solstice, san juan, tarija and back to school!

more horse....grrr!

me and sophie

receiving the "good vibrations" at the solsticia

aymara flag
me and lupita and a bottle of singani

Hmm well these last few weeks have been pretty full. As I have been reminded by a number of people, I have been neglecting my blog....sorry!

At the end of June it was Aymara new year here which coincides with the solstice. It is celebrated by the ahem, massively catholic population here, by thousands of bolivians descending in the middle of the night to Tiwanaku, the stonehenge-like ruins miles out into the middle of nowhere on the Altiplano. Naturally, I decided to go along for these celebrations as it seemed and proved to be, an experience not to be missed! Everyone lights fires and there is dancing and singing and drinking through the freezing cold night. Everyone takes thermos flasks filled with a mixture known as ´te con te´, which is the local and potent alcohol, singani, made from the leftovers of the grapes after they have been already used for alcohol, and cinnamon and clove tea. This actually tastes surprisingly nice and is like warm mulled wine at christmas. When the dawn begins, everyone lines up to go through ´the gateway to the sun´ to receive the ´good vibrations´for the new year. When the sun begins to emerge over the horizon, everyone stands with their arms in the air until it is fully risen for further good vibrations. After that everyone breaks out into further singing and dancing. I heard from a reliable source that a llama is sacrificed each year too, although happily, I saw no sign of this.

A few days later was ´San Juan´, the coldest day of the year, supposedly, which is of course again celebrated by massive partying in the streets. The bolivians light fires everywhere in the streets, although this is illegal, but they give the police who come over alcohol so the police just wander from fire to fire in the streets, the drunkest out of everybody!

This last month has also been winter holidays for the schools here. I was originally told when i asked how long they had off, "well....it's either two weeks, or three weeks.....listen to the radio or watch the news....the government decides at the end of two weeks". I took this to mean it would be three weeks, which was sort of correct.

So as it was school holidays, I decided to take the opportunity to go down to the south of the country with Sophie, before she went back to switzerland, to a place called Tarija, which is where Lupita's family live. We had some problems getting there, as a lot of roads were being blockaded at the time, which in a country of about 20 roads is a serious issue! The bus journey in the end took just over 24hours...on the way we hit a blockade, the bus driver then decided to drive off the road around it, we got completely lost, eventually back on the right path, hit roadworks and a road which was closed for 6hours, although we managed to get through after 3 when the passengers collectively bribed the roadworkers with coca leaves. After that we only had to stop to change a tyre and then when the police decided to do a random search of all baggage, before we finally made it to Tarija.

Anyway, Tarija is a really lovely city. It was much warmer as it is lower down and it is also where most of the Bolivian wines come from. They are very sweet and sugary, and taste like homemade wines, but they are quite nice and also very alcoholic. We had a day at one of the wineries, tasting wines before leaving with seven bottles. We also went horse riding(not again!) one day too, again stopping at a local ranch to drink some wines....not a good idea when you have to get back on a horse. Anyway, so much for my recent horse riding experience....this time i actually fell off the horse....this was partly my decision, as i was at the point where i decided i would rather be on the ground than the horse.

After I got back to La Paz, it was the third week of school holidays, so i worked all week at the pub. I was looking forward to getting back to school: normality, waking up in the mornings, sleeping at night and all that kind of boring stuff, when the government announced that school holidays were now going to run into a fourth week....is it any wonder that the country is so backward when the education, which is already bad enough, is put on hold on some governmental whim(probably because they don't want to pay the teachers).

This week school started again, which was really nice actually. I wasn't expecting the kids to remember so much after 4 weeks holiday, but they remembered everything, which is a really good feeling, and it was also nice to see them again (strange). Saying that though, i have not seen the class which is really a pain yet, though!

Salta

me on baherito "little bird"
Gaucho cowboy....and some impressive sunburn
me and girls i stayed with in the cable car
gorgeous mountains
pretty buildings too!

The argentinian side of the border town, La Quiaca, is very different to Villazon, the bolivian side. Suddenly there are pastry shops, proper roads and little cafes!

I caught the next bus to Salta, a city in the north of Argentina, and a mere 7 hours away, with some girls who I had met on the train and crossed the border with. We arrived in Salta Wednesday evening and found a really nice hostel to stay in. The next few days were spent wandering around Salta, shopping, eating and drinking. It was perfect!

Salta is a lovely city, and felt really friendly and safe... especially after Bolivia! Argentina is supposed to be quite Italian; I don´t know about that having never been to Italy, but it certainly was quite continental and european. You can even get croissants! The buildings and plazas are really colonial in style, but well maintained, whereas in Bolivia, everything is falling down.

The landscape was also a lot greener, with more trees, I suppose because it is not as high up. I have been really missing proper green trees, so I was very happy to get a bit of a tree fix! There are huge cactii everywhere and the mountains are incredible too.

We went in a cable car over the city one day, and horse riding by the mountains the next. The horse riding was really really good, although painful afterwards!! We went to a gaucho ranch(gauchos are argentinian cowboys) and the ranch was beautiful. The gauchos also wore the traditional outfits and did things like playing flute-like instruments while they rode; they made it look so easy! We rode round the tobacco plantations and the areas where they dry it all out. I´m afraid that the horse riding itself was a bit of a battle; I could manage to trot, but galloping felt like I was back on Death Road again! However it was a lovely day, although I did end up with some impressive sunburn and a very sore bum by the end of it!

Argentina is, of course, well known for its meat, and it´s wine. After Bolivia, which is not only unremarkable, but I would go as far as to say appalling, in these respects, it was lovely to be in Argentina! I didn´t have to worry about what the food/unhygenic plates etc would do to my stomach! The red wine was gorgeous, and the meat was too, even though i´m not a huge meat fan myself, so it had to be good for me to love it. The only thing is though, if you order a steak, you get a huge steak....and nothing else! They love the meat so much, that they don´t even bother with vegetables or chips or anything!

I left Salta to start heading back on Monday morning. It was probably a good job that I had to go, as I kept buying clothes...I was so excited to see real clothes shops and clothes that were actually of a style within the last decade that I kept buying them! I was sad to leave Salta though. I am definitely going back there, and to see the rest of Argentina too, at some point. Its a very really beautiful and relaxed country, and it was a good little holiday too!

Anyway, I am back in La Paz now. I have just got back from lessons at school, which are going well, especially after my little break. Unfortunately I have a nasty cold, but I am off to the pub now to get some hot whisky for medicinal purposes.

Uyuni Salt Lakes and up to the border

Cactii growing on the coral islands
ahem, yes. Pringles.
The building, the tables, even the chairs are made from salt

Standing on a salt mound
The sunset was stunning

I was due to set off for Argentina on Friday. However, a goodbye indian meal on Thursday night rudely awakened me on its way back up at 5am, and then its effects left me unable to get any further than the bathroom for the rest of the day, let alone out of the country. So on Saturday morning, still slightly ill, I was up early, ready to try again. Of course, I had forgotten that that day was La Paz's biggest festival, "Gran Poder", which starts at dawn and lasts through the day until 3am. The parade route effectively cuts the city in half and no one can get across the road, although you can queue at a couple of points and they let people through every hour or so. The queue are literally hours long. The costumes are spectacular and were 30,000 dancers in the parade. The dance, called 'Morenada', goes two steps forward and then one back. As you can imagine, for 30,000 people, this takes quite a while. Unfortunately I was on one side of the road....and the bus terminal on the other. There were no buses leaving the city until late in the day, anyway as all the roads were closed. I left the house at 10am, managed to cross the road at 7pm and finally managed to leave the city on a bus at 8.30pm. Nightmare.

I arrived in a town called Oruro, where the train line starts, at 1am, found a hostel and slept soundly. Once again rising, bright and early to catch the train, found that due to it being a Sunday, the train does not go until 7pm. There is, of course, only one train a day. The joys of travelling in Bolivia. Anyway, Oruro was an immensely boring town...luckily I had brought the fattest book I could find with me!

That night I took the train from Oruro to the Uyuni Salt Flats, arriving at 2am. The trains, I am glad to report, are very comfortable and spacious, obviously made for long journeys. Actually the shortest train journey possible in Bolivia is about 5hours. They even run on time!!

I spent Monday in the town of Uyuni, which was the first time i actually felt on holiday. It was a lovely town, small but not too small, and quiet, but not too quiet. For some reason, in a country which has really not embraced the pizza as other countries have, the only food places were pizzerias. Possibly as it is one of the few foods for tourists that even Bolivians can manage to cook properly.

On Tuesday I went on a tour of the salt flats, which were incredible. 40,000 years ago there was a huge salt lake there in the Andes, but now all that remains is the salt, which is 5metres thick. It is solid at this time of year, but at the beginning of the year is mushy. It covers an area which is 12,000 sq km, so it is literally nothing but salt as far as the eye can see in every direction. There are mounds of salt everywhere, where it has been scooped into piles, ready to be carried away by trucks to be used for food and such. It is a very strange and surreal place to be. There are strange salt stuctures, shaped by the weather, and flamingos live in the south. There are hot water geysers in some places (possibly something to do with the nearby volcano? I couldn't understand his explanation of the geysers in spanish!), a hotel made from salt, even the beds and table and chairs, and leftover coral reefs 'islands', stranded in the middle of the salt lakes, which have cactii growing on them and by climbing up to the top of them, offer an amazing view of, well, a lot of salt, and a lot of mountains!

It is such surreal scenery. In some places, the salt is literally like soft, dry sand on a beach, and in other places hard as rock. It reflects the sun at least as much as snow and I realised how much I needed sunglasses! Its also a perfect place for optical illusions as its just a huge expanse of nothingness. The mountains even looked like they were floating in the air, as the salt reflected them back underneath, as water does. It was a very weird place. One the sun began to go down, the slat went pink and purple reflecting the sunset and watching the sunset on the horizon was possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There was nothing, in any direction, other than salt, mountains and the sun, all of which went strange colours.

I left Uyuni on the train again at 10pm that night and headed to the border town of Villazon, which we reached at 7am. I met some girls on the train also heading to Salta, Argentina, and we all went together to the border. The border was absolutely horrendous. There was a queue for everyone crossing the border to Argentina.... and one window where they checked your papers, one at a time! I should also note that there was absolutely no-one entering Bolivia! We had to wait an hour and a half to get across the border, and then got straight on a bus to Salta, as La Quiaca (which is basically the same town as Villazon, just the argentinian side) seemed pretty dire.

So I am in Salta now. I have been a few days but that is enough of what I've been up to for now! I will write about what Salta is like soon....it will suffice to say that I really don't want to leave!

Dia de la Madre and upcoming holiday!

Mother´s day competition....just before the furious hair plaiting began
potato peeling competition
Me and Lupita....unfortunately the best picture i have of us!
The beatles get everywhere....the ´liverpool´karaoke bar
Fiesta! ( dancers with scary masks!)


Last Sunday it was ´Dia de la Madre´(Mother´s day) here.... don´t worry, you´ve not all missed it- only here! Of course, any excuse for fiestas etc so it was non-stop partying and dancing in the streets on Sunday, and then there was no school on Monday. Honestly, you can never get anywhere in these streets between dancing and protests.

And then today at school they had celebrations where the mothers came in and there was singing and the children did a play and then everybody had a meal, which was nice. There was also some interesting competitions for the mothers to take part in, for example, who had the longest hair, who could plait their hair fastest(all the women here have long plaits), and a even a potato-peeling competition! I suppose they are pretty traditional competitions for the women here, but it did seem a little odd to me!

It was a nice change to lessons and a fun, if slightly bizarre morning anyway. Although, saying that, I have only had one day of school so far in the last two weeks as the road onto the Altiplano was blocked by protesters for most of last week so there was no way of getting there. Yes, they only have one road in each direction out of the city! Bad planning? I´m starting to wonder if thats the idea as the daily protests would not be able to cause havoc if they had a more efficient road system.

As i´m mentioning protests, the whole of Bolivia has gone into uproar as FIFA have banned international football games on pitches 2,500m above sea level. Which rules out most of Bolivia´s pitches. In protest, roads are blocked as everyone is playing football in the street. Even the President,Evo Morales, was playing football outside the presidential buildings this morning! Not that Bolivia really has much to offer the international football scene, however the country is generally outraged.

My bank card (second, as i lost the first one which was stolen on the day i got it, ahem) has arrived...again! I am not taking it out of the house though as i am terrified of losing it again. Tomorrow I am going to see ´Pirates of the Caribbean´, which i am looking forward to, woohoo!

Mostly I am planning for my little holiday, starting on Friday, to Argentina. I say planning in a very lose sense of the word; planning is impossible here as you cannot book or make plans for where to go unless you are in the place you intend to travel from. Hence, it is all very see what happens! I definitely have to make it across the border though, as my visa is about to expire in Bolivia, so when I come back I will get a new stamp for more days. Noooo I am dreading taking my passport into the big wide world and losing it.

Anyway my plans so far are to get the bus to Oruro, Bolivia on friday and probably then the train to the Salar de Uyuni, which is a huge salt lake in a place called Uyuni, with really surreal landscapes and vegetation. After spending a day there, I plan to head down to the border and to a city called Salta in the north of Argentina, which is supposed to be quite lively. I don´t know whether I will actually make it any further south as I have only ten days to get there and back on very unreliable transport! So should be fun, fun, fun. I will take lots of pictures to put on here!!

PS pictures for this blog on tomorrow....this computer won´t let me upload them :(

New home!

me (looking startled) and the kettle(looking not so startled)

the shower of death

my room

kitchen

living room

After 3 weeks of bread, I finally received my bank card on Tuesday. I immediately went for a huge meal and then, once again, packed my bags(which is getting more and more difficult) and moved out of the hotel and into my new house. Nobody else is there at the moment as Lupita is visiting her family in the south and sophie only lives there at the weekends, so it´s just me and the cats. There´s a black cat and a white kitten, which are very sweet, despite my lack of fondness for cats.

The house is great!! It´s so nice being able to make a cup of tea when I want and such things. I have been enjoying cooking and cleaning and sorting my stuff out and other such domesticity, although I am sure it will wear off soon.

I also have not watched TV for so long, which I haven´t really missed, but they have world channels so I have been watching CNN and BBC world a lot as I have no idea what is going on in the world. When I turned it on this morning it was all about Blair finally stepping down, so have seen an awful lot of Blair montages today, which is a face I haven´t seen in a while! I also watched "Back to the Future" yesterday too, as they have loads of american/british films with spanish subtitles, which is great.

Anyway the house is in an area called Sopocachi, which is a really nice area and very quiet and safe. I don´t know the full address but I will post it on here as soon as I know. We don´t have hot water other than in the shower, so there is always water boiling on the stove, and there´s a little kettle that whistles when it boils. I think I am pretty lucky to be somewhere with a hot water shower. I have put a picture above of the shower....the showers all throughout south america are like that and look absolutely lethal to me. This one is one of the safest I have seen, but they all heat the water directly in the shower head by running electric currents through the water using wires which just dangle about over your head! I´m always really paranoid about touching them when I wash my hair!

My room is good too. I have a little balcony which is quite nice for catching some sun. I need to put up the rest of my photos, but I have lots of lots of everyone and not enough blu tac! I don´t think it exists here actually so I may have to resort to drawing pins.

Anyway that´s about it. Things are going well, at school, at the pub, and now at home. Off to work at the pub in an hour actually so.... toodle pip pip!

Latest news from this week!

new hotel street
inside new hotel
new but now lost hat :(

So, since I last wrote a blog, I don´t feel that I have done that much. In fact, I have twice moved hostel, had my bank card stolen, acquired an evening job at the pub, caught another stomach bug, lost a hat, acquired a helper for my large and unruly english class and found a permanent place to live. So I have been quite busy after all!

I am now staying at a hotel called, "Hospedaje Milenio", which is really nice. It is much cheaper than the other one at the mere equivalent of 1pound 75p a night. Hurrah! Unfortunately though, no more free internet, hence the lack of blogging. I did stay on night at a horrendous place, which looked like an asylum inside, had incessant drilling going on, did not seem to have a mattress at all, and certainly there were no curtains. I was out of there at 8am the next morning, as quickly as i could haul my now ridiculously heavy suitcase down the stairs.

My bank card was stolen on Monday night inside a club, which I am so annoyed with myself for as I never take my bank card anywhere with me- and certainly not in clubs. Unfortunately I had forgotten to take it out of my purse though as I had had it with me earlier. Anyway, this all caused no end of trouble, although I believe a replacement is now on its way! No idea how long it will take to arrive... So, I am very skint at the moment and living on bread, whch is not too bad as I have a stomach bug too and would be on the bread diet anyway!

On the other hand, school is going really well. Art classes are a doddle and loads of fun too, and english classes are getting much easier as I am getting used to teaching. And for my huge and difficult class that I have twice a week, I now have a helper called Helen, who is from London, and is absolutely wonderful! She is really friendly, patient and smiley and takes th younger ones so now i only need to concentrate on the 10-16 year olds, which is much easier than 5-16 year olds!

I start work at the english pub here on Tuesday night as I need some money to fund my bread diet until my card arrives.

And lastly, and most exciting, I have found a place to live! I am going to move into a house with a girl called Lupita, who is Bolivian, and a swiss girl called Sophie. There´s a big living room, and nice kitchen and a bathroom, and then I have my room, which is fairly big and even has a balcony. Lupita is hilarious and Sophie is really nice too, so I decided straight away to move in with them, as I really like both them and the house. However I do have to wait until my card arrives so that I can pay for where I am currently staying. I am really excited about moving in, though!

So I think thats everything. I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of my card, so that I can move into new place, and also return to normal life and food intake! After a bad start to the week, things are looking up!

Tiwanaku

On Tuesday I went to Tiahuanacu (also spelt Tiwanaku, and to be spelt like this from now on as it is far easier!), which is the site of some ancient ruins located a mere couple of hours of a hot and airless bus journey onto the altiplano. It is a kind of Bolivian version of Stonehenge! There are two temple sites and more areas being excavated and also a museum, and a lot of sunburn to deal with as there barely any shade.

Tiwanaku is not just the name of the place, it is the name of a huge society of people who lived in the Andes even before the Incas, from around 200BC until 1500AD. Nobody knows what they actually called themselves, as they did not have a system of writing, so Tiwanaku is the Aymara name for them. The site of the ruins was the original village which grew and later became the spiritual and political centre of the culture, which covered mainly the Bolivian Andes, but also extended into Peru and down into Chile, and a small part of Northern Argentina too.

The ruins are of huge stone temples, with archways and gigantic stone men who represent the gods. There is also archaelogical evidence of buildings and so on and I even what looked suspiciously like sacrificial tables! Much of the site is still being excavated, but quite a few parts have been restored. Much of it in a poor state of preservation though, due to amateur excavation, stones being taken to build the railways and unbelievably, the military have even previously used it for target practice!

However, it is still pretty impressive. The Tiwanaku culture was obviously pretty advanced; they transported the massive stones from Peru across Lake Titicaca in woven straw boats, and also managed to beautiful carve and place these stones into position. The stones are properly placed together so close that not even a razor blade can get through. They also had knowledge of maths and astronomy, and knew that there are 365.24 days in a year; the positions of the stones reflect years and months and the sun and the moon. They had excellent irrigation systems in the fields and drainage in the temple and city; pretty incredible considering that in most of Bolivia you have to throw a pail of water down the toilet to flush it!

Tiwanaku was really interesting to visit, despite the hassle from the men and even, would you believe, the police, at the museum, who insisted that the museum was dangerous and did I need them to go in with me?! It´s a lesser known civilization than the incas who came after them in the area, but still pretty advanced. I think things became far less civilized in South American once the Spaniards and Europeans arrived!

K ´ala Marka

On Friday night I was invited to go to an andean folk music concert that an american hippy and an Italian, who made fun of my accent(my english one, that is, not even my spanish one!) had accidentally acquired a a spare ticket to- everything happens by accident in Bolivia.

K´ala Marka, who promote themselves as "The Power of the Andes", are supposed to be hugely popular here; this was soon confirmed by the hour of queueing to get in! It was held in an open air theatre, and was absolutely packed with thousands of happy bolivians.

They were actually really good, and the whole show was excellent. They used both traditional andean and modern instruments and they blended the two together really well. They also had dancers doing bolivian dances and wearing costumes from everywhere in the country from the andes to the jungle, and they were pretty spectacular in themselves! I am still puzzled as to how they managed to do such energetic dancing with tall headress balanced on their heads.

It was funny to see all the bolivians wearing their ponchos and hats and so on dancing around. They looked like hippies at a concert in england, apart from it was actually just the indians in their traditional dress! Anyway, it was a really good night out and way of getting to see some live bolivian folk music...especially as it was all for free! Keep your eyes (and ears) out for them; their CDs are probably being sold and played on the streets in the UK and they are well worth listening and having a little jig around to! And...well, why not?- You could even do a little bit of air pan-piping along too.

Museums and Galleries

This week I haven´t been up to that much, although I have had a few problems to sort out!

I sucessfully extended my visa yesterday, but then lost my cash card in the machine. The machines here give your card back last instead of first so I automatically just left after I had taken my money. I only realised all this last night after the banks had shut so I went back today to try and get it back-it was going to be a difficult enough task anyway with my limited spanish-only to discover, yes they have it, and that not only do I have a different name on my card and passport but I also have a different signature on them both, so no, they couldn´t give it me back as my passport proved me not to be the owner of the card. After half an hours span-glish, and 3 bank managers I was just about to resort to busting into an embarassing flood of tears, when my card was finally returned to me. I am going to be so careful from now on!!

On Tuesday, I went the coca museum here, which was fairly interesting, with information on all the aspects of coca here in Bolivia, from it´s spiritual and ancient roots(it is not only seen traditionally by the Aymarans as a medium through which to communicate with the Gods, but it is also a God in itself), scientific research in that chewing the leaves helps to adapt to life at high altitudes as it opens up the bronchioles in the lungs allowing more oxygen to be taken in, and also moving on to the legal and illegal drug trades. It also had a pretty good history of coca-cola, which originally contained cocaine, and was developed as a result of alcohol prohibition when the manufacturers found an alternative stimulant drink by creating cocaine based coca-cola. Of course this was also banned soon after!

Anyway the coca traditions are still well and alive today in Bolivia. You can buy the leaves on every street and while I am sure plenty of people still chew it, it is mostly taken as coca tea, which is just basically hot water poured on the leaves and left to brew. Everytime I have a stomach ache or feel unwell at all, I am quickly given a cup of it. Personally, I find paracetamol far more effective but the Bolivians use it to cure everything.

I also went to the national art gallery, which was shockingly poor for national standards, although I wasn´t really expecting much! It had a total of 3 rooms (although I also accidentally took a walk around the director´s office!) and nothing of any significance, although some of the contemporary bolivian art was alright. However it was a really beautiful colonial building, with arched levels and gorgeous stonework, so I contented myself with trying to take some good photos of the building!

That´s it really. I have been taking some photos of the kid´s at school, which was a really bad idea as they all wanted to see every picture and kept pestering me to take their photos again and again and again....and again! I had to pretend the batteries had run out! I think I am getting used to teaching; it is getting slightly easier....and I am working out how to deal with the naughty ones! ha!

Hopefully going to some ancient ruins tomorrow. Three people have given me completely different directions for bus routes, so the journey should be interesting at least!

Semana Santa and Lake Titicaca

It is of course, Holy Week, or Semana Santa, as it is known here. Easter Holidays; woo hoo! I did in fact have an entire day off for Good Friday!

Here the women have been selling things made from palms all weeks, ranging from intricate crosses, to baskets, rings, necklaces, bizarre shapes, bracelets, everything. They also still buy eggs for the children it seems, however they are about the size of a kinder egg! An american lady came here last night and this morning she gave me some cadbury´s mini eggs, which i think she had brought from the US. I have not had chocolate since i left England, but i ate as many as I could all in one go, which in all fairness, was not that many. My chocolate tolerance has sadly dropped an awful lot!

So on Saturday I went to Lake Titicaca with Emma and her family. Athough my family outings have reduced dramatically over the past couple of year, it was nice to go sort of go on one again. We went sailing in a very rickety little boat and then kayaking after. It was pretty similarto a holiday place at a lake in England, apart from a everything was in spanish, and everyone was wearing thick jumpers and shawls in the hot sunshine, because all the Bolivians are inexplicably convinced the country is freezing, despite my constant sunburn.

The lake is about 2hours away from the city, and everyone goes there at Easter. Some families even walk there for up to 4 days, camping along the way. The Bolivians are very proud of the lake, as they have no sea! It stretches as far away as you can see and is very beautiful with all the mountains surrounding it. You can almost see the Peruvian mountains in the distance, as it is half in Peru too.

Other highlights of the week include; getting lost on the wrong side of a set of mountains on the Altiplano- basically a 5 hour detour- oops! My first Bolivian hangover after visiting the english here....this was not my fault... i was talking to someone who then produced from his bag the first version of the lonely planet guide to mention the english pub here. After showing this to the owner who was absolutely delighted to have ´sold out´, it was pretty much free drinks from there. The guide described the pub as´unashamedly english and a somewhat dubious cultural experience...´, which is pretty much a perfect description. I also went to a bolivian club here which had a drummer playing traditional sort of bongo drums along to the western music the dj was playing!

An english pub!

Today was my day off...so i did some wandering round the city. I went into the San Francisco church here, which is absolutely enormous. Outside it is beautifully elaborate, very detailed colonial architecture, and inside it is even more so, with gold and statues everywhere. It was pretty impressive to see.

Then I went to one of the parks here with a girl called Mary, who is here for two months living with her uncle who works in the US embassy. The park was really fun, it had loads of lovely slides (yes, I did go on them!) and animal playareas and was at one of the look-out points over the city, although it was pretty much in the centre of the valley! Work that one out... the whole landscape here is crazy!

Afterwards I went into an english pub here -yes! an english pub! -called Oliver´s Travels, which i had heard about from the travellers grapevine here, which you get all sorts of useful information from.

Anyway It wasn´t bad at all. It wasn´t quite the Barley Mow, but it´s probably the most english place you are going to find here in Bolivia! The bar staff accidentally ate my meal (a very British lasagne) and but when it came I was so happy to be eating normal food! It felt like the first good meal I had had in two weeks.

I am disappointed to report on the local beer here though-personally I found it very poor. Paceña is the local beer of La Paz, and it is advertised absolutely everywhere with the slogan "Paceña.....es cerveza" (literally ´paceña...is beer´) , which is a pretty poor slogan too!

I will have to stick to imported beer!

I survived ´Death Road´.... just about!

´Camino de la muerte´, or ´Death Road´as it is known here locally, is justifiably called the ´world´s most dangerous road´, due to the amount of people who die on it each year. It drops from 4,700 metres to 1,200 metres in 4 hours of cycling, obviously much less time driving. The road winds a ridiculously narrow and almost entirely downhill route round the mountainsides from La Paz to Coroico; there are enormous cliffside drops on one side, and the strong possibly of falling rocks from above at all time.

So I decided to do one of the mountain bikes tours along it....

I was slightly apprehensive about the whole thing. I don´t really know what possessed me to sign up to this instead of one of the many more gentle tourist activities there are. As we were on the bus there it occured to me that I haven´t actually been on bike in about 2 years- I have no idea where my bike is!

There were an Argentine couple, a German couple, a guy from London and me, as well as the biking guide and a friendly spanish old man who drove the support bus. We had thermal cycling shorts, and t-shirts, gloves, helmets, raincoats, ponchos, new mountain bikes, regular stops, plenty of food for energy, and a support van with rescue equipment driving behind all the time in case we wanted/needed to ride in the van for a bit. Even so, the day was pretty horrific!

We couldn´t actually do the first bit of road as the weather was so bad. There was already a thick foot of snow, and it was snowing heavily. The bus had to drive at about 5 miles an hour down the road it was so slippery, and there were cars stuck in the snow at some points.

After we got out of the thick snow, some of us decided to start on the bikes. It was bitterly cold, as we were so high up, and I had on about 8 layers. The road was contanstly doing ridiculous winds and bends and was going downhill pretty steeply. It was also not a flat at all; the surface of the road was made up from the rubble from the mountains and was sharp rocks ranging from the size of your head to the size of your fist.

Within about 15 minutes I hit a rock and went flying. Luckily it was on a wider part of the road! It was a pretty bad fall and I was quite shaken and I knew I couldn´t just get back on the bike and ride off, so I was waiting by the roadside for the support van. A lorry pulled up and two concerned men were fussing at me in spanish which I couldn´t understand, but I managed to get across to them that I was waiting for a van which was coming. The support van picked me up and stuck my bike in the back, and the driver and the two women who hadn´t started yet all fussed over me and then I realised there was blood pouring out of my nose, and my chin and my knee were bleeding as well as being bruised all over. That´s one good thing about the cold, you don´t feel the pain!

So they cleaned up my cuts and bandaged my knee and put iodine on my knees and face so for the rest of the day I was an interesting yellow colour!

We caught up with the others who were cycling, and slightly concerned I was no longer behind them. I told the biking guide that I didn´t like the rocky bits and when was it flat and he looked at me with complete contempt and said ´it´s all rocky´. Noooooooooo!

I couldn´t really bend my knees properly and I was completely bruised. After about 20 minutes in the bus we all stopped and we told this was the point were it started to get tough! I decided it was time to get on back on the bike, although the guide told me if I didn´t think I could handle it, get back in the bus because I would die! To be honest, I think that getting back on that bike was one of the bravest thing I have ever done!

The next 5 hours were physical and mental torture. The road is unimaginably beautiful and absolutely terrifying to cycle along, or even in the bus for that matter. Every rock in the path seemed like an enemy, about to throw me off, but although it came close I didn´t fall off again.

As we got further down, we left the bleak rocky landscape and there was more vegetation and it got warmer. Further on, it was practically jungle, with banana trees and dense plants. It was also pretty humid. It was weird seeing how the landscape changed within minutes as we descended.

All along the road, there are waterfalls which fall onto the path, again very beautiful but deadly. There are frequent crosses, marking where people have died, and we saw a fresh flag, from where someone had gone over the edge only 3 weeks ago. We also saw the shell of a car way down the cliff caught on a tree.

Twice whilst I was in the bus, there was a thunderous sound on the roof and we were told it was a falling rock striking the roof.

We also came to a point where an avalanche of rocks had blocked the road and there was no way the support van could pass. There was a minibus which was stuck before it and the men were attempting to lever the rocks out with broken trees, which was a pretty dangerous job in itself. As they managed to send a rock tumbling off the path and down the cliff, we hear it hitting the cliff again and again and again and didn´t even hear it hit the bottom it was that far down. I don´t know if they managed to clear the rocks, one was at least as big as a person, but it must have taken all day if they did. We managed to climb over the rocks with our bikes but the bus had to go back and meet us at the end after that.

After about 5 hours of cycling in constant terror, we finally made it to the end. I was so relieved! Every time we had stopped for a break, I was just happy to be alive! We went to a hotel where we had free meals and showers, and a well deserved beer. It must have been the most beautiful setting for a hotel, looking out high over the mountains and streams, and it was a lovely end to a very hard day.

Except after that we had to get back in the bus and travel back along the Death Road to La Paz. The bus journey is just as bad, as you actually have the chance to look at the scenery and you can see you are a centimetre from the edge!

So.... I do now have a T-shirt saying ´I survived Death Road´, however, I also have a huge cut on my chin, some on my cheeks, cannot bend one of my legs and am sore all over. It was kind of fun, but a very hard day too. I think that to do it you have to really want to and also be a pretty confident cyclist, otherwise it is really not worth it. I´m glad I did it but I don´t ever want to see Death Road again!