ToBeShaw

… as I was saying!

I realised two things last night. One, I missed out mentioning Salta. We were only there a day as a stopover, as it sounds like more of a party place than a daytime hangout. Seemed nice enough, but Mendoza was the priority. Two, my brain is obviously starting to switch off, as I meant, when describing my freakish punctuation marks, a cedilla, not a circumflex. So apologies to all my French friends. *hangsheadinshame*

Getting Those Looks again. And need to catch my bus. Laters…

What a few weeks it has been

After Sucre, where I met a sweet guy from Leeds to hang out with a week or so, met the loveliest man Omar ¿say no moreª? who ran both the hostel and the Spanish school next door. Highly recommend the Travellers Guesthouse and Bolivian Spanish school there, really nice and chilled and homely, the complete antithesis to Loki and all it brings with itª

FYI, a superscript A is an exclamation mark, a c with a circumflex is an apostrophe, and my brackets are question marks. Of course…

Anyway, after a week hanging in Sucre, I decided to head down to Potosi, to check out the mine tour. I was geared up for something pretty traumatic, having heard so much about the way the mines are run, the conditions under which they work, and the potential for my freaking out due to clautrophobia, but I figured this trip is about new experiences and facing fears, so thought, sod it.

As it happened, I was building it up in my head, as usual. Donçt et me wrong, it was possibly the weirdest, most out=of=comfort zone thing Içve ever really done, but not to the extent I expected. I had watched a film called the Devilçs Miner the night before, which was due to give me some insight into the experience. It was positioned as a documentary, but I found out afterwards it was just a film. So that tainted my expectations somewhat. I had also heard that this particular mine was reserved for the tours, and that most working mines have far superior, more modern conditions than we were witnessing. But Içve learned that everything = ESPECIALLY in Bolivia = is to be taken with a certain amount of salt ¿pardon the pun, for when I start talking about Uyuniª? and it certainly didnçt take away from the tripp, more that it helped me appease my guilt about exploiting levels of poverty and danger to see something really cool.

Uyuni was next, and Içm GUTTED I cançt post photos from my camera on this computer as it was one of the most dazzling things Içve ever seen. We were really lucky as, being wet season, the entire salt flat became a giant mirror, and my group ¿had a cool bunch? spent a couple of hours larking about on the salt, taking the usual cliched photos of people jumping ¿or attempting toª?, doing yoga, running about etc. AWESOME trip.

Next stop = which was my birthday, incidentally, and I have to keep saying it out loud that yes, I am 36 now. Jesus when did that all happen+++ = was San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile. ONly stayed a couple of days but went sandboarding in the desert. Amazing funª And met three cool Aussies who adopted me for a few days, and theyçve all just left for BA.

Then thought Içd join them in Mendoza, where we visited three wineries = cançt remember the names right now = and had a briliant tour with guide on the region, had a spectacular lunch, with pairings, and has inspired me to become more knowledgable on wines when I get home. AM now being glared at for being on here too long, so will sign off and pick up later.

Habla pronto…

So, I ran away from La Paz yesterday. After two weeks over festive season, at altitude, it was about as much as my health could handle!

Met some amazing and gorgeous people. Some less so!

Now, it´s onwards and upwards. Or downwards, geographically (or am I now higher than I was yesterday… who knows anymore?).

Now arrived in Sucre for some calm, culture and loveliness, after a long and arduous final day in La Paz. The sun´s out today, which was very welcome. Not worn a pair of shorts since I´ve been here.

May stick around and take some Spanish lessons, but if not, I´ll be here three or four days and then head to Potosi to throw myself into a silver mine (don´t worry mum, I will be neither the first nor the last!).

Was sitting a beauticians the other day trying to make myself look relatively more human than I had been looking, and during four hours of being buffed, painted and polished – all for about 15 quid (I know!) – I had a lot of thinking time. Sadly, now I have forgotten many of my more profound thoughts I thought I might share (worst blog post EVER!?).

But there´s a very common perception here, amongst the people I´ve been meeting, and I´ve had it a lot this week. A lot of people are putting pressure on themselves, as in they should see this place, or ´DO´ this country, and at the end of the day, every day is a different day, and we make choices. And each of those choices will be for a different reason, and will have different outcomes, some known, and some less known.

Anyway, the point of this ramble was that I needed to stop feeling guilty about moving on, or not doing something on The List, and relax. So I may change my originally planned route, or may extend by a while, as it´s FLYING by. I even thought about staying and working for a brief stint, but that didn´t quite work out.

I know to everyone who´s done these kinds of things before, this is a very typical thought process, but it´s new for me.

Also major events seem to be hindrances rather than helpers over here. For instance, there was the whole thing about Christmas and New Year and where to be. Now there´s the whole birthday thing, but I am inclined to forget about this one if I´m honest and stop here (not met so many 18-25 year olds since I was, well, probably 18-25)!

Now I feel like in wanting to be in Rio for Carnaval, I may have painted myself into a bit of a corner, as I seem to have underestimated the time needed for my original plan. So it could all change, in terms of going there first and then coming back in towards Argentina, or skipping it altogether, but I need to do some research into logistics first (not exactly my preferred forte!).

All good either way.