Everybody On Tha Move... Na Na Na

After completing the Inca Trail Devon and I decided to see heaps, Australians say that word heaps of times when trying to describe something in a large quantity, of cities/ sites in a very small amount of time. On paper this decision was awesome, we were going to knock out a lot of the cities, and natural wonders we wanted to see/ experience in a very short period of time. After deciding to carry out the decision that looked so good on paper, we realized seeing lots of different cities and sites in a small amount of time involved loads, English people employ that word quite often when trying to describe something in a large quantity, nevertheless Austrailians say heaps, heaps more times than English say loads when trying to describe a large quantity of something, anyways seeing lots of different cities and sites in a small amount of time involved loads of our least favorite aspect of traveling, which is traveling. I know that might sound weird to you, I bet you might even be thinking to yourself how can two boys who claim to love traveling so much, hate traveling. I will explain how this strange phenomenon works.

Traveling requires quick movements, not quick movements like AI but going to different places quickly, and long bus rides, Devon and I were never too enthused by long bus rides, after taking a couple long bus rides in Peru and Bolivia our lack of enthusiasm for long bus rides turned into a pure despise for 10+ hour bus rides. Three events lead to my hatred of long bus rides, here is the break down.

Long Bus Ride 1: Cusco Peru---- Puno Peru

This technically wasn’t meant to be a long bus ride, only 6 hours, however I am convinced that punctuality and timeliness are relatively insignificant in Peru thus the bus ride took 8 and ½ hours because the Driver stopped at just about every city between Cusco and Puno with a proper bus station, so the ride took nearly 9 hours, but that didn’t faze me. The activity inside the bus was/ is the main reason I started to hate buses. First, the bus was stinky, it smelled like dirt, fried meat, and nastiness all mixed together then sprinkled on top of Body Odor. The best description of that nasty smell would be dirty meaty, nasty, Body Odor. Second, not only did the bus driver stop in heaps of little cities, he also pulled over for just about every vendor on waiting to peddle their goods on these stinky, crowded, uncomfortable buses. Normally highway vendors wouldn’t faze me, but one duo of bus vendors took it to a new level of straight nastiness. Here is the story…

Devon and I are sitting on the bus pleasantly watching Apocolypto, a masterpiece indigenous slasher movie directed by Mel Gibson, when two Peruvian women dressed in the traditional Peruvian women outfits composed of multiple layers of sweaters, a long skirt, braided hair, some sort of top hat, with a large bag strapped across her back, board our bus. One woman immediately starts selling thin transparent plastic bags filled with strips of meat accompanied by boiled potatoes. Well everyone on the bus goes nuts for this plastic bag filled with nastiness, so bus vendor number two takes off her large bag sets it down right in front of me and Devon, opens the bag, grabs a huge butcher knife and starts straight hacking large strips of meat of the half cow in her bag. I am not even kidding this woman was raising the gigantic butcher knife above her head and crashing the sharp blade into the stinky, juicy flesh of the dead cow in a Peruvian Bag. After she cut a sufficient amount of meat, she would grab the bloody, gooey, drippy, nastiness with her bare hands, stuff it into a plastic bag, then she would reach into another compartment of her bag grab some potatoes with her greasy, bloody hands and stuff the taters into the bloody nasty plastic now somewhat transparent bag.

My eyes were fixed on this odd situation like a rubber neckers eyes are fixed on a car crash in the shoulder of a road, you know you probably shouldn’t be watching, but you just can’t help it.

Anyways this continued for 5- 10 more minutes, and then the Peruvian meat peddling duo finally jumped out of the bus. After this strange bus selling event my stomach never felt 100% for the rest of the journey.

Long Bus Journey Number 2: Uyuni, Bolivia ----- La Paz, Bolivia

Welcome to Bolivia, thanks to Chile and being land locked, the most underdeveloped nation in South America. The lack of development in Bolivia means, lack of paved highways, and adequate buses. Story…

Well I explained most of it, 85% of our bus Journey from Uyuni Bolivia to La Paz Bolivia was spent on unpaved dirt highways. Unpaved dirt highways = very very bumpy roads = hard to sleep. This formula is already less than ideal, but it gets worse for my boy Devon, his seat did not recline and inch, so a new formula was created for him.

Unpaved Dirt Highways = Very Very Bumpy Roads

+Seat that doesn’t recline an Inch = No Sleep.

I am going to give another Gold star to by Boy Devon for putting up with Bolivia’s underdevelopment in an all-star manner. I don’t think he even complained once.

Long Bus Journey Number 3: La Paz, Bolivia ---- Cusco, Peru

After buying our ticket Devon and I were kinda excited for this bus ride. The woman told me we would have cama seats, which are seats that recline pretty far I would say about 150 degrees, and we would also have a snack and a desayuno. Omgosh that sounded amazing.

The seats were pretty comfy, but 30 minutes into our journey our driver discovered a group of political activists had shut down the highway so they could protest something. I thought countries with socialist presidents didn’t have to protest things, because socialism is the perfect form of government thus everyone is happy and no one protests. I guess I was wrong. Well this protest caused a huge detour for our bus, so we spent 2 hours driving through unpaved back roads trying to find a way around the protest.

Our bus driver was doing work through the back roads until we came across a river… which was actually a very small puddle like thing between to medium sized puddle banks of rocks.

Well our bus driver decided crossing this puddle like body of water was going to be difficult so we had to get off the bus, bajarnos del bus, to lighten up the load. Once the load was lightened he tried to cross this puddle of danger, but his first attempt was unsuccessful. So all the bus experts deliberated for 15 minutes and they decided the best solution to this problem would be to throw medium sized rocks into the puddle of death. Slowly but surely 50 people started tossing medium sized rocks into this puddle because somehow that was going to get the bus across the puddle of death I don’t want to come across as a neoliberalistic meanie face, but I have a theory Underdeveloped nations = somewhat underdeveloped thought process. All I have to say is thank the big man Devon and I had so much practice tossing rocks while playing rock toss in Chiloe, Chile. After we tossed rocks into the puddle for 15 minutes our Driver decided it was time to try and cross the puddle of death. After some skillful driving our driver successfully made it across the puddle of death, woo hoo!!

The rest of the ride was okay but spending more than an hour watching a bus trying to cross a puddle set me off a little bit.

Traveling also means one doesn’t have sufficient time to develop strong friendships within the hostel community. Example, Devon and I stayed in Rio for 11 days, and during these 11 days we accumulated heaps of friends on Facebook, I am talking at least 14+. During our brief stint in La Paz, Bolivia we met a lot of great people, but we didn’t have sufficient time to take our friendship to the next level and become friends on Facebook. We gained zip zero friends on Facebook during our brief stints in La Paz. This may seem insignificant, but let me assure you friends on Facebook = Friends Forever.

Those are the central reasons why my least favorite part of Traveling is Traveling.

Now onto more interesting things, first let me give you a breakdown of where we were and dates that corresponds.

March 6^th- 8^th Cusco, Peru

March 8^th-10^th Puno, Peru

March 10^th-12^th La Paz, Bolivia

March 13^th-14^th Uyuni, Bolivia

March 15^th-16^th La Paz, Bolivia

March 16^th- 18^th Cusco Peru

March 18^th Lima Peru

March 18th Quito, Ecuador

As you can clearly see we were on the move, hence the Title of this Blog Everybody on Tha Move, which is a song by Michael Franti.

Anyways let me give you some highlights of the many different places we were.

Cusco, Peru- The city served as the Capital of the Incan empire, it’s buildings are gorgeous, there are lots of neat ruins, the nightlife is great, actually I have just heard the nightlife is great Devon and I never actually went out in Cusco, and there is an amazing restaurant called Jacks.

Puno, Peru- This town is freezing cold at night and there really isn’t much to see as far as the town goes, but it is borders Lake Titicaca which is gorgeous. Since the only thing to do in Puno is see Lake Titicaca Devon and I thought it would be a good idea to take a little tour of Lake Titicaca, isn’t that fun to say “Titicaca.” Anyways our tour was quite neat they took us to a little area of the massive lake called Uros. Uros is famous for having floating islands. You might be asking yourself floating Islands what are those… I will explain.

When the Spanish came down on their bloody conquest a group of people fled into Lake Titicaca and they constructed Islands which are made solely out of reeds. A small group of people still live on these 2 meter thick reed islands. Pretty neat huh?

La Paz, Bolivia- The world’s highest city. Gazing down at La Paz from a hill top is fascinating. It appears the city was originally built in a large valley, and when the valley ran out of room, people started constructing buildings along the mountain sides. Now the city looks like a mountain range covered in buildings rather than trees. I am not sure if that explanation makes sense so I will post two pictures of the city so you can see for yourself.

Anyways La Paz does a great job of segregating Gringos, Anglo-Saxon foreigners, from the rest of the city. There are Gringo Hostals, Gringo Bars, Gringo Restaurants, Gringo Clubs, and Gringo Extreme Activities, and Gringo Tourist Attractions.

Example- The map our Gringo Hostel provided us conveniently had numerous tourist attractions marked on it, and somehow all of these tourist attractions were Gringo related. Since Devon and I aren’t really creative do it yourself backpackers we followed the map and went to the different Gringo restaurants, bars, and tourist attractions. We definitely had a nice Gringo experience in La Paz.

Although we did take part in a lot of Gringo activities such as A Bunch of Gringos watch Cholitos wrestling, Gringo vs. Gringo paintball, and consuming Gringo food at Gringo Restaurants. We also, saw a lot of the city on our daily epic walkabout.

The Highlight of walkabout was mos def, that means most definitely but it kinda sounds a little more edgy, the markets in Bolivia. Everything you would ever want is sold in Bolivian street markets, Shampoo, Lotion, Chewy Gobstoppers, Fake Designer Clothing, Alcohol, Soda, Towels, Meat, DVD’s, CD’s, Sunglasses, Books, Electronics, and anything else you may find at a Target or Wal-Mart. Also, the layout of the of the markets are hilarious, one block will be all shampoo, and lotion, then the next block will be all candy/ cookies, to your right is a lane full of nasty meat, then to your left could be 10 different shops selling sneakers. Honestly, it is kind of hard to explain the street market madness in Bolivia, but if you want a more local less Gringo experience in Bolivia mos def check out the street markets.

Uyuni Bolivia: Home of the world’s largest salt flats, Salari. After doing a little bit of research I found out the slat flats were created after a gigantic lake dried up. Honestly, I am glad the lake dried up because the salt flats are stunning. When we finally entered the salt flats, I felt like I was in a desert covered in Snow. It is really hard to describe the Salari so hopefully the pictures do the talking.

The tour of the Salari de Uyuni, was somewhat unorganized and kinda strange but hey I was in Bolivia, what could I really expect. Here is a break down of the tour.

Our Salt Flat group was composed of one Brazilian Man, Two Japanese Girls, Two Argentinean Girls, and Two American Boys, Devon and I.

Stage 1: Our not so friendly Driver took us to a “Train Graveyard” and everyone there took cheesy pictures next to rusty trains.

Stage 2: Our not so friendly Driver took us to a little market where Bolivian ladies sold things made out of Salt.

Stage 3: Our not so friendly Driver took us to the first area of the Salt Flats where locals gather salt to be processed and sold. Absolutely Stunning.

Stage 4: Our not so friendly Driver took us to an area called Isla Del Pescado, which was a big cactus covered land mass in the middle of the Salt Flat Abyss. We sat down around tables and chairs made of Slat and ate a sub par lunch. After lunch Devon and I walked around the huge Cactus covered land mass, and took a bunch of pictures of the slat flats.

Stage 5: Our not so friendly Driver took us back to our hotel.

Doesn’t sound too exciting but it was awesome.

We spent the rest of our time in Uyuni in our hotel room watching an HBO television series called The Wire.

After Uyuni we went back to La Paz, stayed there one night. We slept for a total of 3 hours in La Paz, then took a 16 hour bus ride to Cusco, stayed in the beautiful city of Cusco for one day and two nights. Then took a flight to Lima, waited in the airport for 3 hours then flew on up to Quito. Lots of traveling but lots of good times and great memories.