Salta, Argentina!

The night I left Uyuni was a good day. This was not my favorite town and wanted to leave instantly. It reminded me of that great Will Farrell movie where he is some soccer coach. I got on this less than perfect local bus to head to Villazon. Villazon was the border town for Bolivia and Argentina. Got on the bus and we headed out into some 4x4 offroad dirt course for the next 6 hours. I mean dirt road, not gravel road. Most of the trip the bus would be moving front, back and side-to-side. Sometimes feeling like a rollercoaster and others like a bungee jump. It was extreme enough where the driver and his minions had to get out of the car and add rocks to certain areas just so we could get up a hill. After the massage like motion put me to sleep, we arrived at Villazon at 5:30 am. This was the part I didn’t know where to go from. Two other kids on the bus seemed like they were in the same situation and asked them if they wanted to travel together to Salta. They agreed. These were two 18 and 19 kids from England. We walked across some bridge (every border has a bridge) and ended up in Argentina. Since I had to pay $160 for my 10 year entry fee, the number clicking into the computer system was much longer than everyone else’s. Sorry. Later on some woman checked my bags and boom, I was at the one and only country called Argentina. I was extremely excited. The first sign you see was a distance sign to the bottom to Patagonia. It said something like 5, 250 km! We walked for about 1 km. into the next town of La Quica to find a bus to Salta. Exchanged some US dollars 7-1 and all felt rich. Hoped onto some bus and 8 hours later arrived in Salta after a long stop in Ju Juy.

In Salta and already had a hostel to stay at. I told Tom and Alex about the hostel, then some random lady popped up asking if we needed a hostel and free taxi ride! We said yes like idiots. We arrived at this Backpackers hostel, wide open, painted white and ridiculous vinyl circles on the wall. The hostel was also empty. For some reason, we all agreed to stay here, mainly because we were tired. The manager was a complete d-hole and we still stayed.

Next day walked around this incredible city. Salta was truly my first introduction to Argentina and it did well. The people talked way too fast and made me feel like I didn’t speak any Spanish (which I mainly don’t). The food blew my mind and the city itself was breathtaking. It had the European colonial city feel with a posh statement. The markets sold specific foods and a normal large park reminded me of San Diego. It had similar trees of Balboa Park with the exception of random trees I’ve never seen. Surrounding this park was a large hill that had a gondola that brought you to the top. Outside this park was the city center where everyone just people watched all day, including me. Wine and steak are extremely cheap and empanadas have started to take over my life.

Besides this beauty of just walking around all of the locals drive these old vintage cars. Cars I have never seen in my life and think they are all bad ass. I’m not sure if they think the same (maybe its poverty) but if these cars were in the states you would be some really cool hipster setting the par for the next level. Another weird situation is eating dinner at 11 pm and going to the bars at 2 am. Then not coming home until 10 am and sleeping all day. This is new for me.

Two days into this crappy hostel we finally move to my original hostel. This hostel had a more local, group feel to it and instantly liked it. I stayed for another two days here while my other friends left for Buenos Aires.

The 10 am party on Saturday night was one hell of a night. Made lots of friends that night and a few dream girls I made friends with that once again slipped away.

I’m now on a 24 hour bus to Mendoza to meet some previous friends I met in Panama. They should be showing me a great time in there town. Can’t wait!

Sucre, Uyuni, and Salt Flats

Overnight bus plus more to Sucre. Sucre was the capital of Bolivia and known for its colonial buildings and beautiful scenery. We arrived and instantly Chad said he was going to find a bus to the salt flats. From the bus terminal you couldn’t see anything of the city and didn’t look that nice. As Chad ventured off to figure out a bus solution I chatted with the group to see what there plans were. The girls mentioned horseback riding and not knowing when they would leave Sucre. Arve was now falling for Mathilda and knew he wouldn’t leave her. The way they made it sound was they were going to be in Sucre for a while and I really wanted to get to Argentina for my three activities: wine, steak and woman. Not much more I could ask for. Chad came back and said there was a bus leaving in 5 minutes for Uyuni. This was the town where the largest salt flats in the world were. Instantly, on a limb I said goodbye to everyone and said I would see him or her in Uyuni (hopefully). We all had our horrible goodbyes and part of the group broke up. This was a very said moment as me and Arve had been travelling for the past month and the girls and I became really good friends. All within 30 seconds we all dispersed. Wish there was a better way than this way but it happened.

Uyuni

The bus that I thought would take only a few hours turned into 10 hours. A bus that I seriously regretted once I got on. I felt so bad for the way our group left, I felt I shouldn’t have ever left. After 10 hours we arrived into Uyuni. This town was a complete shithole and started to stress instantly. Chad and I both realized this place sucked and didn’t know what to do. We knew the salt flats were here but no sign of any salt. We walked around looking for hostels and one day trips to the flats. Another main reason to coming to the flats was for the day trip, not the 3 day campouts. None of us wanted to do that and heard you could do day trips here. Instantly asked if this was possible and most of the places said only 3 days were offered. Stress began. Next issue was trying to figure out how to get out of Uyuni to Argentina and for Chad to Chille. This equaled stress number 2. Then finding a room plus getting some dinner since that never happened since yesterday. Overall the first hour in Uyuni was hell and already wanted to leave.

We found a hostel and ventured out to get the deeds done of booking the flats and booking buses out of this town. Done! We found a day trip for $20 and both bought tickets get out of this town! Chads bus left at 3 am the next day and my bus left two days later. The only option for me was a night bus at 8 pm and the tours come back at 8 pm so I had to opt for the next day.

Salt flats:

Next day woke up bright and early for our 10:30 am tour. Yes 10:30, extremely late for a tour. We started to drive into the wilderness for about 15 minutes and the driver pulls into this railroad cemetery. No idea why there is a railroad cemetery here, or why it’s a tourist attraction but we stayed here for 30 minutes to take photos of these things. Either some people have never seen a train in there life or they are just dumb. Either way, I jumped on the train and snapped a few photos to look normal. Got back in the van and took off for the salt flats! 45 minutes later the driver stops at some random, deserted street clothing strip for all the tourist to buy random shit. This is another reason why tours are typically overlooked by people and taken advantage of. We stopped for a while. All of the gifts were made out of salt! Wow-ee. I gave in and bought some salt dice. Damn driver. Next stop salt flats! Next stop indeed was salt, and miles upon miles of salt. But this first stop was where workers would dig up salt and pile it on top of each other forming this pyramid shape salt mine that is about 4 feet tall. Surrounding the cone is a perfect square of water that the worker dug up. They do this to dry out the salt. Another interesting stop because we were just in the middle of the way of all of these workers trying to work, while we take photos of salt. Quite ironic in my opinion. This is another reason I did the day tour, not three days. Next stop salt flats! Even though we were already on endless miles of salt and 7 meters deep of this stuff we kept on driving. Each time you would see a car, the car would look like it was driving 400 km a hour and before you knew it, it was gone. The perspective out here is gone and depth reception is out the door. That part was my favorite about this area. You felt like you were on another planet and earth did not exist. One of the stops was to take some perspective photos. Since there is no perspective you could shoot photos that looked like you were small. Sort of like the movie/book “Indian in the Cupboard”. You can take a photo and look like you are 2 inches tall. Our photos were jumping on a beanbag like a trampoline. Pretty neat huh? Next stop was some island. This was not an island to me since I could walk into the salt but still very ire and surreal. To get  on this island you had to pay. Our solution was to walk around the island fo free. Beat that system. The lunch that day was pretty good: T-bone steak and rice. Not bad.

Got back from the fun day at the salt flats. Exactly what I imagined and checked off the list. Grabbed some food and went to bed. That night Chad left for Chile and I had the benefit to stay in Uyuni for one extra 24 hours! That day was pretty boring I must say. Went to the Internet café for most of it and did a bit of people watching, then repeat. I had no hostel so couldn’t just sleep it away. That night grabbed some pizza (for some reason the whole town was pizza shops) and headed to the bus. This is where the best part of the trip started. It was when I got to leave Uyuni.

La Paz, Bolvia

The driver slowly but surely arrives into La Paz. We were on the outskirts of La Paz. This was the grungy style part, full of people selling random things and going about their business. This took us about one hour just to get through. Finally started to zig zag down the streets and before you knew it, the hidden valley popped up. Inside this valley was the entire city. First glance everyone started to go “ooo” and “ahhh”. It was so breathtaking no one could say any real words except giggle in excitement. Across the valley were snowy mountains that shot straight up into the clouds. Each hill you could see were brick houses on top more brick houses. No real piece of land could be exposed due to the population here. The city was high up in the mountains over 4,000 meters. Without even getting out of the car I was out of breath.

Soon enough the driver just decided to pull over and say this was our stop. Even though we told him to take us to our hostel. He refused and also refused to take more money. What a chump. Then he decided to raise the cost for the drive from 15 to 20. What a chump. I pulled out a 20 and it ripped in half and gave him that. So in fact I gave him 10 bolivianos. We found some other taxis and hired them to take us to the hostel. My taxi definitely was not a licensed taxi but we got in and chatted with the guy. This was, I think to this day, the best Spanish I’ve spoken with a driver. The whole 15 minutes was us chatting back and forth about his city and his and my family. All of which, I didn’t have to search for words like I usually do. I was impressed with myself and most of the time never works out like this. Well it usually doesn’t work out like this.

Arrived at Wild Rover hostel. I knew right away I didn’t like this place and I was the one who reserved it. An amazing hostel but filled with English kids with there British accents. I knew I was about to get dumber and party way too much. At this time I was also started to get sick and knew trouble was just around the corner. The dorm room was a large 16 bunk bed room. It was about 6 pm and the hostel was already blasting shitty radio music. Though complaining, I ordered some food and drank beers with the gang. The set-up for this bar was long and narrow, looking exactly like an Irish Pub. People just smoked inside and the whole bar filled with smoke. No idea why they allowed this, but no one apparently complained to the owner about this. This night got pretty rowdy.

Next day we signed up for “the deadliest road on earth”. This was a tour that you mountain bike down the world scariest roads. We got to the top of the mountain and got geared up like we were on a NASCAR team. Fully decked out in gear I felt like we were an assembled team from around the world to beat some world record. After some minor briefing, we heading straight down this road. We were going so fast we were passing other cars. Luckily, this beginning section wasn’t the deadliest but merely an introduction to get used to the bikes. We pulled over, had breakfast and then took a detour onto some gravel road. This gravel road was the beginning of the real deal. The guide explained that if we say a car we needed to be on the left side of the road (overlooking the 1000 ft. cliff, rather than be on the safe side). This was because the width of the car was the width of the road and easier for a bike to manage.

We jetted off and road extremely fast. Not ever scary for me, me and two other friends would stop and wait for everyone to go by, and then race as fast as we could to catch up to the front. Some of the sections were a bit steep. At times it would randomly ran and you had to ride you bike over waterfalls that landed on the road. This whole exertion lasted about 3 hours and we descended about 2 or 3,000 km. Easily the best part of Bolivia I experienced!

Got back to the hostel that night. At midnight it was Lise’s birthday and was party time. I was in fact feeing quite ill and needed to go to bed. Only problem is, I had a headache that could here everything from a pin drop to a sneeze and was living in a 16-bed dorm. Lots of things happened that night. Ask me later.

Next day, not feeling any better, we walked around the city. Tonight the plan was to eat some amazing steak, go to a women’s wresting match and go out into the nightlife. All but three occurred that night. Amazing steak, check, nightlife, check, but wrestling was on Sunday, not Saturday. This helped us opt out for some other activities that words can’t describe.

Next day, get the hell out of Wild Rover (worst hostel I have been at this whole trip) and move south to Sucre, Bolivia. 

Cusco to Copacabana, Bolivia...if you don't ask...they don't tell

First off, the intro to Source Code has been on repeat for the past 2 hours waking me up in the wee morning on my bus ride to Mendoza. For some reason they like to wake everyone up and let us know its morning by playing some action packed movie or with some naturalistic movie with dolphins, birds and every animal you could think of. Both quite annoying and no idea why they need to wake us up. Regardless, the bus driver may need some attention or its some cruel joke all the locals are used to. If I had to choose it would be the dolphins. In this particular case,  I think I memorized the intro to my new favorite movie:

            Explosion, explosion, fire exploding, main girl actor says, “I listened to your advice…thanks…it was good advice”…violin playing back and forth rapidly.

I asked the driver to change the movie, I think he forgot. Now my lack of 12 hours of sleep on this bus is making me get up and write. This story below could be filled with action so make sure you have a weird violin playing with loud train like noises and explosions while you read this. Game on Source Code.

The title above says Cusco to Copacabana but there was a small town in between that had a small one night stays for the gang (Norwegians, Sweden, Canadian, Aussie and ‘merica). This town was in fact on Lake Titicaca but on the Peruvian side. We all thought this would be an awesome lake town, but it was filled with bad Chinese food and awesome cepticon transformer tuk tuks. The weather out here gets a bit colder so the tuk tuks are fully wrapped with armor to protect its clients from the extreme climate. I applaud these locals…truly.

Anyways, we stayed in this unknown town (forgot to copy and paste this info in my brain) for one night. We found this pretty awesome hostel that had a great homelike feeling. This was mainly because the homeowners also stayed here. This was also the best part of the city. Like I said above, we got into town and desperately needed food. Our solution was next door and it was Chinese. Not to be raciest or anything but being in South America the Chinese food couldn’t be bad at all. Nonetheless, a Chinese owned, Spanish-speaking family was another curve ball in the field. We all ordered, spoke in Spanish, and also literally pointed with our index fingers on the menu what each person wanted.  The waiter agreed and wrote our large order down.

Bo-na-pa-teet. One by one our food came out of the kitchen. The waiter would say out loud what the food was and no one would claim any of it. Each order kept coming out was wrong. By the end of eight plates, only a few of the plates were actually correct. We were all dying of hunger, so we complained only for a few minutes and then went to town and had our grub fest. Yes, this word was just used very appropriately.

After we ate, each person noticed that the wrong orders, were in fact not written down wrong, but they also decided to add the cost to the real order on the menu. Thus, each person would be paying much more money (in theory). Luckily, were smart and caught this mistake. This ventured into an argument about us paying more and how we wouldn’t do it. Just saying, some establishments charge 50 cents for refills. Just saying. Well we one, left, and headed back to the hostel to watch some stories. Night ended.

Next day, got up, sort of walked around until we found some breakfast joint. Ordered some eggs and received eggs, rice, a large steak, bread and coffee. Incredibly large meal for breakfast and felt like I was going to die after this was in my stomach. All I wanted was a few eggs but it was the same price and can’t say no to stuff that is sort of free.

Me, Chad and Arve got back to the hostel and woke up the others. We mentioned how this town sort of blows and how we should leave. This is where Copacabana comes into play.

Around this complaining period we, as the largest group I’ve ever traveled with, decided to move to the lake town of Copacabana. Copacabana was on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca and would be a simple journey of a few hours to the border.

We packed up, quickly, and headed to the bus station. An hour later we hoped on a bus to Bolivia. Everyone on board was good except for me. I was an American and needed $135 for a visa and the driver warned me that the border had no ATM and needed to take money out here. Good thing too cause the ATM at this bus station rejected my card. Luckily, I had some great new pals and they said they would help a brother out.

The scenery driving from the unknown town to Copacabana was pretty wild. Lake Tatty next to us the whole time, and monster climbing rocks on the other side. These rocks were large Joshua Tree like formations, but heavy winds over the past million years gave them a sideways hat feel. They had flattened clay like steps that would jet up like a pyramid, but you couldn’t hike up them like stairs. You would have to rock climb up a section, have a picnic, and then hike up the next section. These crazy rocks were all along the border and were much more interesting then the flat ocean that had no sign of swell coming in.

Finally arrived to the border. Bus driver said to hurry up and they would meet us on the other side. About an hour later and me being the last one (visa applications, free cola from the customs and high fives) we blasted out of there. Only issue, the whole gang was waiting for us because the bus couldn’t get through the border. Supposedly, large protest were happening in Copacabana and cars couldn’t get through due to barricades and crazy funny locals standing in the way making sweaters. I didn’t have anytime to think except follow the gang that was yelling for my name and saying to hurry. I grabbed my surfboard and ran after them towards the sea. We climbed over fences, yelled at a few cows and hiked over some rock barracks that had barbed wire on them. Soon enough we ended up at the Lake where the rest of the bus members were. They said some boat was going to pick us all up and take us to town!

This was one great introduction to Bolivia. None of us knew where we were and no one was worried for a second. The sky was turning every color imaginable and the sun was setting over the water. The moon gave one of those large halo bubbles around itself. It was a sure sign this place was going to be cold. All of which gave us excitement about this mysterious town called Copacabana.

The boat came, but took about half an hour to figure out how to dock the thing. We finally got on board and the captain said the boat ride would take 15 minutes! But 15 minutes in South America, nonetheless Bolivia had to be longer. For some reason these people have no idea what time is. I’ve said this countless time before but time was never introduced to them in primary school. Therefore, 15 minutes could in fact be 15 minutes or 2 hours. Only time could tell.

2 hours later on top of the boat and many stories swapped we landed in Copacabana. The boat was freezing enough I had my alpaca sweater, gloves, poncho and badass cowboy hat on and was still looking for my balls. Copacabana arrived and we hoped off some sketchy wooden dock onto land. At first glance we knew this place looked special. Old colonial houses were spread out filled with coffee shops and restaurants.

We walked around, found a hostel and headed to get some food. We sat down at one amazing looking Mexican burrito shop. All of the portions looked huge and delicious. We were all very excited. Half-hour later some waiter, who saw us come in said they closed the kitchen down. Furious, we left to another joint. I’m telling you, this burrito had mashed potatoes in it and the size of the plate. It was a distant memory of San Diego burritos and was craving this badly. Next-door was some cu ant restaurant that served some amazing local fish. It was delicious but didn’t hit the spot for what we were all craving.

Bedtime happened

Next day, woke up early to work while everyone, as always gets their beauty sleep. The more people I’m with, the earlier I have to get up to work because more activities are presented to the table and must do. That morning I found this great coffee shop that jetted fuel into my blood stream like I was back in ‘Nam. Ask my Mom or Dad; they’ll know what kind of adrenaline rush I’m talking about is. Anyways, the girls came down later and mentioned some island tour around the Lake that leaves at 8:30. Grabbed some more coffee and we headed to the dock. Supposedly, this was where the sun was born…on this island! Wow. Another 3-hour boat ride and we made it to this weird island. Though long, the Andes were in the distant and you could see more lord of the rings mountains in the distant. The more I see the Andes the less I belief the movie was shot in New Zealand. There is some serious competition here.

We landed on the island and walked around to some ruins that were quite weak compared to Machu Picchu but still cool. This island was where the Incas started so that’s pretty cool. Ate lunch on the other side of the island (where we had to pay to enter, classic move tours, ya bastards) and had to give some money to this random gypsy who played guitar in front of us. Never asked for this dude to play in front of us but he insisted we were rich and we had to pay. Fuck that guy. I did get a funny photo of him looking at my camera, as he knew I didn’t approve of his message.

Okay, long day was over and we landed back into town. This time we were on a mission to eat this burrito. The gang headed directly there. Burrito shop closed due to protest. Today was some city wide organized day to close all of the restaurants, but we were on the island were the sun was born and didn’t know this information. Now were more pissed than yesterday. It was like your kid did something wrong, your not mad your just disappointed. That’s what we felt. We moved onto the next restaurant and decided to talk about how we could get out of Copacabana (due to strikes). No taxis came in and all of the boats were shut down unless you wanted to go to that weird island. The only solution was to hike out of town back to the original Bolivian border we started on. This hike was about 15 km and up and down all of the roads, plus shortcuts people told us about on the way. It was a task that wouldn’t be easy with my rice bag, backpack and heavy surfboard. All of which, was the only option.

Next day, got up, went back to the awesome coffee shop with the crew and discussed our game plan. The owner started to lock his doors and said the locals were getting a big angry and not to get in there way. Today was a huge protest day and everyone would be in the streets doing funny protest things. It reminded me of something Eugene, Oregon would do, except lots of grandmas with a bag of culture walking around. We gathered all of our stuff up, quickly and headed out of town. While this was going on, behind us was the whole town protesting and walking towards us (the city). We escaped this by a matter of minutes. I don’t think anything happened but got a few rad photos on the way. Good old journalism at its finest!

The long journey began up and down long hills. Some of the girls were complaining and re-assured them that I was in more pain with all of my gear. Some of the locals were also leaving so the new, old, modern and old fashioned collided as we all hiked up this hill. It was pretty cool. On the way, multiple DIY barricades were set up. These barricades consisted of cut down trees and like I said earlier cowboys and grandmas knitting sweaters and hats to pass the time. I gave then a nice western nod with my hat and posted up like the paparotsi and snapped a few photos with thumbs up. Some other reporters with filming the situation and saw all of us walking by and started to film us. I gave them the classic peace sign and they were stoked! Peace is in fact what they were after. Well-done Sean!

At this point I’m huffing and puffing with all of my gear. Once again, all of my good friends grabbed my board and we started to trade off carrying my luggage. These were good people I must say.

2 hours later we made it to the Bolivian border. We stamped our way out and hired a taxi to take us to the next Bolivian crossing. Walked back across this border again and made it into Bolivia. This point in my trip I get a lot of weird looks with my surfboard. Kids don’t know what it is and this particular time I took out my board just to show these curious rugrats what was under the hood. The touched it, I explained it was for the water and gave them high fives.

Found some car and hired it to drive us to La Paz, Bolivia. This drive was about 5 or more hours with a non-social driver that said it would cost each person 15 bolivianos for the ride. On the drive we got pulled over by the customs and had to get out of the car to show them our passports. All of which they weren’t interested in, but we had to cross the freeway, into some random strip of food and clothing stores, then back into the car. They were in hopes we would by some random stuff.