,m Sean´s Shenanigans: July 2005

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Salta

Currently here in Salta. Its a Sunday afternoon and i´m pretty much dying of a hangover. Had a big night here last night - my first in a while. Got hammered and I ended up drinking with a bit of a dangerous crowd. Don´t know if any of you have seen the Brazilian film City of God, (great film BTW) but the main guy was pretty much like Benny. Came to this morning near the dual carriage way with an Argentinean police man shouting in my face - I can´t understand this bloody accent they have here! Found my way back to the hostel with the help of a nice French couple. Also walked in to a tree and cut my head on the way to the bus station to buy my ticket; so the day hasn´t been going well so far!

Have eaten steak here every day since I came to Argentina. The stuff is great and relatively cheap. I´m heading to Corrientes at 6pm on the night bus. I meant to book a ticket to Clorinda on the Paraguayan border but I mixed up the Cs. Want to go to Asuncion, Paraguay to get a refund from Lan Chile for my New Zealand Flight - with the declining euro and other stuff I can gain about 200 euros by getting a refund and rebooking the flight - I hope.

One man and his dog :)

posted by Sean at 9:37 pm 0 comments

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Humahuaca

Crossed ther border to Argentina yesterday. In Humahuaca at the moment and i´m getting a bus to the city of Salta this afternoon.

posted by Sean at 6:24 pm 0 comments

Argentina

Capital: Buenos Aires
Currency: Argentinian Nuevo Peso
Exchange Rate: €1 = Arg$ 3.54
Time Zone: GMT - 3
Population: 38m


More Argentina Info

posted by Sean at 1:56 am 0 comments

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Back to Tupiza

Came back to Tupiza today. Took 3 hour a jeep to Atocha which contained 11 people and then had to wait there for over two hours before another jeep took us to Tupiza, that jeep managed to fit 13 people in! Left cold Uyuni at an early 6am. Its the last day of my Bolivian visa tomorrow so I plan to cross over into Argentina before it expires.

posted by Sean at 9:07 pm 0 comments

South West Bolivia

Have just returned from my Jeep tour. Went with the two lads, two fun girls from Colorado and a **** of a girl from London.

The first place we visited was Salar de Uyuni - the Salt Lake of Uyuni. The local people collect the salt and sell it on when the water from the lake evaporates every winter.

That night we stayed in a little ramshakled town in the middle of nowhere so we naturally went down the local for a pint!





We went back to our "hotel" for dinner and afterward played cards and drank Puro. Puro is a spirit containing 96% alcohol that the miners of Potosi drink and its pretty potent stuff - a litre of the stuff can be bought for the princely sum of one euro. As it turned out I forgot to get a sleeping bag and due to a dictionary malfunction asked the guy in the hotel for a shawl instead of a blanket. Rather drunk I fell onto my bed in the early hours and passed out. Bad things happened in the wee hours of the morning and i´ll not be drinking Puro again. Day two began with 4 of the 5 other people still talking to me - I never liked the girl anyway!

The next three days were mostly spend in the Jeep looking at blue and red and green and other kinds of lakes. We saw some geysers and some flamingos and some rocks and some other stuff too. Night two was the coldest - apparently it was -20 degrees outside and none of these places have heating. On the plus side I learned the correct word for blanket and wasn´t as cold again. We went to a town party on the last night (it was held in the parish hall). Bolivian dancing is a strange sight - I feel as if a former ancestor of mine invented it and brought it here. For a while they just face each other and dance without making eye contact, apparently the woman can´t leave the dance until the man does - and they can stay dancing for ages, not that they expend much energy doing it. They also have a dance called the Circle Dance where they dance in - surprise surprise - a circle!

posted by Sean at 12:42 am 0 comments

Friday, July 22, 2005

Uyuni

Arrived here today after an eight hour bus ride from Tupiza - all on dirt road as is the norm in Bolivia (only about 5% of Bolivian roads are sealed). Its known throughout Bolivia as a cold city (when the sun sets) and its freezing when I arrive (only 6:30pm). Its so cold that I straight away fork out 2 euros for a fleece jacket. It has a Pikes Peak crest on it - thought it was some high mound of rubbish at the back of a caravan site in Limerick initially.


But apparently Pike´s Peak is the second most climbed peak in the world after Mt Fuji.
Tomorrow I hope to meet up with Vinnie and Peter and take a four day Jeep tour of South West Bolivia. Its meant to be extremely cold down there so i´ll need to rent a sleeping bag and bring some warm clothes for the trip.

posted by Sean at 6:30 am 0 comments

Butch and Sundance

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed a payroll north of Tupiza and fled to the mining town of San Vicente in 1906. It was here they were eventually killed.

San Vicente has a current population of about 40 people, an evaluation of 4500m, and is situated 100km northwest of Tupiza. A truck comes down to the Tupiza market once a week (Thursday) to buy produce and returns to San Vicente that night. I´d like to go there but I don´t have the time. Tomorrow I head for Uyuni - the gateway to southwest Bolivia.

Coincidentially, Che Guevara also met his end in a small Bolivian backwater town.

posted by Sean at 2:41 am 0 comments

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Tupiza

Here in Tupiza, southern Bolivia at the moment. Tupiza is a small city of about 20,000 people. Its famous for its Wild West scenery and its association with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Yesterday morning I rented a horse and guide and spend a few hours in the surrounding area.

posted by Sean at 12:03 am 0 comments

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Potosi - Food

Since I came to Bolivia I´ve only been out one night - mainly because I blew far too much money in Cusco. I´ve found that I always seem to be hungry here. All I seem to do is eat. A meal in the market here in Potosi coast about 60 cents.

I´ve also come across a culinary delight here that I have seen no where else - namely the "egg in the spud". The only person i´ve seen make it is an old woman up by the miners market (a 30 min walk from the centre of town). The nucleas of this phenomen is a hard boiled egg. The egg is encased within a mashed potato shell and coated in an secret batter (the old woman would not let me know the ingredients). This is then shallow fried and served in a sheet of paper. And this cost of this? A mere 10 cents! The woman beside here sells Llama meat and corn for 30 cents - a cheap meal or what?

posted by Sean at 3:49 am 0 comments

Monday, July 18, 2005

Potosi

Arrived in Potosi yesterday morning at about 5am - the place was freezing! It is at an altitude of 3967 meters and has about 115,000 inhabitants. It is claimed to be the highest in the world. It lies beneath the Cerro Rico ("Rich mountain"), a mountain of silver ore.

The main reason for visiting Potosi is to take a tour of one of the mines. It is estimated that over one million indians died working in the mines.





To get them through a long hard day working in the mines the Miners chew coca leaves. A small bag can be bought for 30 cents. I tried a bag (hence the strange colouration of my mouth) but I kept forgetting about them as I was walking thought the tunnels and accidentally swallowed them! There are no restrictions in Bolivia about the buying and selling of dynamite. A stick, fuse and detonator can be bought for a euro. We bought some and blew them up after the mine visit.

posted by Sean at 11:22 pm 0 comments

Friday, July 15, 2005

Cochabamba

Arrived here this morning. Couldn´t get a bus from La Paz to Potosi, so I decided to come here for the day rather than spend another day in La Paz. Left my bag in the Luggage Store and am leaving on a night bus to Potosi at 8pm. Not alot here in Cochabamba. It has a pleasant climate and one of the biggest statues of Christ in the world (El Cristo de la Concordia). I debated whether I should show a picture of the statue or of the scenery - and since travelling and thinking don´t go together, i´ve shown both!

posted by Sean at 11:07 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

La Paz - Again

Back in La Paz after spending 3 days in the Pampas around Rurrenabaque.
The Pampas was good fun. To get there we had to take a jeep three hours to the river and from here it was a further two hours upriver to camp by boat.
Went Pirhana fishing and swimming with Pink Dolphins among thinks over the three days. Apparently Pirhana and Alligators don´t swim where the Dolphins congragate!


On returning to Rurrenabaque a guy was waiting at the tour office looking for a person to take up the remaining seat on a four seat passenger plane to go back to La Paz. I reckoned that this option which would take an hour and cost me $40 was better than waiting a day to spend 22 hours returning to La Paz by bus.

posted by Sean at 8:01 pm 0 comments

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Rurrenabaque

Arrived here in Rurrenabaque early this morning after an 18hr dirt road bus trip from Coroico. The town is surrounded by the jungle and pampas. Have planned to take a three day pampas tour starting tomorrow costing $80. The temperature here is in the high 20s which is great following the freezing nights of La Paz

posted by Sean at 8:51 pm 0 comments

Friday, July 08, 2005

Death Road

Mountain biked the Death Road today with Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking.

The distance between La Paz and Coroico is only 64km, but the road to Coroico starts on a summit near La Paz, 4633 meters above sea level, and heads down to 1700 meters above sea level. Not only that the road is extremely steep, but it is also narrow, muddy, and has steep drops of over 1000 meters instead of margins. And disasters indeed occurr - and that is why the road got its name - the Death Road. I heard there is one fatality every year and an serious accident every two weeks!

All in all it was a bit of a let down. The guides seemed to be trying too hard to maintain their company record of "no fatalities" and were too slow for me. I had much better fun biking in Peru and the cost here was alot hight at $50 for the day. I think they should have just let us do our own thing and if you fall over the edge - then its your problem!

posted by Sean at 7:28 am 0 comments

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Huayna Potosi Climb

Arrived back yesterday from the 3 day Huyana Potosi "Expedition". On the first day we practiced ice climbing on a glacier which was very good fun.

Day 2 was a relatively simple day. It was a three hour walk with all out gear up to camp which consisted of a winswept tin hut at 5200m.

Ten of us had to sleep there (4 of us, 5 brazilians and an English guy). With a rise time of midnight, we all went to bed at 5:30pm - I don´t think i´ve ever gone to bed so early without the interference of alcohol. With the altitude we were at, I didn´t manage to sleep a wink.

Got out alarm call at midnight and between food and getting dressed it took us over an hour to get fully ready.

The four of us started the assent with 2 guides. After half an hour on rocks, we hit the snow and ice at about 2am. After fixing on our crampons we continued out assent - slowly. After a very tough climb myself and Vinnie reached the top at about 7:15am. The last technical part was a 250m steep climb to the summit. It was incredibly tough and I pretty much wasted all my energy getting there. Peter and Dave had to turn back just before this due to altitude sickness and lack of oxygen respectively (the latter due no doubt to an excessive smoking habit).

The decent will pretty tough, my body just had no energy left. It took about 3 hours to get back to the camp where we had to load up all our gear and carry it a further 2 hours down to the Refugio.

posted by Sean at 6:58 pm 0 comments

Monday, July 04, 2005

Huayna Potosi

Decided to climb Huyana Potosi which is the closest high mountain to La Paz. The mountain comes in at 6088m tall which is over the magic 6000m mark but some 20 ft below the 20,000 ft mark. It will take 3 days and we begin tomorrow. The climb is costing us $115 each. As the warmest item I have is an alpaca jumper, the agency has to supply me with all the necessary gear.

posted by Sean at 2:55 am 0 comments