Back to School in Sucre

We’ve been in Sucre, Bolivia for around two and a half weeks now, so I figured it’s time for another update to the blog. After over a month travelling around jumping from city to city and seeing quite a few interesting places, we’ve decided to settle down for a bit and concentrate on something other than being a tourist for a while.

After our nightmare bus ride into Sucre (see previous post) we arrived and immediately noticed that Sucre is the kind of place that we could potentially stay for a while. Sucre is a medium-sized city of around 300,000 people although it feels much smaller. It has a rich history and quite a lot of indigenous culture, which makes it perfect for visitors looking for a place with a relaxing atmosphere along with a fair amount of interesting sights and activities. Due to the high altitude the weather here is a little cooler, but not quite cold enough to lose the flip-flops.

After only a few hours of walking around we made the decision to stay here. The city is clean and friendly, extremely inexpensive, and there are large markets in which we can shop easily. Also there seemed to be plenty of local schools offering Spanish classes.

After a reading a few reviews of Spanish schools in the area, we settled on Sucre Spanish School (http://www.sucrespanishschool.com). We visited the school to enquire about the details and we met Klaus who happened to be the owner of the school. It turns out that Klaus (who was originally from Germany) had come to Sucre three years ago as part of his South American travels. After visiting Salar de Uyuni, he came to Sucre to learn Spanish as well. He ended up falling in love with a local he met at the school, and he decided to stay. He got married and he is now operating his own Spanish school. He was a really nice guy and he invited us to his home for lunch (one of the best meals we’ve had yet…) and he helped us look for a place to stay while we were enrolled in the school.

We ended up finding a great place to stay. We’ve got a completely private apartment with our own kitchen, bathroom, etc. It’s a bit old and run down, but it’s very large and better than most of the hostels we’ve stayed at. Also, it’s only four blocks away from school, and still close to the markets so it’s easy to go out and quickly get some food. We immediately booked it for a month. Only $250. That’s less than 9 dollars a day, which will really help us get control of our budget again after an expensive first month. It was a great feeling to be able to actually unpack our backpacks and settle down. After living in hostels, sharing bathrooms, kitchens, and having very little privacy, it was really nice. They even gave us Internet access for a few dollars extra – although the Internet here is extremely slow. Apparently it is very slow everywhere in Bolivia. We’ve really made use of the kitchen and we’ve cooked quite a few of our own meals over the last few weeks, although we are realizing that it’s not really that necessary when you can go to a restaurant here and get a great gourmet meal for less than 5 dollars. You could go cheaper and get a meal for a dollar or two, but why bother when that big steak dinner next door is only 3 dollars more.

The Spanish classes have been going well. We’ve learnt quite a bit over the last two weeks. We definitely have a lot more to learn but we can finally understand a little of what most people are talking about and we can make ourselves understood if needed. It is quite amazing how much we’ve learned, yet we still have so much more to go. There is so much vocabulary to memorize and countless verbs that need to be conjugated correctly. On top of all that there is the pronunciation. All the words need to have the correct emphasis in the correct part and if you pronounce it incorrectly, you could be saying something completely different. We have four hours of class every weekday, plus homework. It also helps to practice as much as possible. Joh is constantly catching me talking to myself like a crazy person. I have all sorts of imaginary Spanish conversations with myself while I’m walking around. I may look crazy, but I think it’s working. I imagine that after another six months or so we should be pretty comfortable with the language. Definitely not fluent, but comfortable.

We’ve received quite a few emails asking us about how we’re doing with our Bucket List. For those of you not familiar with it check out the Blog Archive – it the second oldest post. We’ve accomplished a few of the easy ones. So far we’ve accomplished the following:

5. Eat meat from an animal that you've never eaten before
Ate llama meat - first night in Bolivia
12. Learn Spanish
Doing it now
20. Rent an apartment in a foreign city for a month and live there.
Doing it now
22. Get invited to a local's home for dinner
Done in Sucre
35. Eat asado (grilled beef) in Argentina
Yep - and yes it was good
38. Drink Yerba Mate in Argentina
been there... done that
44. Collect a souvenir spoon for Jack's mom from each country we visit
So far... although we haven't found one for Bolivia yet
52. Find a traveler that has been to Burlington
Very easy. We've met quite a few travellers from Ontario
63. Completely quit smoking
Haven’t had one since February 10.

There are also a bunch more that we’re currently working on. 57 & 58 are well on their way, as is 61. Number 8 won’t be done. We found the winery, but it just too far out of the way to justify going there. There are a number of them that are being put on hold until later. All of the fitness ones are next to impossible in high altitude. I went for a run last week and I made it around 3 blocks before I quit. It’s really tough to get enough oxygen.

We’ve also been asked what it’s like being away from home and what we miss. We obviously miss our family and friends. On Sundays we often comment about how nice it would be to spend the day with the family like we usually did back home. It’s something you definitely take for granted. Nights out with friends, guys/gals nights, hockey games, etc are also highly missed. Aside from all that the number one thing we miss (other than people) is our nice king size bed. All of the mattresses we’ve used so far have paled in comparison to the one we’ve got at home. Night after night of lumpy mattresses that are either too hard or too soft and are way too small. We’ll probably need some serious chiropractic work done when we eventually come back.

Another thing we really miss is easy access to good English books. We both really enjoy reading, so it really sucks when we need to go out every few days to try find another book. The stores here do not sell English books. The only place to get them are the book-exchange shelves at youth hostels. If you're lucky they maybe have 50 books at the most. Half of them are falling apart and/or missing pages, and most of them are really crappy books that you would never want to read. If you’re lucky they might have an old murder-mystery book or some crummy John Grisham novel that you read back it 1995. It has been bad enough that we’ve decided to spend some money and order two Kindles from Amazon.com. For those of you non-techies who have no idea what a Kindle is, click on this link: http://www.amazon.com/kindle. We had debated buying one or two of these before we left but decided against it due to costs and fear of them getting stolen. Now we regret it. I have no doubt that these will be the most useful and enjoyable things ever for a trip like this. The only problem is that they’re stuck in customs at the Bolivian border and it’s been a nightmare to try to get them released and delivered. We spent all afternoon today going back and forth to the customs office and to DHL with different documentation trying to figure out what we need to do and to get permission to get them into the country. At least it’s given us a chance to practice our Spanish with the customs agents. Hopefully it’s mostly worked out now, although I expect it will be at least another week before we finally get them.

Other than all that, everything is going really well. We’ve got another two weeks left here in Sucre and then its off to somewhere else. We haven’t decided where yet. It’s a tossup between heading north up the western coast through more of Bolivia and then into Peru, Equador, and Columbia, or going to Brazil. We really want to see Brazil and then back again to those other countries, but it doesn’t really make sense to spend all this time and effort learning Spanish only to jump straight into a country that speaks Portuguese. The problem is, if we don’t go now, we’ll have to jump back down later and it would be much less convenient, and we’d probably have to spend a bit of extra money to fly there and/or back again as it would be a bit out of the way. Whatever…. We’ll figure it out.

What we do know now is that we have only around six months left to see the rest of South and Central America. It seems that for the first time now we have a time constraint added to our trip. Ashley and Tyler have gotten engaged (Congrats guys!!!) and are planning a wedding sometime in the fall. Naturally we can’t miss that wedding so we’ll be coming home. We’re already looking forward to seeing everyone again and to be there to help celebrate the big event with Tyler and Ashley. If everything goes according to plan we hope to be home for a couple weeks and spend some quality time with everyone before heading out again for the second half of our trip in Asia.

¡Buenas noches y vamos a ver ustedes en septiembre!

Photos from the 3 day Uyuni Tour

Better late than never....

Jack and I are currently in Sucre, Bolivia. We have been a bit lazy with the updating, but will post about Sucre within the next couple days.

Enjoy the photos:)

BLOG - 3 day tour of Bolivia, from San Pedro to Uyuni

San Pedro to Uyuni

Hola,

Last week Wednesday Jack and I signed up for a 3-day tour to take us though Bolivia’s National Park Eduardo Avaroa and Salar de Uyuni. We heard a lot of good reviews about this tour so we were really looking forward to exploring Bolivia. Booking a tour like this is one of the only ways that you could see what we saw, unless you owned some sort of 4x4 vehicle. The roads or dirt paths were extremely bumpy and due to the Bolivian rainy season, often hard to navigate through.

The views were insane, we witnessed snowcapped mountains, multicoloured mountain ranges, beautiful sparking lagoons, desert landscape, volcanoes, hot springs, geysers...the list goes on.

On Day 1, after crossing the tiny border into Bolivia and jumping into our 4X4 jeeps, we drove through the Bolivian high plains, also known as the Altiplano, where we stopped at Laguna Blanca. It is known as Blanca because the water looks white from the high amount of minerals in the water. Among the beautiful background from this lagoon we could also see the Licancabur Volcano in the background.

Second stop was Laguna Verde, another colour- named lagoon, this time the greenish colour is caused by deposits containing copper minerals. By this time in the tour we were about 4, 300 meters above sea level. It was windy and cold, but we sucked it up and took in the beautiful scenery

The next stop was a thermal water pool that you could sit in and enjoy the mountains and water surrounding you. We unfortunately could not go in because our bathing suits were locked away in the top of the jeep.

We had one more stop before we headed to our hostel for lunch; it was the Sol de Manana geysers. It smelt like rotten eggs, but was quite the sight. Sol de Manana is a geothermal field that extends over 10 square km, between 4800m and 5000m height. The area is also full of mud lakes and steam pools with boiling mud.

After a nice hearty lunch at our hostel, we headed out to the Laguna Colorada, this lagoon was the best one so far, just absolutely massive and amazing. Turns out this lagoon is a breeding place for thousands of flamingos. You will notice that the water has a pinkish colour. This is from algae and plankton that live and grow in the water that is very high in salt, magnesium, borax and gypsum. The algae provide food for the flamingos, therefore causing the flamingos to also turn pink.

Day 2 we drove through the Siloli Desert where we saw many funky rock formations due to wind erosion. One of the most popular formations is this rock tree, pictured below.

We also stopped at a couple more impressive lagoons. (You can see more of the lagoons in the online photo album that I will post shortly).

After a full day of driving around, including a flat tire on our jeep, we made it to our hostel just before it started pouring cats and dogs. The second hostel looked a little sketchy from the outside, with its only bathroom and shower being outside the building. Once inside, we found it to be a nice cozy place. We enjoyed a nice dinner with the tour group: some traditional Bolivian soup followed by some llama meat and sides.

The third day was the big event. We were all excited to see the Salar de Uyuni. After stopping at some little towns and the antique train cemetery, we made it to the salt flats. This is the world’s largest salt flat. At 10,582 square kilometers it went on forever. The salt is over 10 meters thick in some areas. Due to all the rain, it was covered with a couple inches of water. No problem; everyone just took off their shoes and walked around barefoot. It was just awe-inspiring to look at, the reflection of the water just made everything shine.

The tour ended in Uyuni. Since there was not much to do in Uyuni, we booked an overnight bus to Sucre in Bolivia. The 12-hour bus ride was definitely a little rougher then the buses we were becoming accustomed to in Argentina and Chile. It lacked a bathroom, which after 12 hours becomes very painful. Also, around midnight, the driver parked on the side of the road, locked the door, and for 5 hours left us to attempt to sleep. I don’t know if this is a common thing. The odd person jumped out of the window to leave or go to the washroom (we think). In the end we made it, and we are loving our time in Sucre so far.

San Pedro de Atacama

(This post was written a week ago, but we've been unable to post it due to lack of access to the Internet.  We've been up to a lot of stuff since then, and we'll post about all that soon.)

We arrived in San Pedro late Friday night at around midnight after a very long 25 hour bus ride.  The ride wasn’t too bad.  We’re getting used to these long bus trips.  The continent of South America is huge, and unless we want to pay more for flights, the buses are the most economical choice.  To tell you the truth, I think that these long rides through the different regions are actually one of the best ways to see the countries.  We get to experience seeing all the mountains, deserts, and small towns instead of just hoping from one airport to the next. Air travel may be practical, but it doesn’t quite give you the perspective of what the region is really like.  We’ve so far spent around 80 hours on bus rides.  If you compare that to back home in Canada, 80 hours would probably get you at least two thirds of the way across Canada. Just think of all things you would see in a road trip across Canada, and then add to that that we are doing it in a foreign continent with very different geographical areas, and you can imagine that these trips provide quite the visual stimulation and are quite the eye-opener.  We can now look at a map of South America and remember what all those different areas look like.  I’m sure as we head farther north we will experience even more interesting regions.

The trip from Valparaiso to San Pedro de Atacama was very long, but still quite interesting.  We saw less huge mountains than on our last ride, but they were exchanged by quite a different scenery – the desert.  Some of the areas we drove through were absolutely unreal.  There were stretches of the ride where we went over two hours without seeing a single plant.  Not even a cactus or a weed.  The landscape was nothing but sand and rocks.  We drove through valleys and sometimes you could almost imagine that you were on the moon or on Mars.   In one of my earlier posts, I noted that flying into Santiago was just like that.  We could see barren mountains from the plane, but now seeing them close up it was really special.

When we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama is was immediately evident that this town was going to be very interesting.  We walked down the dusty streets and saw that this place was quite special.  Even in the dark, we could see really neat looking restaurants, shops, and hostels that had a distinct desert character.  The town is mainly a tourist spot, built to accommodate all the travellers interested in checking out all the surrounding natural wonders.  There are salt flats, salt lakes, dunes, rocky valleys, cool rock formations, and lagoons.  The town is set up in a way that it is very easy to get out and see them.  The town has a lot of tour operators that organize everything for you.  They will drive you to these places (usually less than an hour away) and then show you around and let you explore by your selves for a while.  They’ll pack water and snacks for you, and ensure that everything is taken care of. Because of the amount of different tour operators that are in San Pedro, their prices need to be competitive, so you can get some really good deals.

Floating in Laguna Cejar

The first place we went to was Laguna Cejar.  It is a small salt lake in the middle of the desert.  Due to all the salt in the ground, it has a 40% salt content.  Comparatively, the oceans have around 3.5% and the Dead Sea has 33.7%. We went swimming, and it was amazing how you would just float on top of the water.  You could pretty much just stay still and sit or lay down and the water would hold you up like you were on an air mattress.  It was a pretty cool feeling.  After getting out, our skin was absolutely covered in salt.  There was a thick layer of it everywhere, and your swim suit dries into a crust.

We also went to two valleys in the area.  Death Valley (although the Spanish name “Valle de la Muerte” sounds cooler) and Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon).  These valleys had some really cool rock formations, and some incredible views.  We got to hike around through caves and around huge cliffs and weird salt pillars and the like.  The Valle de la Luna was absolutely amazing.  As sunset approached we hiked up a big dune to the top of a cliff and got some really cool sunset photos.

Valle de la Muerte

Valle de la Luna

Sunset at Valle de la Luna

The weather here is typically very hot and dry.  Apparently this is the driest place on earth.  The day after we arrived however there was rain.  We were told that this is the first time it has rained here in years.  The town was instantly a giant mud pit as they have no drainage systems.  It was neat to see but the rain came with some cooler weather and lots of clouds so it does impact the scenery, and we don’t really get to see as much as some of the roads are closed. 

The plan from here is to stay for another day or two until the weather improves and then head out on a 3 day trip though some more of the deserts and see Salar de Uyuni.  We’re really looking forward to it as it is supposed to be really beautiful.  If the weather remains poor we may end up not being able to see some of it, so we’re really hoping it improves.  This trip would bring us over the border from Chile into Bolivia where we plan on staying for a while.

Photo album for this post:

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Photos for Wonderful Valparaiso

Enjoy:)

Valparaiso, Chile - Blog

Valparaiso

When I last wrote we had just gotten on a bus to drive from Mendoza Argentina, to Valparaiso Chile.  The ride took us directly across the Andes through Aconcagua Provincial Park and through some of the most awe-inspiring scenery we’ve seen yet.  We drove by massive mountains, with huge steep hills up and down and through tunnels that went under entire mountains.  We had intended to catch up on some reading during the trip, but the breathtaking scenery distracted us quite a bit.  It’s difficult to bury your head in a book, when some of God’s most beautiful handiwork is on display right in front of you.  We crossed the border into Chile at one of the highest points, and then took a long winding road down from there to the fertile valleys on the other side of the Andes.  We drove for a few hours through many large orchards.  The amount of fruit trees here was crazy.  It wasn’t just the valleys that were filled up with orchards, but they used the side of the mountains too.  You could see rows and rows of trees winding their way up and down the mountains.  It was quite a sight.  I remember back home that a lot of the fruit we bought had the “Product of Chile” sticker on it and it was pretty cool to see where it all comes from.

We got into Valparaiso in the evening, prepped with an address for a hostel we had booked ahead of time.  The cab driver we hired to take us there had no idea where the address was so we drove around stopping asking for directions until we found it.  The hostel was definitely the worst one we’d stayed at yet.  The bathrooms were filthy, the staff knew barely a word of English, the rooms and beds were gross, and to top it all off it was in a neighborhood that looked really sketchy.  We immediately went online to find something else, and woke up early the next morning and jumped on a bus to the other side of town.  We ended up staying at a boarding house that we presumed was for students.  It ended up being a really nice place to stay for a few days.  The staff still didn’t know English, but they made every effort to help us out and they were very friendly.  The room they gave us was also probably the best we’d had yet.   A huge double bed that looked pretty much brand new, and a private washroom and sitting room.  It felt quite luxurious compared to some of the other places we had be staying lately. 

Once we were settled in there, we set off to explore the city.  We’ve found that the best way to go about exploring a place is to just go for a walk.  I can tell you that we’ve walked more in the last couple weeks that in the past year or two put together.   It is not uncommon to walk at least 30kms a day while you’re travelling.  If you’re not the kind of person who enjoys walking, you’d probably have a difficult time travelling like this.  In the first week or two it was a little tiring but now, it seems we can walk for hours without problems.

We walked around most of the city and explored some of the quirky characteristics of this town.  Valparaiso is not really a town known for an specific landmarks, but is quite unique an different than most places we’ve seen so far.  The first thing you notice is the topography.  The city only has about half a kilometer of land next to the ocean that is flat.  The rest of the city is built on the mountain sides.  The houses looked similar to the orchards we saw on the drive in.  The small and narrow roads criss-cross all the way up the mountains and hold the majority of the houses, restaurants and stores in this city.  The second thing you notice, is the colors.  The houses here are all painted in bright colors.  Each one different.  When walking down the street you pass 10 houses in a row painted in 10 different colors.  Bright yellow, blue, pink, green, orange, red etc.   It is quite stunning to see.  I would guess that it would be a dream city for a photographer.  Joh got some good shots, so you’ll have to check them out when she posts them.

The city is also right next to the Pacific Ocean, which was quite nice.  We walked down the coast watching the giant ships coming in getting loaded and unloaded with containers.  We also walked along boardwalks watching the huge waves come crashing in against the rocks. I’ve always enjoyed being by the water.  There is something very calming and yet still stimulating just staring out over the ocean. We walked by a number of small beaches that were jam-packed with people. We thought about joining them, but the water didn’t look too inviting with thousands and thousands of people all crowded up along the beach.

Unfortunately Valparaiso also had its downsides too.  First off, the city is quite dirty.  There is a lot of garbage everywhere and there is a distinct smell of rot and sewage throughout most of the town.  It’s quite unfortunate.  The city could be one of the most amazing places in the world if they would just clean it up a little. Also, we just couldn’t enjoy a lot of the food.  It seems Chileans can’t eat something unless it is smothered in mayonnaise and cheese.  Those of you that know Joh and I, you know those are not our favorite foods.  Every sandwich here was loaded with mayo.  For example, the hotdogs there had over an inch thick of mayo, cheese, and guacamole spread over the top.  That hot dog is available on almost every street corner.  We had variations of it one day, and we just couldn’t stomach it.

So after spending 3 or 4 days in Valparaiso, we’ve decided to move on again.  We’ve decided to check out northern Chile, so now we’re on another 24 hour bus ride heading to San Pedro de Atacama.  This town is a desert town in the middle of nowhere.  It has a number of really interesting desert landscapes nearby that we’re hoping to check out.  It’s also very near to the border of Bolivia, which is probably going to be the next country we’ll be visiting.   

We’re still on the lookout for a nice place to spend a couple weeks settled down.  We’ve been moving around a lot quicker that we intended with this trip. Originally, we didn’t expect to even be out of Argentina by now, but skipping most of Patagonia kind of changed things up a bit. We’d like a place where we can concentrate on learning Spanish.  Chile is definitely not that place.  They speak too quickly and they are much harder to understand.  Also, it is a lot more expensive here.  We’ve heard good things about Bolivia, in that it is much cheaper and they speak very good clear Spanish there. So hopefully in a week or two we’ll be there and enrolled in a Spanish course.  We feel that getting a better grasp of the language will make things much easier and will enable us to get a little more involved with the local culture.

I hope everything is well with you all back home.  We love receiving your comments and emails, so please keep them coming.

Mendoza Pictures

Sorry I took so long, but here are some of the photos from Mendoza.

Tonight we leave Valparaiso to go to San Pedro de la Atacama. A nice 24 hour bus ride, plenty of time to write a new blog entry on Valparaiso.

Till then:)

Mendoza-Blog