Arrancame el carazon...

te pido amor


¡Hola muchachos!

This cool español keyboard has all the upside stuff and cool ñññññññññs!

Question: what is soroche?

It's sort of like the worst hangover you ever had times ten. But I'll get to that.

We spent our last night in San Pedro at this cool little bar place watching the Copa America game between Chile and Ecuador. Had some beers, got into the chant when Chile scored:

Chi Chi Chi
Le Le Le
Viiiiiiivvaaaaaa Chile!

The only bus out of town to Arica left at 8:45 that night, so we toddled off into the cold and stood around with the other gringos waiting.

13 hours later, Arica.

Bus ticket, 2 hour wait, then onto La Paz.

The bus was actually pretty flash, but it didn'stop me feeling like crap as we climbed above 3000m. The view was pretty bloody awesome from the bus, though - llamas (k was beside herself), flamingos, snow capped peaks, lakes.

Then...our first land border crossing. Went through Chilean customs, then a five k drive through...dunno?

Then into Bolivia. The Bolivian cops really look like cops. None of this blue uniform-security-guard look - they look military and have big guns.

Didn't check our bags at all, though, but then, who smuggles drugs into Bolivia?

After a bit, we got to La Paz. I managed to have quite a decent conversation with some weird dude on the bus wearing a leather jacket, one of those hats the Canadian logger types wear, and totin' a massive leather bound bible. I peeked in his briefcase and it was chock full of other god stuff. He was very impressed that we were from Australia and asked if it was a Catholic country. I was tempted to say mainly Islamic, but decided not to rock the boat.

So I said Hindu.

Really though, he then proceeded to tell me how unsafe La PAz was and how someone would steal K if I didn't watch out. Thank's mate - we weren't nervous at all after that.

Down the hill into La Paz (heaps of eucalyptus trees - strangely similar to coming down the Blue Mountains for a moment - but then you remeber the bus is doing a hundred, swerving, and narrowly missing all sorts of shit).

La Paz is mental. Imagine the most mental South East Asian capital (Bangkok, Jakarta, Denpasar, etc) then replace all the mopeds with Hiaces and all the motorbikes with taxis. Then add micros, old buses all painted up. As always, I came up with a theory about the noticable lack of bikes - the cops have Harleys, but a lot of the cars are American, so maybe nobody bothered to import affordable bikes from Japan, and now only a complete psycho would attempt to ride one around.

The bus terminal was sort of a shed and we grabbed our stuff and walked out into the city with no idea where we were. Strangley, I wasn't that worried - maybe my uncertainty avoidance is decreasing, hey mangoes?

Eventually we found the pub the Lonely Plant recommended...and it was booked out. Tops.

Walked around the corner and found another, looked good. We went in, and by that time we had been on buses for 24 hours. Anyway, it turned out to be a top-end type place, quite flash. Hot water, 100 cable channels, internet downstairs, private bathroom, b very exy for La Paz, though - USD$35 a night!

So we booked for three nights :)

And I felt like complete and utter shit. Altitude sickness apparently. Migraine type headache, wanted to throw up, sort of that headache you get when you curl up on the bed into the smallest ball possible and try to block out the entire world and hope like hell you will fall asleep at some point.

Which is what I did, while k happily watched House on the telly without a care in the world!

Whoa, long post.

I'll leave it here then write later about La Paz itself.

I'll leave you with this - flicking through channels we found Steve Irwin dubbed into Spanish.

Piss funny.

Imagine ¡Dios! said like crikey, if you will.

Hasta luego, señores y señoras.