Signing out

It’s the end of the line. In a few shorts hours I’ll be ten thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean. Australia bound.

It’s been an amazing three months, but in retrospect I’ve had only the briefest glimpse of South America. You’d need far more time and patience than I had at my disposal, to really get inside the soul of this behemoth continent. I can only hope that it won’t be too long before I grace this corner of the globe once more.

For now it’s back to the real world. And that, my friends, pretty much concludes The Gringo Report. Thanks for reading.

Waterworks

I managed to squeeze in one more Gringo Trail cliche before my number’s up on this South American sojourn. The Iguazú Falls. The place is like an Argentinian Disneyland, but it’s well worth bumping elbows with the hordes of screaming kids and fat American tourists, when you finally get to gape at Garganta del Diablo.

Behold.

And now here I am. The Buenos. Back to where it all began, three long months ago. One last hurrah before I bid South America adios. This time next week I’ll be on Australian soil.

Bummer.

¡Viva Argentina!

Some months back I wrote about the culture shock I experienced crossing from Chile into Peru. Well I just had the reverse experience, times two, arriving back in Argentina. One minute it’s fried chicken and potatoes, dirt roads and breathing diesel fumes in the back of a bus that’s older than Fidel Castro. One passport stamp later, it’s red wine, medium-rare bife and reclinable leather seats. It’s real coffee, warm weather and not having to watch for pickpockets every time you step out in public. It’s sweet, merciful relief. Viva Argentina.

The natural downside to being back in the western world is the western prices. That, and the fact that a developed country, for all the comfort and convenience, could never be as entertaining as the disorganised madness of a third world circus like Bolivia.

I am NOT complaining about the food though, let me tell you. It’s like I died from salmonella in Bolivia and went to heaven. Today I had steak for lunch, and I dare say I’m going to have steak for dinner. The forecast for tomorrow is steak.

Yee Haw

This morning I partook in the joys of horse riding for the first time in my life, and couldn’t have chosen a better location than the outlying regions of Tupiza, in the far southwestern reaches of Bolivia. It looks like the set of a cheesy 1950s cowboy movie. An infinite expanse of cacti, sand and rolling red hills under a scorching February sun. Regrettably I didn’t get to shoot it out with any injuns, but I still felt more like John Wayne than I have at any previous point in my life.

Tupiza is actually very close to where two famous American outlaws were shot dead, back when the whole cowboy scene was en vogue. Legend has it, and by legend I mean Wikipedia, that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid finally tasted hot lead in the nearby mining village of San Vincente, ending an illustrious criminal career that spanned twenty-five years and two continents.

And that just about wraps up Bolivia. It’s a stone’s throw to the border from here, and this time tomorrow I’ll be in Argentina. Back to the land of fine wine, good food and almost-first-world amenities. The three-fold increase in the cost of living should be a nice kick in the teeth.

Salt of the Earth

These last three days were spent on a dusty, arse-numbing 4WD crusade across the Bolivian outback, and I dare say it’s been the highlight of the trip so far. We cruised the Salar de Uyuni. We saw blue lagoons and red mountains, and three different species of endangered flamingos. We frolicked with herds of llama. We stood in the shadows of thousand year old cacti. We drank tequila in a hot spring bath at five thousand metres above sea level.

Quite the adventure. The first day on the Salar was the best, one of the most amazing outdoorsy-nature-type places I’ve ever seen. The salt flat is a blinding-white 360 degree panorama of . . . . salt. The horizon is perfectly horizontal, in any direction you care to glance. If you look closely you can actually see the curve of the Earth. Unbelievable. After spending so many weeks in the mountains, suddenly finding yourself in one of the flattest places on Earth is a mind-warping experience.

And then the next day you’re back in the mountains again. That’s Bolivia for you. In a country not much bigger than New South Wales, you have the anaconda-infested Amazon in the north, a dirty great desert in the south, and the six thousand metre peaks of the Andes scattered in between. It’s a land of phenomenal contrasts, and dirt cheap to travel by South American standards. Sure, the crime rate and political situation leave a little something to be desired, but nowhere’s perfect. Besides, like ninety-five percent of the other people who venture into Bolivia, I’m coming out of my five week stint in this country both unscathed and unrobbed.

I’d be lying if I said my time in this wacky nation wasn’t without a few disappointments. The most notable of which would have to be the quality of the food and the temperature of the beer. By and large, Bolivian cuisine is . . . well, shit. This country has an infatuation with potatoes, rice and chicken. And not a lot else. There is a finite number of different ways you can prepare potatoes, rice and chicken. And the Bolivians generally disregard even these meager possibilities and just deep-fry the lot. Getting a quick bite on the street here usually entails a greasy chunk of meat between two pieces of semi-stale white bread, smothered in mayonnaise and tomato sauce, with a side of greasy chips. Not such a horrible scenario when you’re staggering back to your hostel at 3 am in the morning, but unfortunately you can’t savour every meal in a drunken stupor, and in the sober hours the monotony takes its toll.

And there’s nothing quite as unsatisfying as washing down a mouthful of fried chicken and potatoes with a glass of lukewarm Bolivian beer. These people just don’t get the concept. Unless you specifically request otherwise, there’s a real possibility that your beer will be served at room temperature. And even when you stress your desire for cerveza fria, it’s usually moderately cool at best. And it doesn’t seem to be for a lack of refrigeration facilities either. I think the beer drinkers of Bolivia genuinely prefer their poison warm. Each to their own, I suppose.

Being that I’m presently smack bang in the middle of nowhere, right out in the Bolivian boondocks, there’s zero prospect of finding internet fast enough to upload any photos of my salty adventures. Just writing this post has taken up the better part of my morning. I’ll get some visuals happening in the coming days, when I return to the bright lights, big cities of Argentina, and begin the final leg of this all-too-brief foray across América del Sur.

Las Minas del Cerro Rico

I spent yesterday morning fifty metres underground, listening to dynamite exploding. Really.

It’s the only reason most people come to Potosí. The star attraction of this town is touring the mines on Cerro Rico, the “Rich Mountain”.

You mightn’t guess it, looking at Potosí in it’s current state. But this was actually the richest city in Latin America, if not the world, for a very long time. Back in the good ole’ colonial days, Los Españoles discovered the possibility that there was an arseload of silver buried in that big brown hill, and proceeded to tear the mountain apart in search of precious metal. They found a lot of it, too. This town bankrolled the Spanish Empire for two centuries.

Hundreds of years later, most of the mines are still in use. The silver is long-gone, but they’re still cranking out tin, zinc and other much less-glamorous minerals. For about ten dollars, a guide will take you deep into the bowels of Cerro Rico, and you can watch the whole operation in action. You spend a good part of the tour crawling on your hands and knees in the mud, choking on dust and gas fumes.

It’s not exactly “fun” in the conventional sense, but a thoroughly insane experience. The conditions in these places are horrific. There’s no ventilation, no fixed lighting, and no protective clothing beyond a flimsy plastic helmet. There are weekly fatalities. And if you don’t fall down an open shaft or get crushed by a collapsing rockwall, just breathing the poisonous air should knock you off within a decade or so. They say the average miner dies, of one respiratory disease or another, within ten years of starting work. There are kids as young as eleven toiling away in these God-forsaken hellholes, for all of $200 a month.

When you finally re-emerge into the daylight, the tour wraps up with a dynamite blasting demonstration. That part is kind of fun.

Another intersting factoid about Potosí, is that it claims to be the highest town in the world, at around 4100 metres above sea-level. Bit of a strain on the lungs. Especially when you’ve been breathing asbestos and silica dust all morning.

I’ll be spending the next few days on a 4WD tour of the Salar de Uyuni. The blog will be incomunicado until I return to some form of civilisation.

Bolivia in the flesh

Mixing with the locals, Isla del Sol, Lake Titicaca

Taking the llama for a walk, Copacabana

Lake Titicaca

La Paz…

Sucre…

Anti-Constitution banner in Sucre

We paid for BLOOOOOD!!

And so far I haven’t seen a drop. We’re now in Referendum Day + 3, and I think it’s fairly safe to say that, in Sucre at least, the event has been a complete flop. Not a single overturned car or torched building. Not even the faintest whiff of tear gas in the air. The angry protesting mobs, who marched the streets for weeks in the lead-up to the vote, have all but packed their bags and gone home. Same goes for The Goon Squad, or “Bolivian Police Force” as they like to call themselves. It’s back to business as usual in this town, almost as if the referendum never happened.

I have to say, I feel cheated. Happy for the peace-loving folk of Sucre, of course, that their beautiful city isn’t going up in flames as I write this. But cheated all the same. These people have by no measure lived up to the Bolivians’ hard-earned reputation for not taking shit from the government.

I don’t see much point in hanging round here any longer, if there’s no street violence to watch. It seems the anti-constitution hordes haven’t been able to muster even a handful of roadblocks, and the buses are running as usual. I think that’s my cue to get back on the road. So long Sucre.

All quiet on the Sucre front

‘Si’ it is. An emphatic victory for President Morales.

So far there’s little sign of impending carnage on the streets of Sucre. For a population so ardently opposed to Evo and his new constitution, they seem to be taking their defeat pretty well.

I’ll find out tomorrow if there have been any disruptions the bus services. With a bit of luck, I just might get out of Bolivia on schedule, without even a single injury to show for the experience.

Although I was kind of looking forward to at least a little bit of rioting.

The calm before the . . . ?

The polling booths closed at 3 pm this afternoon, and as far as I can tell the actual voting part of the referendum has concluded peacefully. It’s been a quiet, lazy day in Sucre. Granted, I slept in until about 11 am, and may have missed some early morning excitement. But it seems that having all those armed thugs on the street has paid off, and the voting masses have been on their best behaviour.

I’m told the results will be released tonight. Which means the war could potentially start tomorrow. We’ll see . . .