Sucre oh Sucre

We have had a really great time here in Sucre. In fact, it's going to go down as one of my favourite cities that we have visited. Our acommodation was just perfect, and at $4 a night who can complain. The coffee at breakfast was not Nescafe, but real proper coffee. We've eaten beautiful fresh produce from the market every day combined with delicious Bolivian chorizo lunches. However, we gotta keep this show on the road....

We're on the night bus tonight to La Paz. It's a short 12 hours, and Michael has secured us seats on the 'Best Bus in Bolivia'... That's right. There is a bus in Bolivia that is better than all of the rest of the busses, and WE ARE ON IT. It remains to be seen what makes this bus better than the rest, but here's a suggestion:
Reclining seats...

I may have to go shopping for clothes

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

I have been avoiding the fact that my wardrobe has been dwindling. For the last couple of months I have been busy patching, and sewing and cutting and hoping that I would be able to finish the trip with the clothes currently in my backpack.
It seems, however, that I may be forced to buy myself a new pair of trousers. The pair I currently have now have a floral patch on the butt, and are promising to wear through in at least 3 other places.
My favorite skirt (yes the one that I wear all the time, in every photo, evidence here, here and here) is also on it's way out. I have already made about 4 repairs to it, and when it returned from the last wash I had to make 3 more.
If these two items die, it will leave me with only one skirt. And that skirt I made by cutting up a dress.
The photo is of Michaels trousers. He retired them, as they were threadbare. Fortunately Ken (Thank you Ken) donated a pair of jeans which means that Michael won't have to resort to shorts and legwarmers.

Fitting right in

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

Our one purchase at Tarabuco market yesterday was a new hat for me. A hat that has proved to be very popular with the local ladies, and a great conversation starter. Nearly every Bolivian woman sports a hat of some kind, and most of them wear a hat like this.
On the bus on the way home I was admired by a couple of locals who kept taking my hat off, and putting it back on my head at a 'better' angle. Taking it off again, they even inspected the inside of the hat, and were thrilled to find out that it was a Bolivian original. We compared hat 'notes' in sign language as my Quechua language skills are non existant, and they spoke no Spanish.

Sunday market

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

Today we took the local bus out to Tarabuco for the market. It's a 2 hour ride through scenic countryside on a bus packed with other market goers. The closer we got to Tarabuco, the more tightly packed we got as the bus driver stopped to let on passengers.
The market itself is famous for it's local indigenous community in traditional dress. You can see a fantastic slide show of the market here, and more photos here. The costumes are so beautiful, and incredibly detailed.

3-0

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

We very nearly missed kickoff, but a last minute dash with a few hundred other people got us into our seats just before the whistle blew.
Universidad, the local team were playing Oriente and the whole of Sucre had turned out for the match. The stadium was sold out, and the final score of 3-0 (to Sucre) ensured that there were many firecrackers.
We ate hot dogs and joined in the 'mexican wave' and cheered ourselves hoarse...

Shopping for our supper

Originally uploaded by m_hagen

We're in Sucre, Bolivia - and loving it. The town is beautiful, with all of the old colonial buildings in the center painted white. We spent the day yesterday wandering the streets and picking up some delicious treats at the market for our supper. We bought some amazing chorizo sausages, a round of white goats cheese and some salad vegetables. We cooked the sausages on a parilla at our hospedaje, threw together a salad and washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Huari beer.

Pass the salt please...

The Salar de Uyuni covers an area of 12,000 km², making it the largest in the world. It's hypnotic, the salt is endless and the horizon wavers in the distance. At it's thickest point the salt is 8m deep.
We dragged ourselves out of bed at 5.30am to watch the sun rise over the salt flats, and then spent the morning driving and walking on the salt. We visited a couple of different 'islands' and had fun scrambling amoungst the cacti.
The day finished in Uyuni, where we visited the train graveyard - where all those hard working trains go to sleep.

The air is thin...

Day 2 on the altiplano. We loaded the car, and set off on another day of surreal landscapes, beautiful wildlife and spectacular scenery.
All of us had struggled to sleep throught the night, not only because of the extreme cold but also due to the altitude.
The second day was filled with expansive landscapes, 'daliesque' desert colours and more altiplano lagunas filled with flamingos.
We finished the day in a salt hotel on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni. Everything in the hotel was made of salt - walls, beds, tables & chairs. Even the floor crunched underfoot!

Headed into Bolivia...

These are the photos from our first day in Bolivia. We crossed the border at 10 in the morning, where we loaded the surfboards onto a Toyota 4x4 for the trip across the altiplano to Uyuni. The terrain is rough and dusty, and the road (track? trail?) on the bumpy side - but the scenery is out of this world.
It's a fairytale landscape unlike anything we've seen before.

The day included visits to two altiplano lakes and some thermal hot springs. The first lake Laguna Blanca, is home to flamingos and appears white due to the high concentration of borax. We then traveled on to Laguna Verde and the Licancabur Volcano. Laguna Verde has high mineral levels of Arsenic, Lead and Copper giving it a bright green color. Both of these lakes are at 4400m (14,400 ft).
A mid morning visit to the thermal hot springs (Termas de Polques) gave us an excuse for a bath and some time out of the truck. The water was lovely and warm, but getting out was difficult - cold wind and nowhere to get changed made for some fun balancing acts!
After our bath we headed to the Solar de Manaña geyser basin, to watch some bubbling pools of mud spit stinky gas into the air. These are at 5000m (16,400ft) - which left us all a little out of breath, and happy to be back in the truck as passangers with minimal physical exertion!
After lunch we visited Laguna Colorada - a beautiful red lake filled with 3 species of flamingo (James's, Andean & Chilean). The lake is colored red by algae and has bright white borax islands that create a startling contrast.
Our acommodation for the night was in a basic adobe building - no heating, so we pilfered extra blankets from the room next door... All of us slept in our hats as the outside temperature was -15 centigrade (5 farenheit)... (really really cold)

La Luna

Originally uploaded by ladyhedda

The air over the Atacama desert is transparant and dry, which makes for perfect stargazing.

We watched the moon set and the sky darken. Alain (our astronomer guide) taught us about stars, constellations, planets and galaxies. He has 6 telescopes set up all directed towards different objects. We saw the Moon, Saturn, Mars alongside clusters, gas fields and more.

Michael has written a beautiful post about his experience at an observatory further south over here....

Cold, so cold...

We made the trip to see the El Tatio Geyser field. The geysers are at their most active between 6.30am and 7.30am, and they are a 2 hour drive from San Pedro... So, in order to see the geysers do their thing we got out of bed at 3.50am - I know, stupid right?

The geyser field is at 4200m (13,800 ft) which at 6am in the morning translates to really fucking cold... -8.5 celcius, or 16.5 farenheit to be precise.

There are about 80 active geysers, and the erupt at varying heights with the tallest being 6 meters. Cold underground rivers met with hot volcanic rock underground, and hey presto the only way is up!
In summary, we got out of bed at ridiculous o'clock to see a bunch of holes in the ground spurt stinky water and steam into the air, whilst freezing ourselves to death. Nuts.

The Atacama

We're in San Pedro de Atacama, in the North of Chile. The town is at 2700m (7900ft) in the middle of the Atacama desert. The air here is dry, and at night it gets really cold.

There is beautiful desert scenery surrounding San Pedro. We've been out to visit the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) at sunset and the Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley) - which is really the old road linking San Pedro to the nearest town. A wiggley road meandering between desert rock formations.

Other Rio fun

On our last morning Claire and I made an early run around to the main street in Ipanema to visit the cashpoint (ATM). Obviously someone had been there before us, and they had been busy... Unfortunately neither of us had cameras with us, so you will have to imagine what we saw....
On the floor in the middle of the lobby was a large teracotta bowl, in which there was a (very dead) rooster, surrounding the bowl/rooster was a ring of manioc flour and some large leaves, similar to bay leaves. The last component was a large bottle of Grants whisky.
Magic, Macumba magic. If you are looking for some help to get what you want (and me thinks that someone was in need of some cash) then you can visit a Macumba specialist. They will tell you what to do, where to do it and when to do it. Sort of like a prescription. Saturday morning, in the lobby, with the rooster....

20% of Rio's population lives in a favela

We went on a tour of two of Rios favelas - Rocinha and Vila Canoas. Rocinha is the largest favela in Brazil - the official population is 60,000. However some believe that the real number is somewhere between 150,000 and 400,000..... Christina (our guide) explained to us about living in a favela - and about the drug lords that run them.
There are sentries posted at the entrance to the favelas, each holding a couple of large rockets/fireworks which they will let off as an early warning system if anyone unwelcome tries to enter.
In late 2006 there was a 'war' within Rocinha, and control of the favela passed from one criminal faction (the CV) to another (the ADA).

Here's a link to a Washington Post photo essay from Rocinha.

Vila Canoas is a really small favela, and the tour company supports a school here.
Mike got a photo of me skipping with the kids. Skipping is bloody hard work.

hedda playing with the kids in the favela
Originally uploaded by yobosayo

I've been working out

I nearly had my wallet stolen, nearly but not quite... I don't know who was more surprised me, or the bastard who tried to rip it out of my hand. Obviously he wasn't aware of my amazing grip strength, as all he got was the strap! I looked behind me (not really expecting to see the culprit) but there he was stanging on the pavement with a look of confusion on his face, clutching a pink strap and nothing else. So I shook my fist at him, like an old lady.

Maracanã Stadium from ladyhedda on Vimeo.

We went to see a football match at the Maracana stadium in Rio.... It was an international game between Fluminense (Rio) and Libertad (Paraguay), the final score was 2-0 to Fluminense. This (short) video was shot after Fluminenese scored....

The only team chant I managed to learn went something like this:
Fluminense, Nense, Ole ole ole ole ole, nense, ole ole ole ole....
Original hey?

Redeemed?

Here are the photos from our trip up to see Christ the Redeemer. Are we redeemed? I don't feel any different, but Claire seems to think we may be.