Getting injured on the world's most dangerous road, who would have thought it?

Hello everybody from Peru! I hope you all had a great Easter! I certainly did as I continued my journey through Latin America throughout Bolivia and into Peru.

I have just arrived in Peru today and am currently in the Southern town of Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca. To be honest the town is not the nicest place, and tomorrow I get on a bus and head to Cusco where I stay for a few days before I begin my Inca Trail. I think Puno looks slightly worse than it probably is largely because I have just come from the Bolivian town of Copacabana on the Southern shore of Lake Titicaca. It is a great town in it's own right as well as the port for ferries heading to the Inca ruins on the islands of Isla del Sol and Isla del Luna on the Lake. I spent a day walking around Isla del Sol looking at some of the Inca ruins (The Inca's believed the island was the birth place of the sun god) which has really made me begin to look froward to Macchu Pichu in the next few days.

Aside from Copocabana I have spent the rest of my time since my last post in La Paz. In many ways I was suprised at how much I liked La Paz. I was not expecting it to be that great, but what I found was one of my favorite city's of the trip so far. The only reason I had planned to stay so long was because I did not want to be stuck in some village in Bolivia during Easter, but what I found was a vibrant and fun city and one of the best places to go out in the entire of my trip so far (it may have helped that I was staying in a brewery).

The city itself is the highest capital in the world and yet sits spectacularly in a valley surrounded by snow capped peaks which the houses climb up. The city is also the base for the popular 'world's most dangerous road' mountain bike trip. I decided to do the trip thinking the name was exaggerated slightly. The reason the road (going from La Paz to Coroico) was named such was because on average it used to have 100 deaths a year largely due to bus crashes. However the Bolivian government finally worked out that it might be sensible to open up an alternative route linking the to towns to stop this, meaning that the only cars that now use the road are those people that live on the road itself. The road is a 40km long 3m wide gravel (loose gravel as I found out!) track that descends 3000m. It is covered in waterfalls and lanslides and has an exceptionally high drop off the side (about 2 bikers die every year going off the side) so obviously I had to bike down it. It is very hyped and thousands of tourists do it every year unharmed, but while deaths are rare, apparently broken bones are not uncommon. I can see why. I had the misfortune of skidding on one corner, known by the guides as 'collar bone corner' and coming off the bike (fortunately) onto the road. I escaped with merely scrapes and bruises, although one bruise does cover my entire left hip area and I have an impressive limp at present. However I carried on and made it to the bottom alive.
Speaking to my guide at the end of the ride I was told by him that accidents are not uncommon largely due to blokes riding too fast (guilty!) girls riding too slow. He then told me that he himself was not immune to this and had been off the edge, but had fortunately only fallen 3m into a tree and not 400m. Maybe the name 'the world's most dangerous road' is appropriate.

Anyway I best be off to bed now as I have a ridiculously early bus to Cusco tomorrow morning. I will speak to you all soon.

Phil

Mmmm Salty!

Hello and welcome to the latest blog update in my South American odyssey.

I am currently sitting, writing away in my hostel in Potosi in Southern Bolivia. Potosi itself has a number of claims to fame; firstly it is the highest city in the world (4060m) and secondly it used to once be the most important city in the entire of the Americas. This is because Potosi was built on the site of a huge silver mine which effectively bankrolled the Spanish empire. The mine was in fact so large that it is still used today to mine silver, tin and zinc among other minerals. However where the mine was once worked by South American slaves for the benefit of the Spanish empire, it is now owned by a cooperative of the workers.

That is not to say that conditions are much better. This morning I did a tour of the mine and frankly i'm amazed that anyone can last a day in there let alone 30 years. Some of the shafts literally require that you crawl through them, which was fine for me as I don't suffer from claustrophobia, however a couple of the other guys on the tour did and they really struggled. Anyway the conditions in the mines itself are so bad that 40 men die a year in the mine , either from carbon monoxide, or cave-ins and that is excluding the number that die every year from lung problems such as silicosis (the average life expectancy of a miner is 30-40 depending on whether they enterec the mine at 10 or 20).

Cave-ins are not uncommon, due largely to the way in which they mine: the miner drills into the rock, shoves in a stick of dynamite and then runs. For this reason the miners market in the city sells all kinds of things such as various explosives, fuses and dynamite. My guide advised that i purchased some dynamite as a gift for the miners, telling me thery would would give me a demonstration. I kind of expected dynamite to be expensive, but a stick of dynamite, a fuse and some ammonia nitrate to increase the explosion cost less than $3 US. However you need not worry because they have place an age restriction to buy the dynamite, you have to be at least 9! The explosion itself was great, but there was attached a warning: 'don't try this at home'. Apparently about 6 months back, some English tourist bought some extra dynamite to try and set off there own explosion, however instead got drunk and accidentally blwe up a hostel in Uyuni (see below). The result was that they ended up having to pay $10,000 US to repair the hostel and $12000 US to get out of jail!

The experience was a slightly humbling one, I was frankly amazed that people would work in such conditions out of choice. But this is because there is no other work. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and it shows. It has its feet firmly planted in the 3rd world. For example the country only has 1 paved highway, all the others consist of dirt roads (which made for an interesting 6 hour bus ride from Uyuni to Potosi). I have not seen poverty in this scale since Venezuela.

Anyway aside from that, I got to Bolivia 3 days ago. I arrived in Uyuni in the South of the country following a frankly awe-inspiring trip across the Atacama Desert and the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Plains). The sights were amazing; red, white and green lakes full of Flamingoes, boiling geysers, volcanoes and of course the Uyuni Salt plain which stretches as far as the eyes can see. This was certainly a good way to travel from Chile to Bolivia and is without a doubt one of the most amazing things I have done in my trip so far.

Anyway I best be off, there are people waiting to use the computers, a loading all these photos has taken quite some time.

I'll update you all again soon.

Phil

Brown Water Rafting

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest post on my blog.

The last 10 days or so since I last posted has been rather hectic and that seems to be the way this trip will remain, at least for the next couple of months while i'm in South America.

I am currently in San Pedro de Atacama, a village sitting in the middle of (apparently) the dryest desert in the world, the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. The village itself is nice enough, but it's sole purpose is as a tourist destination and is thus prone to the usual problems that you encounter when that is the case - i.e. expensive and too many tour operators trying to get you to do their 'unique' tour. The desert itself once used to be a key source of income for Chile due to its valuable nitrate reserves and the presence of saltpeter (used for gunpowder), but as the technolgies that used these resources became obsolete, so did the resources and that has resulted in the desert being scattered with 'ghost towns'. San Pedro however remained. It survived due to the fact that it is situated just north of the San Pedro salt flat and is a good central place to see the desert sights. It is also a good jumping off point for excursions into Bolivia to see the much larger Uyuni Salt flats, which is what I am here to do.

San Pedro aside, since my last post I have spent time in Valparaiso in Chile and Salta and Mendoza in Argentina. Valparaiso was by far my favorite city of the trip so far. It is a beautiful city with a slightly bohemian feel that has outstanding views, architecture and character. It is not a European city in South America like Santiago (which was still great), but a truly South American experience. The city has a slight edge to it, but in many ways that benefits it, in that it means that the city itself is not swamped by tourists. It's neighbour town Vina Del Mar is home to all the beautiful beaches and 5 star hotels, but looks more like Miami than a Chilean city, and if I wanted to head to a nice beach, Vina Del Mar was only a 10 minute bus journey away.

Next stop was Mendoza, which was nice enough, but if like me you didn't want to do wine tours it's a bit boring, so I headed on to Salta. Salta is a pleasant town in Northern Argentina, with a beautiful cathedral. But what people come to Salta to do is to see the beautiful surrounding countryside and take part in the many adventure activities available. My main reason for being in Salta was to do some white water rafting in a place which was suitable for beginners in order to get some experience so that i can do some of the more extreme runs later. The rafting itself was really good fun, but due to heavy rainfall the two days prior to going, the rivers had a lot of mud washed into them so were brown (see photo) so it wasn't really 'white' water rafting. It was a great experience and i'm looking forward to doing something a little more challenging.

Anyway i'm of to do some desert hiking and will update you all on my progress soon.

Phil

From arms dealers to snow capped Andean peaks. A typical week travelling in South America.

Hello all!

When last I posted I was just about to leave my relaxed poolside hostel in Puerto Iguazu to head into Paraguay. Since then i've had a fairly entertaining time with a few interesting moments.

My trip to Paraguay was fairly brief, I spent two nights in Encarnacion which is one of the larger cities and a good base to visit the Jesuit ruins about an hours journey north in Trinidad. I realised that Paraguay was a little different from Argentina when within a minute of getting of the bus I was approached by somebody with a gun (not going to lie i was a little worried). Fortunately he didn't want to use it on me, but wanted to sell it to me. I told him that i didn't need a gun in my best Spanish ('gracias, pero no lo neccesito una armar', oh yes), however this only spurred him on so instead tried to sell me bigger guns and told me he could get me an AK47, not sure how i'd go about getting that back over the border but that's not really relevant. Anyway I told him no thank you and quickly headed to my hotel, then the next day I headed to Trinidad. Apparently the Jesuit ruins there are one of the least visited world heritage sites. I can believe this. I was at the site for an hour and i was the only person there. I also did not meet a single foreigner in the entire of Paraguay, so if you want a local experience it might not be a bad place to0 head.

Following this I spent a few days in Cordoba in central Argentina, nice town but not an essential stop for travellers. It might have been better in term time however as there are a number of universities in town, so it would probably give thew town's nightlife a much-needed shot in the arm. That's not to say the town is dead, just considering it's size, not particularly lively. After that I took a bus over the Andes into Chile, on what was a pretty amazing bus journey (see photo) and arrived in Santiago. Santiago is a great city; great parks, great buildings and great nights out. The picture postcard mountain setting can't really be appreciated because the combination of heat and the smog makes the large mountains practically invisible, but that is not enough to spoil a great place.

I am now in Valapraiso which is considered the cultural capital of Chile. I'm staying here for a few days and then heading back into Argentina. I'm planning on spending a few days in Mendoza (wine county!) before heading north.

Speak to you all soon

Phil