This is it! The grand finale! I bet you didn't think we'd make it this far. Well, the amount of times we got lost, missed buses and trains, booked wrong hotels and drank too many beers we almost didn't! But we're troopers I tell you. We have a budget and we stick to it! It also helps if your mum gives you birthday money nice and early. Thanks Ma! Mostly we've just been spending all our money on buying our faithful blog readers presents. Each and every two of you. Thanks for the effort mum and Barb. Juuuust kidding! I know there's ATLEAST two more of you.
Let's get down to the nitty gritty. Let's all go to Bolivia! Or as I like to call it, the best country in Central and South America. Sure I'm biased and we've only been to a few other countries, but this place Rocks. My. Socks. Our first bus drops us off into Copacabana (start singing the song!) on Lake Titicaca. We spend our sunny days on the water in hilarious paddle boats and more mature kayaks. One day we even head to Isla del Sol (that's Island of the Sun for you non Spanish speaking people) on a tiny boat packed with people. If there wasn't water in the way we could have walked there faster. One poor guy had really bad food poisoning and had to ask the driver to pull over to a craggy rock so he could empty his bowels haha ahhhhh classic. We couldn't see anything luckily! Once on the island we saw some old ruins where the Inca culture began (apparently) before walking to the south to catch the boat back again. It was really pretty on the island and the landscape reminded us a bit of Turkey. Just without our cool friends.
Let's get down to the nitty gritty. Let's all go to Bolivia! Or as I like to call it, the best country in Central and South America. Sure I'm biased and we've only been to a few other countries, but this place Rocks. My. Socks. Our first bus drops us off into Copacabana (start singing the song!) on Lake Titicaca. We spend our sunny days on the water in hilarious paddle boats and more mature kayaks. One day we even head to Isla del Sol (that's Island of the Sun for you non Spanish speaking people) on a tiny boat packed with people. If there wasn't water in the way we could have walked there faster. One poor guy had really bad food poisoning and had to ask the driver to pull over to a craggy rock so he could empty his bowels haha ahhhhh classic. We couldn't see anything luckily! Once on the island we saw some old ruins where the Inca culture began (apparently) before walking to the south to catch the boat back again. It was really pretty on the island and the landscape reminded us a bit of Turkey. Just without our cool friends.
Our next bus ride to La Paz was beautiful. While Frosty slept I gazed out the windows at the giant expanse of the Andes while the sun shot down sun beams to dance around on the green pastures. At one point there was a giant green hill with a tiny church perched right on top. It would have had the most amazing view of the snow capped mountains. Just one of those moments you should keep in your head instead of putting in a blog. Well too bad!
La Paz was just another bustling, dirty city but we managed to stay there for quite a while because of the food gems we found about the place. I even got to have bangers and mash with hot mustard and a pint! Ahhhh yeh, it was all going to be OK. I managed to book myself in on another food tour but it had nothing on the other cities. It was just me and the guide which always makes conversation a little awkward and culturally Bolivian food doesn't have the zing of Turkey or Mexico. My guide would order giant plates of food and watch me eat it. "Mmmm, tasty. Yep it's good. Really, really, really .....ah, have I said tasty?" The main dish of the evening was served up at the English pub (!) and the dish came about when some drunk guys harassed a food stall lady at 3am for the biggest plate of food to sober them up. So she got all her left over meat and potatoes, crammed it onto a giant plate and doused it in spiciest sauce hoping to shut them up but they loved it! Soon it was pretty much the national dish. You're probably dying to know what this culinary masterpiece is! It's called Pique Macho (like macho man) and it has fried potatoes, chopped steak, chicken and hot dogs, boiled eggs, tomato wedges all served with a spicy sauce. My guide was kind enough to order me a whole plate that was three times bigger than my head! I had a few mouthfuls.
La Paz has recently introduced a number of cable cars around the hilly city to help people in the higher suburbs get to work easier. Before it could take them two hours or more to get to work now it takes 20 minutes. Generally the poorer communities live higher up as it is colder and wetter. While the richies live lower where the weather is better. The cable cars provide great views for tourists and if you take the green and yellow combo you can cover almost the entire city for next to nothing!
We caught a bus to El Alto one evening for a night of entertainment. Cholita wrestling! Just like our beloved Mexican wrestling but with women in long skirts, knitted wraps and little hats. These ladies were awesome! The local crowd were throwing fruit and empty water bottles on stage while their kids yelled insults to their least favourite wrestlers. The whities sat ring side, cameras a blazing, munching on their free popcorn and looking a little confused. The cholitas were amazing at revving up the crowd and throwing each other around. I think we should start a wrestling club back home. It looks like it would be great exercise!
On a more cultured evening we went to restaurant Gustu in the fancy part of town. This restaurant was owned by the same guy who owned Noma in Denmark, the second best restaurant in the world. In our excitement we got there too early so had a few specialty cocktails and a fancy schamncy snack before settling into our table with front row views of the kitchen. Oooohhhh schmaaaaaaance!!! We had an entree and main each and shared a dessert while throwing back a few more beers and finishing with a French pressed la di da coffee. Uh oh! What? Do we even have enough cash on us? I don't know what did we get again? We have to get a taxi back too! How many beers did you get? The amount of times this happens to us! Honestly, you'd think we'd learn but we don't. So the next ten minutes is spent stressing while we finish off our boutique beers and single-origin-gluten-free-doesn't-cast-a-shadow-except-on-the-solstice coffee. The bill arrives and as luck would have it, they forgot to add on the drinks and snacks from the bar! Hayoooooooooooo!!!!!! Another round of beers please! Just kidding, we got the hell out of there and left a massive tip for the lovely staff. I love it when that happens.
La Paz was just another bustling, dirty city but we managed to stay there for quite a while because of the food gems we found about the place. I even got to have bangers and mash with hot mustard and a pint! Ahhhh yeh, it was all going to be OK. I managed to book myself in on another food tour but it had nothing on the other cities. It was just me and the guide which always makes conversation a little awkward and culturally Bolivian food doesn't have the zing of Turkey or Mexico. My guide would order giant plates of food and watch me eat it. "Mmmm, tasty. Yep it's good. Really, really, really .....ah, have I said tasty?" The main dish of the evening was served up at the English pub (!) and the dish came about when some drunk guys harassed a food stall lady at 3am for the biggest plate of food to sober them up. So she got all her left over meat and potatoes, crammed it onto a giant plate and doused it in spiciest sauce hoping to shut them up but they loved it! Soon it was pretty much the national dish. You're probably dying to know what this culinary masterpiece is! It's called Pique Macho (like macho man) and it has fried potatoes, chopped steak, chicken and hot dogs, boiled eggs, tomato wedges all served with a spicy sauce. My guide was kind enough to order me a whole plate that was three times bigger than my head! I had a few mouthfuls.
La Paz has recently introduced a number of cable cars around the hilly city to help people in the higher suburbs get to work easier. Before it could take them two hours or more to get to work now it takes 20 minutes. Generally the poorer communities live higher up as it is colder and wetter. While the richies live lower where the weather is better. The cable cars provide great views for tourists and if you take the green and yellow combo you can cover almost the entire city for next to nothing!
We caught a bus to El Alto one evening for a night of entertainment. Cholita wrestling! Just like our beloved Mexican wrestling but with women in long skirts, knitted wraps and little hats. These ladies were awesome! The local crowd were throwing fruit and empty water bottles on stage while their kids yelled insults to their least favourite wrestlers. The whities sat ring side, cameras a blazing, munching on their free popcorn and looking a little confused. The cholitas were amazing at revving up the crowd and throwing each other around. I think we should start a wrestling club back home. It looks like it would be great exercise!
On a more cultured evening we went to restaurant Gustu in the fancy part of town. This restaurant was owned by the same guy who owned Noma in Denmark, the second best restaurant in the world. In our excitement we got there too early so had a few specialty cocktails and a fancy schamncy snack before settling into our table with front row views of the kitchen. Oooohhhh schmaaaaaaance!!! We had an entree and main each and shared a dessert while throwing back a few more beers and finishing with a French pressed la di da coffee. Uh oh! What? Do we even have enough cash on us? I don't know what did we get again? We have to get a taxi back too! How many beers did you get? The amount of times this happens to us! Honestly, you'd think we'd learn but we don't. So the next ten minutes is spent stressing while we finish off our boutique beers and single-origin-gluten-free-doesn't-cast-a-shadow-except-on-the-solstice coffee. The bill arrives and as luck would have it, they forgot to add on the drinks and snacks from the bar! Hayoooooooooooo!!!!!! Another round of beers please! Just kidding, we got the hell out of there and left a massive tip for the lovely staff. I love it when that happens.
Alright! Enough city time let's head to the jungle!!! Where we can crank 'Welcome to the Jungle' on a tiny speaker and walk around slow motion wearing aviator sunnies. One short, but thrilling plane ride later we are at a normal altitude for the first time in months and it's hot! Everyone on the plane is still dressed in our warmest La Paz gear while people leaving the jungle are sun burnt and in shorts and singlets. Yessssss!!!! It's been so long steamy weather! Of course we were very excited and tested out the bars around town. Not the best idea when you have to get up early for a long boat ride. We booked in to stay at Serere Nature Reserve and had chosen this more expensive tour over the classic Pampas tour for its conservation efforts. Everybody goes to Pampas and you have a 100% chance of seeing a range of exotic animals up close but you could be there with hundreds of other noisy tourists and guides with little empathy for the creatures about. So we chose the real jungle and that's just one of the reasons why we are so much better than everyone else. Another reason is our ability to make wine from water but that's a different story.
Three hours on a boat heading downriver and I'm excited! It's beautiful already. Nature come at me! Once at our destination we walk for half an hour through the dense jungle until we pop out at the main house right on a beautiful lake. Four black spider monkeys are sitting on a canoe and come over for a closer inspection. A mum carries a baby on her back and the baby uses me as a climbing tool to steal a a banana before scurrying away. The mum and two older kids were bought to the reserve after seeing their dad killed by hunters while the baby had been through a similar ordeal and was orphaned. When they were all bought to the reserve the mum adopted the little baby. How cute is that?! While the kids were friendly and loved playing with the workers, the mum was more wary and kept to herself poor girl. On my last day though she climbed in my lap and I pretended to look for lice on her back haha little cutie. She also liked to sit next to frosty and lean up against him. Who doesn't?!
Other creatures around was the orphaned Collared Peccary (pig) who LOVED rubbing his head between your legs, a tapir who would join you on night walks and a tiny night monkey who had been shot in the face and this seemed to make him forget that he was nocturnal. I loved this place!
Our first day our small group found capuchin and squirrel monkeys devouring coco fruit and just generally being cute. That night we paddled out onto the lake in search of caiman. I don't know a whole lot about caiman but I felt like this canoe wasn't really going to protect us. It was pretty low to the water. Our guide spots some eyes shining in his torch light and we stealthily paddle over getting closer and closer I can't take it it's too close for comfort and then I see it's giant head above the water and I just, I just!!! "Oh it's tiny!" Our guide mishears me "yes it's a big one! Two metres long." It might be two metres long but it's scrawny as! I still wouldn't want to get in that water! The 'owner' of the reserve is a crazy jungle woman. Part panther, part hermit. She would bathe in the lake most days while the caiman watched curiously. One day one of them felt brave and came up and bit her thigh. One of the workers ran into the water and beat the caiman off with a canoe paddle. She lost a massive chunk from her leg and now drags one foot when walking. Let that be a lesson to you kids!
Anyway, back to our night tour. This night was one of my highlights. The stars were twinkling above our heads, the water was completely still mirroring our surroundings, a wall of dense jungle on all sides, a crescent moon up one end and a storm raging down the other. We used our torches to spot the shining eyes of the Caiman while bats silently swooped to catch unsuspecting bugs. Extra twinkles came in the form of fireflies and glow worms on the shore. Can I get a hell yeh?! It was magical! Other days were spent running through the jungle to catch a glimpse of the Red Howler monkeys (our guide called to them and they called back!), bird watching, piranha fishing (I got three!), spider spotting and night walks. It was seriously one of the best weeks ever. One of the best bits was the food! So much food! The cook said in five days we would put on three kilos! It was so tasty we didn't care.
Three hours on a boat heading downriver and I'm excited! It's beautiful already. Nature come at me! Once at our destination we walk for half an hour through the dense jungle until we pop out at the main house right on a beautiful lake. Four black spider monkeys are sitting on a canoe and come over for a closer inspection. A mum carries a baby on her back and the baby uses me as a climbing tool to steal a a banana before scurrying away. The mum and two older kids were bought to the reserve after seeing their dad killed by hunters while the baby had been through a similar ordeal and was orphaned. When they were all bought to the reserve the mum adopted the little baby. How cute is that?! While the kids were friendly and loved playing with the workers, the mum was more wary and kept to herself poor girl. On my last day though she climbed in my lap and I pretended to look for lice on her back haha little cutie. She also liked to sit next to frosty and lean up against him. Who doesn't?!
Other creatures around was the orphaned Collared Peccary (pig) who LOVED rubbing his head between your legs, a tapir who would join you on night walks and a tiny night monkey who had been shot in the face and this seemed to make him forget that he was nocturnal. I loved this place!
Our first day our small group found capuchin and squirrel monkeys devouring coco fruit and just generally being cute. That night we paddled out onto the lake in search of caiman. I don't know a whole lot about caiman but I felt like this canoe wasn't really going to protect us. It was pretty low to the water. Our guide spots some eyes shining in his torch light and we stealthily paddle over getting closer and closer I can't take it it's too close for comfort and then I see it's giant head above the water and I just, I just!!! "Oh it's tiny!" Our guide mishears me "yes it's a big one! Two metres long." It might be two metres long but it's scrawny as! I still wouldn't want to get in that water! The 'owner' of the reserve is a crazy jungle woman. Part panther, part hermit. She would bathe in the lake most days while the caiman watched curiously. One day one of them felt brave and came up and bit her thigh. One of the workers ran into the water and beat the caiman off with a canoe paddle. She lost a massive chunk from her leg and now drags one foot when walking. Let that be a lesson to you kids!
Anyway, back to our night tour. This night was one of my highlights. The stars were twinkling above our heads, the water was completely still mirroring our surroundings, a wall of dense jungle on all sides, a crescent moon up one end and a storm raging down the other. We used our torches to spot the shining eyes of the Caiman while bats silently swooped to catch unsuspecting bugs. Extra twinkles came in the form of fireflies and glow worms on the shore. Can I get a hell yeh?! It was magical! Other days were spent running through the jungle to catch a glimpse of the Red Howler monkeys (our guide called to them and they called back!), bird watching, piranha fishing (I got three!), spider spotting and night walks. It was seriously one of the best weeks ever. One of the best bits was the food! So much food! The cook said in five days we would put on three kilos! It was so tasty we didn't care.
Another wild flight back to La Paz and we were ready and prepared for the altitude this time. Or so we thought! We went out for a Sunday roast and while walking back from the bar I all of a sudden didn't feel to good. I remember starting to say "I feel dizzy" and when I woke up I was on my back on the pub floor surrounded by a bunch of worried Aussies. Steven Segal came bounding over, made sure I was OK and got me home safe. It was so bizarre and fairly embarrassing because I thought people in the pub wouldn't believe that it was the altitude. That I was drunk. Yeh suuuuure it was the altitude! Poor Frosty thought I was joking around because I went down so slowly and had a smile on my face hahaha!! I was able to walk back to our hotel and had an early night.
The last thing we did in Bolivia was go to the salt flats of Uyuni. We joined a tour group and had the best three days! I'm telling you, Bolivia is where it's at! Not only was the scenery amazing but we had the cutest guide and the best bunch of people in our group. Our two cars formed one big group and we ate all our meals together and made lots of noise laughing and chatting at night. You know how I feel about group tours but if they could all be like this one I'd do them all the time! The salt flats were breathtaking of course. You'll just have to look at the pics because I wouldn't do them justice. We also saw thousands of pink flamingos, high altitude geysers, volcanoes and beautiful landscapes. We had car karaoke, astronomy lessons, night photography and plenty of rum and pisco to keep us warm.
The last thing we did in Bolivia was go to the salt flats of Uyuni. We joined a tour group and had the best three days! I'm telling you, Bolivia is where it's at! Not only was the scenery amazing but we had the cutest guide and the best bunch of people in our group. Our two cars formed one big group and we ate all our meals together and made lots of noise laughing and chatting at night. You know how I feel about group tours but if they could all be like this one I'd do them all the time! The salt flats were breathtaking of course. You'll just have to look at the pics because I wouldn't do them justice. We also saw thousands of pink flamingos, high altitude geysers, volcanoes and beautiful landscapes. We had car karaoke, astronomy lessons, night photography and plenty of rum and pisco to keep us warm.
Bolivian Food Edition
Then before we knew it, we were saying goodbye to Bolivia and hello to Chile! We crossed over to the beautiful San Pedro for more stunning scenery and star gazing. We met up with some friends from our Uyuni tour and relaxed in our quiet accommodation. A few days later we were catching our very first overnight bus of the trip! We had been avoiding them like the plague but unfortunately we had no choice. It wasn't too bad I suppose. We visited the colourful city of Valparaiso with it's delicious beer and UNESCO heritage listed funiculars. Then we spent close to a week relaxing on the coast in a colourful little place that reminded us of our cottage before heading to Santiago and meeting up with Tatiana in secret! Little did our families know, we were going to be surprising them very soon!
It was fun in Santiago with Tatiana. She let us stay in her flashy hotel room and spoilt us rotten!! We played with street dogs, ate Colombian street food and found a good place for an evening beer. Tatiana is an air hostess and had just flown from Sydney to Santiago so on our first night we met up with the rest of the cabin crew for drinks. They were all so lovely and had promised to look after us on our flight home. Did they ever!! I don't think we could have been any more spoilt! Our flight was like a dream! We had business class seats with lay down beds and Tatiana was like our very own private hostess! We were so lucky. We couldn't believe it! The rest of the crew would come by for a chat when they weren't busy and give us little treaties. So spoilt!! The queen of spoiling, as you can imagine, was Tatiana. she made sure our bellies and glasses were always full. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to back to our old way of flying again! I'm sure my bank account will disagree.
And so now we're home! It's all over red rover. What a fantastic journey it has been! We have done so much and I wouldn't change a thing. You would think that Frosty and I are sick of each other but you'd be wrong. He's just so cutie pie! Thanks for always looking out for me Frosty, and organising almost everything, and being budget master, and putting up with me when I stress, and making me laugh and having outrageous hair and taking beautiful photos. Ya cutie.
Thanks for taking the time to read our blogs :) It's been fun xx
It was fun in Santiago with Tatiana. She let us stay in her flashy hotel room and spoilt us rotten!! We played with street dogs, ate Colombian street food and found a good place for an evening beer. Tatiana is an air hostess and had just flown from Sydney to Santiago so on our first night we met up with the rest of the cabin crew for drinks. They were all so lovely and had promised to look after us on our flight home. Did they ever!! I don't think we could have been any more spoilt! Our flight was like a dream! We had business class seats with lay down beds and Tatiana was like our very own private hostess! We were so lucky. We couldn't believe it! The rest of the crew would come by for a chat when they weren't busy and give us little treaties. So spoilt!! The queen of spoiling, as you can imagine, was Tatiana. she made sure our bellies and glasses were always full. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to back to our old way of flying again! I'm sure my bank account will disagree.
And so now we're home! It's all over red rover. What a fantastic journey it has been! We have done so much and I wouldn't change a thing. You would think that Frosty and I are sick of each other but you'd be wrong. He's just so cutie pie! Thanks for always looking out for me Frosty, and organising almost everything, and being budget master, and putting up with me when I stress, and making me laugh and having outrageous hair and taking beautiful photos. Ya cutie.
Thanks for taking the time to read our blogs :) It's been fun xx