The Fake Police in Sucre

its the most common story you hear about backpackers getting robbed in bolivia. in peru its more dodgy taxi drivers and pickpockets that trouble us gringos...

i´d just come off a 12 hour (i think) bus ride from potosi. i was the only gringo on board. oh, and i sat next to this girl who had two tiny kittens, one of which escaped in the night and we used my ipod light to find it. only for some of the other passengers to complain to driver about the noise the kittens were making and them being put in the hold. she cried.

as soon as i was off the bus i was in standard pragmatic mode. the bus stops about 5km outside of town. taxi. there must of been 5 or 6 waiting there. everything valuable was hidden nicely away except a bit of cash in my pocket. i was tired and not focussed and being threatened was the last thing on my mind. (big tip... don´t wear a money belt. thieves are on to this. it is easier for a pickpocket to get a moneybelt off you than something from your pocket! - on any transport where i have to have everything on my posession, i where shorts with zipped pockets under whatever it is i´m wearing)

the taxi drivers see me and see gringo. the first guy approaches and wants 5 bvs (50p) - well i don´t know where i am, it´s dark and all i know is my accomodation is 5k´s away. "done".
then another driver hears this and offers 4. "sold".

i´ve heard many a story about people getting done. some horrible - of course, but most are standard procedure for these guys. i went to get in the front seat and put my bag on my lap as normal. he told me to put my bag in the boot and get in the backseat. ERROR - i know not to do this but at the time wasn´t bothered. i should of, and now always do, insist on sitting in the front. and you´re very vulnerable to them driving away with your bag, on entrance and exit, if you put it somewhere else other than with you.

well what happened? he drove around the corner... not even a minute away from the bus stop. i went to pay him and he said he´d deal with it when we got there. he said he knew where the hotel was. he pulled over. a guy was talking to him through the passengers window and then got in. he checked the drivers licence. he looked at me and instantly asked to see my passport...

looking back i knew this was obvious... at no point would i have ever given this guy anything unless i´d seen a weapon. which i never did. i told him that i didn´t believe he was a police officer and asked to see his badge. a lame attempt of a laminated photograph, that looked less official than my library card, was passed to me. i told them both, as i knew the taxi driver was in on this, that i wanted to go to the poilce station, on foot, and that he needed to get my bag from the back for me. i could see my bag in the back behind the seats as there was no boot cover, however, my bag is full to the brim and about 30kgs. there was no way i was getting out of the car until i knew that my bag was coming with me. the driver walked around to the back of the car only to come back and tell me that the door wasn´t working. meanwhile the ´police officer´ was getting aggressive, a few slaps on the face were delivered as he growingly knew that i wasn´t just going to hand it over to him.

i wanted to open the door, not to get out, but just so that they were less inclined to drive off. this is when i found out he´d looked it and the locks from the inside were broken. shit. now i´m wide awake.

well, what would you have done?



i grabbed my bag from over my shoulder, kicked the window out, unlocked the door and walked off down the road shouting ´policia´. thank god i wasn´t wearing my havaianas.

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Potosi

i really felt i was experiencing the real bolivia when i was in potosi. technically the worlds highest city at 4060 m... potosi is set against the backdrop f the cerro rico, a rusty coloured mountain. by the 18th century it had grown to be the wealthiest city in south america as a result of the silver found in the mountain. millions of african slaves were sent to potosi to work and die in awful conditions. although today the silver has been depleted, workers continue to brave the lethal conditions, often steered into the work through proud tradition (often from 14 years old). to keep them safe, they worship ´tio´, their devil.

the mine is not a tourist mine, it is a working mine... our guide took our group of 6 into one of the main entrances of the mine. i thought i was ready for it, but the conditions are scary. after an hour half of the group had turned back! us brave few continued in total trust of our guide, who had worked the mine for 10 years previously. we slid and crawled down three levels of the 16 level mine, where we witnessed the shovellers and the transporters.

at 4300 m it´s hard enough to breath as it is... let alne when you are crawling around dusty tunnels.

the fun part came when we got out of the mine, we got to explode some of the dynamite we had bought in the miners market - so exciting. see the video.

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The World´s Most Deadliest Road

scary scary scary...

10/10 for the company, ´downhill madness´ 300 bvs cheaper ´gravity´, great guide, good food, and awesome bikes

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Salar de Uyuni

the world´s largest salt flat covers an amzing 12,000 sq km and sits at a crazy 3650 m. it was part of a prehistoric lake, called lago minchin, which covered nearly all of southwest bolivia. once dried up it left some seasonal puddles and several salt pans, including the salar de uyuni and salar de coipasa.


the four day tour allowed me to see everything. the laguna colorada, a bright red lake, was my first experience of flamingo. sitting in sparse mountainous desert we also visited the laguna verde (green lagoon) - a splendid aquamarine lake at 5000 m; the nearby termas de polques - hot springs (30 deg c) at 6am; the geyser basin - with its boiling mud pots.

the trip, overall, was one of the highlights of my trip so far. the company was great (andes salt flat expeditions, uyuni); the cost was minimal for the itinerary (500 bvs / 50 pounds); and the photos are spectacular.

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San Pedro Prison, La Paz

in all honesty i was very hungover... which is not a good start to going into this prison. it´s crazy. if you get a chance check out ´marching powder´ and i hear there´s a film coming out shortly with brad pitt.

bolivia is going through a bit of a crisis atm. evo´s support is starting to dip particularly in the eastern cities of sucre and santa cruz... cocaine is a hot topic but not the be all and end all, especially compared to the anti -americanism that is so strong at present.



the government does not recognize the prison as a tourist destination... you have to hang about outside the prison until a lady named mary approaches and takes you inside. it´s not cheap 250bvs (about 25 pounds). a guide (inmate) takes you on about a 2 hour tour of the poor side of the prison with bodyguards (3 guys in for murder). there are some very intense stories along the way, a cocaine factory, crack alley, football pitches, restaurants, and families making a living from everything.

San Pedro prison, the biggest in Bolivia's main city, La Paz, is home to about 1,500 inmates. once you pass the thick walls and the security gates, any resemblance to a normal jail disappears: there are children playing, market stalls, restaurants, hairdressers and even a hotel. it looks more like the streets of El Alto, Bolivia's poorest neighbourhood that sprawls on the outskirts of La Paz, than a prison.

earning a living - the prison is divided into eight sectors and facilities range from miserable to luxurious. there are no guards, no uniforms or metal bars on the cell windows. this relative freedom comes at a price: inmates have to pay for their cells, so most of them have to work inside the jail, selling groceries or working in the food stalls. others work as hairdressers, laundry staff, carpenters, shoe-shine boys or tv and radio repairmen.

'luxury' cells - "if you have money you can live like a king," an inmate told me. money can buy you accommodation in the "posh" sections of the prison - one of the best is Los Pinos. here, cells are spacious and have private bathrooms, kitchen and cable tv. Outside, they have billiard tables, kiosks selling fresh juice, and food stalls. cells cost between $1000US and $1500US and are bought for the duration of the sentence. in the poor areas of the prison, inmates have to share small cells.

prison children - about 200 children live here with their fathers. the younger ones go to one of the two nurseries inside the jail, while the older ones go to schools outside. their mothers are often in other jails or have abandoned them.

quite the experience. read the book guys - marching powder.

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Machu Picchu

wow. what a great four days. i went on the inca jungle trek, which is fastly becoming more popular through the point, cusco. the cost was $185US (so like 3000 pounds i´m guessing), and worth every penny.

the trip is set up as such -

day 1. drive for 4 hours where you start a 4 hour down hill bike ride through jungle, rivers and switchbacks. arrive at Santa Maria.

day 2. 9 hours trek through dense inca jungle. enjoy a well deserved dip in the hot springs at the end of the trip

day 3. 8 hours total walking through the valley and along the train tracks to Aguias Calientes.

day 4. up at 4 to start the 1 hour rush to Machu Picchu. rush through the entrance when it opens at 6am to get your 10am slot to Waynu Picchu. 2 hour guided tour of the site. train ride back to Cusco at 6pm

stunning is the only way to describe it. but why would you expect any less? it´s machu picchu! most travellers highlight of South America. in all the mayhem during the climb, oli and i raced to the top and got there first - because we´d heard that the 10 o´clock slot to Waynu Picchu was the crown in the trip. red bull does give you wings.

Waynu Picchu is not for the faint-hearted! in fact two girls died 3 days before we were there. but the view and the satisfaction of the climb is like nothing i will experience again...

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Nazca Lines

it was worth the money... just to be in a little plane. but the rest of my nazca experience won´t remain with me for too long. the town itself is an absolute hole... and the lines which are amazing, authentic and do take your breath away because of their sheer scale... you have 15mins in a little plane to look at them through a tiny window, whilst struggling to get a photo of whichever animal you are flying over at the time...

there was some comedy... we had got to nazca in a combi (shared car) and the price before we had left was 15soles total... well the cheeky little peruvian had me on the side of the street at 12:00pm debating the price when we got there - he wanted 30 - quite intimidating if he wasn´t 5ft tall... i´d managed to use my limited spanglish to stop him threatening me... and jump in a seperate cab moments later. peruvians, by the way, are known as the thieves of the world.

after waking at 7 am to try to find a good deal (most flights leave around 8 or 9), we´d managed to get into a japanese tour bus that was just leaving... they´d quoted us 50US but no money had been payed. after the flight, we were left waiting an hour and still no tour bus... lets go.

we were doing a runner... very funny at the time. however, the story continues... we went straight to the bus station to book tickets for the earliest bus south (10pm). whilst we were in the station a guy came over with two names written down... they weren´t even close. i can´t remember the exact names he had but it was something like ´Snul Cratha´. well he left it at that.

we arrived for the bus at 9:50pm so that we could literally hop staright on, being peruvian it arrived at 10:40pm - within which time he had found us and used the threat of the police to make us pay up.

doh!

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Huanchaco

after leaving mancora, i knew things would never be the same again. this time i was travelling with two girls, which was hard enough to get my head round...
we stayed at a place called ´casa suisa´ - rude, expensive and not what people had told me. maybe my hostel expectations are a lot higher now.

it´s a pretty little surf town... which in a few years - could be a great place and on the ´must do´ for peru. as of now... it´s not quite there.



the best thing we did was visit ´chan chan´ an intense collection of inca sites surrounding the area. the first cultural thing i have done in a while... and it didn´t let me down. there was a lot of work going on when we were at chan chan... hope you can make out the workers on the wall...

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Mancora

Mancora is beautiful... I´d heard and read so much about the place but never expected to get lost in its charms for nearly 6 weeks. I´ve so many memories to take away from there, but for now there going to stay with me. The rest of South America better step up to the challenge... Mancora will be very hard to beat.

Long story short I worked there for 5 weeks, bought a pet pig called lucy, helped build some new huts using bamboo, met the funniest people i´ve ever met(maybe ever will), drove around in tuc tucs (normally on the roof), rented motorbikes, ate cerviche (raw fish in lime) at for weeks in a row, got violently sick, stayed horribly drunk, cooked tempura for 40 people... I will never forget it... and I will go back.

Grassy Arse to everybody who experienced it with me. long live ´the point´.

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