As some light relief from all those long words Mummy has been putting up, have a picture of a Siberian huskie:



Greg - Ushuaia, Argentina

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It's time to admit defeat, Mummy! That strange circular bite you picked up in the jungle has been around for nearly three weeks now. Might it be time to accept that it is, in fact, ringworm?

At least medicine here is cheap.

Greg - Buenos Aires, Argentina

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The time has come; I'm off by myself! Not everyone wants to go to Iguazu, so I'm being a big brave zebra and heading off on my lonesome.

It's a good job I've got Mummy to keep me company, or I'd feel about as lonely as I look in this Salt Flats picture.

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We saw a lot of lakes on our trip to the Salt Flats with our utterly atrocious guide. Here is the Red Lake:



Here is the Flamingo Lake:



And here is the Green Lake:



Notice any salient feature which is missing?

Greg - Salar Uyuni, Bolivia

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I am writing this in a very grumpy mood, as I am angry at Mummy. Yesterday, she went on a big fun adventure and left me behind! Trapped in a locker for a whole day, just because she didn't think Death Road is a very safe place for a little zebra!

'Death Road', or the Yungas Road if you want to Wikipedia it, as the kids inaccurately bastardise a noun, is a fairly long stretch of road in Bolivia that used to be the most dangerous in the world. Why? Well, have a look at this photograph I stole.*



The drop-offs are "at least 600m", and the road is mostly single carriageway lumps of rock. According to Wikipedia, 200-300 people died a year when it was in use full time. Now the big lorries use the new bypass, but a couple of tourists still drop to their deaths yearly. Back in the good old days, it was the only road in Bolivia where you drove on the left, so left-hand-drive vehicles could get a better view of the wheel perched precariously on the cliff edge. If you want to read more, have a look at a very melodramatic BBC account here.

I think the main reason Mummy was so concerned was that instead of opting for the company recommended by the hostel, which had posh bikes with hydraulic brakes, full face crash helmets and their own mountain rescue equipment, which cost 57, she instead paid 22 to go with some other people. You got free breakfast and a T-shirt though!

She survived, needless to say, although the problematic neck means that she has spent lots of time lying on her back on the floor today. Oh, and drying her cothes, which got soaked by the waterfalls which pound down onto the stones at some points. She is trying to make up for it by taking me to the rainforest soon, so there might be a big break in writing!

Sadly, she couldn't bring herself to tempt fate by wearing her "I survived Death Road" T-shirt from the very start of the trip, preventing the chance of a rather ironic corpse being repatriated.

Greg - La Paz, Bolivia

* _{Mummy's photos will go up at some point, but are currently trapped for complicated reasons. This will do as a placeholder. Sorry to original owner.}

It's the Fiesta de la Virgin del Copacabana! For six days a year the imhabitants of Bolivia and Peru descend on the tiny fishing village of Copacabana to celebrate their Lady and have an enormous party. There are streamers and confetti and bands everywhere, figures of the Virgin processing through the streets as women in rainbow skirts dance and buses covered in rainbow crepe paper get in the way and sond their horns. The whole village is packed and alive and colourful, everything gets blessed and crowds of people swarm up the hill to set fire to countless candles and pools of paraffin and draw pictures of their houses in wax ont eh walls.

But you don't want to see that, do you? What you want to see is a photo of Mummy being blessed by having an armadillo rubbed on her head.



Greg - Copacabana, Bolivia

_{As any good reader of the Lonely Planet will know, it is very bad indeed for tourists to have anything at all to do with the growing trade in dead armadillos, which are cut up or made into mandolins. Ever. So as a discerning reader you will be pleased to know that this particular specimen was alive and wriggling. There's a better picture of it, doing a good bit of shoulder rubbing, in the photos section}

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Not Our Best Border Crossing

So far, we've been doing quite well for border crossings. Granted, Zambia was shut, and the lady on the Namibian border broke my gin, but it's all been relatively pain-free. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this is not the proper traveller experience. Luckily, the people at the Peruvian-Bolivian border, whilst they are many things, are not idiots.

We were settled down on another of our overnight buses, of which we are so fond, expecting a mere twelve hour journey. It was cold, yes, but I had my sleeping bag with me as we trundled (or, for a large part of our time, simply sat around for no discernible reason) over the mountain passes towards the border with Bolivia.

At 6:00 am, we stopped. At about 6:15, we moved a few metres. Then we stopped. This continued for a full five and a half hours, until the bus finally forced its way up to the border archway. The reason for the delay soon became clear; anyone crossing the border had to have an injection against H1N1. Thankfully we are too foreign for anyone to worry about, so were let through without being jabbed in the arm. Our other bus companions were not so lucky.

The border was a nightmare. There were stalls everywhere, cars and buses crammed into every space and policemen shouting things. We got waved along with a stream of people, inspected by the men in white face masks and coats, then saw a great big queue going into an official-looking building. However, this was not the building with 'immigration' written on it, so we went to that instead.

It took a long time to get forms, but we're now expert at filling them in. Granted, I did misunderstand a question and listed the country I would visit after leaving Bolivia as 'Bolivia', but that's not too great a worry. The man at the desk had other ideas, though. We hadn't succeeded in signing out of Peru.

This often doesn't matter (see our America-Mexico border crossing), but the man was quite insistent. It seemed that the police had pushed us straight past the Leaving Peru office (which wasn't the one with the big queue!). We forced our way back across the border, having to push past the police who really did think the stupid gringas were going the wrong way, and found an office. We filled in lots of forms. Then we had to go to another office, where we got a stamp. I bought some confetti.

Back in the first office, a new man was very baffled as to why his desk already had my immigration form on it, and why it had been half completed by his colleague. We explained that we were idiots, he looked dubious...and gave me a stamp!

We got outside just in time to be told that our bus, having spent 5h30 getting to the border, could not spare 20 minutes at it to wait for its patrons, and had left, taking our rucksacks and whatnots with it. We looked at the empty road. A person offered to chase the bus for us in their combi van, so we got in.

We were left in Copacabana, our final destination, by a random little car park and told that the bus would be there soon. The man who was helping us then disappeared. We waited. Forty minutes later (we still don't know where it had gone since leaving us and arriving in Copacabana) it rocked on up, and we got hold of our stuff! We didn't leave a tip.

We're now debating which country to enter from Bolivia; the one with the guards who confiscate all the "fake" dollars you carry, or the one where the entrance/exit points are 60km from the actual border in either direction.

Saf - Copacabana, Bolivia

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Hello everyone!

I went to Laka Titikaka. I have seen a lot of reeds. There are, in fact, whole islands made of reeds, which float about on the surface (although they cheat a bit by anchoring them down) and the people live an almost entirely reed-based existence.

Except for all the tourists, of course.

Have some pictures of some reeds:



P.S. Puno is a shithole. Never go.

Originally published at Where Is Greg?. » Click here « to leave any comments.

Dear Mummy,

It's been three days since you started walking to Machu Picchu, on the hardest route offered by the tour guides. You have climbed 1600m, gasped for breath at altitude, fallen and twisted your ankle. Your legs set solid every time you sit down and if you put your feet down too hard you can feel the blisters shifting. Last night you 'slept' in a tent whilst it was -15 degrees Celsius outside, and your stomach has gone on strike and refuses to digest anything. You are wearing revolting clothes, covered in dust and now monkey poo from that little sod who climbed into your coat to go to sleep earlier. The dirt is ingrained into your hands, and in order to get around at 1:00 am you have to twiddle the knob on your wind-up torch constantly.

So why are you going out clubbing, instead of keeping me warm and cared for? Why? How can that ever be a good idea?

Cusco, Peru - Greg

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