Day 33: Adios 2008

At the end of the first Back To The Future movie, Doc Brown says "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.", and then lifts off in his car/time machine and travels to the year 2015. Bolivia appears to have adopted the same philosophy towards roads, except for the flying/time travel parts. Although, I'm sure at a few points we were airborne for a second or two. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

On our last day in San Pedro de Atacama, Boxing Day, we hired a couple of mountain bikes and headed out of town to some nearby points of interest, including the ruins of a village from around 1,000 BC and a fortress town from around 500AD. Near the latter is a cave called "Cuave el Diablo" (Cave of the Devil), which we of course explored. Snr. Cohen attempted to climb into one the inaccessible parts of the cave, but was unsuccessful. Instead, he satisfied himself by climbing a steep path outside the cave. Upon reaching the top, he discovered two things:

 

1. Deep sink holes that would be rather difficult to get out of if fallen into, and

2. Getting down would be more difficult than getting up.

 

Twenty minutes later, he managed to clamber/slide his way down and we were able to continue on our journey. All in all though, a fun day, and some good exercise as a bonus.

 

Upon returning to town, we needed to pay for our accommodation and buy food for our trip across the Bolivian salt flats the next day. Unfortunately, we discovered that none of three different ATMs in town wanted to give us any money. This lead directly to about two hours of running around town attempting to secure the necessary funds. Eventually, we managed to convince our tour company to give us a cash advance to cover most of it, and converted some of our remaining US currency for the rest. No worries!

 

The next morning, we set out for the first day of a three-day tour across the deserts and salt flats of south-western Bolivia. Our tour group consisted of the two of us, two girls from Rio in Brazil, and an older couple, consisting of a French woman and a Chilean/French man, and of course our Bolivian guide/driver. The Chilean and our driver were the only native Spanish-speakers, and English was hit-and-miss, so communication was fun. It usually consisted of Spanish with a bit of English, with the Brazilian girls (who spoke Portuguese, some English and a bit of Spanish) translating for us occasionally.

 

In any case, the trip was great. The first day, we drove past several 'lagunas' (lagoons), each a different colour, and all higher than 4,000m above sea level. Laguna Blanca was white, Laguna Verde was a brilliant aqua green, and Laguna Colorada was a reddish colour. Pink flamingos are plentiful, and we even got to take a dip in a hot spring.

 

After a decent night's sleep on the edge of another beautiful and very windy laguna, we set out again, past more lagunas, interesting rock forms and mountainous plains covered in yellow brush. The day ended crossing a section of the Salar de Uyuni. The salt flats are pretty amazing, with white expanses in all directions. Driving on the salt was actually better than following any of the roads to get there.

 

David had been praying for rain so that we would be able to get some photos with water on the salt flats. When this happens, you get some amazing reflections. If it's not too deep, you can walk through it and it looks like you are walking on water, or even in mid-air if you get the right angle. Thankfully, the heavens provided, and we got some pretty cool shots, such as the one in this post.

 

Upon finally arriving in Uyuni, it quickly became apparent we wouldn't be wanting spend much time there, so we bought some bus tickets to Cochabamba, about 12 hours drive to the north-west. We have a friend named Elizabeth from our church who lives there with her husband Oscar.

 

This is where we discovered the Bolivian affinity with Doc Brown's driving philosophy. It turned out that the road from Uyuni northwards was pretty much a dirt track in most places, and sometimes less. After some initial concerns about the loud rattling sounds from the rear right axle, and the occasional 30-degree tilt to the left or right, we finally made it to Oruro, we had to change buses at about 3am in the morning. Finding the right bus company (or any company, for that matter) proved interesting, but eventually we found one and were merrily on our way to Cochabamba.

 

After we arrived, Elizabeth and Oscar welcomed us warmly. After some breakfast and a much-needed shower, we headed out for a look around town. We visited local markets (including one from which you can buy anything whether it be shoes, baby intercoms, food, PlayStations), some of the nearby towns (each with a quite different feel), ate some local food, and visited some of Oscar's family.

 

Although most of you are already well into next year by now, it is still 2008 here. In any case, Happy New Year to you all! Oscar is a pastor in a local church here, and it should be interesting to celebrate New Years with them later today and some of the local young people.

 

Until next time, hasta luego!

 

Los Davides

Day 27: Feliz Navidad!

Greetings all, and although it is a day late for most of you, Happy Christmas! It is still Christmas day here, so it counts as far as I'm concerned. And while we're at it, since we may not have an Internet connection between now and then, we hope you have a Happy New Year too.

 

Since the post-volcano-conquoring update in Pucon, we've headed north. After a rainy last day in Pucon we caught the bus to Santiago, the national capital of Chile. We spent about 2 hours here, basically just waiting for our connecting bus to the sea-side town of La Serena. Santiago, from our extremely brief passage through it, looked to be a mix of rich and poor, with nice parks and expensive buildings mixed with slums and broken down houses, all set against the backdrop of the Andes mountains. But we wanted the beach, and would not be delayed.

 

La Serena turned out to be a much larger town than I had expected. It has connected with a couple of other nearby towns and become a sprawling metropolis. All the tall buildings are on the beach, and provide expensive accomodation to the well-healed. Interestingly, La Serena is more popular as a travel destination with Chileans rather than foreigners, and it was refreshing to get away from the typical backpacker-infested locations we have generally been at so far.

 

We spent about 3 days here in all, with no mountain climbing this time. A couple of visits to the beach, an astronomy tour out to a nearby observatory (Chile is known for having one of the most reliably clear skys in the world), a trip up a towering, three-pronged cement monument called "The Cross of the Third Millenium", opened in the year 2000. It had a great view, but it seemed rather incongruous having a US$5 million construction surrounded by one of the poorer areas of the city.

 

Next, we hopped on another bus to the town of San Pedro de Atacama, near the Bolivian border. The north of Chile is dominated by the dryest desert in the world. It is a desert of dirt, not sand, and a lot of mining takes place scattered across it. But the landscape is unique, and the town of San Pedro itself is quite nice, in a very laid-back, and very hot way.

 

Last night, which was Christmas Eve, we were told there would be a Christmas presentation in the square near the local Catholic church at about 8pm, followed by a church service at 10pm. As dutiful Westerners, we arrived at 8pm to find the square empty. Having nothing better to do, we sat on a nearby bench and chatted until about 9:30pm, when the parade actually arrived. It was made up of 10 dancing children and four musicians (a bass drum, a snare, and two accordians). This resiliant group of dancers kept it up until 10pm, when the service itself began. We made our way inside and enjoyed an interesting service, which included Christmas carols lead by a brave woman who lacked both pitch and rhythm (the music was still enjoyable though), liturgy, prayer, a pop-quiz for the kids by the Father, a small baby-doll Jesus, and communion.

 

Catholicism, in South America at least, has a lot of imagery. The church itself had about 8 colourfully-dressed statues of Mary, Jesus and other saints and lots of pictures on the walls. This is a stark contrast to our own church in Australia, but it was good to see people genuinely celebrating the birth of Jesus in such a different culture.

 

Tomorrow, we will be exploring around San Pedro a bit further, and on Saturday, we head out on a 3-day trip across the salt flats in southern Bolivia, ending up (hopefully) in Uyani, Bolivia on December 30th.

 

Until then, we wish you a happy holiday. See you on the other side!

 

Los Davides

Day 21: The Daves vs the volcano

This one will be a bit shorter than usual, since a) only one thing of real interest has happend since the last edition and b) we have some multimedia finally. Firstly, a brief update to get you in the picture.

 

On Tuesday we left Bariloche for our second country - Chile. The destination was Puerto Montt, a medium sized port city in the south of Chile. On the way, we encountered the Chilean customs service at the border. There were no problems, but it was a long wait while everyone got processed and all our bags were x-rayed for any offending food items. Apparently Argentinians don't trust Chilean beef and like to bring their own when they travel. Chile doesn't seem to appreciate this practice.

 

Anyway, after 7 hours on the bus we finally arrived at our destination. The next challenge was finding accomodation, and after talking with the bus station security, fending off several people interested in offering us a room to stay, we picked one and bunked down for the night. It turned out to be someone's home, with several guest rooms attached. This is a pretty common practice here, we're finding, and it was a pleasant enough experience. However, we didn't find much in Puerto Montt of interest, so we headed north the next day for Pucon.

 

Pucon is tourist central, situated on a nice lake and with a big volcano named Villarrica dominating the skyline to the east. Mr Cohen, who after our Andes trek the week before declared he would do no further trecks this trip, was very interested in climbing it.

 

We headed out of Pucon at about 7am, driving to the base of the volcano, at about 1,400 meters above sea level. We would be climbing a further 1,400m to arrive at the top some 4.5 hours later, a total of 2,884m, according to the iPhone GPS. The hike itself was very tiring, and about half of it was through snow, and interesting experience in and of itself. But we made it to the top, and had some spectacular views of the surrounding area, including several other volcanoes nearby, at least one of which is in Argentina.

 

Rather than slogging our way back down the mountain, we suited up in water-resistant outer clothing, strapped a piece of hard plastic between our legs and slid down the mountain. Yes, we slid down a volcano at about 25km/h at some points. Most entertaining. Dave Cohen apparently only figured out how to slow down on the last slope we went down, so he had lots of fun, including going face-first down the steepest run. My favourite moment of the descent was accidentally letting go of my ice pick, which we used to help slow us down, watching it cartwheel down the mountain beside me, and managing to catch it again in mid air. Where's a video camera when you need one?

 

Anyway, we made it to the bottom in one piece, somehow. You can check out our exploits yourself in three (yes THREE) different ways:

 

1. The map of our treck up and down the mountain (the iPhone managed to track us the whole way before dropping out just as we got back to the base camp). The Satellite view is the coolest, and if you click the "Replay Treck" button on the map you can watch our journey in super-speed time. Note the way faster descent :)

 

http://www.trailguru.com/wiki/index.php/Track:2ZCO

 

2. Photos!

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=723095230&k=XVM6YVV443XMX11ETB44R

Enjoy!

Los Davides

 

 

Day 16: Cultural Awareness

In the last update, we had just returned from conquering/retreating from the mighty Andes mountains, and were waiting for our Brazilian visas to get processed. While we waited in Mendoza, we basically did two things:

1) Wandered around town, and
2) Figured out what we were going to do next.

Given the vast amounts of planning we have put into this trip, item 2 has turned out to be a common pastime for us. In this case, we were deciding between heading west directly into Chile, or south to San Carlos de Bariloche.

In the meantime, we figured we would see what events of interest might be happening around town. A couple of blocks down from our hotel was a theatre, so we wandered by to see what was on. To our great interest, it turned out that there was going to be a special presentation for the 'Dia Nacional del Tango' (National Day of Tango) the next night. We hadn't been able to get to a tango event in Buenos Aires, so we stepped inside to find out what the details were.

To our surprise, we were ushered into the main auditorium where we discovered a group of young people at the end of their performance of an electronic/hip-hop dance piece. Somewhat intrigued, both by the performance and the lack of an entrance fee, we stuck around, and the dance number was followed by what turned out to be a documentary on a concert held in Mendoza in 1988 by Peter Gabriel, Sting and Bruce Springsteen (among others), and some of the socio-political events happening at the time. The interviews were a bit tricky to follow, being in a foreign language and all, but it was interesting watching the crowd get into the music, clapping along, and afterwards the production crew came onto the stage and took a bow.

Having failed in our quest for information about the tango event, the next day we tried again. Our first attempt was foiled by the fact that unlike everything else in Mendoza, the ticket booth opened at 1pm. I don't think we've mentioned it before, but in South America the concept of 'siesta' is quite popular. In Buenos Aires, most places stayed open during 'regular' (aka Australian) business hours. In Mendoza, they love siesta. Well, I should say that most people love the siesta, except one old lady we met who informed us with an extremely croaky voice that she couldn't stand it. In any case, most shops close between 1pm and 5pm, and then reopen from 5 until 8 or 9pm. Food vendors and restaurants typically stay open, but not much else.

In any case, we came back at about 2pm and secured our tickets. Ready to go! At 9pm, we put on our best clothes (jeans, t-shirt) and joined the growing queue outside the theatre. Anticipation was in the air, although it was possibly also humidity due to the rain earlier in the day. The doors finally opened at around 9:30, and we strategically chose our seats with the shortest people we could find sitting in front of us. In true Argentine fashion, the show started another 30 minutes later. But it was worth waiting for.

Throughout the night there were dances by a local tango troupe, as well as music played by three different groups of musicians (a double guitar and violin group, a piano, double-bass, and violin group, and a 6-piece band which included a piano accordion and a saxophone), and a female singer with a fantastic voice. Overall, a great night, and I don't think we would have found a better one in Buenos Aires. There was definitely a lot of preparation and effort going into the presentation.

The next day, we successfully aquired our Brazian visas and hit the road again, this time to Mendoza. The overnight bus took about 19 hours, but the last two presented some amazing lakes, with pure blue water that was transparent, surrounded by mountains rising up into the sky. Amazing.

Bariloche is a very touristy town, but is surrounded by some great natural beauty, and we spent today doing a road-trip/walk around one of the national parks near by on a trail called 'Circuito Chico' (aka the small circuit). On the way, we were assisted by a friendly Argentine couple from Buenos Aires, followed by a local hotel's dog for about 3km, chatted with another couple from Israel, another from Spain, and finally another made up of a guy from Argentina, a woman from Sweden and their little boy of 8 months. These guys were nice enought to give us a lift back towards town where we could catch a bus the rest of the way, on the way taking us by the 'Llau Llau' (pronounced by Argentines as 'Shau Shau') 5-star hotel which looks a) spectacular and b) rediculously expensive. Needless to say, our accommodations are much more modest.

Finally, tonight, in our final night in Argenina for a while, Dave Cohen suggested we visit a local theatrical production here in Bariloche. We weren't exactly sure what form it would take, but it turned out that it was essentially an interpretive dance group, made up about a dozen young girls, three older girls in their early 20s and one much older woman who seemed to be the coordinator, as well as comic relief. The evening consisted of 8 pieces. The first 5 or 6 consisted of various configurations of the younger girls performing to recorded songs. The last two were the centre-pieces and were performed mostly by the three older performers (with a couple of cameos by the old woman). Not being experts in either the Spanish language, interpreting dance, or comprehending female body language in general, the plot of the two major pieces were a little difficult to follow. However, here is our best guess:

1. Entitled 'Duesta en escena, Crisis', the first piece involved three women, each evoking some kind of emotion individually, assisted by projected images of odd ghostly aparitions and occasional red lighting. We believe this was a representation of the trial and tribulations of being a woman and eventual victory by working together and ocasionally giving each other a hug. Or, possibly something totally different.

2. Called 'Transparencias', the second piece was actually a bit easier to follow, possibly because there was less dialogue, as well as assistance by being accompanied by fairly obvious physical gestures. Without going into too much detail, it seemed to be a reflection and commentary on the negative effects of social pressure on women with regards to body image.

Anyway, an interesting day all around. Tomorrow we head to Puerto Montt in Chile, after which we'll start heading back north in Chile towards Bolivia and Peru. Until next time...

Hasta luego,

Los Davides...

Day 12: The Daves vs The Andes

No, this is not an Ashgrove Baptist grudge match. From Sunday to Tuesday, the two Daves hit the road and took on the mighty Andes mountains. Specifically, the highest mountain in South America, Aconcagua. We weren't foolish enough to try and get to the top (about 6,700m above sea level), but we did get up to the southern face of Aconcagua, to a height of around 4,125m.

 

We don't have any photos uploaded yet - we'll try to get some online in the next couple of days. In the meantime, you can check out the (incomplete) GPS recording of our hike. The first day is fairly complete (up to the point where the valley splitts), but my iPhone battery was severely depleted for the second day so the trail is incomplete - we just recorded spot-points along the way. The link is here:

 

http://www.trailguru.com/wiki/index.php/Track:2V6Q

 

Day 1: Mendoza to Confluenzia

 

After waking up at the crack of dawn, we caught a 4-hour (plus or minus) bus ride from Mendoza to Puenta del Incas, high in the Andes mountains. After a picturesque but slow ride we arrived in a small town which seems to purely exist for the tourists and people in transit to and from Chile. On the bus we had met three Israeli guys (Roie, Shai and Daniel) who were doing exactly the same hike as us, except that they had decided to pay for a guide. We, of course, we cheap and were told it shouldn't be necessary for our particular destination anyway.

 

From here we began our first day's hike, a distance of almost 10km, ascending around 600m. We started out well, chugging along at a reasonable pace. The Israelis soon left us in the dust, but that was fine with us. After crossing the main river over a cool-looking bridge, Dave Cohen spotted a mighty Condor in the mountains above us. Check one childhood dream off the list for Snr. Cohen.

 

After that, the slope increased significantly, and our rate of progress decreased in a roughly linear ratio. It turns out that lugging 15kg of baggage seriously increases the difficulty of climbing mountains. We had already left quite a bit of our extra weight in Mendoza, but we were wishing we'd left more pretty quickly. By the time we got to Confluenzia (the first base camp, and our destination for the day) it was 4 hours, about 10 litres of sweat, and 4 seriously tired legs later. Dave Cohen in particular was feeling the altitude, but the medic at the base camp checked him out and gave the OK for continuing our journey the next day.

 

Day 2: Confluenzia to Plaza de Francia

 

After getting a surprisingly reasonable night's sleep (sleeping bags in a tent at around 0 degrees celcius) we had breakfast and set out for Plaza de Francia, which is at the base of the southern face of Aconcagua. This time we were just carrying small day-packs rather than our relatively massive backpacks. A very good thing since we would be hiking for around 8 hours, and increasing our elevation by another 900m. We took our time, both to admire the spectacular views and to preserve our energy, and the Israeli boys left us behind fairly quickly once again. We got into a rhythm however, and, 3 hours and several stops later we were very surprised to discover that the group behind us was actually our Israeli friends. They had taken a different route and we had actually overtaken them along the way! Ha! Who needs a guide anyway?

 

About 10 minutes later we arrived at our destination, at an elevation of 4,125m above sea level. While we ate our lunch and tried to stay out of the wind we admired the view and chatted with another group of hikers who were hoping to make it to the summit sometime in the next week or so. Good luck to them, it should be a pretty good challenge!

 

By this point, David Cohen had developed a pretty good altitude headache, so we took it pretty slowly on our descent. As it turned out, our return journey took a completely different path to the one we had come up on. Given that we had walked up a closed valley and the only way out was through Confluenzia we weren't too worried. However, a hour-and-a-half later we still hadn't recognised any of the terrain, and a little disorientation had set in. A quick prayer later, we continued on and met a guide who was returning to Confluenzia from the next base camp up the mountain at exactly the right time to point us on the right path and we arrived back at Confluenzia about 10 minutes later. Woohoo!

 

We hung out with our Israeli amigos for the rest of the evening and generally tried to stay out of the very gusty, dusty wind and cold.

 

Day 3: Confluenzia to Mendoza

 

On our final day of hiking, it was pretty much all downhill. Which was great, because we were stuffed. Shouldering our hefty backpacks once again we set off down the mountain back to Puente del Inca. After a much shorter and easier walk we made it back and had about 4 hours to kill in Puente del Inca before our bus arrived. The 'sandwicheria' there makes a great steak sandwich, by the way. Finally our bus arrived and we set off back to Mendoza. After changing buses in a town called Uspallata we began what was one of the scariest bus rides I've been on. It seems that the bus company has two policies about speed.

 

1) When driving on flat or slightly up-hill roads, drive at a maximum of 40 km/h.

2) When on a down-hill road, avoid using breaks unless absolutely necessary.

 

When the hill you're driving down is the Andes, this can make life very interesting. Even more interesting is when you can see the driver yawning all the way down the mountain...

 

Needless to say, we made it back to Mendoza in one piece, and after a long-awaited shower and some dinner we crashed out and had a great night's sleep.

 

We will still be in Mendoza until Friday, while we wait for our Brazilian visas to get processed. Next, we will most likely be heading to Chile. We'll keep you posted.

 

Until then, hasta luego!

 

Los Davides

Poll: Early or late?

The two Davids have had a dispute on an issue of critical importance and require your assistance. Please reply with your answer to the following question:

If the actual time is 10:00 PM and the clock in your bus to Mendoza says it is 9:30 PM, is time on the clock 1/2 an hour early or 1/2 an hour late?

Results will be posted in 48 hours (give or take).

Gracias,

Los Davides

Day 3: Boca, Boca, Boca

Well, we've now been in Buenos Aires for three days, so here are a few of the highlights. Sorry, no photos today, but I'll try to keep it under a thousand words.

Saturday: Landed, found our accommodation, attempted to contact a friend who lives here, had dinner at what turned out to be a vegitarian restaurant and shared a table with three women in their 50s who we entertained with broken Spanish and poorly phased questions.

Sunday: Wandered around the local area (Palermo). There is quite a contrast between very poor and rich buildings, sometimes right next to each other. Palermo is home to the richer residents of BA, as is evidenced be a really really nice mall in one section, but also has dodgy little store and abandoned buildings.

The highlight of the day however was the opportunity to go to a futbol (aka soccer) game - Boca Jr vs Racing. Before we even got to the game we we experienced our first vehiculac accident (our bus vs a small red car at an intersection - winner: bus) and a fake Diego Maradona who gave us our tickets signed one guy's shirt. Once we got into the the stadium, there were still two hours to kill before the game actually started. We were in the 'local' section - standing room only - which
was uncomfortable, but fun once the game started. They have at least 10 different chants, which everyone knows. Our end quieted down during interesting play, but the other end, which contained the official fan club (aka 'Player No. 12) kept going all night. The game itself was ok, but the atmosphere was great. Dave Cohen only got spit on once by opposition fans. Fun!

Monday: Caught a one-hour bus back into the La Boca area, which is distingushed by brightly coloured houses and a high crime rate. On the way, we finally made contact with our friend, and then sat out the rain in a cafe. After it cleared, we wondered around and ended up in an art galley pretty much at random. This lead to an hour-long conversation with the proprieters who gave us some travel advice, offered to take us around BA for 50% of the tours from our hostel. We didn't buy any art, but Dave C helped to sell a piece to some American tourists who wandered in.

Anyway, that about sums it up for now. I'm not sure if it stayed under the word count, but stay tuned for the next edition, which may or may not include: The Daves learn to tango, the Daves visit the cemetary and The Daves figure out what to do next...

Until then, hasta luego amigos!