Lake Titicaca and the Cardboard Boat

Having risked life and limb mining in Potosi and careering headlong (by bike) down the world's most dangerous road outside of La Paz, we decided a peaceful stay by Lake Titicaca was in order.

It started well with an $8 (for 2) night in a new hotel with spectacular views of the Lake at Copacabana-the Bolivian version, interupted only by the dulcet tones of one of our travelling companions, Felicity, who had forgotten that Barry Manilow was referring to the Brazilian version. The next day, our boat ride to and hiking on the Isla del Sol, the mythical birthplace of the Incas was spectacular.

Esther decided to do the peaceful thing and retire to bed (another great $6 place- Bolivia really is the cheap but spectacular holiday seekers destination) with its 180 degree views of the Lake whilst Gavin, Felcity and I thought that it would be fun to walk one way down the island (3 hours) and then persuade a fisherman to take us back to the other end where we were staying.

The walk was gorgeous (though not far off 4000m above sea level so the hills required a fair amount of panting). When we finally arrived at the far end and enquired with the locals about the possibilty of a boat, the answers were as usual- very clear and definitive- no, yes, maybe, lets see.

Finally a man with a tiny boat turned up, the price negotiated and we were ready. What we hadn't noticed was that the wind had really whipped up and the waves had responded. No problem in an ordinary boat but this was tiny, made of cardboard (well ok, maybe chipboard but it felt like cardboard), with a little outboard motor which was being refuelled from a clear tub between the captain's legs.

The boat thudded through the waves that at times rocked it so severly that we discussed which bit of land we would swim for and I mentioned the possibility of taking shoes off. I really was gripping on for dear life and matters were not made better when we had to stop while the captain tried to untangle his rope which had wound itself around the outboard motor.

We finally arrived and clambered up onto the jetty, and watched the little boat disappear. It had less than a third of the fuel left that had been used to get us to our destination and we could only hope that the "captain" had returned safely.

Breathless in Boliva

Above: Our Landcruiser and the Arbol de Piedra (tree of stone, chiseled by the wind)

What a country. And how lucky we are that the gods sent us on this unplanned journey into the clouds.

It started with a double-take - severe rain in the driest place on earth (San Pedro de Atacama) meant severe snow at 5,000m and two days of waiting at the Chile/Bolivia border for our 4x4 to be allowed to cross.

And since then we´ve been operating at altitude (around 4,000m). After nearly two weeks the discomfort of dull headaches and nausea is gone (plenty of coca tea), but we still wake up out of breath and the slightest incline sends the heart on a pinball course. (Maybe the heavy breathing has more to do with our deep awe at the spectacular countryside than with altitude sickness?)

Colour-coded delights
The four days in the Toyota Landcruiser united us, and Gavin and Felicity from London and Luz and Miguel from Santiago against Grumpy Git, our Bolivian driver. It is also, in all probability, the most spectacular scenery we've been lucky enough to find ourselves in (sorry, South Africa), from which even the intense cold and atrocious toilets (balance back in favour of SA) could not detract.

From different-coloured lakes (algi, salt, and other minerals made for Lagos Blanco, Verde and the red Colorado (pic on left) packed with flamingos, to snow-covered volcanos, geysers spouting sulphur into thin air, the wind-eroded arbol de piedra and miles and miles of sky, we had it all.

And then the Salar de Uyuni. Nothing can adequately explain the expanse of whiteness that is this salt flat. Or the mirror images that the 1500m-thick salt crust, covered in summer rains, exposes to our overloaded brains. We cling to Grumpy Git, desperately hoping that the experience won´t end. But the futility sinks in as he slams his door, races off and refuses to stop for more photographs. (Pic below: Coups and a mirror image on the salt flat.)

Precarious pueblos
A six-hour bus trip through yet more spectacular countryside makes us hope with innocent fervour that we´ll never reach beauty-overload, and brings us to Potosi, an unlikely mining town clinging to rich Cerro Rico at more than 4,000m.

A trip to the mines - a good source of income for the mining co-operatives - makes for an uneasy experience as we meet 13-year-old boys pouring with sweat in the heat of the inner mountain and see wiry men push 3-tonne ore trolleys down ill-lit shafts. We keep moving on.

La Paz, too, clings unfeasibly to its mountainside, and you wonder why. But, still hanging out with Gav and Flick, we walk throught the witches market and grimace at the llama foetuses, and Coups indulges in some consumer therapy. (Pic left: a lady doing what ladies do in La Paz)

And then we go down the mountain
We whizz down the 69km that is Most Dangerous Road in the World (according to all the guide books) from La Paz to Coroico on mountain bikes in about 4 hours. And it is scary. So scary that they force traffic to drive on the left - so the lorry drivers can accurately judge the few centimetres they have on the gravelly cliff edge.

Wanting to keep up with the boys, I come off my bike, suffering no more than a grazed fore-arm, dinky thumb and stiff hip and shoulder. (And bristly ego - silly 38 year old). Coups turns out to be fearless, and after my fall I never manage to see her backwheel for more than a few minutes.

But we made it - and have the T-shirts and multi-media CD to prove it. We´re loving it.

Over to Amanda for the Lake Titicaca instalment.

(Pic left: Clearly deeply traumatised by my fall on the Most Dangerous Road in the World)

Valle de la Luna

Us waiting for the sun to set on Valle de la Luna in the Atacama Desert after a gruelling run up a sand dune. More pics to come later.

Valle de la Luna
Originally uploaded by espaarwater.

Low flying

Low flying
Originally uploaded by espaarwater.

Amanda shows her sporty side at the iceberg graveyard that is Lago Onelli near Calafate. For a change, I managed to press the button at just the right time.

What a glacier

What a glacier
Originally uploaded by espaarwater.

The Perito Moreno Glacier near El Calafate in Argentinian Patagonia. We´ve been doing a straw poll of fellow Gringo Trailists and some reckon that they were more bowled over by this than by the 4x4 trip from San Pedro de Atacama to Lagunas Blanco, Verde, Colorado and the Salar de Uyuni. The latter is probably our all-time favourite so far, with this glacier a close second.

Up a volcano, on the beach with old friends and into the desert

Esther here again. Further to Coups' previous entry just a quick thought for the day: Keep the Clean. (Copied from the ladies' bathroom in our Calafate hostel. Joined by: Do Not put paper in odorless. The Spanish for toilet is inodoro or some such.)

Puke-on (Apologies to Nelis and Johanna)
We hit Pucon, the playground of the Chilean rich in the Lake District as the sun sets in most spectacular, red-enhancing fashion.

We spend the first, cloudy morning in bed reading, chilling after some heavy traveling across mountains and lakes. I also still have not shaken my chest infection completely and need to rest. Amanda ventures out and gets her first glimps of Pucon, this quaint (albeit artificially so) village of low-level log buildings and no neon signs: lago Villarica, massive mountains in the background and, lording it over all, Villarica volcano. Its mouth is mostly covered in clouds, but when the curtain is lifted, it flaunts its splendour with the tell-tale sign of a live volcano: a gently rising whisp of smoke.

The next morning we're on the beach of black volcanic ash, and later meet up with Janet the Aussie and Kieran. The four us spend a decadent afternoon in the 6 mountain pools of a thermal spring, preparing for our ascent of the volcano the next day.

First thing the next morning we get kitted out in volcano suits that make us look like extermination men, as well as ice picks, crampons, helmets, cloves etc. And then it begins.

The first 400m are fairly easy - we're on a chair lift, but then our motley group of one Brit, one SAer, one Irishman, 2 Dutchies and one Chilean start to follow our guide, slow snow step after slow snow step.

The thinner the air - we're zig-zagging to 3200m at the crater mouth - the slower our progress and the more frequent our requests for rests. I turn out to be the group chicken: my congested chest starts to wheeze like a forgotten granddad in House Last Sigh and it feels like my lungs have lost the capacity to send oxygen around my body. The guide's sense of competition (get the feeling it's guide's honour to make sure everybody makes it to the top) coaxes me to the top with promises of just-around-the next-brow. And, shame upon shame, I lose my hard-woman image (?) as he takes my back-pack and drags me up on the other end of his walking stick.

But worth it: the 3200m-high view of 4 or 5 other volcanos, Pucon and an ocean-full of lakes takes the breath away (although my breathing recovers miraculously) but the coolest is no doubt the swirling mass of red-hot lava down in the crater revealed every few minutes when the wind parts the cough-inducing sulpher cloud.

We rest, Amanda makes us tomato and salami sandwiches and I thank the guide profusely for getting me there. And then the fun, and the reason for our nuclear suits, starts. Whereas it took us four hours to reach the summit, we get down in 40 minutes. On our arses. Sliding down in the snow, laughing wildly and willing ourselves to go faster, faster, faster.

We spend another day in Puke-on, internetting, looking to replace Amanda's too-small boots, a quick visit to the doctor for more antibiotica (I'm about to remove my lungs manually), and some fantastic freshly liquidised peach juice before we catch the 7.45pm bus for Valparaiso on the coast near Santiago.

22 years since we last had tea together
Arrive in Valparaiso at 8.30 and immediately jump on the next bus to Algarobbo, an hour and a half away, to meet an old friend I haven't seen for a while. (A misunderstanding means he jumps in his truck at about the same time to collect us in Valpara. Sorry, Nelis.)

Our timing could not have been worse. Nelis (school mate from Cape Town, last spotted in 1984 and rediscovered thanks to Google) is in the stressful throes of a massive project converting an old house into a restaurant with the best location in Algarobbo, but he takes us home to meet Johanna, his wife, and Alexander and Daniel, his two sons who have only lived in Switzerland but speak perfect Afrikaans. With much concentration I manage to connect the images of Nelis-1984 and Nelis-2006 and listen with wonder to this driven, determined man and his bubbly, bright Chilean wife, who, along with her family, fled the Pinochet regime in 1973.

We're going back before we leave South America, and I'm glad, because there is so much more talk to talk and so much more x-raying to be done.

The driest place on earth
And here we are now, in San Pedro in the Atacama desert (supposedly the driest in the world with a rainfall of between 10 and 50mm a year). And also the very first time that our blog is up to date.

San Pedro is a mud town in the shadows of the Andes (blimey, they're enormous) that's been perfectly preserved in the dry air of the Atacama, surrounded by the most fascinating rock formations, the result of volcanic activity in the Andes millions of years ago and other such geological happenings.

We do a two-hour walk in a dry canyon filled with salt deposits, gypsum, silicone and even condor vomit. Then the Valle de la Luna where Coups and I are the only ones in our group to race up a dune to get the best view of the setting sun while the mad lunar landscape is on fire behind us. Too many other people, but damn, damn spectacular.

We've had a change of plan after meeting many travellers who said the 3-day 4x4 trip from San Pedro to the salt flats of Uyuni was THE South American highlight.

So, tomorrow morning we're crossing the border into Bolivia for our little adventure. Then on to La Paz, hopefully mountain biking down the "most dangerous road in the world" (guide book) and then into Peru via Lake Titicaca. (This means we won't go to Arequipa and Colca Canyon. They'll have to wait until next time).

El Fin del Mundo, ice fields and into Chile.

For those of you who have wondered what the end of the world would be like, I can tell you- spectacular. Picture snow capped mountains around a stretch of water which connects the Atlantic and Pacific (the Beagle Channel), islands, Chile on the one side and Argentina on the other. Living on the islands are sea lions, penguins, cormorants and other birds. On the Argentinian side colourful houses pile up against the mountain. Ushuaia- is in the middle of nowhere (the first thing we did on our arrival was to book a flight out a week later- we decided we had done buses for a while) but is surprisingly big. 60,000 people live a life of beautiful scenery but freezing cold for the majority of the year and with no easy escape. We were there at the height of summer and our souvenirs were walking trousers and hats- we lived in all the layers contained in our backpacks.

The shops are good- in fact retail therapy is highly possible. When we got out of bed the second day, and admired the view, we realised why- a huge cruise ship had arrived (carrying 2000 people). Ushuaia is the base for Antartic cruises and for the passengers -after 2 weeks stuck with 2000 other people, you can only imagine the exitement of setting forth onland and dispensing with some pesos.

We met quite a few people who were in town for the Antartic and the recommendation for anyone thinking of doing the trip is think small. A ship with 100 people which is better equiped for the ice can dock at the Falklands, South Georgia and let you off onto the Antratic ice. A passenger on the larger, more luxurious ship told us that weather had prevented them from getting off at all.

In Ushuaia we finally got to do the backpacker thing and hang out with fellow travellers, thus far we had been chatting to Argentinian holidaymakers in our broken Spanish (hence not many long conversations). John, Jim and Ali were our play mates for the week and together we ate, rode horses in spectacular scenery and walked in the national park. John turned out to be a master chef and cooked us steak and veggies for 3 nights running in his hostal.

We went miles by boat to the Harberton Estancia- the estancia built by the European founder of Ushuaia. Thomas Bridges was an Anglican missionary from the early 1800´s and appears to have been a good guy- he could speak the native language fluently, compiled a dictionary of their language and when offered 20,000 hectares anywhere in the country to retire in, by the Argentinian government- chose a part of the Beagle Channel to be near his native flock (4 hours sailing from Ushuaia). There was something quite poignant about leaving the estancia on our tourist boat and watching the lone figure of his direct descendant, wave us off- dwarfed by his remote mountain range and corrugated metal buidings.

Thoughts from the Glaciers

Next stop was Calafate- the base to explore the Argentinian ice fields. Here, we stayed in our first dorm. We wern´t really roughing it as there were only 2 bunks in a dorm and they had nice new thick mattresses. The hostal had a fab view of the bright blue Lago Argentina (blue from the glacial minerals that flow into it) and was really rather nice. Unfortunately there were a few building snags to be fixed, it having only opened a few months previously, which meant that when I shut the door of the ladies bathroom when we got up at 6am one morning- we couldn´t get out again and had to bang the door until we were rescued.

Perrito Moreno, the most famous glacier is stunning- all huge wavey blue ice. Its the only advancing glacier left in South America (everything else is receding) but doesn´t advance too much before rupturing, retreating and starting its advance again. We also did an all day boat trip which took us to many of the other glaciers that can be visited and saw numerous spectacular neon blue icebergs and fabulous scenery, mountains, wavey, jaggedy glaciers flowing off mountains into Lago Argentino. The deepest part of the lake is near the Upsala glacier (the channel it cut) and is apparently at least 700 m deep, and possibly 1000 m deep (no one has been there). 60 m of the glacier is above the water and 700m is below. Mindblowing!

Into Chile

Spectacular scenery again (we are feasting our senses everyday) accompanied our 5 hour bus ride to Puerto Natales in Chile. Puerto Natales is a fabulously nowhere town. The little corrugated metal houses were bleak, wind howled, the streets were empty, shop signs creaked and there was a feeling of lack of colour and of being far from everything- fantastic! We were ecstatic to find El Living- a veggie cafe run by an English couple with fab salads, juices, soup and sarnies. English mags, the Guardian International and the sofas made it somewhere we couldn´t bare to leave (we didn´t eat anywhere else in the 2 days we were in town). On our second day we jumped on a 7am bus (oh yes- lots of early starts- but I can´t say I find them much easier) to the internationally renowned Torres del Paine national park.

We could have gone on the one day tour for not much more cash but after spending the Upsala glacier trip with 300 other tourists we decided that we had enough of the tourist group tour and had to do this ourselves even if we missed out on some of the park we would still see a good part of it. We were eventually dropped off deep inside, having passed the famous granite towers of Paine, the horns of Paine and lots of stunning blue glacial water lakes. The first hour of the walk was up a steep, scree hill with the wind howling. Putting one foot in front of each other was such a battle with the wind that I was on the verge of morphing into Scott of the Antartic when a horse came down the slope in front of us. We were in the middle of mountains, with no one around and a horse appears! It was then followed by 2 others, followed by nervous looking riders- one lady told us she didn´t know how the horses were still upright the wind had been so strong. We finished after walking through the greenest of green fields, surrounded by towering peaks. I have to admit we had a number of picnics but then again Esther had a bad cold and needed to be conserved to fight another day.

We were in Puerto Natales to take the weekly ferry which for 3 days goes up through the fjords and past the glaciers of the Far South of Chile to Puerto Montt. This didn´t happen owing to the engines deciding to cease on the way to our rendez vous and the passengers being taken off by lifeboats etc as witnessed by Chilean TV. After a wrangle for our cash and a race to book alternative means out of this tiny town, we found ourselves together with 4 other boat refugee backpackers (including Jim from Ushuaia) in a cheap and v basic backpacker place 3 hours further South in Punta Arenas. The next day we flew out in the rain with Kieran from Ireland to a hopefully sunnier place further up this thin country (the Chileans still think of it as the South but it took over a 2 flight to get there). Ultimate destination being Pucon, in the heart of the Chilean Lake District.