The Far South

Enfin me voila en Argentine,le pays ou je vais passer le plus de temps dans ce voyage.
Je commence logiquement par le nord, pres de la Bolivie, avec comme base pendant ces quelques jours la ville coloniale de Salta.
C'est une capitale de province coloniale,sympathique et un peu endormie (ce doit etre la chaleur), avec une grande tradition folclorique et musicale.
J'en ai conscience lors de ma premiere nuit ici, j'etais heberge par Laura, une nana un peu hippy qui vit pour la musique et qui m'a fait decouvrir une excellente peña locale.
Le dimanche, c'etait les elections presidentielles et le pays etait mort, j'ai donc fait une jolie excursion dans les environs.
Puis location de voiture pour 2 jours afin de visiter la quebrada de Cafayate (magnifique) avec Brice (de Grasse cette fois ci, presque) et 2 gamines danoises sympas mais jeunes. Evidemment a Cafayate j'ai retrouvé l'autre Brice (de NY qui etait au perou et en bolivie avec moi).
Allez on repart pour une nuit de plus et 20h de bus (je commence a hair le bus,ici au moins c'est plus confortable, mais tellement plus cher...),pour passer 2 jours a Mendoza, la capitale du vin argentin, avant d'arriver (en avion cette fois ci, youpi) a Buenos Aires.

Después de 4 dias en jeep, tantos kilómetros y paisajes increíbles, necesitaba un pequeño descanso.
Pasar entonces dos dias en Sucre, una muy linda y tranquila ciudad colonial en el centro de Bolivia, ha resultado entonces muy agradable, ademas hospedado en un hotel por fin confortable !
Lo cierto es que no hay mucho que hacer ahí, una vez visitado el extraño e encantador cementerio, un parque "cretacico" con huelles de dinosaurios que encontraron en una excavacion en el medio de una cimenteria, y unas cuantas cenas en restaurantes por fin aceptables (uno de ellos en la Alliance Française por supuesto).
Potosi esta a tres horas de Sucre y en mi camino hacia Argentina, asi que paré algunas horas ah tb para visitar la ciudad mas alta del mundo (4070m), creada por los españoles para explotar las minas de oro y plata mas grande del mundo...y se sigue usando la mina, pero para otros minerales hoy...los mineros trabajan en condiciones casi tan desastrosas que durante la epoca colonial, pero por lo menos a no son esclavizados, e exterminados...se pueden visitar las minas, pero pasé...me parecía demasiado "voyeur" como experiencia...me contenté con la visita (decepcionante) de la antigua casa de la moneda donde se fabricaban las monedas a partir de la plata.

Bolivia, me encantó por su diversidad, su autenticidad, su lado tan salvaje, logré odiarla a veces por su comida y sus transportes, pero lo cierto es que después de casi dos meses en los países andinos necesitaba cambiar ya de cultura, de paisajes y de gente.... así que por fin un ultimo bus sucio, por una carretera de miera durante 20h...y ya aparece Argentina.

After another transportation trouble, I finally changed my plans and arrived by train in Tupiza in the south of Bolivia.
That's a nice place, once again really different from the rest of Bolivia (such a diverse country), and this time I felt like I was plunged into a western.
I stayed one day here, enjoying a 3 hours horse ride around, before planning a 4 day jeep trip to the Lipez and Uyuni Salar, Bolivia's most famous and unbelievable places.
For doing that you have to find an agency (very easy) and other guys to fill the jeep (4 or 5 person) if nobody has booked it before...I finally ended in a group of 5 french people(I haven't chosen it, but actually there are a lot of french travellers in Peru and Bolivia). Actually it was two couples, Maxime and Stephanie (french engineers from Paris, cool guys), and Sylvain and Ludovic (yes I'm pretty sure these two were gays, from Paris as well), Ludo was quite weird regarding with his food habits (basically he can't eat vegetables, fruit,and so many other stuffs if they were not cooked the way he wanted...I just remember him saying he liked donuts...) and was such a drama queen (he was with fever the last two days and behaved like he was dying...poor guy!)
for the rest it was really amazing, even if we were most of the time in the jeep, and the nights were freezing, with such a strong wind.
sometimes you just believe that you are in another planet...landscapes are so extreme, different and surrealistic...just take a look at the pics to understand what I'm talking about.

Finally in Rurrenabaque, I took a day to have a rest, and enjoy this really lovely, clean and well organized village (yes I couldn't think I was still in Bolivia).
I found an agency for a 3 days and 2 nights tour in the Madidi National Park (supposed to be one of the most diverse and nicest in the Amazon.
On the next day, having breakfast in my hotel, I saw suddenly come in Pascal Roucau (a guy from INSA which I haven`t seen for at least 8 years) and his girlfriend...I knew they were also doing a trip around the world and should be in latin america on theses dates...but the coincidence was still unbelievable.

I has just a short moment to talk with them since I had to start my tour on the jungle.
This time I was in a group of 5 (with a dumb young english couple, an old austrian witch and a quiet German daddy...so much fun...). After a three hours boat trip we finally arrived at our lodge in the jungle...good food, and quite disapointing first walk in the forest on the afternoon, without seing interesting animals or trees..
But the jungle is really great at sunset...then it suddenly gets noiser than a busy Madrid street ! crazy cicadas, making unbelievable noises, frogs, yeller monkeys...you suddenly fell small and lost.
On the next day we made a bigger trek, to sleep directly in the midlle of the jungle with just hamacas and mosquitoe net...and we stopped in an incredible mirador, close to macaws nests, one of the loveliest(and surely the wildest) sights I've ever seen...on the way we also saw snakes, monkeys and many other birds and insects...on the third day, to go back to the lodge, we even made our own wooden "raft" to go downstream on the Tuichi river...nice!

This trip in the jungle was not inicially planned, but I was very happy to have done it, it was a unique experience.

With Brice (de NY, not de Nice), we decided to have some "fun" by doing the Death Road on bike.
It's the former road between La Paz and Coroico, from 4700m to 1100m height, 50 kms of unasphalted road, that was one of the most dangerous road in the world before they built a new one (almost 150 dead per year).
Now there's only some agencies that propose to make the descent by bike...at first sight they look more or less the same regardings to bikes and safety measures, so we took a cheap one....big mistake!
The bike in itself were not bad, but very badly maintened...and the guide was just crazy....Brice had to change his bike with the guide because his brakes dindn't work properly, mine was almost as shitty and I felt down....luckily not on the precipice but still on the road...stayed in shock a few seconds and had to go on. The problem is that I'm not used to do such a large descent by bike on a bad road, so at the end I could barely moved my hand because of the pain...I was to "crisped" on the bike and used my hands and wrists as amortizer...one week after my wrist still hurts...
Anyway, it was still a nice experience, because the landscape and the road are just unbelievable, and this was on my way to the Amazon...
I spent the afternoon and day after in Coroico the have a rest, it's a nice and quiet area, before taking the bus (15h to do 300 kms...I should have felt the trap) to go the jungle.

And then I made my second mistake in two days...going up in the worst bus I've ever seen, on the second worst road I've ever seen (yes it's indeed the continuation of the Death road, still unasphalted but just larger)...I was the only foreigner in the bus...after being blocked 3 hours for works on the road, the driver just went mad, and drove like if he was on a rallye...During a while I got very scared and thought this was my final moment...the most unbelievable, is that the other people in the bus, were quiet, it was "normal" to them, it shoud have helped me but made me feel worse, like if I was in an horror movie actually...when we finally went out the mountains the road was less dangerous but still very bad, so I couldn't sleep during the whole night of this true nightmare.

When we arrived in Rurrenabaque on the next morning, after taking a shower on my hotel, first thing I did was buying a flight ticket for my way back to la Paz.

Ya , despeuse de tres semanas en Peru, tocaba cambiar de aire, o casi, ya que pasé por Bolivia por el Titicaca, y es mas del mismo, salvo que visité esta vez una isala (del SOl), muy bonita, con vistas sobre los picos de los ANdes, un cielo fantastico, que pasada es este lago la verdad. Es muy "puro", muy tranquilo, parece que el tiempo no tiene poder sobre este lugar, una sensasión increible.
Acabé el Peru con una pareja de catalanes majos (si despues de 4 años en Madrid descubro ahora que esto existe! vale exagero pero ya soy medio gato), y tb con otro chico frances, Brice, que finalmente viajo conmigo durante unos dias mas.
Pero bueno despues de casi una semana en total ahi ya era tiempo de volver a la "civilacion tercermundista", y en este sentido La Paz ha sido el destino ideal.

Todo el encanto de la capital tiene en su ubicacion completamente improbable e impresionante (casi en el fondo de un cañon, con vistas a un volcan, y valle desertica casi en la ciudad, rascacielos, e favelas rojas pedagas sobre pendientes fuertes. Pero tambien a su ambiente (se ve a mas gente en la calle que en Madrid), a sus transportes en comun cutreskitsh, a su gente indigena que representa mas de la mitad de la poblacion, y a su puta contaminacion.
Encontre el mejor limpiabota de mi vida (ademas de ser el mas barato), la peor camarera de mi vida,hice la mas mpresionante bajada en bici de mi vida...todo esto en dos dias...es cierto que viajando te pasan mas cosas!!
Queda sin embargo bastante mas caro que el resto del pais (sin pasarnos tp, me costo 11 eur una cena en un restaurante tipo camareros super atentos, que te preparan la silla y llenan los vasos), y en dos dias ya no hay mucho mas que ver...asi que decidi darme una vuelta (imprevista esta vez ) por la amazonia, en un parque natural que dicen fantastico...ya veremos !