After about 5
minutes of waiting, a collectivo (taxi that takes several
passengers), asked us where we were going. We said Valle Grande, and
he ushered us in. We thought it was just too super easy. And it
was. We stopped in the next town, the end of the ride. We asked him
how to get to Valle Grande, and he said there was a bus across the
street in 2 hours. We settled down on the sidewalk and waited. The
bus finally came, half an hour late, and as we were about to get on,
a taxi driver asked us if we were going to Valle Grande and we said
yes. He said he'd take us for 30 Bolivianos. So we went with him
instead. It took about 2 hours to get there, winding through the
mountains. I still didn't feel well from food poisoning the night
before, so I just laid in exhaustion in the back seat.
We got to Valle
Grande, and Jesse found a hotel. We went to see about Che tours, and
were told we could have one the next day. So I found a packet of soup
and had them cook it for me at the little cafe we went to for lunch.
Then we rested. The next day we had our tour to the Che memorial, on
the edge of town. You can only go with a tour guide. It was the
place where Che's body was found in 1998. The military had buried
him, along with 4 other combatants, under the airport runway, near
the village graveyard. In 1996 an American journalist had asked the
military where they buried him, and they told him: in between the
airport and the graveyard! So a team of people from Argentina and
Cuba started to search. The memorial is huge, and has pictures of
Che throughout his life. But his body has since been moved to Cuba.
Then the tour guide took us to another spot, where more bodies had
been found, including the body of Tanya, the only female combatant in
Bolivia. Then the tour was over! Pretty short. We had to walk back
to town, where we went to see the hospital washing room where Che was
laid out after he was assassinated, so the press could see he was
dead. Most of the townspeople didn't know who “the Che” was, but
they went to see him anyway. Then we went down to the Che museum in
town, which was really good. There were accounts from some of the
nurses at the hospital and journalists about the days after his
death. Very interesting, too, to read why Che was in Bolivia, and
what his plan had been.
We left Valle
Grande and went back to Santa Cruz. We were on a tiny, rickety bus,
which became totally crowded. At one point and old man got on and sat
on the steps right in front of us and put his arm across Jesse's
legs! Huge personal space cultural gap!
In Santa Cruz we
stayed another night with Katie, and Jesse made Sheperd's Pie and her
boyfriend came over. Then we headed to Sucre on a 13 hour overnight
bus, which was about 5 hours of backtracking for us, but we hadn't
wanted to bring all our stuff with us to Samaipata and Valle Grande.
The bus to Sucre was awful. The people behind us smelled so bad of
body odor, that we had to keep our window open all night. The bus
stopped at this truly awful restaurant in the middle of nowhere, so
we were starving, and the bathrooms were absolutely disgusting. The
only other time the bus stopped was when it got a flat tire. For
about 6 hours there was a man lying on the ground next to me, and his
feet where poking into my bags. But, when we got to Sucre we felt
better, the sun was out and Sucre is a really lovely town. Jesse
found a decent hostel, and we took a much needed nap. Sucre had lots
of restaurants catering to tourists, which was great! Bolivian food
had quickly gotten boring for me. We booked a ticket on a tourist
bus to go up to a mountain town, Tamabuco, for their annual dancing
festival, which Evo Morales was supposed to be at. We had met a
girl, Savannah, in our hostel and she decided to come with us. She
was an ex-model from London who had been traveling on her own for 8
months! The festival wasn't that great, as we couldn't see much due
to the crowds, and the dancing is not really dancing, but more of
shuffling feet around. The costumes were cool though, and the town
was very interesting. While we were there we ran into our friend
Katie, who had lived in Santiago and taught English as well. It was
very random! THEN we also ran into a German couple we had met in
Chile Chico months before. And we also ran into a French couple we
had met in Ihla do Mel in Brazil! All in the same town, in the same
day! It was very random. We met up with the Germans and their two
German friends for dinner. We've met a lot of Germans on the trip,
and they are always really fun. We ate at the local market, which
was really cheap and unhealthy!
The next few days
we walked around Sucre. One day we went on a hike with a local
guide, to a waterfall in the mountains. He could speak Quechua, the
local indigenous language, so I filmed him speaking it.
We met up with the
Germans and Katie for two more nights.
We finally left
Sucre on a bus to Potosi, which is the worlds highest city. So, on
this trip we have been to the worlds southern-most city and now
highest! It was definitely hard to breathe there! Jesse didn't feel
well at all. I felt okay, just out of breath and almost nauseous at
times. Jesse spent two days in bed mostly, and I walked around town.
We didn't go to the mines, which is the thing everyone does in
Potosi. They take you into active mines, where you are supposed to
give presents of coca leaves, dynamite or alcohol, to the miners.
Apparently, it's really hot and cramped in there. I'm a huge wuss, so
I wasn't down with it, and Jesse decided not to go after not feeling
so well.
After Potosi we
left for Uyuni, where we were going to go on a three day tour of the
beautiful surrounding nature, including a massive salt flat. It was
a long, cramped bus ride through the desert. At one point a guy got
on with a bag that had a baby vicuna (like a llama) in it! We rolled
into town about dinner time, and it was crawling with tourists. We
found a decent hostel, ate, went to bed. The next day we shopped for
our tour. There were dozens of tour outfitters. We found one that
was offering the tour for 750 bolivianos, and said we'd get to stay
at a hotel made entirely of salt. This sounded cool to us. But we
went to a couple more places to check out their tours. We found a
place that was offering the same tour for 700 bolivianos. We went
back and told the first guy about it, hoping he'd drop the price of
his tour, but he said he wouldn't. He also said the other tour agency
was lying, that they didn't really stay at the salt hotel. So... we
went and told the second tour agency that the first one said they
were lying. The owner, a woman, told us it was in the contract to
stay at the salt hotel. So we booked it.
We left about 10am
the next day. There were two Bolivians, one Chilean, a guy from Utah,
and us, in an SUV. From the minute our driver got in the car, he was
awful. He was not interested in us at all. And he kept saying the
salt hotel was really far away.
Our first stop was
the train graveyard. It was a bunch of rusting old trains, and was
actually really cool. All the other tour groups were there too,
which is slightly annoying, but that's traveling! Then we stopped
briefly at a small town in the desert, where people were selling all
the usual local crafts and junk. Our next stop was the salt flat,
and it was really cool. We took lots of visual-trickery like photos,
ate lunch, and then left for the salt hotel. Or so we thought. Our
driver, Jimmy, took his time, dallied, stopped off back in Uyuni (we
had to go back the same way because there was too much rain to drive
over the salt flat) at several places, while we waited in the car.
Then he told us that the salt hotel might be full, and we should go
to this other town, to a normal hostel. We all argued with him and
said we wanted to go to the salt hotel. So he took us. But he let
another car pass us, and when we got to the town the salt hotel was
in, he didn't go straight there. He stopped at some other place he
pretended was the salt hotel. Then we went to it, and of course, it
was full. So he drove us 3 hours in the dark to another hostel,
which was awful. When we got there Jesse heard the lady say to him
“Why are you so late?” Which pretty much confirmed for us that
he was scamming his boss and us. I was so livid!
The rest of the
tour, Jimmy was the same lame person, but the scenery was beautiful,
and we enjoyed it as much as we could. At least all our tour mates
were cool, and we had fun hanging out with them. The second night we
stayed at a really really bare bones place, and it was freezing.
There was no electricity, and our dinner sucked. We had to get up at
5am in order to get to the geysers. It was sooo cold. But then we
went to a hot spring, and sat around in it until Jimmy came running
over yelling at us to hurry up. Hahah.
