oruro
from there we all traveled to ororo for carnaval. every town and country celebrates it in its own way, and oruro celebrates with a week long celebration of a goddess. the dancers start at one end of the town, and end up in the cathedral, where they get blessed. this dancing, drinking, and pegging people with carnaval foam and water balloons went on for 5 days straight. not kidding. we went to bed a 6 one morning, woke up for breakfast (it was free at our hotel, so ofcourse we set our alarm) at 8, and the dancers were still parading through the streets. daisuke, one of our new friends from japan, also brought an outfit( vegeeta from dragon ball z ) from japan so it was hilarious to see him dancing around…although we were prime targets for water balloons.
getting to the bus station was also tricky because we had all of our bags and could not move as fast, but we made it out alive…
from there we said our goodbyes since i needed to head back south to bs as, and i spent another night back in potosì. well, more like another day in a hostel, since it was carnaval here as well, but there were more kids dumping water off their roof, as well as drive-by super soakers…
salar de uyuni
since rodrigo and i were both heading off to uyuni, we decided to go together, and met up with his friend andy there. the uyuni salt flats are amazing! we were in a 4 x 4 for 4 days with a french couple and a japanese girl, so our conversations were ridiculous. i spoke to rodrigo and andy in spanish, and to izumi in japanese, and then we all kinda spoke english…but it was great to be able to practice japanese before my trip! since it had been raining a bit the first night, the salar looked like we were driving on top of water…we also saw things like flamingos, llamas (they are everywhere) huge cactus’s like 30 foot tall, awesome rock formations, pretty lakes, and geysers.
we decided to go cheap and bargain with all the tour companies, and so of-course the one we went with ended up to be pretty non-catering. our driver was also the cook and tour guide, and our car was shit so he was a mechanic most of the time…haha.
potosi
from there, the guys left for salvador, brazil, and i to potosí, which is a little mining town south of la paz. they have coal mining caves that you can visit, and so rodrigo ( an argentine guy from my hostel) and i decided to do the tour. the tour takes about 4 hours, which i thought would be a long time to spend crawling in a closed dusty place. but it went by fairly fast and i kinda imagined myself like the dwarfs in snow white…
i still can not believe the conditions that these people work in. most of the workers work ten hour shifts, and make less than one dollar a day…and the average age of the workers is 20. we bought coca leaves, cookies, and dynamite to give to the miners, because this is what keeps them going throughout the day. lighting off the dynamite was cool because it was risky but i thought i lost hearing for a bit…
la paz (san pedro prison)
after cusco i ended up spending another week in la paz, and got another chance to visit the san pedro prison. the san pedro prison in la paz is famous because there are different rankings of prisoners, and so some live in shithole cells and some in like hotel suites. tourists used to be able to visit until a few years ago, when there was a riot and it was clear that is was unsafe for foreigners. anyways, i heard of people getting in and the guys i was with really wanted to go in, so we decided to try. it was actually really sketchy, because you have to know someone in the prison, (long lost friend, relative..etc) but ofcourse when you have me and three aussie guys that don´t speak spanish, they guards knew we are lying.
so we waited across the street for some guy to come over and hand us a sheet of paper that had a spanish guy´s name and number to the jail. the number is 2131454 in case you know of anyone that is gonna go…just ask the guard for ernesto. his full name is ernesto sello, and he said he has been in there for the last 3 years and has 10 left. we thought it would be cool to hear his story. so we used the payphone across the street and called for him. the guard put him on the phone, and then ernesto he told us to bring him some coke and cigarettes in a grocery bag, and that we should put our names and some money for him to bribe the popo so that our names would be down on the visitation list.
well…it was kinda intimidating because there are all the prisoners with their arms through the front jail gates and i was the one that had to go in there and hand ernesto the bag. it was also sketchy because the guards were like, yea, YOU can go in. i was like, ¨HELL NO¨ not with out my friends. we then had to call ernesto back from the payphone and arrange a time for us to meet. the guards were watching us the whole time, and i can not imagine what they were thinking. probably something like…weird stupid gringos. anyways, we arranged for a time but then went out with a bunch of the guy´s friends from melbourne that night and missed it the next day. so, all that for nothin. haha.
we didn´t get to go in to the different rooms of the jail, but got to see the courtyard, eating area, gift shop, and talking area from where i gave ernesto our goods. so it was enough for me. and yes, they have a gift shop where the prisoners can sell their crafts…