Chinese New Year in Singapore and the islands in southern Thailand

Dear reader, I'm back!

First of all, some of my lazy French friends asked me to write a summary in French of each article, so from now on, my posts will start with  few lines in French.

Resume du premier episode asiatique:

Apres trois semaines en Europe entre Londres et Paris en janvier, me voici enfin en Asie pour de nouvelles aventures. Je suis tout d'abord alle a Singapour rendre visite a mon ami Chor pendant le nouvel an chinois, puis j'ai decolle direction Bangkok. Pour des raisons de visa et de vaccin, j'ai du legerement modifier mes plans de voyage (qui demeurent de toute facon toujours assez flexibles, ca ne serait pas fun sans la possibilite d'improviser!) et suis reste dans les iles du sud de la Thailande pendant deux semaines et demi: Phuket, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Lanta et Koh Phangan de l'autre cote. Le sud etant assez touristique, ca n'etait pas forcement la partie la plus culturelle du sejour mais j'ai pu glandouiller tranquilement dans des endroits paradisiaques et surtout rencontrer plein de gens tres cools venus des quatre coins du monde. Bisous, a la prochaine.

Once the doctor gave me the green light regarding my wrist, I immediately booked my flight for Asia, visited friends between Paris and London and before I could realise, I was on my plane to Singapore, back to my travels.

So here I am, end of January, landing in Singapore a bit more than a year after having visited this place for the first time. It seems that by luck I picked the best time to be there, arriving just before Chinese new year celebrations. I was staying at my friend Chor's place and he brought me around to all these dinners, making me discover the tradition from the inside.

Briefly speaking, the Chinese New Year consists in many dinners, with traditional food served only during the two weeks that new year celebrations last, spending weekends visiting family and friends (they will have their door open and a big banquet ready to receive you at any time of the day), and of course some gambling, a very strong Chinese tradition. A very surprising and unexpected tradition linked to the "visiting" are the red envelopes. It basically works that way: married persons will have to carry such envelopes containing pristine bank notes, and when they meet non-married persons, they would offer them one of these envelopes. So when you go to visit a family friend, all the married adults in the room would come to you and basically give you free money, a very unusual and surprising tradition I had never heard of before! And on the plus side, it made losing at poker on my last night much less painful...

Next stop on my list was Bangkok, where I only spent a day and a half to check a few things regarding my visa for Myanmar and some vaccination I still required for the trip. Because of this missing injection, I had to stay in the South of Thailand and avoid the more infected northern regions. Bangkok being a big hub for my travels, I knew I would come back here at least a couple of times and therefore did not bother visiting too much of it. I only saw a very dirty city (arriving from Singapore, every city in the world would probably look dirty) and more interestingly I ended up in the park were big demonstrations against the regime were held, an improvised camp were many demonstrators are living and protesting. Everyone tells you to avoid it of course, but in the end I was very surprised by the quietness and the peaceful way in which people were trying to show their anger to the government. Thais are known for being very peaceful and always trying to avoid aggressive confrontations and loss of temper in public, but I did not expect this. Even though roadblocks perturbed the traffic and some areas were full of military clothes, Thai flags, nationalists slogans and "Shutdown Bangkok, restart Thailand!" T-shirts, I did not see any trace of brutality, no fireguns, nothing clearly indicating violence. Of course, you should avoid wearing the wrong colours in some areas (I will not get into details, but basically the 'yellow' camp seem to be protesting against the 'red' one), but overall I felt pretty safe there, at least during daytime.

Demonstrators camp

I then took a night bus to Phuket, probably the most famous island in Thailand, and arrived in the morning in Patong, the main touristic town on the island.

Oh. My. God.

I have rarely seen a place as ugly as Patong. It is full of retirees on holidays, burning under the sun on an extremely crowded beach, drinking beer all day long... I can't even find words to describe it. Honestly, I would not even want to get paid to spend a holiday week in Patong.

Vision of hell: Patong Beach

But wait, we keep hearing about Phuket, and not only as a tourist pack destination. Where are the beautiful beaches, five-stars resorts, villas and turquoise water which attract jet setters and those happy few from all around the world? I decided to rent a scooter and went on to check other bays, further south from Patong. I passed a nice boutique hotel and decided to stop there to ask for directions (I was trying to find some 'secret' beach I had heard of). As I parked my scooter, I realised it could be a good idea to have a look at the place... which turned out to be pretty amazing. And since no one bothered asking me if I actually was a client of the hotel, I ended up spending most of my day by their amazing sea-water swimming pool... So yes, there are still some hidden paradises in Phuket!

Vision of paradise: Villa Royale hotel, Phuket

I also went on a highly recommended eco-tour, literally it had the best reviews I have ever seen on TripAdvisor so far. They pick you up in the morning at your hotel and bring you on a boat, where you enjoy plenty of delicious Thai food before the real thing starts. You go on a canoe with another tourist and a guide, and while you lay down and relax, the guide will paddle into cave and hongs, making you discover mangroves and beautiful untouched nature only accessible this way. Experiencing this level of quietness in such an incredible scenery was a truly unique experience, and the contrast with messy Patong couldn't be stronger.

Entering a hong

Hong seen from the outside

Back on the boat, you are introduced to the Thai tradition of kratongs, floating light supports made of natural components and with the help of your guide you build your own one. 

Our beautiful kratong

Sunset from the boat

Then, after having had dinner and watched the sunset from the boat, you're back on the canoe and into a cave full of bats to light up the kratongs and release them. Finally, when the lights fade away, and you're in the true darkness of the cave, the best part is still to come: play with the water and hundreds of bioluminescent plancton will light up like stars in the water. Astonishing.

I left Phuket after this awesome day and took a ferry to Koh Phi Phi. A very small and therefore very crowded island, good for diving and partying with drunken Brits. Not that Patong wasn't fun party wise, but at least the crowd on Phi Phi is much younger. To give you an idea of the atmosphere, there was this bar with a muay Thai (Thai boxing) ring in the middle where people could volunteer to fight and would win buckets of alcohol for that. Having a beer in front of this spectacle, while Arsenal was being raped by Liverpool on the screens broadcasting the English Premier league made it for a good night. Alex, this very cool dude from Annecy I met there, was always in for a fight. He even won three of the four fights he took part in! And if you need more, head north to the beach, where you'll find a taste of the full moon party, people playing with fire and loud music all night long.

The ring, with some Thai kids showing off their skills

I also went on a tour of some nearby gorgeous islands, but too touristic. When you arrive on monkey beach, see monkeys being fed by everyone and some tourists giving them beer, you know that something is wrong. And you understand why it may be worth to pay a bit more for eco-friendly tours.

Something went wrong on monkey beach 

On the islands around Koh Phi Phi 

Sunset from our long boat

Next stop was Koh Lanta. We (I was traveling with Alex at that time) ended up in this beautiful bay, 500 metres of sand with two five star resorts, our small hotel, a few restaurants, some villas up on the hill and only one local bar, playing live music every night in a very laid back atmosphere. Which made it a great place to mingle with other people around, who were not necessarily backpackers like us (especially not this Brit cool gay couple on their five star honey moon) but still very open for a chat. 

Yet another great sunset on Koh Lanta

We met really cool Chileans (which was excellent for my Spanish) and I ended up spending the whole following day with them, chilling and recovering from our Phi Phi intense partying.

We then went to the other coast of Thailand, and arrived in Koh Phangan four days before the infamous full moon party. For those who haven't yet heard about it, the full moon party, held as you could have guessed on every full moon night in Koh Phangan, is one of the biggest parties in Asia, and the island is literally invaded by thousands of revellers every four weeks. It is quite a big deal when you travel in Southeast Asia.

Following some friends advice, we were staying in a bungalow in Haad Yuan, five minutes away from the main party place, Haad Rin, but only accessible by taxi boat, which means that it was a world apart from soulless Haad Rin. Finding a bungalow had been quite difficult, the whole bay having been invaded by a group of 62 Canadians, but we managed to find a very decent and cheap one, with extremely good breakfast included.

Our set of bungalows

 Breakfast in paradise

But once there, I discovered a totally different mentality. Most people were here to practise meditation, yoga, to relax and enjoy a simple and free life. I met Saga, a Finnish girl who over the week became a very precious friend, and who had discovered the bay two years ago. She introduced me to the main places and most importantly helped me get into the right mindset to fully enjoy it. Overall, people there were so open that I had very deep conversations and finally started to appreciate what traveling really is. As Saga put it, "there is so much to discover when traveling. Everything around you and so much within yourself". And it's only now, about five months into my travels, that I am starting to grasp this idea. 

Bamboo hut in Haad Yuan

The full moon party became actually not so important, but I still went with Alex, since we wanted to meet many friends there (but never found them within the huge crowd) and since we first came to the island for that reason. Plus it could still be fun to watch drunk people get burnt trying to do stupid games on the beach. 

Overall, it was good fun but I didn't stay very late. The mass of dancing persons was truly impressive, and I found a spot with decent music a bit further north from the main five or six main bars, but surrounded by so many fluokids I didn't really manage to get into the mood. Even if it wasn't the best night of my trip, it is still something I will remember and I am glad I did. I woke up the next morning went straight to meet Saga at a party in Haad Yuan that had been going on all night long and went on raving till they stopped in the early afternoon. Much more my kind of fun!

Aussies and Brit, my new post- full moon after party friends

After that, Alex went back to Phuket were his parents now live, and I cancelled my trip to nearby Koh Tao, one of Thailand best diving spots apparently, to stay a bit more in Haad Yuan and enjoy this peaceful paradise. Diving will be for another occasion, and probably not right after the full moon when Koh Tao suddenly crowds up.

The view from the top, very worthwhile trek

Sunset from the ferry leaving Koh Phangan

That's it for today!

From wherever on the planet you are reading this, have an amazing day and enjoy life!

Besos,

อองรี

San Pedro de Atacama, back to Argentina & Uruguay

Located at the heart of the most arid desert in the world, the small town of San Pedro de Atacama is one of Chile most famous touristic attractions. The town itself has not much to offer, but its surroundings are definitely worth a visit. San Pedro is by far one of the most expensive places in Chile, but prices seem outrageously prohibitive mainly because we were arriving from cheap Bolivia, so we decided not to stay too long there and to do as much as we possibly could in a couple of days.

Agencies offered some tours which were quite similar to what we had just done in Bolivia, so we selected the only ones that seemed relevant to us. 

One day, we rented mountain bikes and went to see both the Death and Moon Valleys, some impressive rocky landscapes, as you can see on the following picture.

 Death Valley (1)

 Death Valley (2)

We started biking at 9:30am and came back at 7:30pm. A whole day biking in the driest place on earth, under a burning sun. You can imagine how tired we were when we went to bed, but at least we felt asleep loaded with great memories.

On the following day, we went to a tour to visit other beautiful places in the middle of the desert. It was mainly a set of stunning lagoons, the first one being deep and salty enough to let you float as if you were in the dead sea, and the last one, where we enjoyed some pisco sour watching the sunset, was basically a very vast and thin layer of extremely salty water, of a stunning changing colour, as you can see on the following pictures.

 Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (1)
 

Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (2)

  Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (3)

Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (4)

Next stop on our route was Salta, on the north west corner of Argentina. After about two months out of the country, I was finally back. It felt so good to be once again in Argentina that I am even tempted to say it felt good to be "back home"...

Salta

After having changed our dollars on the black market as usual, we visited the town and we (Duncan, Dan, Carl and myself) organised a traditional asado (barbecue) with some great Malbec, before heading to Manu Chao's concert. The concert itself was ok, except that I got robbed by some pickpocket gang who had quite cleverly thought that such a big crowd full of backpackers would be an easy target. Luckily I only had my wallet with me, with no credit card and wasn't carrying a lot of cash. The fun part of this story was when I ended up at the police station, negotiating with the officer so that he would take my testimony. At first he clearly refused to cooperate and to do his job (probably a question of showing some nice statistics to the minister at the end of the year, or perhaps he simply wanted to go home early...), but when I started to shout angrily at him in Spanish, he understood I would not leave before getting an official document... which I manage to get in the end!

Another good memory (because, overall, getting robbed there will remain a funny memory) was the night we spent at Loki Salta, one of the many Loki hostels in South America, but which was surprisingly located very far from the city centre. Because of a special deal they were offering (basically, you could stay there for free, they still make their money on drinks and food they sell at the bar), we met there so many persons we had been traveling with at some point over the last few months, including a large group of Dutch girls and, of course, many Israeli we had met in Bolivia.

At that time, I had realised that I needed some change. Despite the fact that the area between Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina had offered me some of the most beautiful landscapes I have seen in my life, I was getting a bit bored of dry mountains... So I decided to change my plans and booked a flight to Bariloche, in the Argentinian lake district, at the north west border of Patagonia, a place considered as Argentina's top skiing destination in winter and a great place in summer for people who enjoy mountains and gorgeous lakes.

Ruta de los Sietes Lagos, between Bariloche and San Martin de los Andes

Bariloche (1)

Bariloche (2)  

 Bariloche (3)

Bariloche (4)

Natural park near El Bolson

I stayed around Bariloche for six days, visiting San Martin de los Andes and the charming hippie village of El Bolson. Literally, the city was self-proclamed non-nuclear zone fifteen or twenty years ago and they hold a market every other day, where a crowd of old hippie, white rasta and pseudo bohemian wander around looking at ethical home-made products, eco-friendly wooden educational games, sipping some organic fruit juice and occasionally sharing a joint. Weird medicinal plants shop juxtaposed with the pharmacy complete the picture of this laid-back town, surrounded by beautiful mountains, lakes, and clouds of weed.

After that, I took a night bus to cross Argentina all the way east to the Atlantic coast, in order to see the Peninsula Valdes, a world heritage natural site mostly known for its very unique wildlife. I got there early enough to catch a tour to the Peninsula. It was the end of the whale season so I didn't get the chance to see any of them, but I did see sea lions, sea elephants, pinguins, a tapir, more lamas, and some strange animals I had never heard of. Unluckily no killer whales, even if it usually a good spot to watch them. 

Unfortunately, due to some technical issues, I cannot post any photos yet about it...

The sea lions and elephants where probably the funniest. We saw some sea lions aggressively fighting for a female, whereas sea elephants spend their days literally doing nothing. Unlike sea lions, who go hunting for fish everyday and sleep on the shore, sea elephants live at a very different pace. Because they go hunting for food quite far and deep in the sea, they spend four months eating and living in the sea and then come back on the beach for two months and spend their day chilling in the sun, sometimes going for a swim when they feel like it. Life's hard, really.

From there, I went back to Buenos Aires, where I was staying for a week or so at a friend's place, mainly recovering from the forty four hours I had spent in busses in just four days, and then simply meeting some friends, eating even more beef, going to pool parties... Life's hard, really. The city was also living its hottest summer in a century, with a lasting heatwave causing massive disruption and electricity and water shortages, even sometimes for a few days in a row for the worst afflicted areas of the city.

I also spent a weekend in Punta del Este, Uruguay, staying at a friend of friend's place. This guy basically retired and he now spends half of the year playing golf in Punta, and the rest of the time in France. Life's hard, really. I have rarely met anyone as warm and welcoming as him, and really had a lot of fun over those 48 hours. He showed me around Punta, from the beautiful villas up north in Jose Ignacio to the old town where the Rio de la Plata meets the Atlantic, from the more Bohemian bars of La Barra, a place that probably looks like Ibiza twenty years ago, to Punta's famous casino... and I must say that I was very positively surprised by what I discovered. Punta is kind of a mix between Miami and Saint Tropez, but in South America. Real estate is booming, but except a few uggly towers with too many storeys located in the centre, they managed to build classy and not too glossy buildings, and even some amazing ones, like the one in which Zinedine Zidane bought a flat (a whole floor with its private infinity pool, to be more precise). Money (and probably not always of the cleanest kind) pours in from everywhere, but mostly from rich Argentinians who want to invest some of their wealth abroad, in a more stable environment than Argentina's economic mess. Therefore, the whole thing looks like a massive bubble, especially because Uruguayans (like in many other South american countries) live on credit. But unless Argentina suddenly turns into a stable and business-friendly country, the bubble could keep on inflating much more... 

Anyway, from a purely touristic perspective, over the summer Punta becomes full of Porteños, who live just across the rio, and rich Brazilians fly in with their private jets to be there on Christmas and NYE. Punta becomes the place to be for a few weeks, and I can now understand why.

Again, no photos to show you from Punta for the moment...

Finally, just before Christmas, my parents and my sister Claire came to visit me. We spent a week in and around Buenos Aires, spending a day in Colonial del Sacramento, Uruguay, and one for a lunch outside of the city centre with some friends. My cousins also came to BA right after Christmas, so it was really cool being all there together on the other side of the planet.

We spent NYE in Montevideo, a city that literally shuts down for two days at that time (every Uruguayan seems to have left for Punta!) and then went on traveling to the northeast of Argentina. We visited some of the famous Jesuit missions located between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, saw the biggest barrage in the world in terms of electricity production, built on a river in between Paraguay and Brazil and of course, concluded this fantastic trip with two days at the Iguazu falls. We first saw this magical scenery from the Brazilian side, stopping at an exotic birds park where we saw many colourful toucans and parrots, and finally spent our last day on the Argentinian side of the waterfalls, from where you can better experience both the power of the waterfalls and the sense of entering a lost world of wild forest and unreal waterfalls.

I'll leave it there! 

To tell the truth, I'm writing these few lines from a beautiful restaurant in the South of Thailand, facing the sea, so... I was a bit late and still have quite a bit to catch up! 

Kiss love peace dear reader!

El Riton

Bolivia

After three intense weeks in Peru with my friend Pam, I headed straight to La Paz, where I spent a few days visiting the city and writing my previous article about Peru (Bolivian internet being really slow, it takes ages to upload any picture).

La Paz is a very depressing city. 3600m above sea-level makes it a difficult place to breathe, but add an extremely polluted and dry air, rain every afternoon (it's the beginning of the rainy season here) and you can get an idea why I really hate this place. It is surrounded by impressive mountains, as you can see on the following picture. But I said impressive, not beautiful.

 La Paz  - View from the top (1)

La Paz - Supposedly Bohemian area

On the contrary to places like Santiago or Hong Kong, where local topography also drives the social organisation of the city, here poorer people live in the highest areas (about 400 metres higher than the city centre) in the north of the city, for example on the way to the airport (highest of its size in the world for the anecdote), whereas wealthier areas are located in the south of the city, maybe 400 or 500 metres lower than the city historical centre.

Another great electric engineering work

 La Paz  - View from the top (2)

You may think that I insist a lot on altitudes in this article, but it is really important in Bolivia, both in terms of health (altitude sickness, lack of oxygen when you do some physical effort, etc.) and in terms of pride to always be the highest something in the world (I have seen villages indicating their altitude to the nearest centimetre, so yes, Bolivian do care about it).

I was also waiting for my Dutch friend Ruby to arrive in La Paz (she was visiting lake Titicaca at that time) so that we could get into the infamous San Pedro prison.

Let me tell you the whole story.

Mel, my friend Chor's cousin (to make it simpler) had told me about this book "Marching Powder" she read, which basically tells the story of a Brit who got arrested for some drug-related crime and was put into this jail. He seems to be the one who started offering illegal guided tours of the prison to tourists. I had heard about it long time ago, but now that I was in Bolivia, it had piqued my curiosity and I decided to get more info about this place.

The prison is divided in eight neighbourhoods, each with its elected mayor, treasurer, etc. You'll find no guards and no rules within these walls, guards only control the entrance of the jail. Prisoners have organised their lives themselves, and there are countless surreal anecdotes about how this tiny closed-economy actually works.

To put things in context, three quarters of the people there have been sent behind bars for drug-related crimes (Cocaine is a big deal in Bolivia, even taxi drivers ask you if you want some when you go out in La Paz). Apparently, everything is organised around money and prisoners have to buy their own cell, resulting in drug barons owning proper houses, sometimes living there with their family with all the comfort you could dream of (tv, rooftop bbq, sauna...).

Anyways, that sounded way too interesting to miss it, so we decided to take the risk and check it by ourselves.

Because, yes, since it is totally illegal, there are some risks involved.

A few years ago, after journalists filmed an American girl exiting the prison while proudly raising her middle finger (a video that went viral on the web), authorities decided to stop these illegal tours. But since this was really helping prisoners to make some extra money and live slightly more decently, a huge rebellion followed. Since then, there have been ups and downs, but the trend is pretty clear: authorities want to stop these guided tours and avoid more bad press about it. Recently, there's been a lot of buzz around a tourist being raped while she was visiting the prison, so now they seem to have seriously clamped down on visits.

Of course, there is a bit of voyeurisme involved in all this: if you manage to get in, you'll see where these guys live all year long, sometimes impinging on their privacy. But my personal opinion (and you may disagree with it) was that done with respect, without taking photos as if you were on a safari, this could really be a fascinating experience. What I really wanted to see was how the dynamics of power and money would structure one's life in such a closed world.

So we went on a sunny morning to the prison, and waited for at least ten minutes not too far from the entrance to see if anything would happen (usually people come to offer you the tour). Since no one came, we asked a Bolivian who came out of the prison for advice, and he told us to try discuss it directly with the officers guarding the entrance. The first guards we approached seemed cooperative at first, and our hope to nicely bribe them to let us in grew significantly. But after having waited for another fifteen minutes under the burning sun, another guard came and told us that prison tours were illegal, and had always been, so we shouldn't stay there. Seems like not all Bolivian guards are corrupt, good news for our dear friend Morales but that left us very disappointed... When we came back two hours later, he was still at the entrance of the prison, so our chances to get in felt sharply. And unfortunately, we didn't have another occasion to try it, so here is the story of how I missed the occasion to visit what probably was the only worthwile place to see in La Paz. The first big fail of my trip so far!

And yes, I know, I just spent half an hour writing about a place I haven't actually visited.

But let's not be that dramatic about La Paz. There are actually a few nice cafe, bars and restaurant, sometimes hidden in the middle of nowhere. We managed to discover an extremely cheap restaurant who had opened only a few days before and was run by a French guy (which means that unlike typical cheap Bolivian restaurants, you won't have only a soup, followed by chicken, rice and potato to eat), another restaurant where I had great quinoa raviolis, listening to a whole album of our (French) national pride Charles Aznavour, but surprisingly singing in Spanish, a  cool bar we renamed the "recycling place", its entrance looking like your local recycling depot, the highest Swiss fondue in the world (we didn't try it though, it smelt more like a tourist trap than like Swiss cheese), and... well that's pretty much it, so La Paz clearly doesn't have much to offer.

Presidential office buidling

Coolest bar entrance ever (La Paz)

Probably the only nice street in La Paz

La Paz remains a favourite with many backpackers, at least for a few days: It is very cheap, can be a useful hub for your Bolivian travels and boasts some big backpackers party-hostel, like the famous Loki and Wild Rovers, conveniently located a couple hundred meters away from each other, which means that you'll find all you travel friends staying in La Paz in the same block. These are franchise hostels with multiple branch scattered across South America (mostly in Bolivia and Peru though), where the most strategically important area is definitely the bar and its overpriced food. To get a better picture of what kind of hostel it is, on a karaoke night there, we had the chance to watch a live performance from a drunk Aussie dude, who ended up dancing and stripping on the bar all night long. Usually, you don't stay in one these hostels if you really want to sleep. As the Lonely Planet travel guide says about Loki La Paz, "if you don't already know about it, you shouldn't probably stay here"

A Street next to Loki La Paz

What else about La Paz? Oh, there is also the interesting but slightly biased Coca museum, to say the least, where you can learn about the history of the Coca plant, its place in Bolivian culture and how occidental Imperialism transformed their national pride into a terrible drug and unfairly blamed Bolivian for all their own troubles. A great example of self victimisation of the proud Bolivian people! Among other things, you can learn how Coca Cola was invented during Prohibition as the nonalcooholic version of "French Wine Coca", a beverage containing coca and probably originally inspired by French "Vin Mariani".

We also made a few really good day excursions out of La Paz though, the first one to Chalcataya mountain. To get there, we (Ruby, Dutch, Solange, French, Daniel, German and myself) had to bus to the northern and higher part of the city (which is also the poorest one, if you remember what I wrote earlier), and then fought hard to find a cab to take us to the mountain, the route being extremely accidented and difficult to ride. Our expert driver dropped us at a refuge, from where we walked for maybe half an our to the top, 5300 m above sea-level. You really feel the altitude, but walking slowly it is easily doable. And the view was clearly worth it, as you can see from the following pictures.

View from the top of Chacaltaya mountain, La Paz in the background, top right corner 

View from the top of Chacaltaya mountain, Lake Titicaca in the background, top right corner

On top of Chacaltaya mountain

We were surrounded by very bizarre rocks, as if thin layers of solid rock structures had been stuck together, then broken into pieces and finally carried all the way up. There are so thin you can actually break them by hand. I would have loved to have a geologist with me to understand how all this happened!

Crumbly layers of rocks, Chacaltaya mountain

On the way down

On the following day, Dan having already left for the jungle, Solange, Ruby and I went to the Moon Valley, south of La Paz (and thus went through the wealthiest and supposedly nicest parts of the city, which failed to make me change my very poor opinion of La Paz). Another set of very bizarre geolical formations, solid mud shapes similar to what your little cousin does when playing with sand on a beach. The all place makes you feel you just landed in the middle of a Star Wars filming, worth a visit if you're desperately stuck in La Paz like I was.

Moon Valley, South of La Paz (1)

Moon Valley, South of La Paz (2)

Finally, on Sunday, Ruby, Carl (a Swedish guy) and I took a place to Rurrenbaque (a small town in the Bolivian jungle, 30 minutes flight to the north of La Paz) and left La Paz (YES!!!).

Our plane was this small propeller-driven aircraft for 18 persons, good news being that the same model from a rival company had crashed on a similar route only a few weeks earlier. But the 18 hours bus (that's if you're lucky, usually it takes between 20 to 25 hours, possibly even days if you have bad weather) being even more dangerous, we didn't really have a choice.

Come on, no one in his right mind would expect that flying in Bolivia is safe, right?

Safest plane to the Amazon

We landed in Rurre and immediately felt the very humid, hot and heavy air characteritic of the Amazon.

The first thing you see at the airport (if we can call that shack dropped in the middle of a field an airport) is an advertisement in hebrew. It is one of the most surprising aspects of Rurre, you have so many Israelis tourists that locals have adapted their offers to specifically target them.

Apparently, after they have completed a couple of years in the army, most Israelis travel, and you won't find much 21 to 24 years old kids  left in Israel. Peru and Bolivia are very popular destinations, but we reached a new level with the remote town of Rurrenbaque. One explanation could be that apparently a few years ago three Israelis went on traveling there, and two of them died in an accident in the middle of the jungle. The only survivor wrote a book about it and that was the beginning of the story, everyone suddenly wanting to adventure into the wild Bolivian jungle. Word of mouth quickly took over as a way to make Rurre the place to be for Israelis backpackers, to such an extent that you'll end up in surreal situations, for instance when your Bolivian guide start speaking perfect hebrew, even if he can barely say more than two words in English!

Looking for a hostel, we met a French baker, who brought us to a good place in his home-made car (a smart commercial move, his bakery became our headquarter!). He had decided to come to live here to escape civilisation (this includes French taxes, Francois Hollande, and much more...). He is actually building a boat to live on the river, so he's pretty serious about it.

French Baker and his home-made car, no surprise you have more Toyotas than Peugeot cars in the jungle

After half a day sunbathing by a huge swimming pool, we started our pampas tour (you have the choice between pampas and jungle tours, but you'll find more swamps in the pampas than in the proper jungle, therefore many more mosquitos but also more wild animals to be seen). 

In addition to the three of us, our group included Americans, Dutchs and of course Israelis. A three-hour ride until the river, from where boats brought us to our lodge, but slowly enough so that we could start looking for animals. For two days, we basically went on  small excursions to see pink dolphins, caymans and aligators, exotic birds and monkeys, ending each day at the "sunset bar", watching the sunset (as you probably guessed) while sharing a drink with tourists from other lodges and complaining about mosquito bites. Actually for me it wasn't that bad: I took antihisthamine tablets so that my skin wouldn't react from the bites and would not hitch at all, plus a lot of insect repellent and many layers of loose clothes (the most effective protection being to wear a carefully closed rain coat, so you end up sweating like a pig under your k-way but at least mosquitos can't reach your skin!). You should have seen me in my pijamas/k-way combo, definitely up and ready for Rurrenbaque fashion week 2014.

Getting intimate with a cayman

Beer-loving Italian dudes and their American friends

Sunset bar

On our way to watch pink dolphins

Anaconda hunting in the swamps

After our three-day excursion, we (Carl and myself, Ruby had left a day earlier) came back to Rurre, where we ended up staying an extra day, all flights back to La Paz having been cancelled due to bad weather (rainy season has started!).

Cows on Rurrenbaque very wet airstrip

From La Paz, we took a night bus to Sucre, constitutional capital of Bolivia (even if La Paz is the de facto one), also called "the white city", because, well as you can see on the pictures, there are a lot of nice white colonial buildings in the city centre.

Sucre - University

Sucre - some government building

Sucre

We spent the first day visiting the city, and went on Sunday to Tarabuco, a town located 2 hours away from Sucre and mostly (or should I say only?) known for its Sunday market, where prices even for gringos are so cheap that you don't even bother bargaining.

Next stop on our Bolivian route was Potosi, said to be the highest city in the world ("only" 4090m above sea-level, so you can challenge their title depending on your definition of a city) and home of the "mountain that eats men alive", el Cerro Rico. Potosi is mainly known for its silver mines, dating back to colonial times. It said that more than eight million people died there since its exploitation started 450 years ago, hence its nickname. During the sixteenth century, Spaniards had found so much pure silver in this mountain that Potosi had grown to being one of the biggest and richest cities in the Americas and in the world, on par with places like Sevilla, London or Paris. Now, most of the silver is gone and none of the wealth is left.

Mines are still in use though, extracting various minerals, mostly silver mixed with zinc, tin, etc. We had seen a German documentary about the mines the night before ("The Devil's Miner") and decided to go on a mine tour.

Potosi seen from the Cerro Rico

As well as giving you all the equipement needed for a safe excursion, operators make you buy overpriced coca leaves bags as presents for the miners before the tour actually starts. Miners have always used coca to go through their terribly rough days, to the point that at some point, the value of coca ended up being indexed on the price of silver. Many Bolivians, wether they work in a mine or not, still spend their day chewing a big bowl of coca, to give them strength and reduce hunger. It is really part of the local culture, and has always been linked to the history of these mines.

All ready for the mine

Miners at work

Anyways, during the tour itself you walk for a couple of hours in low-ceilinged dark tunnels and meet miners at work. I guess the aim of these tours is to make you realise how terrible working conditions are for these poor men (and yes, they truly are), as well as to let you know more about the history and traditions of the mines. But for me, the most interesting part was to discover the way these mining businesses are organised, a good lesson about how business is conducted in Bolivia.
 
There used to be big foreign mining companies in Bolivia, but when President Morales started his resources nationalisation program, he nationalised many of them all and redistribute them to his people. Thus, mines are now organised in cooperatives, but in fact they do not work at all as such. Miners are totally independent, working on their own there and when one finds a good vein, he usually hires co-workers to help him extract minerals, resulting in groups from a couple miners to thirty or fourty miners maximum working together. In other words, you could consider that some miners run small mining businesses, simply paying to the government a tax for the right to work there and then managing their teams as they want.

Of course, miners never earn a lot: they sell minerals they extract to companies who then start the purification process, and then send their product to Chile, from where minerals are shipped to Europe, US or China to be refined. And purification/refinement is where you really start making money, not extraction of impure minerals.

But except the use of pneumatic hammers, the way miners actually work has barely changed in centuries, and the whole process remains very far from efficient. There are actually European charities helping miners by raising money and buying some of their heavy working equipment, like rails, trolleys, etc. To me, this seems like a total non-sense, and a sign that something is clearly going wrong. Of course, these guys have a terrible job, but charities would make a much better use of their endowments by for instance helping new generations access better education and thus avoid having to work in a mine. The fact that an NGO has to do the job of an entrepreneur or an investor kind of tells you something about Bolivia's economic woes.

Despite the fact that it is one of the poorest countries in the world, Bolivians seem to fully trust their populist and protectionnist president. There is still so much resentment against Spaniards (something you can also easily feel in Peru), dating back to the suffering endured in colonial times. For instance, in the sixteenth century Spaniards would force indigenous men to work for six months straight in the mines (and by straight, I mean these guys would barely see any sunlight in weeks or even months) because they could not import African slaves to work at such altitudes, only locals could do the job.

Bolivians  nowadays take a lot of pride in their hard-fought freedom and consider most foreigners as greedy and heartless capitalists wanting to steal their plentiful natural resources. Wether they were Spanish colons centuries ago, or American firms in the last decades makes no difference, and a few nationalisations did not make business climate any better.

But enough with Bolivian economics, it was now time to head to Uyuni and desertic south west Bolivia.

Carl and myself had booked a three-day tour across Uyuni salt flats and the desertic landscapes further south, to end up at the Chilean border in San Pedro de Atacama.

We were six in our classic Toyota: our guide/chauffeur/cook Luiz, a quiet Equatorian girl, whose name I don't recall, two Spanish dudes called both Roberto and Duncan, coming from Canada. Plus Carl and me.
 

Dream team

The tour started with a quick stop at a train cemetery. The region around Uyuni is full of minerals, and since Bolivia has no sea access it has to send everything to Chile by train, passing through Uyuni, which thus became the centre for trains repairs in Bolivia.

Train cemetery

Carl re-living his childhood memories on a swing

The Dakar finishes in Uyuni next year! 

The number of tourist cars with us was at first quite worrying, but fortunately enough Luiz managed to keep us away from them for most of the day.

In Uyuni, you hear a lot of stories about terrible guides, who won't tell you anything more than the time you have in one place to take pictures, or worse who would get drunk and then get lost in the middle of the desert (one tourist ended up spending a day driving instead of the guide, who was unable to stand behind the steering wheel). Luiz may not have been the funniest guide ever, but at least he was sober, and knew everything about local geology, plants and other singularities of the Salar.

We spent the first day in the Salar de Uyuni properly speaking, the biggest salt flats in the world. It is actually quite difficult to describe this salt-saturated experience, the emptiness and immensity of the site can hardly be captured in a picture. More than 10 000 km² of perfectly flat bright vacuum surrounding you. Looking in any direction, you'll see nothing but the top of mountains located dozens of kilometers away. Prick up your ears and you'll hear nothing but an overwhelming silence.

Some dust storms had given the salt flat a singular colour, a dazzling intensity varying from off-white and cream to beige. You'd better wear good sunglasses if you want to avoid suffering terrible headaches at the end  of the day!

Luiz showed us holes in the salt crust from where we could see the amazing process creating perfectly squared salt cristals. It is difficult to believe that we were driving on such a small layer of rock-solid salt with our heavy car, but salt flats are full of such surprising natural phenomena, and that's what make them a truly unique place on earth.

Driving on such a thin layer of salt

Apparently, there is quite a lot of lithium a few thousands of meters underground in the southern part of the salar. Bolivia is probably seating on the world's biggest source of lithium (estimated at around half of the currently known lithium reserve worldwide), a key component of electric batteries you'll find for instance in your Nissan Leaf, or if you can afford it, in your brand new Tesla. But being Bolivia, both the government and local communities strongly oppose any foreign extraction, preferring to build their own lithium mining industry, even if that will take quite some time to materialise.

After our Geological Economics 101 lecture, we spent some time taking the traditional funny salar pictures, especially with our new friend Raúl, a plastic dinosaur we found at the back of the car.

Synthesising vitamin D

Raúl's in a bad mood today

David vs. Goliath

Then, the Inca Huasi island (sort of huge rocky hill popping up right in the middle of the salar for no obvious reason) and its countless cactuses was waiting for us, before heading south east to watch the sunset and then get to our salt hotel. If you're wondering, that's like a normal hotel, but with walls and furnitures made of salt blocks.

View from the Inca Huasi island

Cactus forest on the island

Inca Huasi island

Sunset in the salar 

Salt hotel

On our second day started the proper desert part of the trip. While the salars are located about 3660m above sea-level, here we started to go a bit higher, reaching 5400m in the middle of the  afternoon. What surprised us was the variety of landscapes offered to our eyes. Dry mountains, sand deserts, huge volcanos, lagunas of all colours full of flamingos, rocks of any size and shape, volcanic structures... As you may see from the following pictures, the whole tour was clearly one of the highlights of my trip so far, I'm actually wondering if I didn't enjoy more the last two days of the trip than our first day fully spent in the salar!

Uynui desert (1)

Lagoon in Uyuni desert (1) 

 Lagoon in Uyuni desert (2) 

Uyuni desert (2)

Carl and Duncan doing some rock-climbing

Thousand-year-old plant in the desert

Uyuni's tree rock

Uyuni desert (3)

Uyuni desert (4)

Another lagoon in Uyuni desert (1)

 Another lagoon in Uyuni desert (2)

On our last day, we woke up at 4 am to go to some geysers. The sun being still low enough, it created a very particular atmosphere in the geysers, that you can see in the following pictures.

 Geysers in Uyuni desert

Carl and myself in the geysers

But then, to conclude this tour on a truly pleasant note, we had the chance to enjoy some early morning hotsprings, (sun-) bathing 4500m above sea-level, another fantastic experience...

 High altitude early hotsprings

Lamas family

Unfortunately, as Geoffrey Chauser once said, all good things must come to an end, and here ends the Bolivian part of this trip. 
 

 Dali's desert

Another lagoon in Uyuni desert (3)

Like in Peru, I started with the worst part of the country (its capital), and finished with its main attraction (Machu Picchu and Salar de Uyuni), in both cases a very touristic spot, true, but world-class regardless. Another highlight for this whole South American experience!

We finally ended up at the Chilean border, leaving Duncan with Luiz and other tourists (they were going back to Uyuni), while we waited for our bus to San Pedro with the two Spanish Robertos... But I'll leave that for my next post!

Thanks for having read this far! 

Much love from South America.

Un besito,
Votre loyal Riton.