Backtracking to Bolivia: Our first true Bolivian bus experience (from La Paz to Uyuni)

As mentioned in my post on La Paz, our next stop in Bolivia was to be Uyuni – which we were heading to to book ourselves onto a Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats) tour. Whilst a whole post on just the bus journey may seem a little unnecessary (except, of course, I’ve already done just that about the “epic” 18-hour bus journey from Ica to Cusco), I feel like one on our first proper Bolivian bus experience is a must!

A couple of things first. Upon researching our trip, we came across about a thousand blog posts/threads/comments/reviews of buses in Peru and what companies to use and why – not to mention all the (well-deserved) great things written about the cama class on said buses. If you try and research anything to do with bus companies in Bolivia, you’ll most likely come up against a brick wall – there’s no mention of particular bus companies or times. And bus companies certainly don’t have their own websites!

Secondly, and on the flipside to the above, what you do find online is some amusing/scary/unnerving accounts of people’s experiences on bus journeys in the country. I’ve read stories about buses being inches away from cliff slides, almost hanging off the side. Someone wrote about being given a stranger’s baby to hold whilst she tended to her other children. Another about someone else being handed a dirty nappy, which they couldn’t figure out what to do with, so they simply chucked it out the window (with no one batting an eyelid). Plenty of posts about multiple people crammed into just one seat next to a traveller. Lots of comments about being frozen in the middle of the night (travelling in summer – although whilst still cold in the early hours – meant we didn’t experience this). And too many write-ups to count about the bad road conditions (essentially, dirt roads) which result in lonnnng delays.

We used Panasur to make the La Paz – Uyuni journey – the guy at the bus station when we purchased our tickets seemed friendly enough, and even gave us a flyer about the route. A company with its own flyers – fancy! By this stage in our trip, we were less precious about levels of bus service. However, a bunch of travellers staying in our hostel had a last minute panic – the “tourist” bus to Uyuni had been cancelled, and they had to make alternative arrangements! Two things: a) this apparently isn’t too uncommon and b) we didn’t even know there was a “tourist” service. Turns out our company put on an extra bus (hey, how’d they manage that so quick…?) to accommodate the sudden additional demand. We paid 100 Bolivianos (£10) each for our tickets.

We set off more or less on time, settling into our semi-cama seats right at the front of the bus. All semi-cama or cama seats that we came across have footrests that flip backwards, so you’ve essentially got one long seat – a bit like a Lay-Z-Boy recliner. In this case, we were at about the 10% level of comfort of a Lay-Z-Recliner, not least because our feet were in exactly the same position whether we used the footrest or not.

This bus also provided everyone their own thick travel blanket. A girl sitting behind me proclaimed her disgust at the state of her blanket, saying “this is like something my dog would sleep on!”. I completely disagree – any proper pet owner knows that you give your pets only the best, most luxurious and comfortable (and preferably new) blankets to sleep on…and these blankets were nowhere near that good.

Sometime after midnight, our bus came to a halt on a particularly bumpy road. After a few minutes, it moved on again – travelling about 5 metres – and then properly came to a stop, with the driver switching his engine off. Some passengers starting speculating about the cause – were we stopping for a break? Was the driver going to take a nap? Neither of those. We had in fact stopped because another bus had gotten trapped actually in the road itself, with one of its wheels wedged in a dip. Smaller vehicles (i.e. anything that wasn’t a bus) could go round it, but we were trapped there until the bus managed to get rescued, which took a couple of hours. (If anyone wants more specific details, ask Dan. He watched the whole thing. I dozed on and off.) Of course, once the obstacle was out of the way we had to go through the same dip in the road…which we did, without any problems (mainly with the driver flooring the accelerator pedal). I could tell our driver had done this before.

All was well through the early hours until around 7am. The bus came to a complete stop once again…and this time there was no faffing around. Engine off, door open, driver out. One by one, most of the passengers followed him, to find the dirt road twenty metres in front of us partially submerged with an ambulance half stuck in the giant puddle. A group of people from the other vehicles waiting to pass through had gathered around to watch the rescue effort, which we promptly joined. (Note: I saw no evidence of the ambulance actually taking part in any kind of emergency. Well obviously not now it certainly wasn’t…but it also didn’t seem it had been before, either.)

I’m guessing this happens all the time, because they seemed to be quite adept (if not especially quick) in getting the ambulance out and fixing the road. One guy (sat on the hood) held a giant hose with a pump system taking some of the water away. Some men tried to wedge a bit of wood under a rear wheel. A digger tried to get some of the muddy earth out from in front of the ambulance (sometimes dropping some of it over the heads of the men working in a comedy fashion). A tipper truck kept bring more earth to the site so the “road” could be rebuilt once the ambulance had been removed. And another truck was there to pull the ambulance out of the hole it had fallen in to. All of this may have taken another couple of hours – as I said, Dan is the “watching vehicles get rescued from Bolivian roads” expert; after watching for about 10 minutes, I retired to the bus for a bit more of a snooze. However, I did notice that literally a second after the road had finished being rebuilt, our driver floored it once more to zoom past all the trucks lined up in front of us – he clearly wasn’t going to let them damage the road before we could pass!

At the end of Back to the Future, when Doc Brown says “Where we’re going…we don’t need roads!”, I didn’t think he meant Bolivia.
(Yes, I did think of that caption as soon as I took this photo. And yes, I have kept it in my head for a month and a half until writing this post now!)

All of these delays meant we pulled in to Uyuni at midday, a full five hours after we were supposed to. Our twelve hour journey had turned into a seventeen hour one…and you know what? It wasn’t even that uncomfortable, tiring or stressful. I suppose when you’re not in a rush to go anywhere, it doesn’t really matter!

Being so delayed, it meant that we had missed that day’s departures for Salar de Uyuni tours. For the reason of frequent delays on buses to Uyuni, it’s wise not to pre-book a tour as you can never be sure when you’re actually going to turn up. But with countless tour companies in Uyuni offering daily departures, you’re almost guaranteed to be able to book something for the next day. (Sometimes even the same day, like we were…despite being so delayed. But we were a little dubious about these companies.)

It turns out that our five hour delay was practically nothing. We had chatted to another traveller in our La Paz hostel just prior to leaving it who was also headed to Uyuni – but on a different bus. We next bumped into her walking through town…at 6pm, when she’d just arrived. That’s an eleven hour delay! Her bus had been caught up in protests (a very common bus-delaying reason in Bolivia), that brought their journey to a standstill for absolutely hours. In fact, we did speculate whether our bus driver had taken an alternative route with a worse road to avoid said protests.

So, our delay meant we stayed a night in Uyuni, booking ourselves onto a Salt Flats tour for the next day. We checked in to the Hotel Julia which our guide book promised had Internet. (It didn’t.) I now see it has some average-to-poor reviews online – but it’s certainly fine for one night. (Aside from our window being next to a restaurant with an outdoor speaker that was pumping music out when we went to bed at 11pm…and still doing the same when we woke up at 7am.)

Uyuni was actually far larger and had much more to it than I anticipated – the way our guide book had described, it had made it sound like it was just one road with a few buildings! It is in fact a proper small town although it’s main purpose these days is as a starting point for Salt Flats tours. There’s a few restaurants and bars in town (it is catering to travellers, after all) but not many sights, so not much to really occupy one’s time beyond one day.

Though you do have to try Minuteman Pizza, a great place run by an American expat. In fact, I’m pretty sure every traveller passing through Uyuni does.

The clock tower in Uyuni

A more traditional statue in Uyuni…

…and a less traditional one

Michael Jackson makes an appearance

Backtracking to Bolivia: 24 Hours in La Paz

The title of this post makes it sound like it’s going to be some zany guide for spending a day in La Paz, like many of the travel sections of papers do. Which I suppose it kind of is – because that’s how long we spent in Bolivia’s capital…first time round, that is! For our initial travel planning we had pencilled in three days in La Paz although just before we travelled to the city, this hastily got reduced to just one day. This was no reflection on the city itself (well, how could it – we weren’t there yet!) but rather because of what we didn’t want to do after La Paz. Which was get stuck somewhere we didn’t want to be (versus were we did want to be – which was Sucre) because of bus delays or other travel hitches.

Christmas tree in St Francisco Square, La Paz

Our three and a half hour bus ride from Copacabana to La Paz was pretty problem-free. For this reason, comparing it to the other bus journeys we undertook in the country, it was amazing! Then again, there’s not much that can go wrong in such a short time – or it would be very unfortunate if it had. On the approach to La Paz, we encounter the neighbouring city of El Alto which stretches forever…or so it seems. We’d passed through a number of smaller towns en route which end not soon after they’ve begun, but El Alto’s sprawl of (rather ugly) buildings, people and vehicles simply goes on and on. Once upon a time, El Alto was merely a suburb of La Paz, though it rapidly grew in size from the 1950s onwards as people from rural areas migrated to their capital city. In 1985, it officially became a city in its own right. Not yet au fait with the La Paz and its surroundings, we initially though El Alto was it weren’t the only ones on our bus that thought so. However, there’s a point that you reach the tip of the highlands to see the rather stunning view of La Paz situated in the valley below – causing us (and many of our fellow passengers) to utter a “wow!” in amazement. There’s a long winding road all down the mountainside to actually reach La Paz – but once you’re there, it’s a short hop to the bus terminal.

The first order of the day was to purchase a ticket for our onward journey to Uyuni. Our guidebook stated that there were no direct buses from La Paz to Uyuni (mentioning that a change in Oruro, three hours south of La Paz, was required) – but lo and behold, we discovered two companies in the terminal that did this very route. We approached and ummed and ahhed whilst trying to decide whether we wanted to travel on the next day or the one after and decided that, despite having not experienced any of it yet, just one day in La Paz would suffice. Tickets for the 7pm bus the next day were booked!

There’s plenty of taxis waiting outside the bus terminal, so we hopped in one rather than try and navigate La Paz’s crowded streets and even more crowded pavements with our large backpacks. Taxis in La Paz aren’t metered, so a “Quanto es?” was always necessary before any cab that we hopped in. As far as I can see, taxi fares are decided like this: 1) Short journey, 10 Bolivianos (£1) 2) Slightly longer journey, 15 Bolivianos (£1.50).

We deposited our backpacks in our hostel, Cruz de los Andes, and decided to take a quick walk before it got dark. We were, however, thwarted. Nowhere else on our trip did we truly experience “rainy season” as we did in La Paz. For almost all of our 24 hours there, we either huddled in shop entrances along with locals, took extended lunch or coffee breaks whilst we waited for the rain to stop, or just got on with it and wore our fetching rain macs whilst striding out in the wet.

A typical road in La Paz – the main road rule seems to be “I have right of way”!

Our hostel was well located, just a short walk from may of the sights in the central La Paz area. The Witches Market (or Mercado de Brujas), with shops and stalls piled high with sacks containing traditional herbs and remedies, was just around the corner. St Francisco Square and Church were just beyond that. The Calle Comercio (indeed a – pedestrianised – shopping street, as the name may suggest), where the Museo Nacional de Arte is located, was a short walk further, and this street leads to the Plaza Murillo where the Presidential Palace and the Cathedral are. Having blown off the previous, rainy evening in favour of food and drink, we pretty much did a blitz of all of these sights in a few hours (some of which were rainy). Calle Jaen was also not much further; this cobbled and pedestrianised street is considered to be the main (or perhaps only) remanent of what a traditional street in La Paz looks like. The short street with numerous colourfully painted buildings is definitely worth a visit – there’s a few more upscale souvenir shops if that’s your kind of thing, as well as a few well received (according to our guidebook) eateries. Most interesting, however, is a collection of four museums on the street – the Museum Costumbrista Juan de Vargas, the Museo de metales precioso “Museo de Oro”, the Museo del Litoral and the Casa Murillo. You purchase a ticket for 4 Bolivianos (40p!) that allows you entry to all four of these, although we were only able to visit two – sadly, the Museum of Precious Metals had its door firmly shut with no explanation as to why. The Museo de Litoral (Museum of the Litoral Coastal Region) covers the 19th century war Bolivia fought against Chile, in which it lost its entire coastline. A tiny museum, this one didn’t especially offer much (or less that I would have liked) – some items from that war, historic maps showing Bolivia as it used to be and a collection of documents. Given the land it lost and the country’s position on that subsequently, it’s perhaps understandable.

A very rainy Presidential Palace, La Paz

Plaza Murillo

Calle Jaen

We also visited the previously-mentioned Museo Nacional de Arte, one of the main museums in La Paz. It’s well worth the 20 Bolivianos (£2) entry fee, although there also seemed to be a small free exhibit – which was full of locals! They like their art…or they had spotted a good place to shelter from the rain.

Our museum and sightseeing blitz ended our twenty four hours in La Paz – and off we were to our next destination, Uyuni, to take a Salt Flats tour!

St Francisco Church

Calle Comercio with the Museo Nacional de Arte on the right

This was actually from a second time in La Paz – but I think it reflects the “anything and everything is happening all at once” nature of the streets of the city

Backtracking to Bolivia: Who put this lake here?!?

Lake Titicaca and Copacabana – View from a departing bus

If you take the bus from Copacabana to La Paz for the bargaineous price of 25 Bolivianos (that’s less than £2.50 for a near four hour journey), you spend a great portion of the early part of the journey circling Lake Titicaca. Then, about an hour in, you reach a town right on the lake and stop there – with no obvious means of crossing…like a bridge. (Maybe a bridge is just too obvious.)

What happens is this. The bus driver says something in Spanish to the mostly clueless ears of the tourists, gets off and then returns in about a minute. He then repeats what he’s just said because no one’s moved at all – this time round, everyone miraculously understands that we have to exit the bus instead of just sit there and look gormless. Everyone traipses off the bus to get on a rather rickety little wooden speedboat (lifejackets provided, though seemingly optional) to be taken over to the other side – tickets need to be boat for this bus, but they’re only 2 Bolivianos. The bus is then driven onto a large raft (that has an engine) for its own cross-lake sailing. The raft looks like it’s groaning under the weight of the bus, but it does make it across in one piece. The bus is then driven back onto land for everyone to filter back on. And then the journey continues.

And that’s how you cross Lake Titicaca without a bridge.

Lake Titicaca rafts waiting for vehicles

Lake Titicaca crossing – travellers in lifejackets. Don’t think there were any left by the time I boarded!

“Don Eduardo Avarda – Hero of the Pacific War”

There goes our bus!

From (Vina Del Mar to) Santiago to Mendoza

After our three days on the Chilean coast, we were going to attempt to enter Argentina for the second time. Would we make it this time? To avoid some kind of long-drawn out, cliff-hanger ending type post (and most people reading this probably already know the answer) – the answer’s yes…without any problems.

I, however, have a question of my own. Where have all the daytime buses to Mendoza gone?! We’d read and heard that the drive from Santiago (or Vina Del Mar or Valparaiso) to Mendoza was absolutely stunning, with gorgeous views as you climb up and over the Andes – and that’s something that we really wanted to see for ourselves. However, we couldn’t find any daytime buses that travelled from Chile to Mendoza – although they certainly seemed to exist in the past, going on what previous travel blogs have said. Some bus company websites even mention day time departures, but when we enquired at the Vina Del Mar bus station, the earliest departing bus we could find was 9pm!

To avoid entirely travelling at night, we decided to get one of the crazily frequent Turbus buses (they seem to go about every 15 minutes – for that reason, you can just turn up and by tickets there and then) back to Santiago, and then take another bus from here to Mendoza. Plataforma10.com is the oft-mentioned bus timetable and booking website for travel within (and to) Argentina, so we will able to verify that there were departures in the late afternoon – and we went ahead and pre-booked tickets on a 5pm bus with Andesmar. (The Plataforma10.com site isn’t in English, but it’s all pretty obvious so easy to use. If you do use it to book tickets, make sure you print them out at your accommodation or ask the bus company office to print it out for you when you reach the terminal. We saw a traveller try to show the bus attendants the email confirmation on their phone, and the bus attendant didn’t look to ready to accept that as a ticket.)

Turbus have their own terminal in Santiago – Terminal Alameda – although that’s next to the main bus terminal so we only had to endure a short walk to get to our next departure point. Both of these terminals are pretty rubbish as far as food options go and even as far as snack shop options go – make sure you eat beforehand/elsewhere! Luckily, an Internet cafe with super-fast Internet allowed us to kill a few hours, do some work and even listen to Radio 1 a bit. (I loved finding out all the great new music that’s come out in the UK in my absence!)

As an aside – whilst at the bus station we once again saw the lack of daytime departures to Mendoza. Many bus companies showed early morning times on their official signs, but then had print-outs taped to their windows saying something “A Mendoza 18.00 21.00 22.00”.

This Santiago bus station seemed to be the opposite to many of the ones we’d encountered in Peru and Bolivia. The actual terminal was relatively calm with only a few operators shouting out and offering tickets to particular destinations. It was no doubt calm because absolutely everyone seemed to have crammed on the platforms instead, waiting to embark buses there. (Standing on a crowded and tiny platform seems to be preferable to sitting in the terminal building?!) Our Andesmar bus pulled in late from its previous destination, so there was more of a kerfuffle as people tried to get their bags loaded on, get the required bits of immigration paper, and board in the ultra narrow space between the buses. Incidentally, that was our first experience of bag loading on Argentinian buses – handlers at both ends expect tips for hoisting your bag up to the baggage compartment. Sure, you don’t have to tip much (many just gave coins), but it’s not something we encountered on buses operated by Peruvian, Bolivian or Chilean companies.

Why could you wait in the tranquil indoors…

…when you can cram yourself onto this tiny platform?

The drive on the Chilean side was reasonably pretty as we departed Santiago as we drove past lush green countryside with the odd vineyard here and there. Approaching the Andes region, it was also pretty fast going as we climbed the mountainous road. There were, however, a few times were we had to drive on a dirt path next to a tunnel instead of going through it – passing by actually rather severe (and scary-looking) cracks (earthquake or tremor damage?) in the walls of the tunnel. (These are the kind of tunnels that are cut out the side of a mountain, rather than through it.)

Approaching the Andes, on the Chilean side

That’s…not how you go through a tunnel!

A super-windy road or what??

Sunset overhead as we leave Chile

We reached the border just as a glorious, heavy pink sunset was above us – a lovely goodbye to a lovely country. Unusually, the actual Chile-Argentina border control is under cover, but in something that resembles a aircraft hangar that both private cars and public buses go through. We’d read previously that this particular border – because it’s a popular place to cross from one country into the other – can take an age to go through. It was lucky, then, that it only took an hour to pass through the border. I say “pass through” – in fact, the actual immigration part went relatively quickly with the entire busload of passengers being processed in a short space of time. None of the baggage from the pass appeared to be checked either, although a X-ray scanner was set up for the lane that buses pass through. (I guess they choose at random.) Most of this hour was actually taken up by loo visits (which the bus attendants strongly suggested to us), waiting for people to finish their cigarette breaks, and doling out sandwiches (and asking for a tip!).

Having arrived at sunset, by the time we left the border post it was pitch dark. So we saw nothing on this part of the journey on the Argentinian side – which we were told and read is actually the more picturesque half. Oh well! (If you do want to experience it, it seems that you need to travel from Mendoza to Santiago.)

As we pulled in to Mendoza bus station at around 1am, a horde of men offering their men changing services gathered around the bus. If you know anything about the official Argentinian exchange rate versus the unofficial one (something I’ll cover in a later post), you might want to enquire about what Dollar-Peso rate they’re offering (not something we did, unfortunately) – it might just work out quite well for you!

Stepping over the stray dogs lolling around in the terminal, we got a taxi to our accommodation – the Hostal Confluencia. Thank goodness they had air conditioning in their rooms, for of everywhere we visited, Mendoza was the place with the most oppressive heat. Daytime temperatures of 36C was bad enough, but we couldn’t believe that, turning in on that first night at 2am, it was still 30C outside!

Backtracking to Bolivia: Copacabana and Lake Titicaca

So, I’m definitely a little behind in writing this blog (Dan jokes I’m one country behind) but that’s a little understandable – I think – as exploring is the more important part of this trip, and I fit in the part on writing about it when I can! Because of the whole “one country behind” business, when it came to write about Bolivia we were then involved in assorted snafus and hassles so I didn’t get much of a chance to put pen to paper…or fingers on keyboard. But now I’m backtracking to write about Bolivia (got to write and share pictures about the Salt Flats – right?!). Here’s the first post, part of which I actually wrote at the time.

Another early rise (boy, are we used to those – longest consecutive stretch of early mornings ever) to catch the 7.30am bus from Puno to Copacabana. This time, the bus seemed (perhaps understandably) solely used by travellers – not a local in sight. We’d gotten used to sitting on the Primero Piso (first – i.e. bottom – floor) so picked our seats there, only to find we where the only ones sitting in that cabin. We imagined everyone upstairs was having some kind of wild rave (though I suspect they were probably just napping), but I bet they didn’t have Michael J. Fox’s autobiography to read like I did – who’s the real winner here??

About two and a half hours in, we reached the Peruvian-Bolivian border with our bus attendant telling us assorted instructions about what we were supposed to do there, including “Money Exchange! Toilet!” that sounded more like an order than a suggestion. Our Tour Peru bus had given us the all important Bolivian immigration form which everyone dutifully filled in – and on this form, as with many forms or guest registration books in South America, there was the all important “occupation” entry. Both of us have pretty much filled in I.T. every single time for ease (not least for ease of writing!), and no one’s ever questioned us. (Although, why is that so important and why does it get asked on so many forms? What if you write something untoward?)

We headed into one building on the Peruvian side where our immigration slips (the part they give you to keep when you enter the country) were stamped. Then into the building next door where these slips were taken from us and our passports given exit stamps. No travellers seemed to get any beef – one local had misplaced his Peruvian immigration slip, although the only punishment that that would seem to incur would be a small fine. (I saw “only” but in some countries losing the slip is a big no no. In Bolivia, I believe, you would have to obtain one before trying to leaving the country. Although I don’t know what would happen if you lost it in an airport or border post whilst doing so…)

A 100-yard or so walk followed (think that might be the first time I’ve walked across a border) to the Bolivian immigration room for an entry stamp there. This was the first border crossing we encountered on our trip, and it really couldn’t have been more hassle-free – lucky us. (Little did we know the next one would be the opposite.)

Just as an aside – ain’t we Brits lucky? We get to visit Bolivia without a visa. For reciprocal reasons, American visitors (for example) need a visa – that’s valid for 5 years – that costs $135 and has assorted requirements for it to be processed. Other countries in South America also have such restrictions for certain nationalities, but none for Brits. British passport – the best in the world. No wonder it gets stolen!

It was a mere 15-minute drive after the border crossing to Copacabana (for which we had to pay a 1 Boliviano entry fee) to be deposited by the chaotic Plaza Sucre. We’d read good reviews about La Cupula Hostel and headed in that direction with the hope of a room – which we were lucky to get, and with some rather beautiful views over Lake Titicaca, we weren’t complaining!

Assorted small craft on Lake Titicaca, by the shores of Copacabana

Heading “into town” (i.e. a 5-minute walk down the road – it’s a small place), we sought out food and tickets for an excursion on the lake the next day. In much the same way Arequipa has a “tour company and laundry” street, Copacabana has a “tickets, food, hostels and souvenir” street, otherwise known as “everything a tourist might need” or possibly “places certain pretentious travellers look to avoid as if their life depends on it”. Our £6 lunch probably wasn’t even worth that (although how lucky were we to catch a bit of the Udinese – Palermo Serie A game on TV in the cafe? Hey, where’s the sarcasm tags on this thing?) but we did get two 35 Bolivianos tickets for a excursion to see the Lake Titicaca islands of Isla de la Luna and Isla del Sol the next day.

We wandered up to the main sight in town, the Cathedral, the grounds of which (though nothing special to look at) occupy a very large space. We stumbled across a whole flock of cars parked outside, decorated with fresh flowers and shiny items and thought to ourselves, “ooh, a wedding! Let’s wait for this!”

A kid let off some momentarily startling firecrackers in the road, which we thought was a little unusual for a wedding. Some cars started driving off, which was also strange – weren’t they going to wait for the wedding party? It was only when car owners started spraying their vehicles with some kind of fizzy alcohol, paying special attention to give the wheels a good soaking, that we our brains whirred into action. Well, Dan’s did, as he recalled reading in our guidebook about the car blessing ceremony that Bolivians participated in every week, to see that they are kept safe whilst travelling on the country’s roads. Given the country’s roads and some of the drivers, I’m afraid it’s no surprise that Bolivians take part in such a ceremony. Drivers parked up outside the cathedral to wait for a priest (wearing a baseball cap, no less), who walked around and splashed the cars with holy water. This whole ceremony appeared to be cause for celebration, with people beaming as they posed for pictures with their whole family lined up in front of the vehicle.

The car blessing ceremony in front of the cathedral

Cars decorated for the car blessing ceremony

Incidentally, we did later see a car involved with a real wedding in the town – complete with tin cans trailing behind. The guests celebrated at the local events hall, just down the road from our hostel, which pumped out loud music late into the night and causing the lights in our room to flicker constantly. (When we walked by the next day, the hall had music playing. I assume the wedding wasn’t still going on.)

The local main indoor market in Copacabana, with the usual stockpiles of fruit and veg…

…and less “naturally grown” items – we seek out some pasta and sauce, overseen by the expert

Our second day in Copacabana saw us take a boat to the aforementioned islands of Isla de la Luna and Isla del Sol – which were, according to Inca mythology, where the moon and the sun were born. There’s assorted boat companies that you can use to visit the islands – as well as fast (well, faster) catamarans. Because we just used a local boat line (as did many other travellers), it was rather a long journey – about two hours to Isla del Sol, where they deposited some passengers (much to the confusion of many on the boat, who all tried to get off) and then another half hour to Isla del la Luna which, it turns out, we were to visit first. Our boat was also partially manned by a small child of about six years (clearly the son of the captain) which initially was funny to see and a little strange – although given the way he manned the boat, shouting assorted instructions in Spanish, and scuttled around the small wooden structure with far more ease than the adults did, it was clear to see who was actually in charge! The kid even pulled the boat’s rope and tied it up when we docked – what strength on the little guy!

We were given roughly 45 minutes on the island, which is just enough time to visit the main site there – the ruins of a former convent on the eastern side. There’s not very much else to this island, with very few buildings or people there, although a makeshift football field was located by where our boat docked. Climbing up to the peak of the island on a narrow path, through assorted greenery with the odd llama here and there, we reaching the top to see fantastic views over Lake Titicaca and the Inca terraces with the ruins below. Walking down to the ruins provided a quick photo opportunity for ourselves and everyone else on our boat (which meant a deserted place suddenly turned into a busy tourist spot – complete with one family walking around with a boombox…slightly spoiling the setting!).

Convent ruins

Looking down to the convent, the Inca terraces and out to sea

Walking back to our boat, we followed an older, traditionally dressed Bolivian lady who was picking assorted plantlife (and herbs?) from alongside the path which intrigued me – was she picking items that are special to the island, or was it that she was “free” to pick these things here?

On to Isla Del Sol, the much larger island with several villages on the higher ground of the island. There seemed to be numerous cobble paths leading in all sorts of directions on Isla Del Sol – one of these did indeed lead to a simple lunch place for an omelette and the local fish, trout. Although there were signs outside advertising food, it seemed almost like it was cooked it someone’s home kitchen, and served by a sweet and shy young girl. Post-lunch, we explored more of the island’s paths, including reaching the peak for its views over the lake towards Isla de la Luna. Unfortunately, we weren’t given much time by our boat so had to rush back to the dock to avoid being stuck on the island (although here, unlike Isla de la Luna, there are hostels, so no camping under the stars would have been necessary) and instead head back to Copacabana for the second and final of our two nights there.

View from on high on Isla del Sol – sadly, a grey day

The narrow cobble path back down to the eastern shore of Isla del Sol

A giant anchor by the shore of Lake Titicaca

Stray dogs in South America

They’re everywhere. Peru had many, most noticeably (that I remember) walking around Cusco’s main square, including two that were walking side by side all around the plaza. La Paz was chock-ful of them, although La Paz’s streets were also pretty much chock-ful of everything – traffic, adults, children, people selling all manner of items – and said items, themselves, taking up much of the pavement. In that city, we were followed home by one very hopeful doggy one evening, who then looked utterly confused as to why we were shutting the hotel door in his face, and then mournful as the security guard shushed him away.

Santiago had plenty, much more than I would have thought, and both Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar were almost over-run by them – and both towns had a “dog chorus” each evening around bedtime, which sounded a little like – what with the crazy levels of barking – the dog army was about to storm in and take over the world. (I think in both cases, it was actually dogs in people’s gardens/balconies/terraces going crazy at the ownerless dogs walking by – I rarely saw stray dogs do any barking, or anything much beyond look hopeful and cute at someone walking by or snoozing in the shade.)

Stray dogs in Valparaiso

Argentina has far fewer stray dogs, and I’ve really only seen them at bus stations or in the larger open spaces – not so many in streets or hogging a shop’s doorway, as they liked to do in Chile. If anything, it seems like Argentina’s stray dogs like to keep to themselves in a very polite away. Argentina also seems to have stray-dog proof rubbish holders – little stands in front of people’s houses to put their rubbish bags in.

Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar (and some colectivo confusion)

After our near-week stay in Santiago, we decided to head to see a bit more of Chile. The fact that Chile’s such a long and thin country means there’s quite a distance to many other towns and cities of interest (especially the erupting volcano that Dan wanted to see) – but two on the coast, Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar – are just an hour and a half away from Santiago by bus. (With buses almost every fifteen minutes to both, they’re also very easy to reach.)

Valparaiso was once known as the “Jewel of the Pacific”, and was an incredibly important port town globally before the Panama Canal was built (and ships no longer need to use the Magellan Straits), with it also seeing an influx of European immigrants during the early part of the 20th century. It subsequently fell into decline and visiting it these days, you can certainly see a town that’s seen better days – although it’s still very charming, not least because of its colourful houses and artistic graffiti. (Two parts of it – the Old Town and the port area – are also UNESCO World Heritage sights.)

The (UNESCO Heritage site) old quarter in Valparaiso

One of the funiculars

Valparaiso at night

There’s an incredibly laid-back vibe through much of it, almost to the point where you start wondering where everyone is! The town is also very famous for its funiculars, although from 21, few remain in operation – I’m not even 100% sure how many. (Different online reports say different things; our hostel host pinpointed five on our town map, although that only covered central Valparaiso.) We took one called Ascensor Concepcion (for 100 pesos each) which is the oldest one still working, having been built in 1883 – let’s just say that it’s incredibly rickety, and I’m glad it only went 50 metres up!

One of the main sights in the town is Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s house (well, one of them) La Sebastiana, which unfortunately was closed due to a strike the day we were there. We got to see the gate in front of his house, though… The town is best enjoyed by walking up and down its many hills, especially reaching the higher levels to take in the spectacular views below. Vina Del Mar – across the bay – can even be seen in the distance.

Pablo Neruda’s house, Valparaiso – as close as we got to it (photo taken through the gate)

Plaza Sotomayor, Valparaiso – the blue building is the Chilean navy building

Dan in the Concepcion funicular – not much room!

Graffiti in Valparaiso

After a night in Valparaiso – at the incredibly comfortable and friendly Camila 109 hostel (what a breakfast! What a view!), we hopped on a metro to Vina Del Mar. The metro lies on the same route as the train that used to go all the way to Santiago (a shame that it still doesn’t) and for almost all of the way to Vina Del Mar, it does the very un-Metro-like thing of being above ground, travelling right along the sea.

Now, let me tell you about a slight kerfuffle we had upon reaching Vina Del Mar. I decided to Google Map the address of our guesthouse before we left Valparaiso, so we would have a vague idea of where we would be once exiting the closest Metro station. Upon reaching the town and said Metro station, we were pleased to flag down a taxi relatively quickly. Dan told the driver the address, and he paused a second before saying yes and popping the boot for our backpacks. That he had a woman sitting in the passenger seat was a little weird – but maybe she was a friend? His wife, accompanying him for the day? A stranger, very eager to chat? – but we ignored it, being the tourists that we are. That we were then flagged down by another woman who got in completely baffled us. But we then soon realised we weren’t in a taxi but a colectivo – a kind of shared taxi that operates a certain route, which passengers can hail and use to travel any distance on that particular route. He dropped us off and told us that the cross street was “San Jose” – which, of course, didn’t mean anything to us. Getting out our (pre-downloaded) Google Map, we found the driver had taken us in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go, and nowhere near where we wanted to be. (To explain our taxi/colectivo confusion – taxis in Chile are black with yellow roofs, and sometimes a small taxi sign. Colectivos are black with big signs on their roofs showing their route number. We just hadn’t taken in that last detail.)

We huffed and puffed a little (or actions to that effect) and set off trying to find a taxi – only to find that taxis don’t operate in Vina. Well, they do (I think we saw five the whole time we were there) but it seems you have to call one – which makes a change from most towns we’ve been to in South America, where a taxi passes by you almost every five seconds. With no taxi prospects, we walked all the way in the hot sun to the bus station (with our heavy backpacks, no less!), a place certain to have taxis. And there were. We were perplexed for the second time that day in a vehicle when he starting taking us all the way back to where we’d just walked from…can you guess why? Yeah, Google Maps was totally wrong. Thanks Google Maps. I bet Apple Maps would have worked, and Apple Maps is rubbish. So, the colectivo had taken us just around the corner to where we actually wanted to go, Google Maps had wronged us, and then we cursed the lack of taxis on the streets of Vina Del Mar.

Once we’d got past all that and reached our friendly guesthouse, we took a walk up Avenida Peru, one of the main roads right by the sea, with victorianas (horse-drawn carriages)  plying their trade. Beyond this is one of the main beaches in town – and boy, was it packed! Definitely holiday season in Chile. We stopped off for a café helado (me) and juice (Dan – but only because he thought the waitress had said there was no more ice cream. No more ice cream – what a thought?!).

The next day we explored Quinta Vergara park (reached by another funicular – what fun!), a smallish park featuring trees from various far flung places across the globe. It’s also home to the arena that hosts the very famous Vina Del Mar Song Contest each February – Elton John is to perform this year, donchaknow! (Not in the actual song contest – I believe they also have world-famous artists performing inbetween the competition elements.) We went up to the Arena which was open for people to come in and take photos, and saw assorted workmen busy creating something on stage. I don’t know exactly what Elton’s got planned for his set, but it’s going to involve lots of sawn wood!

We also saw another Vina Del Mar classic – the flower clock! It’s just the clock face made of flowers (to Dan’s disappointment) – the actual hands and mechanism are not flora based.

Crowded beach in Vina Del Mar

Quinta Vergara Park, Vina Del Mar

The flower clock, VIna Del Mar

Seaside!

We headed to get in our beach time afterwards – only to find the sea was insanely cold! That’s something to do with the Humboldt Current, which means the sea off the coast of Chile is always cold in summer. I went swimming in the Adriatic in May last year when the sea temp was about 17/18C – cold, but workable for a little swim. Here, it must have been around 13C – no good! That didn’t stop the Chilenos (and Dan) from taking part in the “getting thrown about in the waves” game. Red flags were flying at the beach so no swimming was really allowed – people instead amused themselves by standing in the water (around waist deep), waiting for the strong waves to throw them back onto the beach (usually partaking in some dramatic screaming), before repeating the whole process. There must have been hundreds of people thoroughly enjoying this game!

Being on a beach was definitely a birthday first – as was going to casino, which we visited in the evening. Well, we went into, walked around the (packed) slot machine area, briefly watched some of the blackjack tables, took a quick look at the Chile – Argentina game (Sudamericano Under-20 Championship)* playing on the TV screens and left. I wasn’t about to start gambling for my birthday!

*Chile won 1-0! Go Chile!

Let me tell you a story about the completo

Do you ever hear about something – a TV show, a song, a book – which peaks your interest a little, but not enough to properly think about discovering it for yourself any time soon? But when do you finally try, you then become obsessed?

That’s how I feel about completos. A completo is a Chilean hot dog. Now, before I go any further, let me say that I’m not a hot dog person. I have no particular problem with them; I just don’t think they’re all that tasty and certainly not tasty enough to warrant eating on a regular basis. Hamburgers I love, sausages yes…hot dogs? Meh.

So that’s how I approached trying a completo. I mean, a hot dog’s a hot dog, Chilean version or no…right?

But these are so good. I think what makes them so good is that they take a regular dog (but with very delicious bread – maybe even with an extra delicious sausage, but I can’t verify this) and then top it high with things that are actually properly delicious. I’m talking about mayo, tomato salsa, avocado, sauerkraut (not all of these things are in one dog) which takes the hot dog experience from being “distinctly average” to Bon Jovi-levels of greatness.

A domenica completo at Domino, Santiago – just look at the deliciousness!

We went to Domino, a hot dog place (now a chain) that first opened way back in 1952. If you find yourself in Santiago, you must go here. They have a list of what must be twenty different hot dog options, with different bread types also available (though why go for anything else apart from the traditional vienesa?), plus salads and burgers. Hey, they even serve beer if you need your completo & cervaza combo – though we can attest the raspberry juice is just as nice. Also pleasing to see at Dominos was that, unlike many other fast food type establishments, many of the servers and cooks were middle-aged guys – almost like they’d been there a while and were “part of the family”.

Interior of Domino, Santiago

Completos, however, are everywhere in Chile. Numerous street corner stands sell them. You get completo establishments like you have kebab shops in London – but unlike London’s kebab shops, these are frequented throughout the day as well. There’s completo caffs (deliberately not saying a café) at bus stations – we tried one at Santiago bus station and swiftly wished we hadn’t. (It seems there’s such a thing as a bad completo.)

Oh, Domino, how I miss you!

Unexpected Santiago

Santiago has been unexpected for us in several ways. Firstly, we’d never intended to come here when planning our trip whilst still at home. Here, however, we’d heard a number of other travellers talk about it and were beginning to think that we could possibly hop over the border from Mendoza (after about a week in Argentina) to visit.

Secondly, so preoccupied were we with obtaining the emergency passport and then making arrangements to leave Bolivia, that we hadn’t especially planned much to do during our time in Santiago (or anywhere else in Chile).

Thirdly, what with out guidebook now stolen, we didn’t have means of reading up about the city. (Yes, I know there’s a little thing called the Internet…but somehow it’s always much more practical to read about a destination’s sights whilst actually there, most likely heading in the direction of something to see.)

So, it’s with great pleasure that I say I loved Santiago! Even despite the fact that, for a visitor, there’s not even all that much to see and do – and sometimes even what there is to see is closed for renovation (like the highly-rated Museum of Pre-Columbine Art).

In some ways I feel a little uneasy saying that I loved Santiago – because it’s essentially a mix of a North American and continental European city, what with the grid-like streets and modern skyscrapers, mixed in with some rather grand mid-20th century architecture. I also feel uneasy saying that because it makes me sound like I’m comparing the city to the places we visited in Bolivia and Peru and referring to them in a rather disparaging way – almost as if I’m saying “Oh, Santiago’s much more what I’m used, this is a lot better.” (Which isn’t the case at all.)

Santiago was the first place we reached on our travels that was pleasantly hot (thought not stiflingly so, like Mendoza), so it was very enjoyable to walk around the city’s streets, plazas and numerous parks during the day. One of the slightly unusual things we came across whilst doing so was children swimming in the city’s very well maintained public fountains. And I do actually mean swimming – not just splashing around up to their knees, but fully submerged, attempting some kind of swimming stroke, usually even a proper swimming costume – and sometimes with a patient mother stood nearby, carefully folding up the child’s discarded clothing.

Santiago had its own Plaza de Armas (the name for many South American city’s main square), a reasonably pretty square off which stood the Cathedral and the National History Museum. Lacking in much grass, as most Plaza de Armas have, it did the the requisite fountain (complete with swimming kids), large wheelbarrows full of flowers (a nice touch), and plenty of seating to while away the summer hours on. At one end stood a bandstand, which was now full of tables and chairs and people playing chess. On the weekend, the square also filled up with vendors selling toys; people offering the opportunity to sit on a small, fake horse and get a photo taken (don’t quite see the appeal); and plenty of tarot card readers.

Wheelbarrows of flowers and chess players in Plaza de Armas, Santiago

One of the first things we visited – not least because it was near to where we staying – was the Cerro San Lucia, a sort of combination hill-park that’s apparently on the site of a former volcano (it’s a very small hill, in case you’re wondering) and actually where Santiago was founded. Climbing up the different levels of the park, we came across assorted pretty fountains and small gardens, whilst at the very top lay a small mock castle with great views across Santiago. There’s also a plaque featuring a quote from Charles Darwin, who once visited park in 1833 and proclaimed the view “most striking”. (So says Lonely Planet online.)

View from Cerro Santa Lucia (sorry about the pole) – you can see Cerro San Cristobal in the distance

The much larger hill Cerro San Cristobal stands just north of central Santiago and is one of the city’s main attractions. Our plan to take the funicular (I love funiculars) up to the top was thwarted by the fact it was closed – which we hastily found out was a result of being broken during the 2010 earthquake. There’s now a free bus to the top instead, although the man in charge of the queue told us the wait would be one hour. Despite being told at the information desk that the walk up would take two hours, we decided to give it a go – hey, we’d had training at walking during the Inca Trail! The walk up on the trail (there’s also a road with a side path if you’re after something with a gentler incline and in better condition) only took us 45 minutes (and only 15 minutes down) and we were rewarded by some even more spectacular views from this much higher peak. The top also features a statue of the Virgin Mary, and there’s a small amphitheatre to sit and reflect in, whilst listening to the alternately classical and Christmas music being played on the loudspeakers.

View from the top of Cerro San Cristobal, Santiago

Whilst there, we tried the popular Chilean summer drink – mote con huesillos, which essentially means dried peaches with wheat. A drink described as “with wheat” perhaps doesn’t especially make much sense in English, but this drink can best be explained as being a bit like peach iced tea with cooked or stewed grains at the bottom. (Actually, that explanation has probably confused you even more.) I’d say it’s equal parts refreshing and unusual – whilst drinking it, I wasn’t 100% sure whether I actually liked it or not.

Mote con huesillos

Another incredibly interesting thing to do in Santiago is to visit the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Only opened in 2010, this essentially tells of Chile during the years of the Pinochet dictatorship, explaining about those that were forced to flee the country, incarcerated and tortured or worse. A display case that showed actual items – dolls, small toys, jewellery – that prisoners made to send as gifts back to their families (or just to be allowed to do something “normal” whilst in prison) was especially moving. It was many of the video installations that especially grabbed one’s attention – from the triptych showing the day of the coup itself, with tanks rolling into Santiago and La Moneda (the Presidential Palace) being bombed (as well as the words of President Allende’s final speech), to a montage of former prisoners (interviewed recently) talking about the experiences of being tortured. A video of Pope John Paul giving a mass to 500,000 people in O’Higgins Park in Santiago whilst some of the crowd starting engaging in protest was in the same section of videos of the ever increasing amount of protests that took place in the 80s, usually ending in beatings and people being dragged away. Towards the end of the exhibition, a totally different type of video was shown – by the time the 1988 plebiscite (on whether to extend Pinochet’s presidency) was to take place, political parties had been made legal in Chile. This final video showing numerous political adverts – with slickly produced ones featuring lots of young, pretty people wearing Si! t-shirts, as well as the many less glamorous ones for No! campaign. The same video showed the counting of the votes whilst people sat glued to the radios to hear initial results…followed by people then taking to the streets, dancing and crying (and embracing the odd carabinero here and there), celebrating the victory for the no vote.

Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago

The museum is free, and it’s recommend to pick up an English audio guide (1,000 pesos – just over £1) which explains many of the exhibits in detail. (Not everything is labelled in English.)

The streets of Santiago are another sight in themselves. From the pedestrianised ones around Ahumada (which seemed like the main shopping area – akin to Oxford Street) to the peaceful ones in Bellas Artes with very grand early 20th buildings and many a café, hip bar, to the even more hipster-ish (and seemingly a top nightspot) Bella Vista, and the very artsy Lastarria. The streets also seemed packed at all times – Ahumada I could expect, given its purpose, but many of the cafes and bars we passed (and sometimes enjoyed!) were packed to the gills.

Giant Chilean flag by La Moneda

All in all, I’d highly recommend visiting Santiago – I’d certainly say it’s a city with something for everyone.

The Passport Snafu Turns Into a Visa Hassle

As I mentioned, we were now in possession of an Emergency Passport, allowing us to leave Bolivia and head into another country! Well, not any country – and definitely not Argentina, which also required a visa for holders of British emergency passports. Chile didn’t have any such requirement, so off we flew (to save us some time and avoid more endless bus journeys) to Santiago…to sort out the visa for Argentina there.

New year, new country. It was in fact on 1st January that we took the Sky Airline flight to Santiago, a flight that does an unusual hopping route from La Paz to Arica in northern Chile, then to Iquique and finally to Santiago. These first two hops are no longer than 30 minutes, which means that almost as soon as the plane levels out from taking off, it starts landing…and if everything you own for entertainment is electrical, including a book, you’re left to entertain yourself in unusual ways, such as endlessly shuffling a pack of cards. (I mean, there wasn’t even an in flight magazine! Unless you count the safety card, and there’s only so many times you can read that.)

 

On a practical note, for anyone that might be heading to Chile on this Sky Airline flight with an emergency passport, we passed through immigration and customs at the airport at our first stop, Arica. This airport – which is simultaneously in the middle of the desert and right by the sea – is rather tiny, so we were the only plane being processed – and in kind of a hurry, as everyone was fully aware the passengers need to get back on the plane to carry on with our flight. The immigration guard at Arica barely took a second glance at Dan’s emergency passport, and the large signs imploring declarations of certain foodstuffs (honey, meat) were certainly more scary. So scary, in fact, that for a second I wasn’t sure if I was breaking the law by bringing in a small snack pack of Oreos, which had been at the bottom of my bag since Cusco. Wrangling them out of my bag, before I could even form a question in Spanish, the customs lady simply smiley and said in a loud voice, “No problem”. (“Oreos – no problem” could almost be an advertising slogan.)

First thing on 2nd January, we got on to the important matter of finding out how to acquire an Argentina visa. By deciding to enter Argentina from Chile, we’d already read that we’d need the additional requirement of a letter from the British Embassy. Despite that sounding rather difficult to obtain, it actually couldn’t have been easier – going over to the British Embassy in a rather business-central area of Santiago, we managed to obtain this mystical letter – no doubt confirming Dan was an upright British citizen – in less than ten minutes. Barely enough time to even watch the obligatory BBC World News that’s always shown in British Embassy waiting rooms; despite it being a relatively easy channel to show (on account of being on all cable packages over here, it seems) I almost feel like British Embassies should show something more comforting from home, like Only Fools and Horses, or maybe Blankety Blank (the Wogan years).

Now we were told to head over to the Argentinian Consulate (not Embassy), and this was were things got a little more difficult. They told Dan that he either needed to provide proof of accommodation in Argentina, or go to a local notary and get an official letter declaring certain things – that his passport had been stolen in Bolivia; that we were going to be travelling around by bus; that we were leaving on the 25th January; that he had enough funds for his travels…and no doubt a few more things that I’ve forgotten about.

The first request seemed far easier to sort – we’d just book a few days in Mendoza, print out the confirmation, and then all would be right…right? Turns out they wanted proof of accommodation for the whole time we’d be in Argentina – something we certainly didn’t have as a) we’re backpackers and b) we didn’t even know if we’d be allowed in Argentina yet!

So…off to to the notary. There’s a great post on a great blog by Emily in Chile (about a half-British, half-American twenty-something year-old girl living in Santiago) all about notaries (notarios) in Chile and their importance – as a British person, I’m a little in the dark about what they do and why. However, we went to one with Dan’s every increasing bunch of documents (police report, flight ticket, bank statements) and they produced a letter as detailed above – with his signature and a thumbprint. Which definitely made things official.

Back to the Argentinian Consulate with the snazzy thumbprinted-letter on Thursday morning, Dan was told he’d most likely get the visa the next day. With no word by Friday afternoon, he called them, only to be told that there was a chance that it would still come through by 5pm that day. (We wandered around the nearby streets, pretty much glued to Dan’s mobile.)

No call came, so we had to wait until Monday for news, leaving us with an extra couple of days in Santiago. Which, honestly, is no great hardship. (Watch out for another post on that. The greatness of Santiago, not the lack of hardship.)

And to avoid dragging out the story of the passport and visa into a fourth post – Dan got his Argentinian visa on the Monday. So we were all set to head to the land of the gauchos.