Bolivia - Carnival, Horse Riding and Film Sets

We left Salta to head to Bolivia, the home of my mate Keogh's lovely misses, Andrea. Once we crossed the border we were in a town called Villazon, where there was a carnival on. There was carnivals on everywhere in Bolivia on different days, unfortunately every time we arrived to a town we were either leaving or arrived too late for that town's carnival. They start at eight in the morning. So by the evening, they are well done.

There was still a party atmosphere going in Villazon, though. Part of the festivities is to throw water balloons, buckets of water and to use water guns to soak unfortunate unarmed passers by. Attention was soon turned to the foreigners. "Hey Gringo" quickly began to mean duck! It was all good fun though and after a bit of a soaking and some silky dodging moves, we broke through the main assault.

We needed to find a bank as we had no Bolivianos yet. We found one, which of course had about ten lads right across the road looking every bit of a bunch of guys on the lash since eight that morning. They were setting off firecrackers and shouting and singing things to us. We smiled and went to the cash machine. They all seemed to be just having fun with us but I was watching over my shoulder all the same. I turned as one of them gradually made his way over to us with his beer, smiling from ear to ear. He insisted we took a healthy mouthful each of his beer, which we did. Once they saw that and we had left the bank machine, they all came over, asking us where we are from. When we said Ireland and pointed to the Irish flag on my bag, they all cheered and danced around. This led to us being offered a drink from everyone's can and we stood there talking to them for a while. They were great fun and Emmet wanted to stay and party but there was a bus to be caught and so off we went, not before one of them giving us the rest of his can. Niamh wasn't so keen on having any as we walked to the bus. More for Emmet. Winning!

Carnival in Tupiza

It turns out the buses were not running because it was carnival, so we ended up having to get a taxi, which was surprisingly cheap. We checked into our hostel called La Torre in Tupiza and sorted out our horse riding tour for the following morning. We were a little reluctant at first due to our experience in Mongolia, which was amazing but painful. I know people say it loosely but we literally couldn't sit properly for days after. A wooden saddle with carpet on a stumpy horse galloping around the steppes of Mongolia does not make for a healthy backside. So this was firmly on Emmets' mind when inquiring about this horse riding expedition. Once we (Emmet) was satisfied with the promised well cushioned saddle, we signed up.

The following morning we headed down to where the horses were kept, with our leather shin covers, I'm sure there is some fancy horse riding name for these items of fashion but leather shin covers will do here. We also donned a riding hat which really completed the whole ensemble. Our guide Diego was a really nice guy, even with his broken English and our broken Spanish. We headed off for a three hour ride around where "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" was filmed.

Niamh's horse was called Pancho. She remembers as she had to shout it repeatedly as he ran off the trail looking for food and sometimes decided it would be a good idea to climb onto little ledges. Niamh found his disobedience less than amusing and had to be rescued by Diego several times. No show jumping medals just yet! Emmet forgot the real name of his horse, so christened him Lone Ranger.

The trek was really great and the landscape was so unusual. There were loads of multicoloured hills, it was beautiful. We visited Puerta del Diablo (The Devil's Door), Valle de los Machos ( The Valley of Matches) and Canon del Inca (Inca Canyon). We took many, many photos and really enjoyed it. Nice saddles too.

Puerta del Diablo

Valle de los Machos

   

Bold Pancho having a rest

Later on we arranged our salt flat tour through our hostel, which we will tell you about next time...

Mongolia

We arrived into Mongolia early in the morning and had an interesting time finding the guesthouse. We wandered until someone saw us looking lost and pointed us in the direction to an unmarked door. We stayed there one night but decided to check out a different place for the second night. We found a gem called Golden Gobi and stayed there for the rest of the time. We spent the first few days sightseeing around Ulaan Baatar.

We done a tour with the hostel which was brilliant. We had a driver and a guide who were sound and there were two other guests on the tour - a lovely Austrian girl and an American lady. The first day we went to visit Terelj national park and stayed with a Mogolian family in their Ger. Ger means home and is a yurt that nomadic people live in. The American lady was a little senile and didn't seem to know what was going on. She thought the tour was to go ride a Yak. Seriously! When she realised that it wasn't she decided she wanted to go home. The hostel owners mother and the grandchild had come along specifically to look after her and ended up having to trek all the way back with her. I have no idea how she got out of her house, let alone end up in Mongolia!

The second day we went to a massive statue of Genghis Kahn on his horse. We got to go up and stand on the horses head and saw some great views. We then stayed with a Kazhak family who were lovely. They invited some friends around to play traditional music for us. They had a lot of livestock which roamed around the Ger. They made us delicious Mongolian food and we sat around chatting with our guide translating. That night we also saw a red moon.

 

The next day we went horse riding to another temple. Really really cool going on horse back through the Mongolian Steppes with eagles flying over, horses and cows alone side you. Great experience but by jaysus is our back and arse killing us today!

Yesterday we went see traditional Mongolian dance tonight with a few people. It was amazing!

We are off to China on Thursday. We wont have access to the blog there so there will not be any updates for a month. We will keep writing away though and post up everything in Vietnam. Bye for now!

Link to Pictures