Stuck in Puno

Hola Chicos y Chicitas.

We´re stuck in Puno (near lake titikaka) for a few days because of some road blocks, so we´re back on the net... We were a bit worried about getting to machu pichu in time, but we have options (albeit lengthy and exxy ones) to get to cusco if the roads dont free up. (the gov is trying to sell off the jungle to US oil companies and the locals are understandably upset)







Cami and Tara battling out the twister in la paz. They each won one match if you were interested.




















Lake Titikaka, as seen from one of the islas of Uros. The floating islands.












One of their traditional boats, made entirely from the reeds.



















A Floating Island.














A cute little kid from the uros isla pescado.












Two handsome Uros-ians















Our transport getting to copacobana. we took the little water taxi.







Until next time..

Steve and Cami

¿Como Te Llama Llama?

Hola amigos,

We finally have some more photos for you, so see below or where ever they end up appearing.

So since our last update we have finally left Sucre. It was a bit sad to go as we had such a sweet set up, good friends, and the city was awesome. Plus we were able to cook for ourselves with fresh food from the markets, so we ate quite well (Thai curry anyone).
So we ended up getting a nice early bus to Uyuni, about 12 hours from Sucre. We have now learnt that the night buses in Bolivia, apart from being usually pretty shit, are the coldest places on earth. So the day bus was appreciated, especially since the scenery was so awesome. Uyuni was cold and kinda crap. Clearly a town built purely on the one street of tour offices and bus stations. Running out of both time and money we decided to do the quick and painless one day salt flat tour, following the hordes of other tourists around the various checkpoints in the tour. Nevertheless it was amazing. The salt flats literally go for miles etc etc, and it was seriously cool. Plus our tour group was particularly awesome. We did our obligatory photos (see photos) and all that, but being the only group left on the flats and hearing the eerie quietness of the salt lake was freaking awesome. Oh and we ate Llama for lunch. Was quite tasty!!

We bailed that night for La Paz, mostly due to the said state of Uyuni, and that bus trip would have to rate as one of the worst in the world. Despite having a sleeping bag and two massive blankets it was still so cold and the road was so bad it was like 4wding. You couldn’t read because the bus was shaking so badly (also there was no light) and you couldn’t sleep cause the bus was shaking so badly… fun fun fun.

LA PAZ- The tourist capital of Bolivia.
La Paz is actually pretty cool, but being surrounded by 1000s of wanker Australians and that backpacker party scene isn’t cool after being somewhere so nice for 2 weeks. Having said that, the city is crazy. It is absolutely massive, surrounded by kilometers of (insert PC word for slums), and everyone is constantly yelling for something or another.
We went to THE PRISON. (The one I have been constantly talking about for about 2 yrs) But unfortunately the story goes as such. In April there were massive riots for some reason in the prison, and the press got word of the tours. More riots followed, people were tear gassed, and tourists were held in the prison for a bunch of hours etc etc. Anyway they ended up stopping the tours, sacking the head of the prison as well as heaps of guards and now you cant get in there. Nevertheless there is a photo of me outside the prison, to prove I went there hahaha.
Having been not let into the prison we figured we would go to Cholita Wresting. (Cholita is the name for the the female street vendors in big dresses and bowler hats) That was possible the weirdest thing either of us have ever seen. Picture WWF or whatever, crap acting and all, but with big Bolivian women fighting men… WHATTTT. After the first incredibly awkward fights, not knowing whether to laugh or be outraged, it kinda got better, but still soo so weird.
So its our last night here, and I assume we will next talk to you all in Cuzco or after the big MP.

Hasta Luego.

PS: Sorry about the long and boring blog. Photos make up for it.

photos galore of salt flats and more (i am rhyme!)

Steve outside San pedro prison. The mmost famous prisonin South America. We didnt get to tour it though unfortunately

Cholita Wrestling. Very disturbing. and weird.

Our group at the Salt Flats. My (cami) foot looks like i have mangled it but i havent

Steve and I loving toyota on the salt flats

Cami Hard at work studying with Lourdes, our lovely teacher.

Cami in a pringles can. Nuff said.

Giant Me and tiny Cami.

Cami kissing her new Novio.

Us standing on Isla de Pescado.

The whole island was covered in Giant catuses. In the middle of Salar De Uyuni by the way.

Cami and Eugene trying Coca leaves.

Eugene and I in my water bottle. Sigg make em big.

Cami standing on part of the Train Cemetary. Why the trains are there, nobody knows. I think aliens.

Sucre and Spanish

Hola!
So we have been a bit slack with the news lately, but it is only because we are acting pretty slack as well here in Sucre. We do 3 hours of Spanish a day and then we are usually tired from the mental sweat we have built up (hiiii to everyone going to uni multiple days a week) so we either read or watch cable tv (yay) or think about what epic meal we (steve really) are going to cook for dinner.

The spanish has been so helpful and really fun as well. We have picked it up fairly quickly so hopefully we will start being able to have full conversations in Spanish soon.

We did go to Tarabuco markets on Sunday. Tarabuco is a village about and hour and a half from here that is famous for weaving and they have Sunday markets that locals go to for clothes, food and other random stuff. There is also a lot of local handicrafs and steve and i bought a really nice weaving and some coca leaves which we are going to try (steve is going to chew them and i am going to make tea). They are used to ward off hunger and fatigue and are apparently really good for altitude as well.

On Friday we are going to Uyuni which is the town where we will take the tour of the Salt Flats from. Then we are going to La Paz for a few days, then Lake Titicaca, then onto Peru for our Inca Trail Trek.

We have way more photos to upload but the internet here is pretty slack (as some of you know from recieving our crappy skype calls) so here is two we managed to upload the other day before the internet cut out.

Sud America Survey

Hola everyone.

Cami and i were talking today (surprise surprise), and came to the conclusion we dont know who is actually reading this blog except for our mums and dads. So if everyone who reads this can leave a little comment we can sleep a little easier at night.

IN other news, we are in Sucre atm, and its awesome. We are staying in an awesome little hostel/guesthouse called Dulce Vita, and we have started our spanish lessons with the loverly Lourdes.

We have also experienced some classic Sucrean past times such as WallyBall (Volleyball in what looks like a squah court and you use the walls to play) and a Nirvana tribute band (who were surprisingly good..) If you havnt seen four non english speaking bolivians playing all nirvana´s hits then you havnt lived. I even got thrown into the drum kit while moshing with the other angsty youths.
NB to Jordy: Wallyball is friking awesome and better than the normal volley ball, i might even come back half decent at it so watch out....

Ok we are off now to look at a church,
CYAA

Steve & Cami.

Animals, Sickness, and Cable TV

Hi Faithfull Bloglets,

It has been an interesting few weeks in Bolvia. Since we left Ginger´s we had a few change of plans around our travels. Basically we had a great week in a small little town called Semaipata, where you can base a whole bunch of nature tours etc, but mainly we just relaxed, ate well and enjoyed ourselves... nice huh. We also did the ´Routa Del Che´(following the last few days of Che Guevara´s life in bolivia where he died- more later)

But just prior to getting back to Ginger´s Paradise, our beloved organic farm, we realised that we only had about 5 weeks to see the rest of boliva, do a 2 week volunteering stint at Inti Wara Yassu and make it all the way to Cuzco to acclimatize for Machu Pichu. So instead of being able to hang out at gingers for a week or so we could only stay 2 days before we had to bail for the Animal Refuge Inti Wara Yassu, which was a bit sad, especially saying goodbye to everyone there, who was so loverly.

Anyway so we made it to Inti Wara Yassu, which is about 6 hours from Santa Cruz in a small Village called Villa Tunari, on a day of torrential rain. It literally flooded the place in about one hour; i dont know about rain measurements but it was alot. Anyway we finally paid, got assigned to our different working areas and retired for the night. I (steve) was working with Small Animals, which is Tejons, Tyras and Turtles, and Cam was working in one of the big Avaries. The animals were crazy, Tejons are a bit like racoons crossed with ant eaters (with huge teeth) and Tyras are like mini bears on 4 legs and are meant to be one of the most powerful animals pound for pound in the world... Im not sure what birds cam was working with im sure she will explain sometime. But basically for the next few days it rained constantly, taking out the entire villages water supply and flooding everyones mould infested rooms. But basically cami and i got quite sick after the first day and spent the majority of 3 days in our room vomiting etc etc.. So much fun. But after a bunch of days like this we decided it wasnt worth staying and being sick the whole time, and there were also some other issues with the park that we werent quite sure of, so we ended up leaving a bit early and heading to Cochabumba so we could get better. Which is where we are now, and im mostly better, but cami is still a bit on the green side.

Anyhoooo we are leaving all this a bit dissapointed that we didnt get to have a great time at I.W.Y and heading off to Sucre to study a bit of Spanish. And as such we now have a bit more time to explore Bolivia and see some things we thought we were going to miss out on.. which is a plus at least.

So for now i will go back to looking after cami and trying to find some food that isnt fried chicken or Almuezo.

Steve and Cami.