Bolivia (Part Two)

BOLIVIA!!

Hola mi amigos!
Let us pick up where we left off, shall we?

Sucre

We’d been wanting to do Spanish lessons pretty much from the moment we set foot in South America. If for nothing else, we wanted to avoid making the same perplexed face at people when they started rapid-firing Spanish at us. The tiny town of Sucre seemed like the perfect place. On our arrival, however, we were told that our reservation at our hostel had been screwed up and we now had to be in separate rooms. Normally that would suck and we’d deal with it, but we needed to be together so we could study.
‘That is unacceptable,’ I roared at the man who shrugged and said it wasn’t his problem. We tearfully demanded a refund on our deposit which he refused to do and then he goes ‘oh, there is a 3-bed room you can have’. Ummmm???? It ended up being an amazing room, but that man continued to baffle us for the week we were there. He’d always tell us one thing and then change his mind mid-sentence, without any obvious reason. So strange.
Anyway we ended up spending 90% of our time in that room. ALL WE DID WAS STUDY!!! We’d wake up at about 9am, study, have breakfast, study, go out for lunch (taking our books with us so we could quiz each other on verbs), study, go to class, study, have dinner and then update our vocab list before bed. Our profesóra Monica, a kind woman who always wore red, loaded us up with so much homework every class because she said we were such ‘muuuuy bien estudiantes’ (very good students). We, being the nerds we are, didn’t want to disappoint her and nearly killed ourselves in the effort. We ended up hating Monica, despite her kindness, just because of all the homework and we practiced our Spanish with sentences like ‘I do not like Monica’ and ‘my teacher is not very good’ (hey, we never said we were any good!)

La Paz

Where do I start with La Paz? It was basically just a cesspool of drinking, inappropriate behavior and an abundance of smelly chat. Nik and I especially out-did ourselves in the obnoxious mole department. But more on that later. We arrived in La Paz after a comfortable-but-oddly-sleepless night on the bus (perhaps it had to do with Nikola eating an apple in my face… core and all!). We were all feeling a bit stressy as we’d witnessed Nik and my bags being put on the bus but not Hez’s. Alas, when we collected them in La Paz, Hez’s was AWOL. Luckily, we found it… it had been put on another bus that was thankfully headed for La Paz as well! Naughty Bolivian bus system!
Anyway we got to our hostel, the wonderful Loki, and was thrilled to discover they had effed up our reservation and we were now in a private 3-bed dorm! We couldn’t check in right away so we decided to go for a stroll. It is a beautiful city in the way that those rolly dogs are beautiful… ugly, but utterly appealing. That night we got smashed on red wine (remember people, we hadn’t gotten drunk since Brazil!) and behaved appallingly (can’t say more than that as family members read this!)
The next night was pretty much a repeat except this time Nikola and I went out. Hez was supposed to come too, but at the last minute she peeped out from behind a pillar nervously and told us she didn’t want to. Uncool Hez! So Nik and I were let loose on the streets of La Paz and we ran an absolute muck! We bumped into a troop of policemen, attempted to steal their hats and chased them up the street yelling ‘WE LOVE POLICE’ in extremely poor Spanish. At first they were refusing to partake in our mischief, but by the end they all had their camera phones out and were taking photos of us sprawled all over them! Hilarious. We went to a bar after that and didn’t emerge until 9.30 the following morning.
We actually did cultural things as well (although it still involved drinking)… we saw a futball (soccer) game!! Bolivia v Argentina, the World Cup Qualifier! It was AMAZING!!! Everyone in our hostel drank together before. All the people who knew anything about soccer were going for Argentina. Accordingly, we went for Bolivia. And guess what? THEY WON! Not only that, they SMASHED THEM!!! Six points to one! Haha! Take that Argentina, you big thieving bullies! It was so funny though, because La Paz is at an altitude of 4200m, everytime Bolivia scored we’d all jump and down screaming for about two seconds before we’d get out of breath and have to sit down. It was especially bad for Nik, who after the game pretty much collapsed! Nothing a bottle of water and a KitKat couldn’t solve!
That night there was a trivia quiz on at the hostel to raise money for a local orphanage. Excitedly, we signed up. Oh dear. it was AWFUL! The questions may as well have been written by a three-year-old, the amount of sense they made. Most were about movies from the 70s that nobody had heard of or events that only caused a minor scandal in Bangladesh. We thought Nik the bartender, who was reading out the questions, was the one who had wrote them and we were heckling him pretty bad. However, it turned out to be the orphanage owner who wrote them and he read our answer sheet on which we had scribbled ‘THIS QUIZ IS SHIT!’. Whooooops!!!! Insulting an orphanage owner… that is a new low. Naughty girls.

WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS ROAD

No, the title does not lie. We really did ride down (on a mountain bike, no less) a road named most likely to kill you. I think 13 tourists have died doing it and thousands of Bolivians too. The number of crosses on the track were ridiculous. Basically, its just a narrow, bumpy dirt track perched on the edge of thousand foot drops. So scary. But the worst part was the pain! Have you ever clung for dear life onto bike handles for five hours? Have you? Give it a go. Our hands were BRUISED at the end. So sore. In our group we had four Israeli girls who made it pretty clear they had no desire whatsoever to befriend us. We’d ask them questions and get a sullen ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and then they’d just speak to each other in Hebrew. It was so annoying. They were also ridiculously slow going down the hill so we ended up being the last group to finish the track. The other groups were psycho though, so its maybe it was a good thing. They were all yahooing (grandma-sounding word but that’s exactly what they were doing) down the hill, being so reckless and nearly side-swiping me! I was nearly in tears.

We went to the Amazon jungle and did the pampas tour after this, but that will be a long article so I’ll put that in the next one!

Adios! xxxx

Brazil – partay time!

We were a little apprehensive about going to South America´s biggest and badest country. For one, we had sort of picked up a little Español and didn’t like the idea of going to Brazil, where they speak Portuguese, and forgetting it all. And two, we were scared! If Argentina could be so unkind to us, what would Brazil do? Luckily we had our strapping solider Ty with us so no Brazilian robbers could touch us!

Florianopolis – CARNAVAL!!!

When we tell people we were in Brazil for Carnaval, everyone assumes we were in Rio. Unfortunately we’re not made of money and therefore chose Florianopolis to celebrate (although this turned out to be just as expensive!) We had a few dramas on arrival… our bus was three hours late, causing us to wait in the middle of a road until 11pm, with all the lights going out and hooded-up cars cutting laps around us. Then, once we arrived in Florianopolis, Ty, Hayley and I got into a taxi that dropped us off 30 minutes away from our actual hostel, forcing us to catch a local bus with two surfboards, our 20kg backpacks and all our prized possessions. We finally got to our hostel and found Nikola hyperventilating, imaging that we had been gang raped by our driver. We were shown to our room, which was at the bottom of 150 steps (by rough count) and was unfortunately located right outside the sewage tank. The room smelt (as Ty put it) “like someone did a shit in a wet sock and the reason that sock was wet was someone pissed on it first”. It was so unfair, the rest of the hostel was absolutely beautiful – sweeping views of the lagoon, verandas, hammocks, fire places… ours was the most cramped little box that we had to share with two 30-year-old Australians (one of whom may have had a bed-wetting problem… this would also explain the piss-smell), a Dutch man who just sat and stared at everyone and never said a word, and a creepy Frenchman who, when asked what his favourite sport was, replied “love making, of course”.

Carnaval wasn´t quite the ‘large-bottomed woman wearing a dental floss bikini makes out with 7ft drag queen on a pink frothy float surrounded by bubbles’ affair we’d all expected (or perhaps we were imagining Mardi Gras?) It was a fun, alcohol-filled week, but a week we could’ve had any other time of the year for half the price.

Paraty

Paraty is a quaint, cobblestoned little village on the coast of Brazil where we discovered one of the best meals, the nicest hostel owners and the cutest little girl in South America. It was absolutely POURING when we got to Paraty and Ty had to run around looking for a hostel because Hayley, Nik and I were all too afraid to ruin our hair. Just joking… we had long given up on attempting to look presentable. We found one, run by the friendliest couple in the world. The man was an eager little soul, scrambling around recommending us restaurants and scrawling frantic maps. The woman sang ‘my name is Luka!’ and giggled like a hyena at her poor English skills. They were delightful. We had a magnificent seafood dinner, but we were less than impressed when we were charged 20 Real ($12!!!) for the shitty musician warbling away in the corner who we weren’t even listening to. The next day we went for a walk to the beach and were thrilled to stumble upon Hannah and Helen! We agreed to meet them later at the beach, but on arrival found the poo-brown water (remnants of last night’s storm) less than inviting so we settled on an outdoor shower instead. There we met an extremely over-confident 8-year-old who wore the typical Brazilian bikini and shook her ass underneath the shower like she was Beyonce! So funny!

Trindade

Or should it be called Sweatsville? This tiny little coastal town sent our glands into such an overdrive, we were forced to forget our sense of modesty and propriety and sleep nakey covered in wet sarongs. It might have simply been our crack den of an apartment that caused such sweltering (and my god, was it a crack den!). On our first night, we spotted a rat scurrying across our bedroom, dodging all of Nikola´s stuff that managed to cover the floor within minutes of our arrival, before disappearing underneath the stove. We thought that was the last of him until our second night when we woke up to Nikola’s 100 decibel shriek and her flying leap on top of Hayley (who was on the top bunk… really quite an impressive feat). Apparently, Ratus the Rat had decided to take a night trip on top of Nik and Ty´s bed head! We were all pretty freaked out after that, especially Nik who was sobbing hysterically and organising rosters for guard duty.

The next night, we were enjoying our typical Brazilian dinner of beans, fish and rice when a dog came up to us. Now, Ty simply cannot leave South American dogs alone, no matter how tatty they are. He calls them all `Chico´ followed by a description of the dog in question. For example, if a dog has quite a lot of hair, Ty will say, “awww Chico…. fluffy Chico.” Anyway, this night was no different. Ty noted the dog´s appearance, commented on it and then fed her his leftovers. Within minutes, we were surrounded by strays. ‘Oh dear,’ we thought. ‘The dogs must have heard we were giving out scraps.’ But no, these dogs had other things on their mind. Apparently Ty´s Chico was quite the desirable creature and she was soon surrounded by dogs trying to mount her.
“Awww Chicos!” Ty said. “Toey Chicos!”

Illha Grande

Illha Grande, literally means `Big Island´ and therefore we had to get a boat to reach it. We´d heard that we would have to catch a ferry so imagine our surprise when a glorious yacht turns up and toots for us to get on! We spread out like kings in the middle of the boat, ignoring the grumblings of all the other passengers who had to sit on the boat´s edge, and had a lovely couple of hours reading and relaxing. When we got to the island it was getting dark, but you could still make out the absolute BEAUTY of it. It was also boiling hot so we thought we’d take a midnight swim amongst the boats. Ty (who has worked on boats in the past) told us how boats often dump their waste when they dock so we were a bit worried we were swimming amongst feces and oil, but the water was so nice and cool we chanced it. After a delicious pay-by-the-kilo dinner (very dangerous for big boys like us) we purchased liquor from a small bottle shop and had a sing-a-long with at our hostel. This turned into quite a party, leading to Nik and I getting rather rowdy and knocking off the curtain rod, waking an entire roomful of people. Whoops. We were sooo hung-over the next day. Like white-face, vomit-burp, mascara-down-to-the-chin hung-over yet Ty still forced us to get out of bed and go to the beach. This would’ve been fine except to get to said beach required a 20 minute climb through the sweltering Brazilian jungle. Not cool.

Rio!!!!

We were getting settled in our dorm, on our first day in Rio, when a New Zealand couple named Emma and Ash walked in and immediately pointed to a bed in the corner.
“Which one of you is sleeping there?”
Of course, it was me. “Why?” I asked nervously.
“Oh, the guy in the bunk underneath you just has rampant sex with one of the hostel workers every night,” they said. EFFING TYPICAL!!! The next morning, true to form, I was awoken with sea-sickness as my bed swayed back and forth repeatedly for three hours. I swapped bunks immediately.

Anyway, on our first night we had a dorm party as this was the only place with air-con and we were all dying! It ended up getting quite rowdy. Ty, who is normally quite composed, even when drunk, was an absolute mess! He kicked Emma in the head, then spilt his beer on her, then knocked the communal alcohol over and then ended up at the bar in his trunks and a shower cap.

The following day we signed up to attend a real live football game at the famous Maracana Stadium… oh dear. It seems we missed out on football season and instead paid full price to see a bunch of teenagers kick around a ball in an absolutely dead stadium. We were so disappointed. No dead chickens being thrown? No bottles of piss? No gun shots or brawls?
The next day we went to Copacabana Beach (que Barry Manilow) which was cool but so ridiculously hot (have I stressed enough people, just how HOT Brazil was?) They had to have sprinklers on the beach so people could walk to the water. Even in thongs, your feet still burned. We could only last an hour which was fine because to be honest the sellers were a nightmare. “AGUA!COCACOLA!CERVEJA!” “AGUA!COCACOLA!CERVEJA!” (Water! Coke! Beer!) over and over again. Some turned it into a song and danced up and down the beach while others shouted it angrily at us as they stormed past. That afternoon we did a city tour of Rio, visiting Christ the Redeemer (the giant statue of Jesus), the Maracana, the Catedral, a beautiful stain-glassed cathedral and finally the Lapa Steps, made famous by Snoop Dog.
That night we had a BBQ at the hostel and were entered in a raffle for a free boat trip! Ty, throwing his ticket on the table, said “I never win these things” and left. Surprise, surprise, he won! Nikola had to accept his prize and was also forced to do a local dance, the Capawara. It was HILARIOUS!! Luckily she’d had two glasses of wine. She was cart-wheeling all over the place, kicking her legs over a man´s head, rolling on the ground like a worm. It was outstanding. We went out in Lapa that night, a notoriously dangerous but awesome place where all the Rio-ians go out. However, after one of our group was busted by the police with naughties in his pocket, then robbed by the same police of $150, we thought it was time to bail.

SIDE NOTE – Nikola had an interesting insight during our time in Rio which I thought I´d share with you all. When you go travelling as a young lad, all you basically do is get drunk, party, sleep around, lay on a beach all day and spend a shitload of money yet everyone thinks travelling is such a commendable thing. Parents proudly tell everyone in ear shot, “oh yes, my child is currently travelling in Brazil”, but if you acted at home the way you do overseas your parents would disown you!

Finally, on our last day in Rio, we went on a boat trip with pretty much everyone from our hostel. It was so much fun! The caprihinas (the national Brazilian beverage) were FREE, FREE, FREE so therefore everyone was PISSED, PISSED, PISSED! That, combined with a slippery deck, plus extremely rocky waves meant that by the end of the trip we had one girl with a broken hand, a boy who required stitches in his shin and everyone else covered head to toe in Caprihina. I myself sloshed my entire drink in both my eyes after a particularly rough wave.

Uruguay – sleazy men, cute Cappy and another year goes by

URUGUAY

Uruguay was like a breath of fresh air after being in frightening Argentina. Yes, I must admit, it took a while to get used to bringing out the camera again. But with the help of some new friends and the surprise arrival of some old ones, we managed to get our groove back.

Our journey into South America´s often-forgotten little country didn’t exactly start off smoothly. In booking the tickets online, we were under the impression you were only allowed to book one seat at a time, because every time we went to select ‘number of passengers’ it would only allow one. `That’s fine,´ we thought, and booked Hayley her ticket first. We went back to do mine and discovered that there were no tourist seats left! Hayley got the last one! So we really had no choice but to book me a first class seat! Hah! So while I sipped champagne and spread out on my recliner, Hayley slummed it down in steerage, amidst crying babies and bleating goats (or so I liked to imagine).

Montevideo

Uruguay’s capital city couldn’t exactly be put on the World´s Most Outrageous Cities list. It’s nice, it’s attractive and the people are friendly (even if they do act like they´re all on Xanax) but it was a bit boring, to be honest. We had to spend a couple of days there as we had applied for our Brazilian visas and we didn’t really do much. On the first night though, we met Hannah and Helen, two lovely British girls who we ended up travelling with for the next two weeks. We went out to dinner with them the first night, which was interesting to say the least. Thinking they would be good, all three H´s decided to order a salad while I (big boy) got a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. First of all, my sandwich came out with ham in it (I’m one of those awful vegetarians) and again being a big boy, I eagerly devoured it and didn’t realise until the pig was already halfway down my esophagus. Then the salads came out. Oh dear… it looked like something you’d give your fussy three-year-old. Square chunks of cheddar cheese in one corner, tinned corn in the other, two boiled eggs cut up into easy-bite-size pieces and two chunks of tomato to finish. Not a leafy green in sight! It would´ve been horrifying if it wasn’t so funny. The next night, H3 and I got onto the wines and hung out in the hostel’s ‘chill out zone’, which was really just a bright orange room with a couple of mismatched sofas and a guitar. I ended up having a fight with a repulsive Canadian man who will appear many times throughout future blogs as we just couldn’t seem to shake him! Him and his Johnny-Depp-lookalike friend who Helen was in love with. He was the world’s biggest dickhead and we met other travellers along the way who have met him and hate him! He’s famous across South America as being ‘that bleached-haired Canadian git’! That night I had the fight with him because he told me that every night, before he goes to bed, he hugs himself and says “I get to go to bed with ME!”
And he wasn’t joking either.

La Pedrera

H2 had discovered a little beach town further along Uruguay’s coast so we decided to meet them there. It was such a cool town, so chilled out and relaxed. Lots of hippies openly smoking bongs, bonfires every night and delicious shirtless surfers… Dreamy!
One of the nights we were drinking at the hostel and a girl came home with a little kitten in her arms! Somehow Hayley, Helen, Hannah and I became its mothers. We named him Capsicum. The reason behind this choice was that H2 were going to Australia and we had been educating them on word-differences between our two great countries. They had never heard of a ‘capsicum’ so we explained they were what they call `peppers´. Anyway Helen, Hannah and I decided we wanted to go to this party at the local reggae bar. Hayley was feeling tired so she went to bed while the three of us went out. We tried to leave Cappy at the hostel but the little lamb didn’t want us to go and followed us down the street, meowing pitifully. Who could resist? I ended up just picking him up and taking him with us to the bar. It was so funny. If I brought a cat to a bar in Australia, I would be escorted off the premises. In Uruguay, all the bar staff patted him and asked for holds. It ended up being a really fun night, we sat around a big bonfire drinking beer and chatting to locals. I got stuck talking to a total geezer though. He kept saying things like, “we are all walking pieces of art, our movements embody a spiritual beauty that blah blah blah…” At one point he started rhythmically beating the air because he “felt the vibrations of life drumming his soul”. It was the most awkward half an hour ever. Cappy was long asleep in my jumper by the time we got home at 5am and it was heartbreaking to say goodbye to him. He meowed at our window for about an hour.

The next day, the four of us went for a walk around town as we were all very sunburnt and couldn’t really go to the beach. As we were walking home, we heard a loud, “HAYLEY SPURGIN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!???” Who should walk towards us, but Nikola and Ty!!!! It was so exciting! Hayley and I screamed like banshees and jumped all over them, probably a bit inconsiderately as they were still loaded up with all their stuff. We weren’t supposed to meet them until the next town but they caught the boat from Buenos Aires early to surprise us! It was thrilling! We went out for dinner to catch up and then all of us got absolutely bollocksed (British word we´ve picked up) around the campfire with some very creepy locals. One of them was the biggest sleaze ever! He force-fed Ty and Nikola meat, then tried to steal our wine, then touched all our legs inappropriately and then vomited everywhere. Hideous. Hannah had a headache so she went to bed, but Helen hung out, earning herself the title of the World´s Most Clumsiest Woman. In the space of an hour, she had knocked over every single person’s drink… twice! The poor lamb. I love hanging out with her though because she makes me look coordinated!

Punta Del Diablo

We spent the first night in the lovely Punta Del Diablo at a hostel, which was a cramped little sweat box, but had the redeeming feature of a dog who had just had puppies! Oh, they were so sweet! We all named them. They were Empanada, Patricia (after a local beer), Chicco and Fat Whinger. We loved them, but wanted to get our own bungalow so we moved out (but still visited the babies often). The next morning, we moved into our beloved bungalow, a yellow two-storey house with ocean views, a hammock and our very own empanada (a South American pastry snack for which the puppy was named) shack next door. We even had our own two dogs, although none of us wanted to touch them. One of them was a big black and white mutt with a red eye and permanent lipstick while the other was coined `Falling Apart Dog´ due to its nipples grazing the ground and its various skin diseases. Hayley was getting angry at all of us for being mean to them, but she couldn’t look at them either. Still, our bungalow was the best! Nikola and Ty got the parents room, while H3 and I had the kid’s room upstairs. Ty was initially a bit concerned about sharing a house with five girls but we convinced him he would grow to love it. That night we had a housewarming party where we played Four Kings and got ridiculously drunk. Nikola and I ended up dancing on the couches so we all knew it was time to head out. Unfortunately, Uruguay doesn’t seem to follow Argentina´s rule of ‘the later the better’. We walked out into a ghost town (it WAS 4am I suppose). On the way home from that disappointing outing, we stopped at a supermarket where I flirted outrageously with the 60-year-old owner and his 15 year-old grandson, calling them `bellisimo hombres´ (“beautiful men”… oh the shame!)

The Toilet Incident

The next day, there was a bit of a situation with the toilets. Now, in South America, it is practice to not flush toilet paper, but instead put it in a stinky bin next to the toilet. It’s disgusting, but you get used to it. Anyway, Nikola wasn’t quite used to this custom yet and flushed, causing a blockage in the pipes and a regurgitation of all that mornings… erm… deposits. It was sooo disgusting and we couldn’t find our landlord to come and fix it. It was especially hard for Ty, who previously chose to believe that girls didn’t go to the toilet. I like to think we educated him well that morning. Anyway Helen, the trooper, decided enough was enough and took matters into her own hands. While the rest of us dry retched in the lounge room, Helen got the fire poker and used it has a stick to try and clear the pipes. What would we do without her?

Hez´s 23rd Birthday

While in Punta Del Diablo, Hayley celebrated (well, commiserated really) her 23rd birthday. We woke her up in the morning with a handmade, shitty card, two flowers, a fruit salad for breakfast and the promise that as soon as she finds something she likes, she can buy it. Slack, yes, but Hayley is more a buy-my-own-presents kind of girl. Plus Diablo didn’t really have anything great to buy. She seemed happy though. That night we had another party, this time a themed one. Well, sort of. We were trying to think of different themes but it’s quite difficult while travelling (you just don’t think to pack your Wonder Woman costume!) So we settled on all wearing black, Hayley’s favourite colour. It was such a nice night; we all sat outside and had dinner of wine, beer, Lays chips and nibbles. Hayley’s birthday cake was a cracker with cheese as the icing and a cigarette as the candle. She seemed satisfied. We decided to play drinking games. I suggested `Celebrity Heads´ which everyone said would be crap, but ended up being so much fun. Very upsetting though when my clue was `he´s very similar to you´ and it ended up being Shane Warne! Nik and Ty stayed at home while H3 and I went out to a party in town. I befriended a table full of locals who called me a `retardo´ because my Spanish is so shit (I understood that word though!) while Hayley, Hannah and Helen got stuck talking to a sleazy American. Helen ended up staying back at the party while we went home but not before we threatened the boy she was with.
“If you robado her, we kill you” we told him while he looked nervous. The next day H2 left for Brazil and the four of us just nursed our filthy hangovers.