Colectivos swerve around street dancers.

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By the evening I was back at the hotel, and was by now very tired. It was time however to meet up with the tour. The tour consisted largely of loud Australians, who were basically here to get smashed and have a good time. They knew no Spanish at all (some couldn't count to four). Which is fine, but I quickly recognised that this probably wasn't for me. I had also, once again, been heavily ripped off by Real Gap, the company I had booked my trip with. Not only did you have to pay to do things, but you also had to pay a 'local fund' which covered your hotels. So really all I had paid for in advance was fairly expensive transportation (which I didn't even really want to be on). I seriously debated leaving the tour immediately to spend more time in La Paz, and in hindsight that is what I should have done. I guess these are the things you learn with the benefit of hindsight.

To be fair to the people on the tour (the vast majority being jebs), the better I got to know them the more I saw signs of hope. They were (mostly) nice people – and good to get drunk with.

A few more things frustrated me about the tour. One was the choice of restaurant selection, and tipping. While it was good to be sociable in the evenings and eat together, they generally eat at what I would regard as 'gringo' restaurants. My preference generally was to have a large almuerzo which would be a set menu, then in the evening do what the Bolivians do – eat street food. Generally you want to see it being cooked, but even that stopped bothering me after a while. In regards to tipping – Bolivians rarely tip (if they do it may be a few coins), and nobody tips on a set lunch menu. The jebs would tip ten percent regardless, which in Bolivia at least is actually a huge tip (you would see a waiter's eyes light up when we would go into a restaurant). Not that I'm set against tipping when it's appropriate, I just feel it's better to fit into the norms of the society that you're in.

Besides hours of Australian hip-hop on the tour bus, another annoyance was occasionally having to cook our own meals (using money from our local fund). It was nice to be able to cook occasionally, but having to then wash and clean everything, then pack it back on the bus made me wonder what the hell I was paying for.

Most of all though I also missed the local bus adventures, and the stress of travelling by myself. I missed having to chat to crazy old men on the bus about stupid things. And I missed worrying where I was going to get off, and whether I would still have my bag when I did.

We left early the next morning on a big, incongruous yellow Toucan Tour bus, and were soon over

the Peruvian border circling Lake Titicaca. The land here is extremely dry, and the sun bright but cold. We soon arrived at the town of Puno, where we would be doing an overnight tour onto Lake Titicaca.

Puno itself is fairly non-descript, and is most famous for being the start of the railway that runs up to Cuzco then eventually up past Macchu Picchu. It has a number of restaurants and bars, the compulsory church and plaza, and if you walk far enough a decent view over the lake.

For a continent so imprinted with the stamp of religion, churches in South America are largely rubbish. It was regular to see local people bent down in prayer in front of a frayed, fading picture of Jesus or some other prophet. I tended not to hang around in the churches, and definitely didn't pay to go into any. On this occasion, I chose to sit outside the church with a beer, chewing coca leaves. Each to their own.

The next morning we left early to head out onto the lake. Puno first thing in the morning is bitterly cold – especially in August, and the temperatures overnight can get as low as minus twenty. We were taxied to the harbour in three-wheel 'trici-taxis' – basically a push bike with a seat welded to it. Our 'drivers' raced each other as we went along, standing on the pedals to get us up over the railway lines.

The harbour is essentially a giant market, where boats also happen to leave from. Stalls run for a good two-hundred metres, and we were immediately accosted by old ladies trying to sell us hats. “Por el frio, por el frio!” One actually mimicked a shiver at me. That night we would be staying with a host family on one of the islands, so in preparation we bought presents. After my experience in Sucre I opted for colouring pencils, which I resisted playing with myself.

We set off on a relatively small boat, accompanied by our tour guide, who taught us some kechua that I now cannot remember. The boat had space to sit on the roof for foolhardy people like me, and reminded me of a small version of the river boats you get at Chester. Sitting up on top was a strange sensation. It's genuinely freezing, particularly as you head out into the lake, but as the high altitude sun is strong you can actually feel yourself burning at the same time. Of course, I tried to stay up top as long as possible, but like going on a Mersey ferry in February when you think you're hard enough, you're not!

Lake Titikaka is huge. As Puno and the reeds that surround in disappeared into the distance, it looks more and more like you're on an ocean not a lake! Away from the shore you cannot see land in any direction at times. We spent about three hours getting to the first island on our trip, the island of Taquile. Taquile is long and thin, which means you can walk across it fairly quickly. Around the main square, the local local children eyeball you suspiciously, while the older residents seem to make a good living selling woven goods.

Left: Taquile is covered with the remains of Inca terracing, which still form the infrastructure of much of the island.Right: Women weaving.

Kechua is mainly spoken on the island, although most of the locals also understand Spanish, particularly if you look like you may buy something. The islands on the lake are partly fascinating, and partly a tourist trap. There is clearly a way of life here that hasn't changed for a very long time, and away from the centres you can see that. You just have to keep your eyes open. What cannot be doubted though is that even in the dry season, the islands are definitely beautiful.

That evening we stayed the night at Amantani, another island further out into the lake. At the harbour we split up into groups, and were met by Mary, whose family was to be our host for the night. (Whether Mary was her real name or not, I'll never know). We walked uphill quickly, us struggling to keep up despite the advantage of longer legs. Mary lived at home with her two daughters, who were six and four. Mary's husband was away working in Puno. By our standards she looked far too old to be a young mother, although I suspect she was probably not older than me. The house when we got there was tiny but amazing. A lot of effort had been put into our room, although we all constantly banged our heads. The family lived downstairs in a stone walled living area, of course with no running water or electricity. The children, while quiet, were clearly used to having tourists around. As quiet as they were, I soon discovered that if you rolled a football at them, they would happily kick it back!

Left: Mary & daughters.Right: The houseAfter a football game with the locals, which we won despite wheezing with the altitude, we walked up to the highest point on the island for sunset, where the views over the lake are spectacular. From the top you can see that the island is actually divided into little areas or patches, with each one belonging to a different family. At the time they were difficult to see, although our guide explained that later in the year when it rained they would become green.

That evening Mary cooked us a meal, a sort of vegetable stew cooked over an impossibly small fire in their freezing, stone walled living room. Mary's mother, who looked about 120, was also there. While Mary cooked, she also prepared cups of jelly for the children, which made me wonder how well they actually eat..

Left: Dinner time. You can see the fire and grandma in the background.Right: The view from the top. You can hopefully see how the island is divided into patches