o solo mio

hola compadres,

so, here I am in Sucre, the administrative capital of Bolivia (La Paz being the "de facto" capital). I{ve gotta say that this place is absolutely great. First of all, the weather is glorious: this makes a nice change from the artic temperatures that I have experienced over the past couple of weeks/months. At last, I can walk around in a T-shirt and shorts and generally bask in the sun. Secondly, the city is really beautiful. It{s whitewashed houses with their tuscan roofs are a UNESCO World Heritage site and its easy to understand why. Thirdly, I{m in a great hostel. Its a really nice Spanish colonial style building with courtyards and passageways and great people. Its very expensive though, at 2 euros a night, I won{t be staying here long, hehe.

When I arrived in Uyuni, I literally jumped onto another bus straight to Sucre... well, I say straight, but in reality I mean to Sucre via Outer Mongolia. I went with the two Irish girls from the Salar trip and we had a five hour ride to Potosi first, on a road that was as much a road as I am a smoked salmon sambo. I got the livin bejayzus shaken out of me for those five hours. We were relieved when we got to Potosi, but we had to sit in the bus from 1am in the morning until 7am in the station while we waited for it to leave for Sucre. To say it was feckin artic is quite the understatement: I wore every ounce of clothing that I have as well as my sleeping bag. Finally, we left for Sucre at 7am and arrived via a fairly decent road at about 10am in the morning.

Being the complete gobshite that I am, I hadnt written down the address of my hostel so I had to treck around looking for an internet cafe, decked out with in all my glory with the biggest and heaviest rucksack in the history of travel. (thats another post alltogether). Eventually, I got to my hostel, had a two hour long hot, hot, hot shower and slept like a baby in clean sheets after three days of cold-induced insomnia.

But now Im here, and I think that I[ll stay here for a bit while I sort myself out with an itinerary for Bolivia. (Plan to stay here for about a month).

When you{re travelling, the choice of hostel that you stay in is of upmost importance. It WILL dictate how much you enjoy yourself in a place. It also depends on what mood you happen to be in. If you are all boozed out, and want a couple of days of tranquil existance, then you do not go for the party hostel, but rather something slightly quieter with a more "mature" clientele. But mostly, you look for a hostel with a capacity between 30 and 60 (not too quiet but not too impersonal either, don{t like "factory" hostels), one with good showers and clean rooms, where the people will be nice and "easy" to get to know.

This whole "easy to get to know" lark is h-actually important too. When youre travelling on your own, you obviously need to get to know people or you will be a lonely little bunny. To get to know people quickly and easily, you have to be more open to new people than you would otherwise be at home. You know the way, when you{re in work, and theres a new face around, sometimes you pass them in the corridor with a "I should know you but I don{t" kind of look. Or when you are in the elevator with another random person in an otherwise closely knit environment... there{s this kind of awkward silence. Well, it can be the same thing in a hostel, you see the same people around and pass them all the time, giving them a kind of faint smile.

I have found that if you just go over to people and say something like "by the way, I[m Conor, whats your name" or something along those lines, then you can instead pass them and say "hey jimbob whats the craic". It make you and them feel more comfortable. Nine times out of ten, if you introduce yourself randomly, you get a very positive response cos the chances are that the other people are feeling the awkwardness too. And you make for a much better environment.

When you meet people for the first time, you usually have a fairly standard conversation along the lines of "Nationality? Name? Where have you been so far? Where are going next?" etc. etc. blah, blah! Sometimes this can be a little bit monotonous, and you would really be better off printing it all on a T-shirt to save your time. But its usually a necessary step, although sometimes you just jump into some obscure conversation without knowing anything about your partner.

Obviously sometimes you meet complete bastards, but for the most part you meet great people and end up doing great stuff with them.

When I got to my hostel here in Sucre, the second I got there I was invited out with a crowd for dinner and we had a great night. Last night, we took it easy with chicken and chips and a dvd (Be Cool, the followy-upper to Get Shorty, quite an entertaining flick) and tonite I{m going out to a Chineser with some other people.

Anyway, thats enough about the dynamics of solo travel. I booked myself into two hours of Spanish course tomorrow to answer some of my long term questions and maybe learn a new tense or how to use pronouns or something... but the only time that was still available was 9am so must take it easy tonite.

So, I promise that I{ll update with photos as soon as I fill my memory card... (by the way, for my retard family, there are lots of photo albums on the toolbar to the right at the bottom)

Hasta luego compadres, and as always feel free to comment... Pics of Sucre here

PS: Finished "A portrait of the artist as a young man" today... I feel like I should get a medal or a trophy or something.... its the national enquirer for at least the next couple of weeks.