The Bish Krew on Tour

Welcome to the antics of the BishKrew on tour round the world. Bish Crew members: Tommy O'Gallagher, Kieran Rafter, James Askew, Tom Fleming, Laurie Howell and Teo Lopéz-Bernal.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Santiago to the back end of Bolivia...and at last we found him!!!

It was monday morning that we left the three globetrotters in their plush Santiago appartment, it had been a great long weekend of unadulterated tomfoolary and we left with long faces. Sadly this lasted a short while as we were soom absorbed into the fine life in Santiago with our friend Sebastien and his lovely family. We were picked up from the end of the metro line and driven out through the smog, to the green suburb of Las Condes. We quickly established the tone for the week as we immediately took to our beds and began two days of sleep. On tuesday however Teo took a bad turn for the worse and this peaked in a spectacular projectile vomiting session coating everything bar the toilet. Our previous travels were clearly catching up with us, and we saw it fit to sleep some more. It is at this point we should mention Ida, she is the family´s house keeper and she was fantastic. With motherly attention accompanied by a warm smile she served us five meals a day. Breakfast, 11´s, lunch, tea and supper, her motive being that we needed to fatten up. We did not complain as she was a master chef so we simpy ate everything put infront of us, and apart from Teo being struck down it was this limitless hospitality that caused us to emerge from the house 3 days after arrival.

Thursday saw us travel by bus to Valparaiso, the oldest city in Chile. Its buildings fall down the steep hills to the sandy beaches lining the coast. These hills are scaled by funicular railways called Ascencors, it is these that structured our mornings ambling around the colourful alleyways high up above the central plaza. We strolled around the ancient Cerros and got lost looking for Escalar de Muerta. We eventually found our way down another rickety Ascensor and took the coastal metro to the co-city of Viña del Mar. Here we were to be met by Maria, an old Chilean Raleigh chum. We quickly jumped in her jeep thing and were wisked off for a tour of the city. The ride took us up to the coastal village of Con Con where we indulged in a gourmet fish meal in a restuarant overlooking the bay full of sealions and pelicans. The tour took us up and around Viña before returning to Maria house, witnessing an amazing sunset over Valparaiso on our return. We ended up crashing at Maria´s house that night as we had missed the last bus back to Santiago. The evening saw us chilling out at a Chilean appartment, chatting about football, travels and general banter. In the morning we headed back to the capital after what was an awesome time in Viña and Valporaiso.

Soon enough it was Saturday and time to head up north. This could not happen before another one of our daily fights with the six kids- Sebastien, Maria Jesus, Bernandita, Jose Manuel, Javi and Juan Diego. These battles ended up getting quite vicious, with Laurie standing on Jose´s head in one memorable duel. Sadly the battle mostly ended up with us getting defeated simply through shear numbers. The battle may have been one but the war is not over!
Later that day it was time to say goodbye and take another one of our now regular, epic bus journeys, this time up north.

We were thrown off the bus 6 hours down the road at 4am in La Serena at the base of the famed Elqui valley. With nothing open we settled down to 4 hours of freezing sleep in the half open bus station. Later that morning we took the bus up the Elqui valley to the small town of Vicuña, and absolutely shattered, we crashed in a nice hostal till the afternoon. We rolled out of bed and onto the bus to Pisco Elqui, the heart and namesake of the Pisco region. After an overpriced lunch we embarked on a tour of the Pisco distillery ´Tres Erres´, we learnt how they made it, saw where they made it and most importantly drank it. At 40% we returned to Vicuña a happy duo. That evening we visited Mamalluca Observatory and spent the evening looking at Casius Major, Saturn and Jupiter amongst other nebulas and things, and the night was finished off with some traditional music played by the in house astronomist. The next day we returned to La Serena and took the over night bus in the evening for a further 19hrs to the town of San Pedro de Atacama in the middle of one the driest deserts on earth. After checking into Hostal Florida, the next two days in the town saw us cycling around the various delights in the surrounding deserts. We visited Valle de Luna and as recomended watched the crimson sunset, we went sandboarding down the nearby dunes and also had some good chats with fellow desert explorers. It was after these two days that the race began....

Meeting Tom on the 27th had been scrapped as we had decided to go the the Salar de Uyuni on a three day jeep tour, it was so close we couldn´t miss it. We changed the meeting date to the 29th and began the three country sprint up South America. The tour took us up to the Bolivian border at 4500m at the foot of the Altiplano where we had brekky and Coca tea (the basis of Cocaine, Parents) . We then drove on a dirt track for an hour to Laguna Verde at roughly 4600m and watched the lake change colour to become a lucid green colour. The track climbed and climbed to the hot springs at 4800m where we swam and relaxed in the 35c water. We ate a fine lunch out of the jeep and climbed further to the Sol de la Mañana geysers at a head pounding height of 5000m. Feeling the altitude, we descended only 200m where we slept in a shack on the shores of Laguna Colorado. This lake due to the algae is bright red and is the home of three types of flamingoes including the rare James flamingo, we watched these peculiar birds frollick about till sunset and returned to the shack for a breathless nights sleep. After more Coca tea we finally began our descent to the Salar, stopping at a string of flamingo lined lakes and looking at the crazy Dali-esque volcanic rocks. We reached the Salar late that evening and were welcomed into the Salt Hotel, and yes it is made entrirely out of salt. We had a warm night at last and woke up at the un-godly hour of 5 to drive onto the Salar to watch sunrise, it was worth all the grumbling and moaning and was an incredible sight. As the sun came up we drove to Isla Pescada, an ancient island lined with ancient cacti. Here we ate pancakes with our Bolivian drivers and contemplated the vastness of the Salar. The jeeps then roared off across the white expanse and we covered the huge white plain stopping only for novelty photos and salt crystals beneath the salty crust. At 3 in the afternoon we eventually arrived a the tiny town of Uyuni.
We didnt pause for breath as we immediately and desperately wanted to get out the town and start our challenge of reaching Ariquipa in two days. We were so keen to leave we bought both a bus ticket and train ticket . We could not leave till midnight at the earliest so we spent the evening in a pizza place with no money but euros talking to two Raliegh friends who we had luckily met earlier that day. After killing time with good banter we jumped into our Executivo seats at 1 in the morning and chugged off on the train for the Bolivian town of Oruro. We arrived at 7am and instantly went to the bus station, with perfect timing we were told the bus to Arica, Chile left in three hours, this was perfect. After being done over by a Bolivian before we should have expected what was going to happen. Three hours turned into 5 hours, and the bus was now leaving from a place 20 mins outside the city. At least they gave us a pickup to the leaving point we thought. However when the jeeps back wheel exploded at 120kmh we were sure the bus would have left without us. But with minutes to spare a lift down the road to the bus stop left us on a bus for 9 hours to Arica on the other side of the Andes. After passing amazing volcanoes in the Lauca national park we got to Arica late at night, and we said ´f*¨! this¨and checked into a hostal for the first sleep in 24 hours. Slightly fresher we got a Collectivo (taxi) across the border to Tacna, Peru and then a rickety bus to Ariquipa 7 hours up the road....and then....

We found him!! The elusive Tom Fleming, tanned, smiling but with a glint in his eye...

TL and now T

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