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Have just got back from Bolivia, had amazing time but only 3 days left in Rio nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!! Anyway moving on from my fear of returning to reality....

Arriving in Bolivia was a bit of a shock to the system after the luxury of Brazil, no roads, 25 year old truck/bus things that barely work and food that regulary makes you vomit or have to run to the bog....(nice huh!!) It is such an incredible place and was really interesting to see as so different to all the other South American countries that I have been to. Bolivia has far less of a European influence and a much greater indigenous population than the other countries that I have visited in South America (worth it just to see Bolivian women´s bowler hat fashion thing they have going on)and it felt good to be roughing it again after being flashpackers in Rio for so long, well for a while anyway!

Tales of the white stuff

Lozy
2006-08-21 10:31:09

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Phils Reebok classics in a public place....dear god the shame! The next day being extremely hungover we made our way to Potosi. Potosi is the highest city in the world and sits at 4060m above sea level, this made even walking down the street exhausting, that was bad but then the altitude sickness set in...never felt so strange, headaches, sore neck, insomnia, LOSS OF APPETITE was like the worst hangover ever for 3 days solid. Simon and I reacted relatively calmly to our symptons but poor old Philip was getting a little stressed out that his lungs were filling with liquid and that his brain was swelling up what a GERTY!!
We did a mine tour in potosi which wasn´t quite what we expected!!! basically involved getting in big silver boiler suits and crawling through dusty tunnels(only meant for tiny nimble bolivians not big hefty westerners)and struggling to breath, was one of the scariest things that I have done but so intersting and humbling to see that so many people work this way everyday, never been so glad to get out of somewhere in my life.
That night we took the slowest bus in the world to Uyuni, I bonded with local women by peeing in the road next to them easy if you are wearing huge bolivian skirt not so easy in trousers when everyone wants to come and watch!. Arrived in Uyuni at 4am and it was about -15 found somewhere to sleep for a few hours and then went on a tour of the Salar de Uyuni, the Salt plains. The trip was incredible never seen anything like it, scenery so surreal and so so vast, stayed with families in little villages, was cold and incredibly tiring but the Salar, the cactus islands and the coloured lagoons are some of the most incredible things I have ever seen. After the tour we took bus to La Paz, so good to be below 5000m and start to breath normally again. Had amazing night out with Jean Philip and Katy, miss you guys.
Then after the weekend in La paz (which involved being dragged about by my english ...