Well after nearly 2 months ¨on holiday¨ we are well into uncharted waters in so many respects. Certainly it is not all easy going with many aspects being quite demanding.....arriving at a seedy bus station at 5am, or accidentally heading down a dark street to get cash from an ATM instantly switch the survival instinct onto full alert! It is a real rollercoaster I suppose, with great highlights and amazing experiences mixed up with occasional hardship and near exhaustion! We try to stay at least 2 nights in any one place so as to pace ourselves, but it doesnt always work out....last week we stayed at 6 different places in a row. Am so glad we didn´t leave all this for another 10 years!
Keeping fit and getting enough exercise is a challenge - going for a jog around the city streets means gulping in hideous diesel fumes and negotiating crowded pavements, while when in the rural areas I have found that as soon as I break into a trot all the local dogs are are onto me like a shot. Sarah and I will generally find a local hill or some place to walk around but there hasn´t been much to go at recently. In fact the most exercise I have had in the last couple of weeks has probabaly been tearing pieces from the un-perforated toilet paper once a day! ( and once a day is a good sign in these parts!)
We seem to have done pretty well with the stuff we have brought in each of our single backpacks with only a couple of small extras that we could have done with, but particularly regret not having any spare space to buy some of the loveley local crafts and sweaters etc which are so nice and sooo cheap. We are, needless to say, getting totally fed up with wearing the same old clothes week in week out, but minimalism is good... isn´t it??
We are certainly missing all our friends and idyllic life back in Nelson and think about it often ( you really appreciate how wonderful it is when you haven´t got it ) but we still have so much to look forward to on our mad schedule!
We are currently in Sucre in southern Bolivia which is a beautiful old world heritage city and our favourite so far.Last week we had 5 full days on a bus and 4X4 jeep as we explored the worlds largest salt flats in the SW of Bolivia aswell as skirting the Chilean border at 5200m (17,000 feet , 1033 perches or 614,173 barleycorns) amid towering volcanoes, snow and red lakes with rare flamingos feeding on the micro-organisms....all quite overwheling but bloody cold at night in some very basic accomodation, with one place made entirely from salt....even the tables and chairs. We also stopped off at the worlds highest town, Potosi (815 perches - you work it out!) where some 8 million people are said to have perished in the local silver mine over the past 200 years.
Needless to say we were well and truely knackered after all that so have been blobbing out here for several days in a lovely hostal and over-eating at the rather splendid restaurants...the best being run by a local couple who discovered the fine olive oils in Blenheim (NZ) which influences their great food.
Tommorrow we are on the move again and will work our way into Paraguay and should arrive in Rio on Monday. Yahoo!
