AspiringNomad

Emily and I arrived back in La Paz on 16th November. After a fairly uncomfortable bus ride back (but not the worst) we headed to our new Hostel and crashed out on the beds. Unfortunately, Emily was feeling quite unwell, maybe a touch of food poisoning? I caught up on Selling Sunset whilst Emily took some painkillers and fell asleep.

A friend if mine, Liv, from way back in Quito, then Banos and again in Cusco was also in La Paz. We had been trying for ages to meet up with one another other for lunch to make up for the fact that we had only really spent time with together when intoxicated!
Despite being tired and my belly feeling a little unsettled, I freshened up and headed back to The Carrot Tree.
The Bolivia vs Peru Football was on in the La Paz stadium which Liv had tickets to. So a couple of hours came and went and she headed off.
Through the course of the day the usual crowd was turning up to La Paz via Bus or Plane. To keep you up to date that’s Aoife, Michael (big migs), Joe, Callum and Chris. They were all staying at the Wild Rover, which Emily and I had decided to avoid until Saturday night as we actually wanted to sleep other than party all night!
However, it wasn’t long before we were both roped into joining them at the Wild Rover Hostel for a couple of drinks. Unfortunately for Emily and I, it really was just a few drinks as our stomachs were in pieces! The gang were back together once again dancing the night away.
In the fear of it being a ‘you had to be there moment’, I won’t bore you with the background story, however, it was this night that my friend Joe suspiciously went off for 20mins at 9pm to return with his very first tattoo that read ‘MALO VIDA’. A phrase that has been a catch phrase throughout my whole trip after he was mistaken for being twice his actual age!
After a few beers were had, the boys that have now been travelling together for quite sometime thought it was the perfect opportunity to also get the same phrase tattooed on themselves in the same fairly discreet place!
I had the best time sitting back, watching the absolute carnage that was unfolding! Fortunately, I don’t think that the small phrase printed on their upper thigh will do anything other than remind them of a great time of their lives and so I hope for their sakes that they don’t end up regretting their decisions!
I found out this night that one of our friends, Kalib was unable to make it to Bolivia due to a rabies scare after getting bitten by what he describes as quite a cute dog during his morning walk in Cusco. There is a sentence I never thought I would write! He was told that he would have to stay in Peru for the next month to ensure he gets his weekly vaccinations!

The following day it became clear that Emily needed some medical attention. I, fortunately seemed to have stopped going to the toilet quite as often but she was in a lot of discomfort.
After getting hold of a Doctor (and her insurance company), we headed off to the Lausanne Clinic to get her checked out. They injected her with two huge needles just above her butt cheeks to help with her fever and cramps. Apparantly my face gave away how big the needles were as I sat and watched from afar thankful that it wasn’t me getting injected.
We were then escorted to our private room with a view of the city and told to wait for her samples and bloods to go to the lab. We shouldn’t have been surprised that we were still waiting 2hrs later after they told us it would be just 1hr. Bolivia seems to work on a different time scale to the rest of the world (very frustrating for us regimented europeans), but as we lay on the hospital bed together watching old eurovision entries and tiktoks about Capybara, the two hours was soon up!

They returned to diagnose Emily with gastroenteritis and a ‘small amount’ of salmonella (whatever a small amount means we won’t ever know). But we took the list of meds, headed to the pharmacy and went straight back to the hostel for some rest. At £112.00, you can’t complain at a service which had us triaged, seen, diagnosed and treated all in a matter of 3hrs!

After some rest we met back up with the others for some food at a Vietnamese restaurant just off the road from the ‘Witches Market’. Its renowned for selling strange lotions and potions along with Llama foetuses. It’s believed that by burying the foetus beneath a building as a gift to pachamamma (mother nature), the construction workers will be kept safe.

As we met with the other group, to our surprise Kalib had spent the day hopping the border into Bolivia! His insurance had told him that he would be able to be vaccinated in Bolivia so didn’t miss the opportunity to join us again on his travels.
5 of us had decided to book for the infamous Death Road on the Saturday and so after something to eat, we headed back to our hostels and off to bed.

I was picked up at 6:15am on Saturday morning to be taken 4700m above sea level to start the tour. I met the others at the top and we all suited up ready for our fairly risky but fun bike tour.
To begin with (and get used to the bikes) we started to head down a road that is still used now. Fresh tarmac and downhill meant that other than reaching 50-60kph, we were overtaking lorries and flying round bends. In my natural competitive spirit there was no way I was letting the others speed away from me so I dipped my head to my handle bars and let the road take me! We soon reached the end of the main road and headed to the start of Death Road.

Constructed during the 1930s by the paraguayan prisoners of war to connect La Paz to the Amazon and Las Yungas. During its construction, as a way of escaping, prisoners would willingly jump from the ledge 200m-800m to their death.
Once finished, the locals would use this road regularly resulting in about one death per day due to its precarious position on the side of a mountain not wide enough for two cars to cross but still a two way lane.

Finally, the Bolivian government closed the road in 2007! Since then it has been used as a tourist attraction where you can experience the road by bike with an expert guide and admire the insanely picturesque views from the dangerous track.
We biked about 30km down death road, racing round the bends trying to avoid the loose rocks and staying well away from the cliff edge. It was so much fun speeding down, I had to keep reminding myself that there is a reason it is called Death Road and gently applied the breaks a little harder.

After a few hours biking, we were taken to a pool and had a few beers before heading back to La Paz. Our tour guide was more than up for a little boogie on the bus so we stopped twice on the way back for more beers. By the time we got back to La Paz we had control of the music and were all singing along to the songs blaring out.

Emily and I switched over to Wild Rover hostel as planned for party night.
So bored of our own clothes we decided to switch over our outfits to make a change.
We were joined by Esther and Sam. A couple that the others met on their Salkantay trek, they had also joined us for Vietnamese food the night previous.
They introduced a new game to the group called ‘lonely whale’ which resulted in me laying on the ground making whale noises whilst everyone else was wandering around with their eyes closed, making animal sounds trying to find their match. A fantastic game that made us look like absolute lunatics to anyone watching!

Traditionally, we collectively decided that we wanted a karaoke bar. We found one close by and made our way there. An odd place (like a lot of places in Bolivia), we settled down and requested our songs. The drinks were cheap and the songs were butchered by all of us. Once the bottle of rum was consumed we headed on to another strange little bar where we consumed arguably too many drinks. We played another one of Sam and Esther’s games which was very similar to ‘Ring on a String’. We were all having so much fun, acting like complete fools and dancing away! Just as Natasha Bedingfield Unwitten came on our UBERs arrived. To this day I am still not sure who booked the UBERs. Once we returned to the hostel and sat on the sofas in the lobby, my 5:15am alarm went off that I had set for the previous morning for Death Road. I had been awake for 24hrs but what a fantastic 24hrs, filled with fun and laughter. It was definitely now time for bed!

As you can imagine, none of us were feeling particularly fresh as we all emerged from our dorms at about midday on Sunday. However, we are all travelling because we want to see the world. So we pulled ourselves together and headed to one of the biggest markets in South America, El Alto. Notoriously known as being a rough part of La Paz we went as a group and stuck together. This market sells everything! Want a new fan for your car engine? Got it. Want a new buckle for you bag? Got it. Want some underwear with built in bum lift pads? You guessed it, they have it! It really did have it all. Unfortunately it wasn’t long before El Alto lived up to its name and Callum was being targeted by thieves. Being stupid gringos we thought the throwing off seeds down his back was some strange curse. It was when we were all flustered trying to figure out who spat on his neck that they swiped his phone from his pocket. There was nothing we could do and had to accept defeat!
In utter disappointment at ourselves for not realising what was going on sooner we gathered just outside the market and discussed our next course of action. Michael and Callum headed back to the hostel so Callum could use his spare phone to block the one that they had taken.

The rest of us continued on with our day and went to watch the Cholita wrestling. Just like most of my time in Bolivia, I was sat there in awe, entertained and confused all at once. We watched a couple of ‘fights’ and then got the cable car back down to our Hostel via Burger King (a safe option to avoid heading to the toilet all night!)

After our heavy night before we all decided to head to bed early. Emily, Chris and Sam had booked Death Road for the following day as they missed out on the Saturday and the rest of us spent the day chilling out and running errands. We had a night bus booked this Monday evening to go to Uyuni. So we used the day wisely to organised our laundry and backpacks.

We had collectively decided to spend a bit more and book a VIP night bus to Uyuni. This involved reclinable seats (a must for a night bus), pillows, a blanket, charging points and food. I decided to skip the food and give my left overs to everyone else as I was still dealing with a case of Bolivia Belly!

We arrived in Uyuni the next morning and headed straight to the tour agency to start our Salt Flats tour.
During our chilled night bus, Kalib was flying all over Bolivia in search of a vaccine as we discovered that it wasn’t available in La Paz after all. After two flights and a couple of taxi rides he arrived after being vaccinated to the tour agency about an hour after us!

We were all very excited about the upcoming trip to the Salt Flats as we had heard such good things about the tour.
It didn’t disappoint, after a couple of hours drive and a few stops to take in the views and see the train cemetery we arrived in the middle of a spectacular landscape and our guides, come photographer’s, got some amazing shots of us doing silly poses in the 12,000sq km desert.

I’m sure you won’t be too surprised to hear that before we left for the Salt Flats we stocked up on copious amounts of red wine including 1.5lt bottles. So after we took the photos we proceeded to pour ourselves some wine (whilst the car was on the move). This turned into quite a tricky task considering the terrain we were driving on.
We watched the sunset together in our group. As it fell behind the mountains in the distance the sky looked like it was on fire, against the white of the salt I had never seen anything quite like it.

The next day we piled back into our cars and headed to a national park. We drove through more breathtaking views (which we were trying our hardest not to become numb to) and we arrived at a lagoon filled with flamingos with a backdrop of volcanoes. All of us were in awe of its beauty and I couldn’t help but think of how lucky I was to be here.

We travelled another 100km that day through the Solari desert and later that evening arrived at our hostel for the final night. This night all 7 of us piled into one room and after a few more wines headed to the thermal pool. We warmed up in the 38° water looking at the stars and actually ended up heading to bed fairly early. I did warn everyone before I went to sleep that I do infact snore, most nights. Apparently it can be hereditary so thanks Mum and Dad for passing that down to me!

We all slept in and were woken by our guide banging on the door telling us that breakfast was ready. In a sleepy haze we gathered our things and headed to get pancakes, sugar puffs and yoghurt.

Today was our last day on the Salt Flats tour and we had one more stop to make before making it to the Bolivia/Chile border. Pretty surreal crossing into Chile in the middle of a desert with nothing around other than a few inactive volcanoes and barren land. Once we had crossed the border and closely avoided being arrested for ‘attempting to smuggle a 10day old banana’ that was found in the bottom of Chris’s bag, we were finally off to San Pedro.

San Pedro is a very touristy little town and we found that nearly all the hostels were full. All the buildings are painted white and there is no shortage of bars, restaurants, clothes shops and market stalls. Most people here use this place as a gateway for either entering or leaving Chile. There are a few tourist trap activities that you can get involved in and we had already decided that we wanted to spend the first night on a stargazing tour.

We soon realised that we were no longer in lawless Bolivia, where anything goes. In Chile, they actually had toilet paper in the toilets, you weren’t allowed to smoke/vape in any of the courtyard areas and there is no drinking outside after 1am.
However, it meant that I could ‘treat’ myself to a ceasar salad and not have to worry about what the lettuce was washed in. After lunch we checked into our hostels and chilled out before heading for some food and to the stargazing tour.
It was a great way to spend the evening and we even got to see Saturn, Jupiter and its moons and the surface of the moon through a telescope!

The following day, Friday, we had a lay in and met up together at a French cafe in the sun for brunch. We discussed hiring bikes to go exploring but quite honestly the heat was putting us off and it was already getting later in the day. We had never planned to spend too much time in San Pedro and for lack of another word, we decided to sack off the idea of bikes and celebrate Emily’s last day with us with a few drinks!

We headed out early. Sensible we thought, knowing we had a 7:30am bus the following morning. We would drink early and get to bed early. Unfortunately we’re not quite as sensible as we thought and after 41 Cristal beers and 2 pisco sours between us, we decided to head to another bar closer to the center.
Emily, in a sorry state of affairs headed back to her hostel, a great move, and one we perhaps should have all followed. Instead we consumed more alcohol and headed back to the original bar. Something we wouldn’t normally do but since they told us they had karaoke starting later on, there was no question of it becoming our plan. Finally at this point I decided that I had had enough and one more drop of alcohol would send me over the edge. So I left the group and returned back the hostel.

The next thing I know, Chris’s alarm is going off and it was 6:15am. The realisation that we still had to pack, get cash out, check out and get to the bus hit just has hard as the pounding in my head.
We all somehow managed to pull ourselves together enough to make it to the bus station on time. I’m now sat on a fairly comfortable bus to Salta which means I’ll be crossing the border into Argentina today. Everyone else is asleep whilst I am sat here feeling very sorry for myself with the smallest amount of water and no food. Its going to be a long 10hours ahead but despite the hangover, and I know I have said it before, I still feel incredibly lucky to be here with some great people in an amazing part of the world.

We will spend a day in Salta and collect a 4×4 that I booked through Hertz on Monday. Kalib, Chris, Migs, Aoife and I are taking a road trip around the Salta province of northern Argentina. Hikes, stars and big windy roads await and I am very excited for the next leg of my travels!