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Published: January 10th 2009
After getting over the Cusco Christmas hangover, we got on a bus bound for Puno on the Peru side of Lake Titikaka, where we stayed two days, visited the floating reed islands, and then crossed the border for Copacabana on the Bolivian side of the lake, where we stayed another two days and hiked the Isla del Sol. To be perfectly honest, Lake Titikaka and both towns were a little underwhelming. I think I was suffering from Post Machu Pichu Magnificence Syndrome. Its not to say they were not interesting, but you can only find alpaca and llama products, and women in big skirts and comedy bowler hats entertaining for so long. The reed islands were interesting enough in how they are constructed and how the people live, but they are heavily touristed (but then again, we are tourists). It does have to be said that, being danced and sang at aside, Taquile island was beautiful - reminded me a little of Greece. I just think my interest in why the people are wearing different types of woven products has begun to wane...
There were two interesting things in Copacaban though. Firstly, there was this bizarre blessing of vehicles happening
outside the cathedral. Cars, jeeps and vans of all descriptions were adored all over with flowers, people were pouring cheap champagne and holy water all around the vehicles and a monk was blessing the engines. The queue went on for miles and people were letting off fire-crackers all over the place. It was very odd, people must have come from miles around for the blessing ceremony. The second thing was the Capilla de Velas or Candle Chapel around the side of the cathedral. Id read in my Lonely Planet it was a ´not to be missed´and went to have a gander. You go through this dark doorway into a putrid passageway were some poor old homeless are begging for Bolivianos. Once you pass them, giving them a few coins, it widens out into a sort of gloomy cavern with a statue of the Virgin Mary of Copacabana lit up at one end. On either side there are stone ´troughs´ where people are lighting thousands of white candles and all you can smell is melting wax and blown out candles, and all you can hear is the sizzling of the wicks and the whispers of prayers. They only light comes from
the flames, and there is graffiti on the walls in wax, and plaques on the wall under the statue thanking the virgin for her various good deeds. Its one of the more bizarre places Ive ever been. Spooky and compelling at the same time.
Isla del Sol would have been absolutely stunning if it had actually been sunny but unfortunately it was more a case of Isla del Dramatic Clouds and A Bit Of Rain. In fairness, it is a beautiful place and the birth place of the Inca culture apparently, so there are a few ruins to be seen as well. Again I think PMPMS was still in effect! But it was there we met up Ben & Jo again, after ´cruising´out to the island for two hours on the worlds slowest and possibly dodgiest boat ever. The hike along the spine of the island was pretty tough in parts - I was still feeling MP in my knees and thighs and because Titikaka is at over 4000m, I was feeling it in my lungs as well. Altitude issues just do not get any easier I think, so I was really looking forward to La Paz, which is
pretty bloody high as well. I cant wait to be closer to sea-level again! The cruise back to the mainland was torture - an overloaded snail-boat, together with surround-sound whining, screeching and pooping children. How I didn't drown one of them is beyond me. I so regret the loss of my iPod...thought it wouldnt have helped with the smell of poo.
I do admit, I was pretty apprehensive about going to La Paz as I´d heard all sorts of horror stories about muggings, kidnappings-for-cash and general lets-scam-the-loaded-tourist type activities. But I have to say, we really liked it a lot. Its this huge city crammed into a ¨bowl¨ in the mountains, and every conceiveable nook and cranny is just wedged with buildings. Its a pretty impressive site upon arrival. We've never felt unsafe or threatened here and actually the energy and general mentalness here is great! Having said that, I'm rarely getting the camera out here, just in case. The traffic is crazy - I´d like to see a Vietnamese driver survive here! The markets are crazy and include a Witches Market where you can buy a llama fetus to bury under your house for good luck, other dead
things, potions and charms for all sorts of needs and ailments. There is the usual woven tat for sale of course, and if you are into huge red or yellow knickers or boxer shorts with cartoon sperm on them, then La Paz is the place to get them. There is everything you can imagine for sale in the street markets including black potatoes which we got served one lunchtime. Spuds should be white, or at the very least, cream. Black or purple spuds are unacceptable. We roamed the streets for a few days taking it all in and for NYE went to a bigger party hostel with Ben & Jo, chewed the ear off random strangers, and suffice to say the route home is a little hazy...
Once we´d recovered from NYE, we cycled down Death Road (sorry I didn't tell you, Mam, but I didn't want to worry you!) with a company called Downhill Madness. You start at a chilly 4655m and cycle mostly downhill for 64km (a vertical descent of 3345m) to the tiny, half-horse town of Yolosa where you slug a well earned beer or two. Its the rainy season, so we were expecting to get
pissed on and for the road to be in a shitty condition, but we were really lucky and had a fab sunny day for it. The bikes were great, full suspension, and excellent brakes and we got full safety briefings from our guides. I expected it to be a lot more hairy than it actually was. Actually, the first half is proper tarmac. Death Road itself is pretty narrow gravel but isn't actually that steep. There are definitely a couple of areas where the cliff drops straight down about 400m or so, but its not all like that. Or at least I think that maybe I was concentrating so hard on not actually coming off the bike and shredding myself on the gravel, that I didn't notice how sheer the drops are! There are cool parts where you have to cycle under waterfalls (that are eating away the road) and through rivers. The old road is still actually open to traffic, as its 30km shorted than the new road, and the guide told us approx. 30 buses go over the edge every year. As for cyclists, well, there have been ten fatalities in ten years, but our company has only
had one... Every so often you would pass a cross indicating the site of an accident. But thats not dissimilar to what you see on many roads at home... Anyway, its all about taking it handy and like I said, we had great conditions. Apart from the landslide that had occurred half way down earlier that morning! We had to get off the bikes and walk them across the soft, mushy surface, while our support vans had to wait for a tractor to clear the landslide before following us - six hours later! So, we survived Death Road. But little did we know there was worse to come!!
We headed into the Pampas on an 18 hour bus journey to Rurrenabaque. Its a local bus i.e. not a sleeper, so none too comfy (but at least there were no chickens) and lets just say the new road that replaces Death Road only goes so far and you find yourself on something that really shouldnt be accomodating coaches or trucks. Its a dirty/muddy single lane road, perched high up the mountains, with tight, twisting bends over sheer drops right down to the valley floor a couple of hundred meters below.
Getting ´danced at´ on Taquile Island!
They then grabbed a few tourists up to join them. Its such a shame Si was on the wrong side of the table for that! There really is only room for one vehicle, but we had to pass loads of other coaches and trucks, and we were on the left side of the road i.e. the cliff side! In addition, I was sitting on the left hand side of the bus, right at the back, and I had the window seat, so I could see every turn we had to make, how close we were to the edge, how crap the road was and how far down the drop was. Officially the scariest journey of my life. Simon still has nail marks in this thigh where I was gripping on for dear life. After a while I kind of said, well, if we die we die, and tried not to worry too much, then entered a state of denial which was enduced by some valium I happened to have to hand! Which was good, as just a little while later I saw a group of people gathered on the side of the road. This is a little strange I thought to myself, as its the middle of nowhere, what are they doing here? So I sat up to have a look (big mistake) only to
see a bus had toppled over the edge and had rolled down about 10 to 15 meters into the trees below. We heard later about 5 people had died but there were lots of rumours flying about, so we are not sure what really happened. It was pretty fucking terrifying. Valium enduced sleep (of sorts) fortunately followed, but the road surface (which thankfully descended to ground level) just got worse and worse and we were rattled and thrown about in our seats, so much so I had bruises on my sholder blades by the end of the journey! Sleep was intermittent to say the least! Thankfully we had chosen to fly back to La Paz after our Pampas trip - best $75 I have ever spent!
Anyway, the Pampas was absolutely brilliant, the perfect compliment to our Ecuadorian jungle trip. The pampas is the amazonian flood plain and we saw loads of wildlife - crocs, ciaman alligators (muy peligroso!), turtles, loads of pink river dolphins, howler monkeys, wee squirrel monkeys that invaded our canoe and one even jumped on Simons sholder! Our camp was really basic, basic huts and the shower used the river water, but it was great
and we had a brilliant group of people too on our tour, which always helps! There were loads of squirrel monkeys in the trees around. We had a resident croc, Pedrito, who visited camp every so often and also a pretty hefty caimon who came ashore for breakfast one morning - they are pretty dangerous so we couldnt get too close (although I tried my best!). We went hunting for anacondas in the pampas itself which involves wading through swamp for about 3 hours in the blistering head, getting eaten alive by mosquitos (Ive never, ever seen so many), nearly snotting yourself every five minutes on the reeds. Si´s wellys had bigs slits in the back so they were completely pointless and he got bitten twice by an insect that made his foot go numb for a while. We were shitting it that it might be a cobra bite, but our guide reassured us (badly) in Spanglish that he wouldnt die! Then the swamp got so deep that the stinky, brown, grimy water simply flooded our wellies anyway. Yum. We feared we had leaches, but thank god we didnt! It was so gross, but fun for the first hour and
a half. Not so much for the second hour and a half! And after all that, we didnt find an anaconda! Another guide did run through camp on the last day as we were leaving, holding one about 2 meters long - Im pretty sure in a national park you are not supposed to interfere with the animals, but as they say here ´Hey, this is Bolivia...´ Ummm.
One of the coolest things was swimming with (well really in the vicinity of) the pink river dolphins. The water is so brackish that you cant see anything more than two inces below the surface, and there was loads of scarey things touching off our legs. Plus there was a boat piranha fishing not too far from us, which was a little disconcerting, but the dolphins would pop up every now and then, and the water was heaven, such a relief from the heat and the bastard mozzies. Also, one morning we were all woken about 5.30am to the sound of howler monkeys in the trees right above our huts, bellowing at the top of their lungs. Obviously, they are called Howlers for a reason, and the sound travels for up
to 5km, so you can imagine how loud it was. The noise is like nothing earthly, it sounds like a monster from an old 50s horror movie! It was pretty damn deadly! We spend the night in Rurrenabaque, a cool little town, before thankfully flying back to La Paz (aint no way I could have coped with that bus journey again!).
What a last day we had in La Paz! We went to San Pedro prison, which is the strangest prison, firstly because they let tourists in, and secondly because there are no guards (again, sorry Mam for not giving you advance warning!). The prison is run and managed by the prisoners themselves - they organise security, ´solve´all problems etc. Its not like a normal prison, its like a litle city within the city. There are shops, street stall restaurants, football pitches, foozball tables, even saunas (which stink) but its really pretty grim. The wives and kids of the inmates also live there but are free to leave for work and school. So there are kids everywhere, mostly pretty grubby looking (and god only knows what they see everyday), running after you, begging for dulces (sweets). We brought a
few bags of sweets and lollies for them, and ciggies for the inmates. Everyone has to work to make money to rent or buy their cells and and the cells range from some quite nice ones with TVs and little kitchens to complete hovels wedged under concrete stairs. In one such hovel we met a man who had been there 30 years, and had 6 months left to serve. Not sure what he was in for, but he seemed very nice. The ´work´also extends to making and dealing cocaine, and there is a full production factory in the prison, and there are loads of addicts around. One bloke stood right beside me smoking crack cocaine, and beside him was a little girl of about 4 years old that Simon gave a lollie to, but she had a syringe (thankfully without the needle) in her other hand. That was pretty horrific. Simon bought a bracelet (they make lots of handycrafts as well as drugs in the prison to earn cash) from this really nice, lovely looking bloke, about 20 years old. We later found out he was in for murder! And we were in his cell! Now, we were not left
to wander around on our own, we did have a guide, Miguel, who was awaiting trail for drug-dealing (allegedly!), and two bodyguards assigned to us for our tour. One of them looked like he might knife someone at any second, which in actul fact made us feel very safe, as opposed to scared shitless! It was the most surreal, but incredibly interesting two hours. It has to be experienced to be believed really.
So last night, we met up with some of the Sligo lads from the Inca Trail and a couple of girls from the Pampas trip and went clubbing til 6am. Simon even danced with some of the local women! I have pictorial evidence! So, today, Im pretty much in a jock, but looking forward to what the rest of Boliva has to offer. We have been well impressed so far!
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Adrian Stewart
non-member comment
:)
Happy New Year you two, lots of love , A Hope the old arse is feeling better Si...still... cheaper than a colonic :)