Copacabana

Copacabana is on the highest major lake of the world - lago Titicaca. According to Incan legends the birthplace of their civilisation. The road along the lake contrasted sharply with the other Andean highlands, which are mostly really dry. They had some real fields with things you can actually harvest with a smile on your face. Cows, sheeps and lamas were eating the juicy gras in harmony. Copacabana probably once was a place as nice as the villages on the road to get there. But when I people got the word, locals began building big time. Now the city is to big and lost it's charme. The dullness of the Lonley Planet and turism in general have not yet stepped on the breaks. Thats why the Copacabana train keeps on rolling. To be fair - there are two nice hills next to the city that provide a perfect view of the lake and the sunsets. Since prices were slashed I stayed at a beachside hotel with a perfect view of the harbour, the sunsets and the TV.

La Paz

La Paz - famous for it's well puplized hight - is in a valley in the middle of the Andes. Surrounded by 6000ers you can be sure that views from the bottom of the pan are overwhelming. The traffic and smog near you, the shanty towns on the hillsides and the proud snowy mountains on top. Paradoxly the inhabitants of the slums have a much nicer view than the wealthy upper class. With the hotel Austria you can be sure, that you made a bad choice. But there was a bed and a reception. I walked through the buzzling streets and tried to make sence of it. A four dish lunch is 1.70$. After checking out some local soccer tournament I went to the cinema to watch "angels and demons" with Tom Hanks - good stuff. The "Mongos" was not as special as my brother suggested (I was porb a bit early - 9PM). Next day I hung out with Stefan from Augsburg. We went to the market, bought a digicamera for him and went to the cinema. This time Star Trek - even if your not a treky that regularly goes to conventions with a fancy helmet, you just have to love that movie. In the evening we got major league drunk with a dutchman in an irish pub and then in a "Loki" branch. I still shiver at the thought of that evening. Brrrrrrr....

Next day drinking vitamin fruit shakes from the market and talking slash guessing about what happened the night before - bus to Copacapana

Samaipata

Samaipata is not famous omong gringos but popular among the Santacruzeños. It is in a little valley on 1500m. Because it was lowseason and during the week, almost no soul was in town. The turist infrastructure was once again way to enormous. I checked into a hostel that also provides a platform for the young chessmaster of Bolivia. They win almost every national championship. Sadly they only play Blitz-chess, what I consider rapeing the game. My TV in the room had only 2 channels. So I decided to hike without further planing towards that "hill over there". After a 3 hours hike on an increasingly deteriorating path, at the beginning along villas of rich Santiageños (could also be local druglords, since Santa Cruz is on the drugmap), afterwards along nature, I made it to a shack. Obviously nobody takes care of it or Barney Gumble lives there. Since it was a dead end and I was far away of any toilet I took my first nature dump of the journey. Then I more or less walked back down. (Summary: 3h hike up - dump -3h hike down)

Santa Cruz

After a 15 hours nighttrip on a regular bus (the ones with a bed were sold out) I arrived in Santa Cruz.
The microbus brought me to a place I didn't want to go to, so I had to walk to the main plaza. The nicest I have ever seen. High and big trees give shadow to all the pedestrians that hang out there during the day. People are playing chess all day. The Residencial Bolivar is a nice oasis compared with the noisy street. Since there was an european week going on in the institute of "alliance francaises" and the "Goethe institute" a lot of countries were represented by their most famous food (prepared by locals with local ingredients). Switzerland had a acceptable "raclette", Germany some nice "schwaebische spaezle", Irland an conventional "fondue" and Italy a surprising "toastbread with nutella". I paid a visit to the local zoo. Local people spilled out on a sunny sunday afternoon and acted stranger than the animals inside the cage. They were throwing candys, icecream, plasticbags and similar stuff at the animals to interupted their obvious boredom. Cages were to small and sometimes not even hermetically sealed. Monkeys were on top of the birdcages and I seemed to be the only one who was bothered by that fact.

Simon and a friend of his from back home caught up with me and we did what english people do, if their on vacation. After only one beer in a posh bar with glaswalls I managed to walk pretty fast in to one of these walls - embaracing myself in front of all the people. Over a week later I still felt some pain in my upper lip. Afterwards we drank some "kohlberg" wine on top of their hostel and crashed.

Sucre

A 3 hour drive from Potosi lies Sucre. Sucre claims to be the capitol of Bolivia. Even though it's not as big as La Paz it has a lot of charme because all houses are colonial style and painted white. Simon and me stuck to the Kolbert wine and enjoyed the Champions League. The nice parque central is one of the best I've seen on the whole trip. We hiked on top of a nearby hill to have a good view of the city. But from the top you could only see the trees taking away the view. Some indigenous people pilgered to the top as well to pray in front of the huge jesus statue and probably sacrifies animals to please the gods. Besides of the omnipresent trash there were a lot of bones on the ground. In the evening we hung out in the bars with people we knew from Potosi. The next day I went to the famous dinosaur tracks. The whole cliff is starting to fall apart. So if anybody wants to see it, he should hurry up, because the nearby cement factory is still using dynamite closeby sending shockwaves to the wall. Our hostel room smelled like the room next door (the toilet). But wine kept us cheering up.

Potosi

Potosi is part of the World Heritage Foundation. It was once the richest city in South America and now only stop on the gringotrail. The city is surrounded by mountains that are much higher than the city itself (4000m). The Koala hostel is the place to be and the Kolbert wine the beverage of choice. A four dish menu for lunch costs 1.5$. People are friendly and the local football clubs the best in the country. The nearby silvermine that nowadays only provides zinc was once gound zero of manslaughering in a huge scale. Compared with this mine the Holocaust looks like a picnic and the current Iraq war like a dust in the Sahara. On this mountain 9 million people had worked their way into their death. Whole Incan populations where wiped from the historybooks. We had the chance to go into the mine where men eat cocaleafs, drink 96% alcohol while using dynamite. People usually die after 10 years in the mine. Turists can buy detonators, dynamite and much more for 1.5$ at every kiosk. In the evenings we (about 10 persons) got drunk pretty bad and recovered during most of the day.

Uyuni

The promised land was reached after 9 hours in a bus and 2 hours at the border because they didn't have "luz". On 3600m, in a really dry place, just next to a desert there wouldn't be a raeson to build a town, if the "Salar de Uyuni" wouldn't provide one of the worlds most stunning views. Uyuni is for turists - nothing else. Food and Parties were good.
So it was time to mess with the 65 tour angencies. Simon took care of that for me and we took the cheapest one. There were also two dutch girls in the jeep and a spanish-irish couple. We visted the vanished pride of the old, rusty trains and then the flatlands of the saltlake. With the "pescado" island in the middle. A hill full of cactuses and fossilized corals. Nena - our cook - prepared good food and the turists were making pictures that were taking advantage of the absence of points of reference. In the evening after visiting an ancient cementary, where corpses were lying freely in stone igloos, we got drunk major leaque with some bolivian wine.
Next day we visited all the lagoons and rockformations of the region. While doing that we saw lamas, flamingos and more. In the evening we stayed at a place at an altitude of about 4500m Thats when Eva got really sick. She felt absolutly desperate because she vomited into the dorm. Maybe because we were good people or already drunk we didn't care that much and tried to help here to get through the night. Patrica (España) nursed her really good. After a bit of sleep we left at 0530 to go to 5200m. On the way up I started to have problems of my own. My muscles started to contract without me wanting to. Breathing was difficult and the hangover didn't help. After seeing the geysers we drove a bit down a things got much better. After dropping of Eva and Eliane at the chilenian border we drove back to Uyuni.
In the evening we got drunk. My first "russo blancos" on the trip. Next day me and Simon from Bath, England drove to Potosi.

Calama

Calama has an anual amount of rain of 5mm. Thats pretty dry. It's also cold because it's on 2400m. It was build with the earnings of a huge closeby silvermine, that has diameter of 4km. An other close village was abonend a few years ago, after geologists found silver under the village. When I walked on top of a closeby hill of Calama, I saw the newly builded houses for the people of the doomed village. The hostel was shitty and the food overpriced, even though the "Prager Schinken" was pretty good. The day has come for my wallet and for some companionship after a week of english weather, european prices and a bulgarien resort atmosphere in low season.

Capiapo, Caldera

Capiapo has nothing to offer, not even for a desparate turist that was in a bus for 10 hours. Puzzled about the uniformity of Chiles smaller citys Timmy wen't right on to Caldera at the Pacific. Caldera seems to be overrun in the highseason, but in the lowseason there is only a sleeping fishervillage with way to much infrastructure to cope with masses of turists. Streetdogs are all over ready for the feast during summer, when turists through away the bad empañadas. I ate at the best places in town and took a decent hotel with TV and baño. The only attraction I saw during the 3 days where the seacows in the bay area. These huge animals seem to be really good hunters and are not as cute as you may think. Otherwise the village is surrounded by the unforgiving Atacama desert. It was time to move on to the oasis of Bolivia, where things were cheaper and bit more alive.

Fiña del Mar

Only a little hop away from Valparaiso, Fiña del Mar is much more laid back and a bit more upper class. It even has a proper beach but the water temperature can destroy any mans pride. So nobody really gets into the water. Since there was no reasonably priced hostel I decided to take the nightbus to the north. While checking out some intel in the LP and sitting on a bench next to the main avenue a 50 year old begger came to me, leaned over me - I was trying to draw aside - and kissed me on the cheek. "¿QUE PASSSSA?" I yelled. But he just walked of smiling. Then I ate some fine italien food and drank some wine and went off to the bus.

Valparaiso

Valparaiso is part of the UNESCO world heritage foundation. They are giving these titles out like candy these days. Once a really important port for ships going around Southamerica, it's significance vanished after the panama canal was completed. The houses are close together, so the lanes are like manmade gorges. Buildings are parlty falling apart and the cold fog of the Humboldt current makes you shiver during the nights. Nowadays it's also a major navy base and still used by cargoships to ship products abroad. The food was really good and the wine cheap.
But it remains a dirty port city that has seen much better days.

Santiago de Chile

After a nice flight over the Andes I touched down in Santiago. After really smoothly getting on top of things I was ready to explore this often overseen city. Stunned by how advanced the infrastructure was and how sophisticated people were, I felt like in an european city. The main difference is that young people are mostly extreme left - meaning the streets are full of punks and alternative teenagers. But there is also an upper class that likes to sit in italian style coffee places and eat sushi with some coffee. That exacltly what I have done. I checked out some of the museums and the houses of goverment. Most santiageños are white and wear more ties than people in Switzerland. There were not a lot of turists and so it was difficult to meet people. I consider it a brief visit to Europe.