Bolivia

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Crossing in to Bolivia at Lake Titicaca, the difference between Peru and this country wasn´t immediately obvious. The scenery at the Lake was at both sites strikingly beautiful, the sun shone just as bright, inca lady´s were still surrounding us, and we continued at the same breathtaking altitude. But we were soon to notice the differences as we boarded our first Bolivian bus towards La Paz. The nice comfortable Peruvian bus waiting for it´s passangers to head back over the border and right behind it (facing the other way)............ a bus that might have been considered modern about 40 years ago. After recomfirming 3 times if this was really our (comfortable) tourist bus to La Paz, we said our goodbyes to Peru and faced the roads heading into Bolivia. After ten minutes we realised the bus wasn´t the major problem - and comparing it with the buses we were still about to board in this country it probably was a comfortable bus - but the roads were in such condition that I was counting down the minutes after the first corner we took.

And then finally came the first glimpse of La Paz, the highest Capital city in the world. A surreal image with houses clinging on to the rocks which made me wonder why anyone ever decided to build a city in this place. La Paz turned out to be fascinating in many ways and definitely very different from any other city we´ve ever seen. It´s a weird blend of businessmen and indigenous people both occupying the streets, big banks next to traditional markets and Ipod accessories being sold at the same time as a llama foetus on one of the stands.
We enjoyed some good food in the many different restaurants (and some really awfull ones), went for a drink in the Engish or Dutch pub, but were just as happy to have a quick coke with the locals at a little market stall - about 15 p. for a little bottle -

After talking to travelers and reading about the country there were a couple of places we really wanted to visit , including the mines, the salt flats in the south and Amazon rainforest crossing the mighty cordillera reals mountains. Not having properly spent time in the rainforest, this was a high priority for us. Whilst in La Paz we booked our flights and an 8 day stay, leaving ten days later. Leaving us with enough time to visit some of the other places on our wish list. The next day we left La Paz heading south.

Bolivia is a beautiful country, but also a very troubled one. When visiting the country you notice this the most whilst trying to travel around, moving from place to place. For us this meant mainly blockades, demonstrations and therefore cancelled buses, trains and complete city´s made inaccessible. Only 3 hours outside of La Paz we faced our first hurdle and got stuck in a place called Oruru, waiting for a train which was never to show up. Having had it explained to us that delays were caused by roadblock demostrations which might be called off any minute we decided to wait around for a day to see what would happen naively believing the locals would want there roads and rail back in working order in quick time....well this is when we started to learn about the Bolivian political situation, as well as understand their great capacity for patience.

The blockades were thrown up by the miners around the town of Potosi, protesting a change made by the president which resulted in a big cut in their salary. During our entire stay in Bolivia the blockades continued and after meeting people who tried to go through them - with as a result having to walk for 5 hours through demonstrations in the middle of the night - we decided that the best thing to do was to go around them.
So after quite a pleasent stay in Oruru - absolutely no tourists around and even our first bit of snow in the morning - we boarded a local night bus (not a comfortable tourist one) heading south to Uyuni to see the salt flats.

Just in time to get our backpacks with all the belongings of what looked like the whole community on top of the bus, we squeezed our way through and over all the boxes and bags which had ended inside the bus and found our seats. A little alarm bell did go off in my head when seeing all the locals entering the bus with at least 5 blankets - of the thickest sort you've ever seen - but hey, how bad can it be!
I did manage to fall a sleep, but about 3 hours later I woke up with a very painfull right arm. This pain turned out to be an unbelievable coldness and I realized the insides of the windows where frozen solid as was the metal armrest my arm was leaning on. After a very long and cold night we arrived at Uyuni at 4:00 AM, with the happy anouncement we were allowed to stay in the bus to sleep a bit more until the sun came up. My rescue came in the form of a very sweet inca lady, who took pity on us and handed over one of her blankets. Finally some sleep.

In Uyuni we had the option to book a 1, 2 or 3 day tour to the salt flats - but still in a frozen shock from the bus journey and having had the information that the nights on the saltflats will be even colder - we decided to go for the one day and then return to a room with heater in Uyuni.
The one day tour on the saltflats was amazing. It's a surreal environment to be in. A white surface as far as you can see, like a massive bleached desert. Together with the blue sky above it gives a weird perspective, all in all a very worthwhile trip down we decided.

After Uyuni we visited to more places further down south, surviving several bustrips of equal and even worse standards as our last one. The most infamous one, when we were shooed out of the bus in the middle of the night to walk up a mountain on sliding shingle, this was necessary as the bus couldn't get up and make the turns with everyone in it. It was quite an experience walking up this steep hill in the pitchblack freezing night with 50 locals of which most of them in their traditional inca clothing, hoping the bus was going to be around the next corner.
But we survived all of this and were able to visit two more great places in the south of Bolivia; Tupiza, with it's beautiful surrounding redcoloured mountains and Tarija, with it's vineyards and nice restaurants close to the Argentinian border.

On the way back up north we tried one more time to go to the mines in the middle of the country, but unfortunately there was no change in the blockades and we ended our trip with an 18 hour most uncomfortable and cold bustrip back to La Paz.

After one day in La Paz we caught our flight to Rurrenabaque, a little riverside town at the edge of the rainforest. The flight was an experience in itself as there was only room for 20 people and the plane swirled around and through the mountain peaks in a way it almost felt as if you could reach out and touch them. It was strange to think that soon after take off we were descending rather than climbing due to the altitude difference in the two airport ( 4000m to 200m above sea level). We arrived in style by landing on a strip of grass.

Rurrenabaque is a nice enough town and had enough to keep us occupied for the day ahead. We met some great people from Holland and England (where else!) and enjoyed a night of big bottles of beer and playing pool. But the next day was what it was all about and with excitement we were waiting for our guide to pick us up early in the morning. We had booked 4 days in the Chalalan lodge. A lodge built in the middle of the rainforest, hand crafted and managed by the local indigenous community. We were picked up and together with 8 other people sepnt 5 hours on a boat trip taking us up river and deeper into the jungle to our lodge. With in minutes the guides were already able to impress us as they help us to spot the capibaras and toucans before we turned the first bend.

Our stay in the lodge was probably one of the highlights of our entire trip. Everything was perfect... The people that work there couldn't have been more friendly and our guide Ricardo was so knowledgable he spent hours talking to us about all the different plants, trees and animals. The lodge is situated next to a lagoon and Mark even went for a swim here together with the Caimans and piranha's. Every day we went on a long walk through the forest, and were even able to spot a big group of squirrelmonkeys, a group of cappuchin monkeys, some spidermonkeys, a tree boa, a big tarantula a beautiful green little tree frog, caiman and many many different birds. It was an amazing environment, we felt completely charged up and were very sad to leave this place. Chalalan lodge is a bit more expensive then most of the other places you can stay (But most of the money goes back into the community) so unfortunatley we couldn't afford to stay any longer, but we both hope we will be able to come back here one day.

We didn't leave this area immediately as we had also booked a pampas tour for three days. Not in the middle of the vast rainforest but closeby in a beautiful river based environment with 'gallery forests' that run in a thin strip along the waters edge. Due to the more open spaces wildlife is considerably easier to spot and we were even getting 'bored' with the shouts of 'capibaira', 'caiman' or 'turtle' which crowded the banks. The strangest site we saw was of the pink riverdolphins playing around the boat, they have longer beaks than normal and pink skin due to the lack of pigmentation which made them a little ugly and because of the murky waters impossible to photograph. Piranha fishing was also on the activity menu and having caught a large enough specimen it then appeared on the plate that night...teeth and all!

To avoid further agony on the Bolivian bone shaker buses we decided to give ourselves a break and after arriving back in La Paz we flew straight out the next day to the border of Brasil. Off course Bolivian style; 2 stops in our 3 hour flight and at one of the stops a two hour delay - but it felt like our travelers luck was about to begin as we ended up spending these two hours in a beautiful warm tropical sunshine. No more blankets required!!!

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Photos

Salt flats
On the Catus "Island"

Bez
All made of coral

train cemetery
near the salt flats

Beautiful view
On our way to the rainforest

On our way to the sun Island
On Lake Titicaca

sun Island
Where we stayed 2 days to enjoy the beautiful landscape

Comments

[Jen]

Wow - you both look so well, and look like you are having a tidy time! Hope you enjoy NZ and send my love to Oz.xxx