Santiago de Chile

Ok, bon like I had said in the previous message, we are in a different world...or back to our normal world. Yeah coz its Europe here or the States for sure close to both.
We arrived on monday 15th of October in this modern city of Santiago, after a comfortable although a bit noisy 24h bus ride. Yes a bit noisy since a group of miners were travelling back home. Miners...ha...or whaouu...again there is a world between the chilean miners and the one we had just seen working in Potosi. All of them wearing jeans, nice shirts, with cell phones were listenning to music or calling their wife. They are employed by an australian mining company which make them work 20 days and rest 10 days in their home in south chile earning about 1200USD! Bref, they talk to us about the good wines they have, about the nice girls they dream of when at work and about the very nice place to visit in south Chile! Chilean travel and visit a lot their country.When we were in San Pedro, we met a 3 kids chilean family that had come from Santiago, for a 4 days week end and were sandboarding with us. The father was a doctor and had plan to take two of their children in Switzerland where he was going the week after for a Medical congress!! But added to all those habit and cultural changes, phisycally they are also very different in the sense that there is no more indigenous or very little. Of course the few left are like in Mexico marginalised and banned from modern life.
Bref it has now been 4 days that we've been staying in Santiago and life is easy, the metro works really well and bus complete it so that it is safe and rapid to move intown. We even enjoyed a Football game at the national stadium opposing Chile vs Peru 2-0! Tomorrow the plan is to try to take off and land in valparaiso one of the nicest and most charming city in Chile. We'll see what's waiting for us...

Fin de la Bolivie(desert d'uyuni), Chili, san pedro.

I'm now in Chile!!! Bolivia was really awesome. Yes, I was telling you about those incredibles mines in Potosi, well while we were ramping in mines, bombing dinamytes outside the mines, and visiting how to separate the silver from the rock, the girls, hanged around in town and bought our bus tickets for the same evening just one hour after our tour ended. This is how Alex and I, went to Uyuni with the dust of the mines from Potosi hehe =)!

We had heared that Uyuni was an ugly city just for tourist to buy their tours to go in the desert, but we actually liked it. A long "peatonal" street with a few restaurant, shops was bringing a nice chilling ambiance, the rest of the city was mainly wide dirt streets and low buildings reminding some kind of old american far west little town. We rested all day in this city, but also bought our three tour in the desert of Uyuni which would end at the boarder with Chile. This desert includes the biggest salt lake in the world and some of the most impressive landscape found on earth called "moonlike" landscape, it is the most important tourist attraction in Bolivia. 65 agencies in Uyuni propose exactly the same tour passing by the same place, for everyday of the week. We went into a few of them and execpt the first price they give you, nothing changes at all not even one word of their tour explanation speach. This uncontrolled competion leads to incredible low prices (of course causing damage tothe environement but also to the local people). However since it's how it work and since we are cheap students and not rich americans, we choosed one of the cheapest one paying 70$ for three days, two nights, with a driver and a cook.

The next day, the four of us plus two english guys where ready to go. All agencies offer the tour on board of a Toyota Land Cruiser none of it being from 2001 or later. Yes cause according to agencies the newest one always break down and don't resist the desert,humhum. Well in order to show us the extreme exemple we were given a Land Cruiser, from...1985! So when the 6 of us were in the car, our six huge backpack on the roof, with the two 50liter fuel tanks, the kitchinette, the gaz bottle, and at the back our 6 small bags, and the food for 3 days, the girl from the agency beg us to accept an extra 7th person that had lost her car!!! Well it was a poor Israelish that was lost and was almost crying so we had to accept her so she could catch up with her car in a few kilometers. That's how the 7 of us plus the driver and the cook started our three days trip in the desert of Uyuni! After 25 min of 4x4 in the desert just outside the town, we reached a train cimetry. Old trains, mainly locomotives, from the 1800 were let to decompose in the middle of nowhere. It was quite impressive and after having seen it on postcards in La paz we were looking forward to discover this wired place. We continued on still being nine in the vehicule since the Israelish girl had not found her car. She really started to anoy us as she was putting pressure on the driver to accelerate in order for her to catch up her group. Soon we arrived in a small salt factory. Actually a village of indigenous treating the salt and putting it into small plastic bags. We were shown how they use to proceed and it looked like it had not changed for centuries! The salt was dried in wood oven, added some iode in a very old and small machine, and put in small bags closed by burning the plastic on the edge. All this made in a small house made of mod bricks. It's where the main production of salt for Bolivia comes from! After playing in small salt dunes with went ahead and soon the ground changed completly. We were arriving in the salt desert, the ground was totally white and with the blue sky and the brown mountains at the back the landscape was amazing! We stopped to take some crazy picts and continued to reach the lake island. We arrived there after driving on this 14meters thick salt layer, which on its surface forms hexagonals shapes making it even more extraordinary. The reasons of this hexagons comes from the fact that the lake underneath humidify the salt which "breaths", evaporates during the day and shrinks making those forms, but why hexagons...this we could not figure it out. Our driver was of course not the one recommanded on good comments in our agency and did not really seemed to care about giving exact information. Once we arrived at the island, our israelish girl finally found her group which had not waited for her...yes her story was long and confused and none of us could understand her very badly english told story. Anyway, she had left and we were finally only our group. While we climbed this cactus island which brown color (as you can see on the picture) was contrasting the white salt ground, our old lady cooked us some dry llama meat. We never understood why the agency was paying a lady to cook us what will be, burned llama, pastas, dry chicken and pancakes...maybe because the driver had never touched a pan but, well ok at least someone else benefits from low tourism incomes. On our way to the salt hotel, where we were suppose to sleep, we once again proved our kindness and gave our unique emergency wheel to another car (full of suisse from lausanne). Their agency had let the driver go for a three day drive in the desert without even one emergency tire, the four other ones being already more than used! The tour is soo cheap but still...bref no problem we all reached the hotel. There Sao Mai and I tried to play football, but we had forgotten that we were at 3500 meters! After a few ball touched we had to quite,feeling really unpowerfull compared to the local kids who continued running for another hour! Instead I taught some smaller kids how to play rugby with my small french worlcup rugby ball (well... hum I'm actually really pissed since le XV de France just lost against this pink rose english team for the second time in a row in a world cup semi-final holalala quelle merde!) Bref. The second day we started really early and headed to some impressive coloured lakes which colors comes from different minerals found in the volcanoes surrounding the high plateaux on which we were going. Our 4x4 was doing really well and supported the violent shocks of the moutainous way. The salt lake was far behind us and some unbeleiveable desert landscape surrounded by active volcanoes was putting us on another planet! We continued for few more hours of 4x4 sometimes going out of the car for it to be able to climb some particularly steep and rocky part. In a desert of sand and rocks we stopped to observe a nice naturally made stone three and continued uphill toward our refuge for the night. We arrived at 5:00pm at 4350 where our room for the night was waiting for us. This trip, and all its landscape has been one of the most suprising I had ever seen, and to come back to reallity, Alex and I went to kick some drops on this high plateaux. At five in the morning, our car engine was already turning, yes by -15C our 22 years old car had started without a problem unlike most of others, all more recent! Like the day before our driver put pressure on us to hurry up, we really felt like we were on an express tour, but always manage to take sufficient time to enjoy the moment. The good thing is that we had always arrived first in all the places avoiding the mass of other 4x4. We saw early in the morning some huge geyser, and boiling mud. Unlike in Costa Rica, where we had seen about the same, nothing was made for tourist to respect distance with the volcanic activities making dangerous but even more enjoyable. It was freezing and we werwe hungry, our breakfast was to be prepared next stop. While having a warm bath in hotsprings on the shore of a magnificent lake and by sunrise, our lady cook was preparing our breakfast. Once again pressured by our driver we left our mouth still full this awesome place to visit another one. We passed through the Salvador Dali desert to reach our final place the green lake. We then headed up to the chiliean boarder where the end of the trip was planned. I'm writing from the other side of this huge volcanoe separating Bolivia and its green lake from the chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama. The change in term of culture, people, and infrastrucutre is more than radical, it's two different world. One that has kept all its indigenous tradition, with people still very attached to their precolombian culture leaving in incredible conditions on the higher country in the world, and the other being really close to the level of development of european countries.

Today we went to bike in the surrounding of San pedro, which consist of the dryiest desert in the world where almost no rain has ever been detected! We too advantage of this moutain desert sandboarding on its dunes. The afternoon has been less enjoyed, at least by me since the rugby score was not the one I had dreamt of, but this is how is sport. Tomorrow we'll go for a 24 hour bus trip directly to Santiago where another part of the trip we'll start being 5 to travel!

Isla del Sol, La Paz, Potosi, Sucre and Uyuni.

Yes the title tells you about how many places we visited the past days. But it all seemed really easy going to us no rush, just pure pleasure, great landscape, great people, great markets!
So as I was saying we crossed the boarder on the 1st of October, and arrived in Copacabana. From there the next morning, we took a nice cheap boat to Isla del Sol! It is said that it's where the Inca religion and culture started. According to this same civilization, it was on this lake that was created the Sun god and the Moon godess having both of them their own island! The Isla del Sol is bigger and present more interest for its numerous ruins, nice mediteranean bays, and possible nice walks. We slepts on this island one night after a nice walk to the south that took us to the ruins of the ¨templo del Sol¨. We came back by boat from the south to our little village where we had our hostal. On our first way to the island the lake was really calm and there was absolutly no wind, the dry yellow rocky island, really gave us the impression to be on the mediteranean sea next to some greek islands or Sardinia. The color of the water was a deep blue, the sun was really shining, the temperature like a nice day of spring! However when we came back from the south, the lake turned even more like the sea, with big waves and strong winds. We had hired a small fisherman to take us on his fisher boat which was really moving a lot! When arriving at are small "seaport" where only one rocky pier was build, it was a real challenge to get off the boat. Without even attaching the boat the captain asked us to jump on the pier but of course with such big waves, the boat almost turned over, and Sao Mai and the oldman fell in the water! While helping Sao Mai to get on the pier and the boat not to crash on it, I lost my sun glasses...! Yeah it was dense! Next day just before leaving back to the mainland, being full of hope, I went to have a look at the place where I had lost my sun glasses and miraculously found them back! They had passed the whole night in the lake in between two rocks!
On the afternoon, we headed toward La Paz. The next day was dedicated to explore this messy highest capital in the world (4000m).
In the morning we passed a lot of time walking around in the old streets full of merchants and markets of all kinds where you can find absolutly everything one can need. Then we headed up to the more colonial part of the city, which has nothing impressive for a capital main square beside the gun bullets on the presidential house. Finally, on our way to the new town, we stopped in a really nice comtemporary art musuem in which there was an exposition of a "Che Guevara" painting contest which had for objective to give back this man its real identity and values, since its image was over exploited. We ended our long day in a cinema..cool! Our day was really fructous and we had no motivation to leave this city so we stood another day, hanging in cafes, posting many postcards, and taking photos of our biggest demonstration since the begining of the trip, that was for keeping some governement structure in La Paz. At nigth we finally took a bus to Potosi where we arrived at 4:30 in the morning! We still managed to find a hostal and sleep a bit. This saturday 6th of October was a lazy day, we just walked. Personnaly I actually passed my day running around Potosi trying to find a place with cable Tv to watch this fantastic rugby world cup quarter final between France and New Zeland! After a few hours I unfortunatly had to give up since from this old very powerfull colonial mining town ( in the 17th century this city was the biggest on the american continent with more than 100 000 inhabitants and was one of the richest in the world because of its mining explotation producing 80% of the silver in the world) there is almost nothing left and its actual developlement is very poor they did not even have the channel needed to watch rugby!! I passed my afternoon listenning to the game in live on "France-Inter" in a cybercafe( this however they have them every where we've been, even in the most remote places like the one I am in now, Uyuni, small town in the desert of south Bolivia). On the next day we headed to Sucre, famous since it was the colonial capital, and still keeps some governement infrastructures. We took a cab, costing only a dollar more than the bus, the two hours of taxi being 4$ per person! We hanged around sucre, eating good food, resting in the very nice main square, talking with street kids, and walking around in the very nice streets in between its white colonial buildings. We ended our day in a really cool dutch cafe, where they played a surprising interesting movie on the mines of Potosi and children working there. This movie was "poignant" and really gave me the will to visit those mines and share a moment of my life with those brave and desperate miners. The Cerro Rico is the biggest mine of all times and about 8 millions indigenous died under colonial times working in horrible conditions, which led to this sad name of "the moutain that eats man". Nowadays, miners still work there but in cooperative having absolutly no restriction for what so ever. This movie gave us a really good understanding of the mines. On the next day, we went back to Potosi, and Alex and I went on a tour to visit these impressive Cerro Rico dominating the city of Potosi. The tour allows miners to get not only a 15% of the money we pay but also to get what ever the tourist like to bring/buy for them, from soft drinks, to dinamyte! The group made of two belgium, two Irish and one hollandes, one Italian(alex) and one french(me) tried the protection clothe transforming us instantly into real miners! We passed by a little shop to buy coca leaves(requested to be able to enter the mines), some soft drinks and dinamytes for us and the miners. Our bus took us to the entrance of the mine, which is not at all a museum but a real mine still in function and we had this proved just on our arrival with some miners pulling out of the mine a huge wagon full of minerals! The rest of the visit was just incredible! Working conditions are incredibly hard and similar to those of "Miserables". In fact there is no air exit leading to horrible density of dust in the tunnels, very high temperatures, it is really hard to breath, there is no light but yours on your helmet, there is mud and the very small tunnels allow you to pass only ramping, the material is not better, old wagons, trails that are broken and not fixed on the ground, no emergency exit, and no one even put a filter on his mouth! Miners know their life will be shorter (one miner starting to work at 18 or 20 years old will have high probability of dying at the age of 45, 50 years old), but don't really have the choice. The small spartiate museum inside the mines gives some very interesting info on the story of this 15th century mine but also on its actual functionning. For example 93% of the miners work in the mines because there is no other jobs available! Inside the mine we could see them at work and offer them a moment of rest offering them what we had brought making them happy!...i'll continue later on since once again I have to leave the internet place!!

End of Peru, begining of Bolivia (Lac Titicaca, La paz)

A few days ago I had just gone down from the impressive Matchu Pitchu, now I'am already in La Paz looking foreward to an adventure in the immense Uyuni desert in south Bolivia.

My night bus from Cusco to Puno (peruvian city on the shore of the lake titicaca), went fine. As usual you sleep half of the trip the other half you wonder if you still have all your stuff and if you have not missed your stop! I arrived in Puno right at sunrise! Alex, SM and Monica were all waiting for me in a nice hotel offering a nice view on the sun rising behind the moutains on the other side of the lake! I still manage to sleep a few hours before we went onto a journey to visit the indigenous floatting villages. At first the lake from Puno does not give a good impression. It looks very polluted and its greenish color given by envading algues does not correspond at all to the deep blue christal water the guidebook was talking about! However, the further we will go in our discovering of the lake the better impressed we will get. At first the indigenous village we could visit was impressive by the originality of their way of living. Since ages, those people, chassed by more dominating indigenous communities, have been living cut from the rest of the world on their artificial islands isolated on this lake, being the biggest lake in the world at this altitude (3800m). It is incredible how they were able to be almost completly autonomous living at first on small boats and later on their island made both of them enterely outof reeds. This natural plant found in abundance on this part of the lake forms the base of their life. Food, houses, boats and nowadays artesania for tourist are all made out of this plant. People were very friendly and we enjoyed visiting one island with all its owner family in traditional costumes (all this was obviously exagerated and prepared for tourist but it was still nice to see knowing that other communities don't accept tourism). We even went on another part of the village made of course of another island, on which there was a small hostal with reeds cabans for rooms. We managed, to see those indigenous real way of living, visiting an Evangelist church and their real new houses made of shining metal tiles and walls. This done, we quickly headed to the Bolivian boarder, in order to get there before dark since our experience of getting at boarder by night was not that great! We arrived after 3 hours of small minibus, 3o min of "bicytaxi" and a few talks with the police boarder (Alex got a long interrogation and a corrupted peruvian policeman tried to get some money out of my gringo friend which unfortunatly, as well as when we entered, did not let us a good idea of Peru's police and politcal system). Bref, we enterred, arrived safe and with everything in Copacabana, our first Bolivian city. Here again, like in Central America, people change radically just by crossing a boarder! No it is true! We were amazed to see how people were more friendly and open than in Peru! We were also happy because we realized that it was the cheapest place we had ever been to. 1.5$ for our hotel room with a great balcoony overlooking the lake! It's 1am and the internet here in La Paz is going to "finally" close, I'll continue telling about all this later on.