Day 146 - could it be that we’re suffering from “Beaver Fever”?

Well despite my, ahem, problems “down below” - of which I may talk more later - I must say that I have absolutely loved Bolivia: another 3 weeks have passed and yet again we seem to have seen and done so much.

Bolivia is a very poor country (GNI per capita of c$1,000 puts it alongside Nicaragua and Honduras as one of the poorest countries in Latin America that I’ve visited) but it makes up for that by having a slightly raw and gritty edge to it that gives it a certain charm. Apart from a seemingly inescapable backpacker’s Gringo trail, it’s also quite free of mainstream commercial tourism (certainly compared to Peru) which means that we’ve been back to cheaper but lower standards of accommodation, more unreliable forms of transport and more basic food. But with that comes a feeling that you’re more off the beaten track and further from the madding crowd - and that’s something I really enjoy. It’s also got such a variety of landscapes, climates, wildlife and people within its borders that we’ve been constantly surprised by the amount to see and do.

Bolivia is a country where the mantra “do something that scares you every day” can be lived out almost by accident. Before I came to South America I’d heard about the infamous mountain biking down Death Road (a stretch of road where in the past up to 300 people have lost their lives each year) and decided that, being a complete mountain bike novice and a bit of a scaredy-cat, it was clearly a crazy and unique challenge that I ought to take. So after a little bullying, James (and his vertigo phobia) agreed to do it too and on our first day in La Paz we found ourselves at 4,660m standing astride some suitably hi-tech looking bikes in the freezing Andean wind waiting for the off. And then we saw a sign that told us there had been 43 deaths already this year. Lovely.

The route is pretty much all down hill so required virtually no effort whatsoever on our part other than actually staying upright. Normally that’s not too difficult a challenge but the road is basically a steep dirt/gravel track with sharp corners in places, so it was easy to find yourself travelling at a heck of a rate. And that wouldn’t be so bad except suddenly you become aware that on the left hand side of the road is an un-barriered drop that in places (normally corners) falls several hundred meters straight down and that one slip on your part would probably mean sliding straight over the edge and to a pretty much certain death. Having said that it was extremely weird how as the day progressed (it took 6 hours to travel the whole route and descend 3,400m) the thought of imminent death only a wobble away subsided and the ride actually became fairly easy and fun (apart from the constant juddering on your wrists, arms and bingo wings that after only 1 hour had made me pretty much numb from my teeth to my fingertips). There were constant reminders of just how dangerous a route it is all along the way though - at regular intervals you pass crosses and memorials to all those who have tragically lost their lives along the route and we actually took the time to stop at a couple of them to hear the stories behind. Sometimes a cross marks just one life, other times it can represent multiple fatalities when the likes of a lorry or coach has plunged over the edge. The most memorable though was the story of the Japanese tourist who hurtled down on a bike, went straight over the edge and kept on peddling as she flew through the air…. she earned herself the nickname E.T.

Without even a scrape though, James and I managed to make it to the end of Death Road (at which point I unceremoniously fell into a river whilst trying to cycle across it) and, shaken but fairly unstirred, we were pretty confident that that would be the end of our crazy and scary challenges for a few weeks. And it would have been if we hadn’t decided that we ought to take a trip to see the jungle and pampas wetlands in the Bolivian sector of the Amazon Basin.

Having declined the idea of the 24 hour bus ride from chilly La Paz to sweaty Rurrenabaque (the entry point to the region) the next morning we found ourselves at a military airbase “checking in” for a flight with TAM the “civilian” arm of the Bolivian Military Airforce. Now you’d think that an airline actually run by the military ought to run with military precision, but if TAM is anything to go by I wouldn’t put much money on them in their next battle… a 9 hour delay, one of the bumpiest flights in a long time and then we were delivered to a different airport an hour from where we needed to be and were forced to pay our own bus fair the rest of the way. The only good thing about the ordeal was meeting Clint and Noellia who we bonded with over a few games of cards and with whom we’ve spent most of our time in Bolivia since.

So - smothered in repellent and full of Malaria pills, our Amazon experience encompassed a couple of nights in the thick of the jungle where we spent the days boating or trekking around the area learning about all the flora and fauna. The wildlife was relatively tough to come across but that’s largely because we were with a badly organised group of 20 - having said that we spotted amongst others, caiman, tarantulas, fire ants, monkeys and various birds. The trip into the wetlands or Pampas was much more rewarding though - 7 of us cruised around the rivers and it was virtually impossible not to see alligators, capybaras, storks, hoatzins and countless other birds every 10 minutes. We stopped off for some Piranha fishing - which was just about as frustrating as any other kind of fishing until suddenly you got a bite and flipped the wee beastie into the boat - resulting in everyone shrieking, rocking the boat and generally tripping over each other to get as far away from the snapping jaws as they could. The Anaconda hunting didn't prove quite so successful due to some movie-style rain that scared them away and put paid to the last of my dry clothes - but we did see a 2m long baby later on which quite frankly was big enough.

In dire need of a wash by the last day somehow we fell for the guide's Homer Simpson-esque story that "it was safe to swim in the river" as "the pink river dolphins will protect you from the dangerous things". In hindsight I'm not sure of the truth behind that - I mean how? - they don't have weapons. Anyhow encouraged by his rather convincing story we braved the alligator and piranha filled waters and dived in for a bit of a swim. Only to find that just 2 dolphins had turned up and they both seemed pretty uninterested in us and kept swimming away with what sounded like laughter anyway. Despite that after spending most of the time clenching and spinning in circles to keep an eye out for any suspicious movements nearby it was actually a fun highlight to the trip - seeing all the alligator’s eyes watching from the waters near the river bank and the thought of all the piranha teeth nearby, not to mention all those lovely parasites you can get in the rivers of South America, certainly made it by far the most memorable swim I’ve had in years!

And so it was time to leave the jungle and head back to altitude. Thankfully TAM delivered us safely back to La Paz in time for an excellent afternoon in the pub for the rugby world cup final - Oliver’s Travels on match day managed to transport us back to a little slice of England whilst in the centre of South America. Unfortunately James’ stomach was playing up so he headed to bed but I had an excellent night out with Claire (one of the many fun folk we travelled with in Peru) at Mongo’s and Vivien’s.

After a day’s rest for James we took an overnight bus south to the historic colonial mining town of Potosi. Arriving at 6am we were within minutes groggily heading off on a tour of the Cerro Rico mines. Potosi was founded in 1545 after the Spaniards discovered the largest silver vein of the time nearby - over the next hundred years they forced the indigenous labour force to work in appalling conditions in the mines, extracting over 62,000 metric tonnes of silver from the area. By the beginning of the 17th Century Potosi was the biggest city in the Americas, home to the South America’s main monetary mint and at one point was bigger and more opulent than London. Its fortunes have declined now that the silver has all gone, however today it is home to 115,000 people and the mines, now government controlled, are still worked in co-operatives by up to 20,000 miners a day who struggle, in conditions that have changed little from the days of the conquistadors, to mine tin, zinc and lead.

The tour of the mines started with a rather unusual shopping trip to buy provisions for some of the miners that we would visit - soft drinks and explosives were the order of the day so armed with a bottle of cola and some sticks of dynamite (which worryingly are on sale to anyone on the streets of Potosi) we donned overalls, tin hats and headlamps and descended into the depths of the hill. I’m not particularly claustrophobic but after an hour of being bent double and crawling hundreds of meters into the mountain through narrow passageways where the roofs are sometimes supported by the most brittle looking bit of wood, you do begin to wonder: What If?. The fact that the air is thin (Potosi is at 4,100m), toxic (most miners have the severe lung damage silicosis after 15-20 years), dusty and stiflingly hot doesn’t help and when you remember that you’re actually in a working mine, riddled with over 5,000 shafts that have never been structurally planned and where they’re dynamiting throughout the day above, beside and below you, it would be very easy to freak out. But we didn’t.

It was a really unusual experience to crawl through tiny tunnels, emerge into a cramped mine-shaft, meet some of the miners (some as young as 16 - all doing back-breaking work without any machinery other than a kart that weighs 1-tonne empty) and then burrow back to the surface. After emerging exhausted from just 3 hours down there all I was left thinking was what it must be like for that to be your life - spending 12 hours every day down in that harsh environment. It must be one of the hardest day’s work I’ve seen anyone do and I hope when I have a bad day in the future and feel fed up with my lot I’ll remember some of the faces we met there. But just as I was feeling morose about the injustice of the world they found us an extra couple of sticks of dynamite which we were allowed to blow up. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

The salt flats or Salar de Uyini are a bumpy but incredibly scenic 6 hour bus ride from Potosi. The town of Uyini itself is literally a sprawling, rubbish-strewn staging post for trips out to the surrounding area and in all honesty if one could avoid staying there at all one would. Unfortunately it was as we got to Uyini that it became my turn for the first dose of stomach upsets I've had since I started this trip. And so, rather than head out on to the pristine white, flat (i.e. nothing to hide behind!) salt flats feeling squirty, we were forced to spend a couple of nights in the town getting me better. Fortunately that gave us time to meet up with Clint and Noellia again and the next day the four of us, along with a couple of others and some Immodium, headed out in a jeep for a 3 day trip across the salt flats and around the surrounding lagoons, lakes, volcanoes and view points of the desert region.

The Salar de Uyini is the largest and highest salt lake in the world at 4,055 sq miles. Obviously it’s not a lake in the sense that it’s filled with water - it’s dried out and left behind a huge barren, featureless landscape of compacted salt, marred only occasionally by a couple of tiny “islands” jutting up from the surface and the odd tire track and weird hexagonal patterning (I think formed by evaporating water). But the blindingly white desert stretching for as far as the eye can see in every direction is an amazing site and was the perfect place to spend a few hours being juvenile and messing around with the cameras to create odd-perspective photos. Being white, at altitude and incredibly sunny, it’s also a near-fatal place to be if you’re a ginger (sorry - strawberry-blonde) so, factor 30 proving totally ineffective, James had no choice but to brave the heat and wrap up from top to toe to avoid crisping completely.

The one thing we’ve done in Bolivia that turned out to be a complete surprise was stumbling across the town of Tupiza - it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie but I always thought that Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid was set in the Wild West of America/Mexico - as it turns out they lived their last days a robbing and a thieving around the Tupiza area of southern Bolivia and were shot by the military police in 1908 in the town of San Vicente nearby. The area is the spitting image of America’s Wild West though and so, with me doped up on more hay fever tablets than can be healthy, we went cowboy style and found us a couple of horses to spend a day riding around the canyons and countryside on. Now I haven’t ridden a horse for years and so was pretty pleased to see a selection of lovely placid looking nags with nice innocent names like Naranjina and Allison being dished out to everyone. Unfortunately as they got round to me, with a wry smile, they produced their last horse - an enormous black beast of an animal with the look of Satan himself about him. I could tell they took great pleasure in telling me his name was Bronco.

I was about to put up a fight and steal James’ horse but before I could he jumped aboard it and in the process shocked the entire group into a stunned silence with some of the best accidental flatulence I’ve heard for a long time. Anyway always up for a challenge I spent the morning doing my best to bond with Bronco - as it turned out, and much to James’ amusement, he pretty much lived up to his name and every time I pulled the reins he’d buck and then carry on doing exactly what he wanted (usually to stop for a while to eat some shrubbery and then bolt off and canter ahead of the rest of the group). I guess they do the same route day in day out so he probably knew more than me but after 2 hours of fighting (I’ve never felt like getting off a horse and punching it before!) I do believe he actually began to do what I wanted. Unfortunately stopping for lunch was a mistake as it seemed to reset him to earlier mode and that afternoon we were back to square one - only this time he decided to have a race with James’ horse straight through a river and then off at a gallop along the river bank - us both clinging on for dear life…. suddenly we weren’t enjoying being out of control anymore so after that I cursed him. And then swapped him for a donkey.

And that was pretty much our last adventure in Bolivia… since then we’ve caught a night bus to the very tranquil town of Tarija (called the Andalucia of Bolivia because of its pleasant climate and flower and tree lined boulevards) and from there moved on to Santa Cruz (Bolivia’s second largest city and main agricultural centre) from where we’ve just splashed out on a flight to our current location, Puerto Suarez, on the border with Brazil.

It was during the flight that we made a fairly important assessment of our current medical conditions - James, although he maintains he did his best not to, burped just before take-off and as a result I, and no doubt a good few other passengers, almost fainted! Having both been plagued with somewhat upset stomachs for the last few weeks, the revolting sulphurous smell that he’s now proceeding to keep bringing up can only mean one thing - the Giardia Lamblia parasite (otherwise known as Beaver Fever) is in residence somewhere below - we’re going to need something more than Immodium. With Puerto Suarez being a relatively small outpost, we abandoned the idea of trying to find a doctor, jumped on the internet and did our own Google-diagnosis - quickly establishing exactly what the problem was and what antibiotics are needed. With luck we’ve just returned from a pharmacy where, without so much as a prescription needed, we’ve been provided with some of the strongest (think post-operation strength) antibiotics I’ve ever laid eyes on - just 4 little pills for fast, effective relief.

Salud Bolivia - I love you but not your cuisine.



Bolivia Slideshow

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