Fate or fortune?

I’m not a strong believer in fate... more that shit just happens. But our latest adventure may have swayed me slightly towards the former.

The few days we spend in La Paz kill us – the high altitude, the constant feeling of being ripped off and the general craziness of the city. So after a few days we leg it to Rurrenabaque, Bolivia’s jump off point to the Amazon jungle and pampas, hanging for warmer weather and wildlife.

We board a tiny plane for a 35 minute flight to Rurre, desperately wanting to avoid the 20 hour bus ride along ‘Death Road’. We are close enough to the cockpit to see that the pilots don’t have their hands on the wheel until we land on a grass strip in Rurre – slightly unnerving when they’ve announced turbulence but there is none.

Geezer suggests we ride on the back of motorbikes from the airport. I hesitate for a split second before flinging my backpack on to the front of a bike and next thing we roar away from the airport, wind whipping my face, yelling.... Hellooooo Rurrenabaqueeeeeee!!

Having been recommended Madidi Tours for pampas and jungle tours we head there after checking out a few other companies that seem to only cater to the masses. We tell the young Bolivian behind the desk (whose gob is so stuffed of coca leaves that he can barely talk) that we want something different, off the beaten track but most of all away from the throngs of tourists.

We are in luck. Madidi had been approached by the owner of a piece of land and they want to investigate whether it will make a good destination for tourists. It would be a seven day adventure – two days up the river, three days in the jungle and two days back – plenty of wildlife and camping with indigenous villages along the way. No tourist has been there. It sounds perfect.

But we add up the cost and realise that it is too expensive for us to do alone. We would have to find another couple that afternoon in order to set off in two days time. We tell Madidi that we’ll be back later to see whether they’ve had any other punters.

We are marginally hopeful - even Geezer offers to stand outside Madidi with a plaque. But we return later that day to discover that an Australian couple has just been in wanting the same thing. Julian, Madidi’s coca-leaf gob stuffed front man, tells us that we can probably find them in the bank as they’d just left. We walk out and immediately spot them – Meg and Hunter – two people pointing frantically at us with the biggest, warmest smiles and equally large hearts. The bond between the four of us is instant. We go for a beer and leave several hours later enormously excited about our adventure in unchartered territory with our new amigos.

The next day we arrive at Madidi to sort logistics and pay up when they tell us that the price has gone up and that they will have difficulty getting fuel because of a 20 litre limit per person. We need 400 litres. The owner of Madidi has to seek permission from the head of the navy to get more fuel. We even offer to round up 20 people (or for all of us to go in disguise five times) with jerry cans to get the 400 litres. They don’t appreciate our humour and sadly, the trip isn’t to be. It will take much more planning.

But there is another area we can go away from tourists, requiring less fuel and we can leave tomorrow. It will be a seven day adventure by boat on the river in the pampas grasslands.

So we wake with the sparrows, meet Meg and Hunter for breakfast and then jump in to a jeep crammed with a week’s supplies of food, water, camping gear, a cook, a guide and Julian, who will be our translator. It isn’t till we arrive in a small, not so remote, indigenous village that we realise there are no fuel tanks for the boat. Having been sat to one side away from the rest of the crew and villagers, we also realise that there is a tense village meeting underway with the chief.

After several hours of waiting and watching the negotiations, we are told that there is no boat, there never was a boat (but they had forgotten to tell us) and even if there was a boat, there is a giant tree blocking the river and we will never get through. We are also told that we can borrow horses from the village but once we reach the river we will be on our own, carrying all our supplies up the river bank – which actually turns out to be thick jungle filled with crocodiles, caimans and god knows what else.

Furious, we hold our own team meeting. Geezer is nominated chief spokesperson and tells Julian that we want to go back to Rurre because this is not what we signed up for and has cost us a lot of money. Easing the tension, Rodolfo, our guide, whips us off on a little tour of the village where he introduces us to some of the villagers who – along with Meg - crush sugar cane to make delicious fresh juice through a giant wooden press. And Sandy, our cook, slips us a kick arse lunch before we head back to Rurre.

We arrive back in Rurre and are told that our money has been spent on the food and supplies, and we won’t get much back unless we agree to another tour with Madidi. After another team meeting we decide that even though the day has been a disaster and Madidi hasn’t been completely honest, we know that Sandy is a wicked cook, Rodolfo is a fantastic guide and the four of us are already great mates so we agree to go with them on a less risky, more traditional tour of the pampas.

So we trudge through pouring rain to a moody hostel optimistic about giving the pampas another shot.

And in the coming days and weeks, Meg, Hunter, Geezer and I will regularly reminisce about the odds of having met each other and the adventures we would share. Fate or fortune? We all think both.

The story of Edmundo and Maria

Our tour of the salt flats leads us in to Bolivia – and as soon as you step over the border, you know you are in a different country.

The ‘chulitos’ (traditional women) wear layers and layers of skirts, aprons, cardigans and shawls, giving the impression of being much larger than they are. They also wear bowler hats balanced on their heads and their long hair braided into two platts, which are tied together at the end with an array of baubles and ribbons.

The men look a little less traditional but also wear hats and many wear suits.

Our next stop is Potosi, the world’s highest city and a mining centre. The touristy thing to do is a tour of the silver mines which were once the bread and butter of Bolivia. Many years ago, African slaves were brought to Potosi to mine silver under appalling conditions. But they would collect about 700kg of silver out of every tonne of rubble.

Centuries later and the conditions are still appalling but the miners collect about 50g (yes – grams) of silver out of every tonne.

I have my reservations about going. I feel like I’m going to the zoo but all the tourists come back saying how amazing it is. So I follow the sheep and go along. And yes it is amazing but also sad. We don hard hats and head lamps, and squirrel our way through tunnels watching the miners at work. We bring them gifts which they gratefully accept because these men work for less than $1 per day. They only get paid if they find something and with the mine having been drained of most of its treasures, they hardly earn a penny.

One miner stops to talk to us. Come and see where I work, he says. So we squirrel further into the mine, up a shaft in stifling conditions and he points to a hose that is pumping fresh air into the area. It is being pumped in just for the tourists. I dread to think what the conditions are like minus the tourists. The miner tells us that the pressure in his drill is not high enough for him to work so he is begging the boss to turn up the pressure.

Through a translator we have a laugh and he lets us take pictures of him at work (Bolivians are generally camera shy). His face is thick with dirt, his eyes are bright red and he is 35 but looks 55. We shake hands and wish each other well.

On our way out of the mine, a miner casually walks past us and says to our guide that they are letting off dynamite nearby. I nearly shit myself – and judging by the sideways glances of our group, so does everyone else. We then hear two distant booms that I feel in my chest. Our guide cheerfully says, OK let’s go and we’re thankfully back out in the open. He then gives us a dynamite demonstration from afar.

Later that day we catch a taxi to another small city, Sucre. It costs five of us $5 each for a three hour taxi ride!

Sucre is a lovely colonial town with a great square for Bolivian people watching. We spend the morning wandering through a food market where I attempt conversations in Spanish with the chulitos manning the stalls. It is absolutely delightful. We try to buy something small from as many stalls as possible because everyone is interested in us.

We come across a stall that sells piles and piles of cheese. We’ve bought a tonne of vegetables to make pasta and think the cheese will make a great topping. Having no clue what each cheese is, I start pointing and making animal noises to determine which animal it’s from. “Baaaaa!” Yes, the chulito says... Yes! But then she points to Geezer’s beard. Ahhhh!! Goat!! Frantic nodding and much laughing from everyone.

We then enter the meat area where I spot a chopping block, an axe and a lot of blood. I have a bit of a turn, head outside for some air, just in time to see a tourist have his backpack nicked and a mob of police chasing the offender. We high-tail it out of there.

We eventually reach the main square of Sucre and rest on a park bench watching the people go by. A young street kid approaches us to see if we want our shoes shined. All three of us – Lou, Geezer and me – are wearing thongs. Ummm... no thanks, we say. But he persists and Lou asks him if he has any red nail polish because her toe nails could do with a touch up. He laughs and says no. We start chatting to him in basic Spanish and after a few minutes a curious young girl also approaches us. Your sister? I ask. Yes, my sister he says. We all introduce ourselves. They are Edmundo and Maria.

Edmundo tells us that he is nine and Maria is seven. They have two more brothers at home. It is the middle of a weekday and I my guess is that they are too poor to be at school, sent out by their parents to work. They are wearing ragged clothes and dirty hair but they are lovely and so interested in our lives – as we are in theirs. Where’s your mama? I ask. Edmundo points off in the distance and says that she is at work.

Throughout the entire conversation Edmundo asks to shine our shoes. So we ask if he has any pink nail polish for Geezer’s toes. He laughs. Nooooo, he says.

An ice-cream vendor walks past and the children’s eyes follow it the whole way past. Geezer stops the vendor and buys them an ice-cream. Their eyes light up. I notice Maria looking from her ice-cream to a shady spot nearby. She then darts off and sits and eats her ice-cream in the shade, wanting to make it last as long as possible but also not wanting to miss out on the conversation.

Maria eventually rejoins us and Edmundo asks us how old we are. Geezer and I say our ages and then pointing at Lou, Geezer says that Lou is a hundred years old. When they realise he is joking they are nearly crying with laughter. We chat with them some more and Edmundo asks us for some water. We give him our large bottle of water and tell him to keep it. He can’t believe his luck.

So after perhaps an hour of chatting to our lovely little friends we bid them farewell. They call out our names and wave to us until we are out of sight – all five of us smiling.

Salar de Uyuni and Bolivia!

Our tour into Bolivia starts off with a bang – literally. We’re not ten minutes out of San Pedro when a tyre blows on the trailer loaded with all our backpacks. We wait for a replacement tyre to be brought out and two muppets from the tour company arrive (minus the tyre) to concur with the driver that – yes the tyre has blown.

We arrive at the Bolivian border where I’m given grief about my passport by a mean looking meat head on border control. We then discover that the dodgy tour company hasn’t sent enough jeeps for everyone and, after much protesting, 15 of us are crammed into two jeeps.

Our first day is spent driving through a desolate landscape stopping at lagoons of different colours and a hillside that looks just like a Salvador Dali painting. We arrive at the world’s highest geyser where there is a lone Canadian man on a bike... cycling all the way through the high altitude desert by himself. I tell him he’s brave and he replies that he’s just crazy!

We arrive at a hostel in the middle of the desert and discover that the temperature is about to drop to -10 degrees. We are at an altitude of more than 5000m, it’s hard to breath and it is freezing. We are given watery mashed potatoes, something that I think is a sausage and moody looking tomatoes. The owner refuses to light a fire until the temperature has dropped well below zero when he gives us some moss and one log to burn. The four of us spend the night absolutely freezing, unable to sleep because our hearts are racing from the high altitude. There are no hot showers and no electricity. Hell on earth!

 

Unimpressed, we leave the next morning to see pink flamingos, red, green and blue lagoons, and a smoking volcano. Our accommodation that night is a hotel made entirely of salt – the walls, beds, even the chairs and tables are made of salt. The temperature is significantly warmer and they serve a great dinner with wine!

 

We are up at 5am the next morning to watch the sunrise over the salt flats – the moment we have all been waiting for. Not realising that our other jeep has a flat tyre we leg it across the salt flats just as the sun is rising. We are completely surrounded by the white of the salt and a pink sky. The sun eventually peeks over the edge of the salt flat and we can make funny shadows on the salt. It is so surreal.

 

I wish we can stay longer. But we have to go. I close my eyes to soak it all in and we catch the last bit of sunrise from Fisher Island, a tiny island on the salt flat with 1200 year old cacti.

 We then drive to a part of the salt flat where the horizon is white against the blue of the sky. Because the landscape is all white we can create some pretty cool pictures. One of Geezer up close looking like he has miniature people in his hand.

And one of me climbing out of a shoe.

 Our last stop is at a train cemetery where we can climb over rusty old trains like kids. My favourite train has ‘ASI ES LA VIDA’ graffiti-ed on the side – ‘SUCH IS LIFE’.