Iguassu Falls

There are few things that could make a 27 hour bus ride that ended up in a humid land of 100 plus degree heat worth it, but these falls were. I just can not come up with words to explain how incredible they were. And I am certain that the picture does them no justice. If you get the chance definitely check them out.

Which of these things are all of the same?

Guess the theme amongst the cities on this sign....

Pulling Teeth

Fountain in Tiradentes.

In the mountains a few hundred miles north of Rio de Janeiro a gold rush almost as big as the California one took place in the 17th and 18th century. Portugal taxed this gold to finance their empire, and through trade, the Industrial Revolution in England.

However, near the end of the 1700s, as the gold started to run out the Portugese, discontent with a lower take, raised the tax rate. This was around the same time as the American and French revolutions, and low and behold, the people of Brazil followed international sentiment and rebelled.

Unfortunatly, unlike the US and France, the revolution failed. One of the leaders of the revolution, Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, took full responsibility for the revolution, and was hung in Rio de Janeiro, in the plaza today named Praça Tiradentes.

His body was quartered and with his blood, a document was written declaring his memory infamous. His head was publicly displayed in Vila Rica, the town at the heart of the gold rush. Pieces of his body were put on display in the cities between Vila Rica and Rio, in an attempt to intimidate other would-be rebellions.

Today, the square of his death is named Tiradentes in his honor. It seems that in Joaquim´s life prior to being revolutionary thinker and General, he had been a dentist. Tiradentes is Portuguese for teeth-puller. Thus, all of Brazil refers to him as Tiradentes, and his home town in the gold rush mountains has now been renamed Tiradentes after him.

Down at the Copa... Copacabana

Definitely not the same as the nightclub in NY, our first Copacabana of this trip was spectacularly beautiful, if quite chilly. Lake Titicaca (no longer just a bad childs joke, or the answer to a trivia question) is one of the prettiest lakes we`ve ever seen. And if it`s beauty alone didn´t leave us breathless, 15 miles of hiking at 13,000 feet certainly did.

(All Titicaca photos can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/sets/72157602584747352/)

Salt Flats are Flat

How we have not put up a post yet on the Salar de Uyuni is beyond me. I mean it was a month ago, and it was phenomenal.

The first day we headed out from Tupiza, Bolivia into a landscape that reminded us of the California desert. However it quickly turned into the desert as envisioned by Salvador Dali.

Red and purple rolling hills quickly turned into giant smoking volcanoes, vivid red, green, blue, and white lakes filled with flamingoes, steaming and bubbling mud pits, ostriches, llamas, vicunas, and of course the highlight of the actual salt flats. Imagine almost blinding whiteness in all directions, with an occasional îsland in the middle of the great salt sea. The most amazing thing is that the salt flats were probably the first thing Mary has found too salty to eat.

All photos can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/underunfamiliarstars/sets/72157602829782359/

Leaving (Bolivia) on a Jet Plane

The national beer of Bolivia is Paceña, with the best slogan ever... "Paceña. It`s beer."

If you spend too much time in Bolivia, you can grow to be quite frustrated with it. It does have spectacular sights, Titicaca, the Salar, and ...ummm... well Titicaca and the Salar, but outside of them nothing really works like it should. For example, leaving Bolivia.

You know a country has problems when it takes a 15 hour bus ride to travel from it`s judicial capital to Santa Cruz, it`s wealthiest and second biggest city (as the crow flies about 200 miles), because no one has ever bothered to pave a road between them. Actually, in places the road is really just a dry riverbed. Or, in the rainy season, the river is where you would want the road to be.

Luckily we were in the dry season. Unluckily we grabbed some salteñas for the road. Really unluckily they had gone bad, and Mary spent 15 long sick hours with a plastic bag and no bathroom nor bathroom stops.

After the 15 hour ride, we arrived in Santa Cruz at 6:30am, an hour and a half before the train ticket window was supposed to open for sales, where we found a line of around 300 people waiting to get tickets. We decided to check into a hotel and come back for tickets, but by the time we had checked in and got back to the train station, the ticket seller had called it a day as it was noon and all.

The next day all train tickets were sold out, however we were able to purchase tickets for the following day. When we arrived at the train station the next day, eager to leave Bolivia, there were signs up saying the train was cancelled due to striking villagers, and security told us the train probably wouldn`t be going for the foreseeable future.

So we decide to fly. Unfortunately the first travel agent we went to wouldn`t take credit cards, and once we were back from the ATM, the tickets we were trying to book had been sold out. (Why not accept credit cards at a travel agency? Why not book the tickets while we went to the ATM? This is not the way of Bolivia.) Travel agent numero dos found us an 11 hour, 5 leg flight out of Bolivia departing at 4 AM. And that, my friends, is the story of how we left Bolivia. (BTW-- it looks like they`re headed toward civil war nowadays and the trains STILL haven´t left. Lucky for us we`re in Argentina now).