While waiting for my overnight bus to Sucre on the highway in Samai I was accosted by a village person - a village idiot, in fact. He was an overly chatty young man who was carrying his 3 fighting roosters with him back to Valle Grande and was assisted by a smiling but more sedate boy in this process. He talked at me in some kind of language that mildly resembled Castellano. I have taken the liberty of translating it fairly literally into English.
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`Che was a really good man, he was a doctor, he helped everyone all the time because he was a doctor, he helped everyone`
me, thinking but not saying: `Yeah, except for the Nazi-style death camps in Cuba`
Later... - `Cannabis in Australia?`
me:`Yes`
`You do it?`
me:`No, I don`t like it`
`I do, because Im in pain all the time and I can`t eat properly` Lifts his shirt to reveal some kind of football lodged underneath his skin where his stomach should be. He makes me touch it.
`See? It`s hard, isn`t it`
me:`Yes, it`s hard`
Later... - `Fine chickens in Australia?`
me:`What?`
`What are the fine chickens like in Australia?`
me:`I don`t know`
him, surprised:`You`ve never seen them?!`
me:`No`
He lifts up a bound rooster, displays his spur and then makes me touch his cock`This chicken killed another chicken. Yeah, it killed it. Really killed that other chicken. Here, touch it`
me:`Yes, its sharp`
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Siobhan joined myself and Kirsty from Melbourne, Mario from Dublin and Heather from London for a nice of nightness and fresh food at the HI hostel. The next morning Kirsty decided to try the local delicacy, food-dyed pink alcoholic chica, which scored almost as high on the make-you-vomit scale as San Pedro. The Finish and I soon moved down to Wasi Masi though to make one big happy family and together with Jeremy from Melbourne we celebrated Jenni´s birthday in (drunk) style with a delicious home-made secret-recipe apple crumble, then later lasagna and Andean licores like coca shots and maca licor and OJ. Before we hit the town though I needed to rehydrate quickly - search for receptacle, ok, this red wine-residue cup looks fine, fill it up and scull away. I had drunk half a glass of the detergent water before I realised that it was so, the result being about an hour of burning throat and cheeks, a sore stomach and consistent spitting and coughing. Recommended.
The fine and dandy days in Sucre were lovely indeed - picnics in the park, double espressos at Florin (including a grand morning in the sunny courtyard with Jere´s headphones), great Chinese stir-fries and of course more salteñas and chocolate. We observed a night of celebrations leading into the Day of the Dead holiday/piss-up with tradicional/Spanish dancer and cool costumes. Amsterdam Marathon veteran Martin and I jogged up a local Jesus mountain three days in a row, including many large steep steps. These were particularly fun on the rock-hopping and at times triple-jumping descent. I didn´t run all the way but kept a good pace anyways. I thought it might start to get easier by the third day but apparently that´s not the way it works - my legs and hips weren´t particularly happy for a following time period. SIobhan and I later went up to that same hill to find the two blossomming wattles there and be reminded of back home - ahhh, I was ready to go home :)
On the Sunday morning of my departure us Australians and the Finish bus-connected it to Tarabuco, a place that reminded me a little of Pisac in how it explodes with tourists on a Sunday morning all searching and buying from the tacky (my personal opinion) souvenir stalls. I went with the intention of ruthlessly doing this myself but failed... the dishonesty and poor quality and general consumerism of it all getting to me and eventually i just gave up. We reconvened for the return trip to Sucre, which I knew was the first of a long segmented journey that would end in Buenos Aires...
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When out of divine intervention the bus came I thanked whatever Chrisitian gods I still believed in and boarded, but the bus gimps were either lazy or wankers, so made me lug my big backpack up next to me in the bus aisle - there were no toilet stops all night on the dusty and hot journey. Bolivia was back! Despite these negative things, the actual journey that I`d recalled as being so dangerous and uncomfortable was not so - it was far worse.
I met Sergio from Spain sitting next to me and managed to doze a few hours before we arrived in Sucre and I transferred to my HI hostel again. There I ran into Jere and Jenni - yay! We had breakfast together and then caught up with Siobhan and Jules - yay! They showed me through a cosy but very cute apartment they were renting for the week. Nice. That evening at their hostel we all sat around a fire in a nice courtyard along with James and Belle from Melbourne, Mez (Isabel) of Andoriña fame and lots of other nice folk drinking red and having fine conversations. We had bought and prepared some pizza ingredients thinking that we`d be making our own at some stage, but before long someone circulated the space handing out gourmet pizza delight! Awwwwesome crispy thin crust and yummy fresh sauce; great ingredients. OK, thanks then, I guess we`ll get onto making our own in a little bit. But no, more pizza came pretty much every 20 min and we were treated to this great service for a few hours until we were all satisfied! Incredible! The head chef was Coralie, daughter of a French pizza maker. Thanks to Roxan the hostel manager and Coralie and your assistants - great night.
The weather in Sucre is great - cool in the evenings but (at the moment anyway) fine and warmish during the day. Myself, the Finish and the Aussies set about indulging ourselves in the foodiness of Sucre - I particularly loved the salteñas while myself and the other Aussies hammered the Para Ti chocolate cafe a few times. It turns out Jere used to be a tech-house DJ also - he`d recently sold his equipment and 400 pieces of vinyl but kept the excellent Sennheiser headphones - I asked for a little borrow of them to indulge in the ultimate sonic bliss... OMG! I`d actually love to try them with some higher quality sound equipment too... *goes off into a romantic fantasy of a date, just the headphones and myself (and possibly taking things a little further)*
Siobhan joined myself and Kirsty from Melbourne, Mario from Dublin and Heather from London for a nice of nightness and fresh food at the HI hostel. The next morning Kirsty decided to try the local delicacy, food-dyed pink alcoholic chica, which scored almost as high on the make-you-vomit scale as San Pedro. The Finish and I soon moved down to Wasi Masi though to make one big happy family and together with Jeremy from Melbourne we celebrated Jenni´s birthday in (drunk) style with a delicious home-made secret-recipe apple crumble, then later lasagna and Andean licores like coca shots and maca licor and OJ. Before we hit the town though I needed to rehydrate quickly - search for receptacle, ok, this red wine-residue cup looks fine, fill it up and scull away. I had drunk half a glass of the detergent water before I realised that it was so, the result being about an hour of burning throat and cheeks, a sore stomach and consistent spitting and coughing. Recommended.
The fine and dandy days in Sucre were lovely indeed - picnics in the park, double espressos at Florin (including a grand morning in the sunny courtyard with Jere´s headphones), great Chinese stir-fries and of course more salteñas and chocolate. We observed a night of celebrations leading into the Day of the Dead holiday/piss-up with tradicional/Spanish dancer and cool costumes. Amsterdam Marathon veteran Martin and I jogged up a local Jesus mountain three days in a row, including many large steep steps. These were particularly fun on the rock-hopping and at times triple-jumping descent. I didn´t run all the way but kept a good pace anyways. I thought it might start to get easier by the third day but apparently that´s not the way it works - my legs and hips weren´t particularly happy for a following time period. SIobhan and I later went up to that same hill to find the two blossomming wattles there and be reminded of back home - ahhh, I was ready to go home :)
On the Sunday morning of my departure us Australians and the Finish bus-connected it to Tarabuco, a place that reminded me a little of Pisac in how it explodes with tourists on a Sunday morning all searching and buying from the tacky (my personal opinion) souvenir stalls. I went with the intention of ruthlessly doing this myself but failed... the dishonesty and poor quality and general consumerism of it all getting to me and eventually i just gave up. We reconvened for the return trip to Sucre, which I knew was the first of a long segmented journey that would end in Buenos Aires...
Hey Tristan,
ReplyDeletethanks for the tips: hotel Wara del Salar in Uyuni was a really nice place stay before ánd after our 4 day trip. And @ Minuteman pizza we ran into J&J again, who turned out to have been to lazy to ask around were Wara del Salar was to be found, haha.
When the owner saw us sitting in the street the afternoon after checking out, killing time waiting for the train to Oruro @1:45AM!, he ordered us back inside, to have a lay down, wow!
Now we're spending our last night in La Paz, tomorrow in Copacabana and then it's Peruvian time!
Have a good time in Argentina, and keep up the running! (My last run dates back to Potosí...!)
Mart!n & Marieke
www.barackomama.waarbenjij.nu