Unpredictable Bolivia

Lake Titicaca

Bolivia is exactly how I pictured South America to be - dense jungles, eerie deserts, high altitude cities, hot and steamy villages in the low lands... Everything looks like its meant to be here. And it is an amazing, if slightly difficult, country to explore.

I started Bolivia by crossing Lake Titicaca (which borders both Peru and Bolivia). One of the highest navigable lakes in the world, Lake Titicaca has long been part of the Andean culture. The villages in this area are attempting to preserve as much of their traditions as possible, although now mostly in support of tourism. But, unlike other parts of Central and South America, their traditions did not appear fake or forced, and touring the villages provided a real immersion into their culture.

The tour I took started with a visit to the amazing floating islands of Uros, where the residents (about 10 adults and many many children) showed us how they live. Definately a differently lifestyle... the island I went to had five families living on it. The island might have been the size of two netball courts. Not big at all. The island is made by cutting big blocks of reed roots and tying them together, anchoring them to the shallow lake floor and the covering with a metre or two of fresh reeds. The huts, the boats and everything in between are made out of reeds as well. The families on the island live to support the tourism trade, either offering their island up for tourists to visit, or spending hours making the most amazing handicrafts and woven materials.

From there, on the slowest boat in the world, I headed to another more natural land based island (ah no risk of falling through the reeds) for a homestay. The homestay was excellently organised and just the best experience. All the villages take on tourists, and have organised their homes and their lifestyles for the tourist trade which coincidentally primarily visits during the lull in the agricultural cycle. The families were all so welcoming, and the kids were more than happy to escort tourists through the maze of farms, walkways and houses around the island. The next day I went to another island, one a little more developed, where it was festival day. (But everyday is festival day somewhere in Bolivia) and got to see the most amazing colourful traditional costumes and dances.

La Paz

Entering La Paz was a shock, more so for the cold change that had moved through and dumped snow everywhere, rather than the high altitude. La Paz was not my favourite place in the world, but it did have charm. The witches market was the definate highlight (although not a fan of the dried llama babies) and there were plenty of sights to glimpse around the city. What was exciting though was the opportunity to bicycle down the old death road. The death road is a narrow, windy and cliff edged disaster of a road still in use. Although the 150km the bike riders use doesn´t have traffic luckily as I am not the best bike rider. This was demonstrated on the last 200m of the trip, where I scared myself somehow, fell off my bike, hit my hid, nearly threw up and then realised I´d broken my thumb. Not a bad effort...

Rurrenabaque and the Pampas

But the death road bike trip paled in comparison to the adventure I had trying to get to Rurrenabaque, in the amazon basin. It was the most stressful 14 hours of my life with no relief... and thank god I was in a jeep and not in a bus.

Phase One -
So we met our driver and our spiffy looking landcruiser at 12:00pm and headed off on the ´new´ death road which I had already been on with my bike tour. Its a cruisy, double laned paved road (one of the only ones in Bolivia) that our driver took at top speed overtaking on every bend. Secretly it was kind of fun but as I was in the middle seat I had to try hard to keep my balance. Seeing as the speedo didn´t work, I´d be guessing we were going at least 100km on a road we should have been doing between 40km and 60km on.

Phase Two -
The fun was quickly over and we rejoined the ´old´death road... one lane and dirt, with hair pin blind corners and plummetting cliff faces on every side. I took a video to try and show you all what it was like and to let you hear the terrifying screams coming from my new Aussie friend Anna and I. The number of times we came head on with a vehicle, slammed on the brakes and then had to carefully reverse to find a space wide enough to pass were too numerous to count. This experience was made even better with the thick dust clouds and blinding sun which made it impossible to spot a car in enough time to stop safely, let alone to view the edge of the road. I particularly loved the moment when we came across a car which had launched over a cliff and landed nose first below. Thankfully the cliff was only maybe 30 m. We stopped to find out what was happenning, and discovered the people in the car had survived and been taken to hospital, a mere four or five hours away. The cables they were using to winch the car back up had all snapped. Not quite sure how they plan on getting the car back up again...

Phase Three -
As we continued on the sunshine turned to torrential tropical rain. And this was of course whilst we were still on the one lane and dirt, with hair pin blind corners and plummetting cliff faces road as previously described. Four wheel drive was not engaged but our driver turned out to be an expert at controlling the vehicle and we overtook every car we met. That is until we met a car which had crashed minutes before and luckily rolled into the cliff rather than over it. Again a nasty reminder of our potential fate and a horrid couple of hours.

Phase Four -
Eventually the road smoothed out and we moved away from the cliffs further into the jungle. We all started to relax and enjoy the ride. But after we had finally been happy for about 10 minutes, the fog turned up. Blinding and thick, with maybe 1m visibility if that. We travelled for 1 hour and a half and probably only moved 10km along it was that difficult and slow. I am not sure if I breathed at all during that time. There was no way we could see the road, let alone the edges.

Phase Five -
With the fog gone we started making good time even if the road was horrible potholed. We even got excited that the end was nearing (I think at this stage we still had another five hours to go). We started a tally of all the animals we almost hit... Ducks, dogs, cows, horses, a person on a bicycle, a couple of native bolivian animals including the one in the picture, more dogs and a couple of parked cars.

Phase Six -
All of a sudden we come across parked cars and trucks and the road turned into thick thick thick thick thick thick gooey mud. We stopped and spoke to the other cars and apparently there was a car stuck in the mud. Our driver got out to investigate and returned 15 mins later. He thought we could make it through, so off we went. And, despite some very hairy muddy moments, we did... Only to come across another truck - this one in the very middle of the track through the mud and bogged up past the axles. Our driver got out again and this time so did we... it was 11:30pm and we could all tell it was going to be a long night. Jumped out of the car and was knee deep in mud. Luckily I had taken my thongs off before because I would never have found them again. I particularly enjoyed peeing in the middle of the road at this stage because I wasn´t sure if I would make it back should I wander off the road and into the jungle.

Our driver spent a lot of time looking at the road, the sides of the road and checking to see if we could squeeze by. The verdict... no. So out came the shovels and he started building a new mud road around the truck. I am not kidding. There was a massive hole we needed to fill in so we started on it. Did any of the Bolivians help, no of course not. Then, much to our disgust and annoyance, we spotted a car coming the other way heading for our new road we were building. Being very possessive of our road given no one was helping us, this was not taken well by any of the crew in the car. But the other car kept pushing through and guess what, got bogged and fell off the road. HA! So then we had to get out and get their car back up and continue building our road. It eventually made it though and just zoomed off (thanks for nothing hey) so we hopped back in the car to apprehensively try it out ourselves. With 4WD finally engaged, we started towards the new road, only to not make the turn and go careening into the back of the truck. Stopped in time, reversed and tried again and again and again. Out we got again with the shovel and started building a berm so we couldn´t slam into the truck and the mud would push us onto our road.

Back in the car and we made it around the first time, only to then come across another bigger pile of mud (I´m talking bigger than our car) which we had to make it over. Even getting to this point was scary as hell and involved lots of fishtailing and tipping and travelling sideways along the mud for a good portion of the time. To say we did not enjoy it would be a nice description of the terror in the car when we finally stopped with two wheels stuck in the mud and the back of the car hanging over the edge of the road. Don´t worry not a big drop, just a metre or two. Anna started to freak out, so we climbed out the windows so she could breathe again (and ended back up in the mud of course). Everyone else followed as we started walking away from the car, pushing it to try and get it onto the mud road and away from the danger. A couple of tries and we finally made it back onto the track. THANK GOD.

Summary -
Turns out, this mud swamp was only 15 minutes drive from the town, hence our drivers desire to get us there rather than wait. (But wait for what I wonder...) We rocked up at 3am (only 4 hours since we hit the mud) filthy and exhausted. We gave a bit of thought to the others in the buses heading this way and laughed at how bad their experience would be. Turns out, those people couldn´t see out the windows so had no idea of the danger they were in. But when they got to the mud swamp, there was no way their bus was getting through. Apparently they spent five or six hours there waiting (for nothing). Eventually word filtered into town (probably spread by us) and they started sending motorbikes to pick up all the tourists. So those guys turned up exhausted after a 25 hour trip that is only about 200km long, and completely covered in mud from the bikes churning up the road. We let them know that WE BUILT the road that they goddamn travelled on. We wanted to turn into into a toll road after all the work we put into that. HA ha ha.

So... sounds fun yes?? Lucky for me, the flights were still cancelled and were until the runway (which we saw) was not covered by a lake of water meant I got to do the reverse trip a few days later.

I did then have a relaxing few days touring the pampas and seeing more animals and wildlife than I could poke a stick at. In fact when I booked the tour promising animal sightings I was a little skeptical. But clearly proven wrong. I saw hundres of alligators and black caimans, pirahnas, turtles, flying fish, fireflys, baby alligators, storks, herons, capiburras, and even an armadillo. Plus of course cute little squirrel monkeys looking for a feed. The one thing I was not keen on though was swimming with the pink dolphins. Admittedly an excellent sounding idea except of course the waterways are swarming with crocs. I could just see the headlines in Oz, "Australian eaten by crocs in the Bolivan jungle" and imagine the sniggers from you all.

Inta Warri Yassi

Not over my Bolivian animal experience, I decided to go and volunteer in an animal refuge mid way between the cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. The little town I stayed in was nothing special, and our accomodation was more on the slide of squatters slum than hostal... The park had over 2000 monkeys and a variety of small animals (like turtles), one spectacled bear and some pumas and ocelots. I never got to see the cats because they are only handled by people they have known a while... but I did get to play with Baloo the bear.

I volunteered in Monkey Quarantine, which had over fifty monkeys who were waiting to be released into other more fun parts of the park. The monkeys were mostly cappichuns with five beautiful spider monkeys. My job entailed a lot of cleaing cages, feeding, and playing with the little guys. Although cute and cuddly they werent, and I quickly learnt that monkeys have grabby little hands and very sharp teeth. The buggers!! I actually pulled a muscle in my shoulder from pulling my hand away from them so fast and so often. And despite the dangers (there was one particular monkey who had learnt to collect, pile up and throw stones at girls) it was awesome being able to socialise with them.

The monkeys would spend hours grooming my hair, looking for cuddles, stealing from my pockets, cleaning my eyes, ears and nose, sharing their spat out monkey food with me and generally being adorable and fun. And even though they would often play bite or be insanely annoying it was such an experience. There are so many funny stories you wouldnt believe the half of them. Everyday was hard work but yet rewarding.

I got to look after Marucha, one of the spider monkeys who had broken her arm. All she ever wanted was to swing off my body or cuddle on my lap. Nothing like having a 10kg large monkey sleeping on your shoulder. Because of her arm, I used to have to bottle feed her just like a baby. And because she was terrible at scaring off all the other monkeys, I used to have to sit her on my lap to make sure she ate her food. What a sweetie!!

The worst part of the week was scaring off the hundreds of other monkeys who would come out of the jungle to steal the quaratine monkey food. I became an expert at spraying them with water and generally being threatening although I think they won more times than I did. Nothing like feeling accomplished after winning over a monkey with the intelligence of a six year old child. Sigh!!

Sucre, Uyuni and Salar de Uyuni

After putting my life on the line for those monkeys for a week, I headed to Sucre for some relaxation and a quality bed. Things did not quite go as planned and I ended up in hospital instead. Thankgod I had left the village Id been in before and was actually in a town with some sort of medical services.

Once recovered, I headed south into the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world! And what and AMAZING trip!! I started with an amazing if not freezing night in Uyuni watching a massive parade. Given Bolivia is the country of parades and festivals I was not expecting it to be that awesome. I spent the rest of the night in a completely gringo bar, except sitting in a room with the owner and his friends listening to them playing accoustic Bolivian music. Pretty magical and definately the true Bolivian experience.

The next day I started a tour into the salt flats, which would end in San Pedro Chile. Lucky for me, four of my group were struck down with a tummy bug. Given that we were about to spend three days roughing it in the desert, they decided to not come along. That left just me and an english guy, the english speaking guide and our driver. We got on so well and had a fantastic time chatting together... Everyone else was packed into jeeps with eight people, so my trip was very luxurious in comparison. That is given the lack of roads (we were just hightailing it randomly through the desert), the copious amounts of thick dust, the dreezing cold, the accommodation with no power or running water.The trip goes through the most amazingly eerie scenery and the lack of any kind of perspective makes for some hilarious photos. It was freezing cold once the sun set (lets estimate between -15 and -20) because of the crazy high altitude. Another awesome thing was all the flamingoes. Yes, I thought they were tropical birds too but it appears not. Another animal to add to the things to see in Bolivia list... There were also the most awesome hot springs and thermal activity. Spent a lot of time checking out the boiling mud and geysers! And the hot springs were amazing once I managed to take off all my clothes in -15 temps to stand in just my swimmers. Brrrrrrrrrr. This trip was up there with Machu Picchu and an experience I will never forget.

Now its back to the real world. After one day in Chile I bused it to Argentina. What can I say but I had forgotten what a road looked like. And toilet paper in a bathroom. LUXURY!! Bolivia is definately the hardest and most trying country I have travelled through to date but all I can say its worth it for the true South American experience. Get off the beaten track and dont be afraid.

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