After my last post I got seriously busy, meaning too much fun and no blogging for a while.Then, end of July I flew back to Europe, meaning way too much people to see, festivals to go to and no blogging for a while.
But I still want to finish my travel blog, so here goes!
The day after we climbed Huayna Potosi (remember, the 6k mountain we managed to get ourselves on top of) me and Khanh, my travel bud, woke up at about 7AM which is not exactly one of our many good habits and this being an understatement…
Loud noise in the streets of La Paz. Once again we found ourselves in the middle of a Bolivian party, el Gran Poder. Tons of people, street parades all day long, starting at 6 AM and going on ‘till 3AM. Even though we could barely move our legs anymore, we spent all day walking, eating street food, and looking at the parades. I actually got pulled into the parade at one point in time to go dancing. One thing about the street food. Most people will horrify by the thought of eating meat on the street in Bolivia, especially given the cleanness of your average Bolivian toilet. But please, people, do not miss out on all these goodies! Street food is Bolivian culture. Between the two of us, Khanh and I probably tried out most of it and never felt better!
El Gran Poder, officially being a religious holiday, it’s celebrated with lots of impressive dancing, live music, amazing outfits and even more amazing amounts of beer in a well orchestrated mix-up of Bolivian craziness.
In La Paz, I took another interesting local bus (in Bolivia all local buses are interesting, yet very probably crappy) to get to Coroico. I spent one week in La Senda Verde (the green trail) volunteering in an animal refugee, main tasks being feeding, cleaning and playing with the animals. Lots and lots of fun. An amazing opportunity to work with wild animals, in an amazing setting, with very nice people, the volunteers being gringos, the staff being locals (funny locals, that is) not to least to mention the thrill of not having to pack my stuff for an entire week. Vicky and Marcelo, a Bolivian couple, did an incredible job. They started in Coroico building their dream house and some guest houses in a valley. One day a monkey that had been saved from a market kinda ended up at the lodge and that’s when it started. Now they have about
15 capuchin monkeys,
6 spider monkeys, a howl monkey,
a squirrel monkey,
loooots of parrots
and other birdlike species. Meet the Spice Girls. Five of them, always together and extremely dumb.
a macaw,
two koati’s (similar to a racoon),
an Andean beer (called Aroma, mi favorite). While one of us would clean his cage, we'd keep him busy feeding him peanuts. My kind of task, amazing how Aroma would gently take a peanut from your hand and break it open with his paws. Way too cute! I had to forge myself to take a good look at his claws every now and then to keep me from petting.
a few owls,
two boa constrictors,
some tortoises
and a bunch of rabbits and guinea pigs.
The capuchin monkeys are probably the funniest habitants of la Senda Verde.
Amazing how humanlike they can be sometimes.
Martin for example would help you cleaning his eating platform. If you wouldn’t give him a brush he’d simply steal yours. Which basically applies for most of them. They’d steal literally everything they could get their little hands on.
One of them was very keen on undoing shoe laces; another would button down your shirt but would be nice enough to button it up again as well. Most of the babies would crawl down your shirt, looking for some “human” warmth. We ‘d recognize Kimbo because he’d always force your lips open with his fingers after which he’d just jam his hand in your mouth. Believe me, better no to think about where those little fingers could have been during the day. He actually managed once to kinda suck my lips for some time. Hesitating to pull him off (those cuties do have very sharp teeth), I couldn’t help but wonder if I was getting French kissed by a monkey now??
The tree house I slept in for a week!
Look at one little bastard slipping down my shirt! 
I would have loved to have been able to stay longer in the lodge. I was getting rid of my flees for free and I had a great relationship with the staff, once again very happy with my Spanish, and the other volunteers and as the week passed by I got to know the animals a lot better. But still a way to go to Buenos Aires and little time to get there…
In Sucre, I met Khanh again. Lots of contradicting opinions on what Bolivia’s capital is. Some say Sucre, some say La Paz. Let's see what my friend google has to say... The official capital of Bolivia is Sucre; La Paz is the administrative capital and seat of government. Well, seems they kinda have two capitals...
Exactly 200 years ago, the "First scream for freedom" , a first wave of protest against the Spanish in Latin-America occurred in Sucre. Kicking some Spanish butt, independence was declared in 1825.
Sucre is a beautiful colonial city, very different from hectic La Paz. The market was simply amazing and our favorite feeding place (restaurant wouldn’t do it justice). City with a very nice and vivid atmosphere, less crazy yet more livable as La Paz.
Our daily breakfast!
We did a few days hike, the tourist office recommended us to go with a guide but we kinda figured we’d be able to go solo, asking people we’d meet on the way where to go to. The lack of people on the way and the lack of knowledge of Spanish of those few we did meet, made it an interesting few days but we managed to go and see what we planned to go and see. A nice way to see life in some very remote villages, only reachable by foot.
The 3 hour bus ride back to Sucre was not exactly a bus and got nominated for most dusty ride ever! The truck left almost empty, but on the way we picked up people traveling with the strangest things, going from 3 month old babies to huge amounts of wood and a few big empty oil barrels.
And two gringos of course, this still being the funniest item on board according to the locals.
Bring in the wood!
After Sucre we visited Potosi, famous for one of the biggest silver mines in Latin-America. A fine example of wise and human colonization… (please spot my irony). Visiting the mines while the miners are at work is not a nice experience, you’ll feel ashamed for being Western and an extremely spoilt tourist, but it is very interesting and handing the miners some coca leaves and soda as gifts might buy of your guilt slightly. During Spanish colonization, the Indians were forced to stay months down in the mines, working in extreme hard and dangerous conditions. The Catholic Spanish initially didn’t feel very much for the Bolivian tradition of coca leaves and prohibited the use. Noticing chewing coca leaves actually helped the miners work harder and more insane hours, God suddenly realized coca leaves weren’t as bad as initially thought and coca was introduced again.
Nowadays, most of the mine is in foreign instead of Bolivian hands and work conditions are still amazing… No control exists on age of miners or work hours. Miners work on commission so every kilo of mineral counts, whether this is extracted by dad or his 12 year old son. Inside the mines it’s extremely hot. Potosi being at 4090 meters above sea level, there’s not a lot of oxygen in the air, let alone down the mines. I felt like fainting several times, once again ashamed as miners passed us by, wearing no helmets or protective clothing, pushing a 2000 kilo cart with their only source of strength in 8 hours being coca leaves and 96% alcohol (not a joke). Potosi itself looks like quite a rich town and it probably is. But regular people are probably among the poorest and less educated in the country.
The miners worship this guy. They leave coca leaves, alcohol and cigarettes.
96% alcohol...And I've seen them drinking it. (and tried some, mixed with water)
From Potosi we bussed to Uyuni for one of the highlights of my trip. Salar de Uyuni, one of the world’s largest salt flats and probably the most impressing one, the size being half of Belgium. The views are amongst the most amazing I have ever seen. Mountains can be impressive and overwhelming but in the end you’ll always have an idea of what a mountain should look like and most probably you've seen them before. Well, kilometers of white salt flats are not amongst your daily holiday views and we were thrown away by it.
Finding a tour company is not exactly a hard task, there are 52 different ones. Finding a decent and reliable one is a different story. Lonely Planet simply refuses to recommend one as none of them would be 100% reliable and a good one today might turn extremely shitty in a month. Not a big fan of the LP anyways, so I did my research online. Reading some horrifying stories (jeeps constantly breaking down, grumpy guides with 0 level of English, lousy food if present at all) we simply picked one that we couldn’t find anything too negative about and it all turned out fine.
Cold though. We passed the second night at -15 degrees in a hut with no heating. Thank god I brought whiskey...
