Cochabamba and the tin opener effect

Having been woken at 5.30am by the cockerels on the farm in Mizque, we got an early start to Cochabamba.  A good job because the road was mostly hand-laid stone.

This meant more bone rattling, but the scenery was pretty cool - we rose to almost 3,000m and made it beyond the cloud base. 

We did a lot of the journey behind an empty fuel tanker, which meant some cool pix that show how mad the road was in places - precarious mountain passes, often with space for just one vehicle at a time.  Again, we were lucky it wasn't too wet.

We also picked up a hitchhiker who endured about an hour of bone rattling before we got to tarmac and his destination of Punata.

Punata was a timely stop for lunch.  We ate at a choriceria which serves only fried sausage.

Don't think you're supposed to really eat salad here because of the questionable water quality in Bolivia, but we're a bit maverick, me and Paul, so we just ate it....and we survived!  Woohoo!  It was delicious.  The pickled carrot salad was particularly nice.  Thumbs up for the choriceria in Punata.

Our overnight aim in Cochabamba was an out of town hostel called Hostel Las Lilas, which has a pool, Wi-Fi and, most importantly, a place where we can park the van.  However, the spiky railings above the entrance were too low for us!  

(The offending arch and spikes in the daytime)

I thought that was it, we'd have to find somewhere else, but to my surprise, the owner Alex said we could bend the spikes to get the van in!  How mad is that?!  And despite having had hernia surgery just a week ago, he even helped us.  In fact, when Paul came to have a go at bending one of the spikes, he was at a loss as to how Alex had managed it! 

(View from roof of van as Paul tried to bend one of the spikes. The rake he was using bent instead.)

Anyway, after a major display of testosterone, I was on spike-watch on the roof while Paul slowly edged the van forward. We seemed to have bent the spikes just enough until the very last bit - because the path sloped down slightly, the gap between one of the spikes and the van closed as we drove in.  My eyes almost popped out of my head when Alex started climbing on the roof armed with a hacksaw!!!!  He was seriously going to saw off the spike!

But in clambering up, Alex inadvertently solved the problem without the need for such drastic action - his weight on the back of the van pushed it low enough to be able to clear the spike without having to saw it off!  We were in!

Unfortunately, in our initial attempts to get the van through, we damaged the roof slightly in a tin opener-esque fashion. 

Nothing a bit of waterproof roof tape won't fix...

Anyway, we're really glad we made the effort, this hostel is brilliant.

Just kidding. That's a derelict building they're refurbishing at one end of the site.  The hostel really is very nice.  We've been able to park under a canopy right by the hostel building, with shower and toilets nearby and use of the kitchen.

And even though we wrecked the security gate, we were fed a delicious meal of chicken and mash last night.

Sucre and Mizque

We weren't expecting much proper camping in Bolivia, unlike Argentina where every town seems to have at least one campsite.  So we were excited to find one marked in Sucre on our Open Source Map.  Other travellers' instructions for camping at Alberto & Felicidad's said knock loudly on the brown door.  But when we did that, the young guy who answered said they no longer owned the place!  Felicidad confirmed it when we knocked at her house around the corner.  Quite gutting as it had all the facilities we needed and was the only place to camp in Sucre.  We ended up spending a couple of nights camped randomly in the centre of town.  

(A couple of shots of Sucre's plaza)

Enough time to try the best salteñas in town (from El Paso De Los Abuelos)...

(They came with a helpful guide to identifying your salteña: chicken, meat or ham & cheese)

...and have a delicious meal and happy hour cocktails at Florin with some other travellers we'd first met in Tupiza and Potosi.  Paul and I tried a cocktail made with a liquor made from coca leaves...not bad but no pix!

Fall-off-the-bone ribs with the crispest French fries ever.

Apple crumble! (with cream rather than custard though)

Our original plan was to head from Sucre to Oruro on our way to La Paz.  But other than being the birthplace of President Morales, Oruro didn't sound like it had much to offer, so on a whim we headed for Cochabamba (or Chumbawumba, as Paul has been calling it).

However, we forgot that Franco had told us which roads were tarmaced and this was not one of them!  (We had driven from Villazon to Sucre via Tupiza and Potosi all on tarmaced roads). About 70km in, the asphalt ended...

Every now and again, we were teased with a bit of tarmac, but for the most part we were bouncing along at around 40km/h on unpaved dirt track.

We were lucky it hadn't rained much, but it still meant our already long drive was going to be even longer.  The van had run out of water (for washing etc) so when we spotted a campsite on the map on our route we added an unscheduled overnight stop in the tiny village of Mizque.  A campsite called Camping Las Cabañas turned out to be a small family farm. 

After initially appearing gobsmacked to see tourists (this village is tiny), the lady of the farm let us park up, fill with water and use the facilities.

With Ayulina (I think that's how her name was pronounced)

Later that evening we even got to try chicha, a fermented corn drink which Cochabamba is famous for and which the family makes.

It was unusual but tasty and quite cool to try it in those circumstances having read about it in the guide book.

Buying fuel in Bolivia

Fuel in Bolivia is dirt cheap.  It's subsidised so diesel costs about 34p/l.  But the catch is you're only supposed to get it for that price if you're Bolivian.  Fuel stations are supposed to fill out extra paperwork and charge you more if you're a foreigner - in some places they simply can't be arsed and the first place we went to (as we entered Potosi) told us they had no diesel even though there were two trucks refuelling.  The second place further down the road charged us 83p/l so we got 30l to get us to Sucre. 

When we left Sucre, one friendly fuel station told us we could get fuel for the cheap price if we had a fuel canister - if he filled the van directly he'd have to charge us the foreigners' price.  But actually the easiest way to do it is to go to a rural petrol station.  On the way in to the tiny village of Mizque, we were filled with diesel at 34p/l with no hesitation. Yay!

Wood, music, dancing and hail.

The drive to Sucre would have been pretty uneventful if we hadn't made an unscheduled stop when we came across a load of vehicles parked by the side of the highway. It turned out there was some sort of tribal/village gathering going on so we decided to investigate.

The first thing we noticed was several people carry large pieces of wood about. 

We think there was some sort of wood/ladder market going on.

Next we heard some interesting sounding music and decided to investigate. It was pretty weird being very obviously the only non-locals around but people didn't seem to mind us wandering about, taking photos, even if we had a lot of eyes on us.

The music was accompanied by people dressed in various costumes and masks, doing a sort of circular procession. 

We watched this for a bit but then got distracted by a violent looking thunderstorm kicking off over the nearby mountains. The storm was pretty obviously coming our way so we decided to make our way through the stalls and head back to the van. 

As the wind started picking up we realised we had perhaps misjudged the distance back and were forced to break into a sprint once the incredibly large and painful hailstones started to fall! In the chaos and with locals scattering everywhere we managed to get back to the safety of the van where we could watch the lightshow happening around us. 

Later, once we had begun driving again, even though this was a very short downpour, we saw how the previously dry riverbeds and drainage ditches were now rushing with water. You could really get a feel for how disruptive the rainy season would be.

Potosi

Because of the altitude, Paul and I found ourselves unable to do much on our first day in Potosi.  We found a cafe with excellent wifi and a 4-course lunch for £4 so made ourselves at home there for a while.  The courses included pancake, quinoa soup and llama steak.

Our plan was to visit the mint, but we were the only two wanting an English-language tour when we went, so we were told maybe there'd be enough if we went back later.  So we headed back to our wifi place and had cake and submarino (hot chocolate made by melting a piece of chocolate in hot milk.)

The mint is meant to be Potosi's best museum but you can only go in on a guided tour.  Thankfully, there were enough people for an English-language tour later that afternoon.  It was really good - we learnt lot of new facts, like the origin of the dollar sign, and also saw controversial mummified babies.  We didn't get any pictures though as you had to pay to use your camera and neither of us was sneaky enough. 

Later on the first day, we realised our fridge wasn't working.  Paul got to work pulling it apart.

The problem appeared to be dust in the jet of the gas burner, but in trying to fix it, we damaged it beyond repair.  Doh!  Cue a day of internet searching the next day.  We managed to track down the name of the part we need, but with our crappy Spanish it was going to be impossible to source one here, so we have ordered one from the UK to be shipped out to La Paz.  It will take about a week, so our plan is to lesiurely head to La Paz.

After a day of admin, we finally got round to Potosi's main attraction - a tour of the mines.  Potosi's economy is driven by a hill in the south called the Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) where silver was found.  It's now mined for zinc, lead and other minerals.  We'd been warned that the tours are tough - low tunnels, high temperatures and lots of dust.  You have to be mentally prepared!!  And dressed for the occasion.

This was our guide Ronald, a former miner himself.  Luckily, we didn't have to dress like that.

The tour included a visit to the miner's market where we bought gifts for the miners, including drinks (because it's so hot), 96% alcohol (used by the miners during their Friday ritual), coca leaves and dynamite. 

Ronald has the 96% alcohol, I'm holding a stick of dynamite.

The yellow bag, known as a completo (not a Chilean hot dog), contains dynamite, a fuse and a catalyst to make the explosion bigger.

Then it was on to the refinery where we were shown extracted silver of about 75% purity.

Then down to business: entering the mine.

First we visited Tio.  The miners believe that the minerals belong to the devil, so they build a shrine to him called Tio (or uncle) and every Friday they offer him coca leaves, cigarettes and alcohol to appease him.

To get down to level 3 of the mine where miners were actually working involved crawling on hands and knees in some places.  For once, I was glad to be small.  There was a tall German guy in the group who complained more than once that his neck was killing him!  

We saw various stages of the mining process, including rocks being loaded into carts and winched to the surface.

The toughest work we saw though was miners drilling holes for dynamite.  The drills produced so much dust, it was unbearable.  This is the scene with no flash.

With flash on, you can see just how bad it was.

It may have seemed voyeuristic to be going in to a mine and gawping at these men doing one of the toughest jobs, but Ronald assured us that the miners welcome tourists, not only because of the gifts, but also because 15% of what we paid went towards to the miners' cooperative.  

No doubt the tour was tough.  Climbing out of the mine was done in stages because the altitude made it so much harder!  I would definitely not recommend it to anyone with breathing difficulties, nor anyone with a fear of bashing their knees on rocks :o(

We were all so glad to survive!

Look at the state of my face!