Month: July 2016 Page 1 of 4

Maybe a coat you bought and never wore, a pair of shoes that didn’t fit, a lemon car? I now know mine.

Cholita wrestling. Apparently it’s very popular with the locals and a newly recognised sport by WWE. I’m not really convinced.

Edit: I should also explain this is also staged wrestling (they’re acting)

For those who don’t know, this is a cholita. There’s loads around Bolivia

This hostel organises weekly trips for £10 and we figured it was worth an evening.

It wasn’t. That’s 3hrs and £10 I’ll never get back. I could have got some good scotch for that.

Giant white guy plodding on down a high street which isn’t touristy seems somewhat amusing to people. Average male height is probably about 5’6″.

Colombia it meant people rushing up and shaking my hand and attempting English. Chileans were clearly amused and overly helpful. Bolivia I’m just getting stared at. Even right now I’m sitting in a coffee shop waiting for Shahd to shake her hangover and the bar staff aren’t even hiding the fact they’re talking about me. It’s pretty odd.

It’ll be strange being back in London when even eye contact is rare.

The worlds most dangerous road. 56kms,  600m drops and 300 deaths a year. Probably not a road you should consider using if you’re accident prone. The Bolivians have finally recognised this and built another (safer) road – you’d have to be plain stupid to use the old one.

Here I am cycling down it:

There is a scene in top gear where clarkson passes a car under a waterfall – I’m pretty sure it was here:

Right near the end was this little orange juice stand run by a girl who can’t have been more than about 12. I fancied one, paid my 4 bolivianos and then immediately regretted it as she proceeded to climb a tree to get an orange right next to the big drop. I really wasn’t bothered enough for someone to climb a tree but it was at least a good orange juice!

Strange fact about death road: They all start driving on the left because heavily loaded trucks coming from la Paz needed to be kept away from the edge to minimise accidents. Fool proof plan.

Infrequent blog posts due to shocking internet connections.

Perhaps put the cash machines higher up?

Now that is quite a sight. They’re even playing loud music in the background. Nice one.

My god they need to stop trying to make their own wine though. For goodness sake Bolivia, just import Chile’s. Shahd and I couldn’t even finish a glass each. It was that bad.

Also, while I’m moaning Bolivia, pleaseeee invest in decent internet connections. People of the 21st century can’t download their offline google maps and are having to use paper maps. Yuk.

Potosi, not a place I would recommend. There was nothing there apart from some unhelpful locals who all refused to book us a cab (even the damn hostel owner!), a load of altitude and a dangerous sounding active mine which you can go down and try not to break your ankle.

Sucre on the other hand:

Wow, what an unexpected change this is. If you squint it could be a super super cheap, insect free Spanish town. Unfortunately you can’t squint because you might fall down a hole…

And I’m not convinced the brakes work on some of these rolling scrap heaps:

That’s what my parents always say. Well we just paid £3 for the 4.5hr bus from Uyuni to Potosi. Bolivia is cheap, but still, bargain right? Wrong.
Now let’s run through all the things that could go amiss on this long, pitch black mountain road. We could have an accident, well that’s clearly awful. I could be horrendously car sick- not the best. Could get lost? Again not great. Or the bus could break down? Bingo. That’s exactly what happened.

The joke is, I seemed to have the only half decent torch on the bus and tried to help by shining it through the engine hatch while this chap furiously hit the fuel pump with a broom stick handle. Yup that’s right- Bolivian engineering, the best a man can get.

I said pumping fuel pump in video. He wasn’t at all, he was simply bashing it while we drove along to keep the bus going. The moment he stopped, the engine stopped. We continued to drive like this for a mile or two until finally it seemed to work by itself.

Gives some idea of the roads we were dealing with. This is one of the best (I could actually hold the camera still)

Bubblin bubblin. Bubblin bubblin. The geysers are bubblin.

4.30am start to get to the Bolivian salt flats before sun rise. Turns out the winning part of this was watching the moon go down.

Moon one side of what was once an island and this sun rise on the other.

Temporaliy stole the flag. I gave it back. Honest.

Nomnomnom

Speedy ganzalo our tour driver had all the mechanical sympathy of a drunken ape (or so I thought). I was utterly convinced at some point during our long 60kph sessions over super rough ground that something would break. It didn’t. It made some loud crashing noises and that’s about it. Land cruisers are tough. I see why they dominate Bolivia.

Gonzalo the don pictured here. The sheer space of the salt flats blows the mind. At one point he switched off the lights and continued to drive at motorway speed completely blind for at least 20mins. The only indication we were moving was the tyre roar and occasional bump

The train graveyard of no health and safety. I took full advantage and climbed up onto the rusted old British built steam train. Getting down was less easy..