Blogs from Bolivia, South America - page 567

After walking the Inca Trail to Machu Piccu in Peru we flew from Cusco south to La Paz in Bolivia - almost the highest capital city in the world..almost in as much as it isn´t a capital city, but hey it is pretty high at 4200m! Sucre is capital of Bolivia for those of you who are interested...what nobody? La Paz is a pretty bazarre place spilling up out of a canyon and onto the altiplano (high altitude plateau). Its very cheap. In the markets you can get some real bargains..cheap guitars and pan pipes, cheap silver things (so I am now adorned in the finest Bolvian jewelry looking rather like a cheap South American Jimmy Saville!) and also llama foetuses. I am not sure how I have got by until now without a well stocked ... read more

Arriving in the small village of Copacabana, nestled on the shores of Lake Titicaca, in landlocked and underdeveloped Bolivia, Kim and I both experienced a strong sense of culture shock. Too many tourists. Too many backpackers. Too many travellers, uniformly dressed, sporting local alpaca headgear and huge rucksacks, wandering around looking unsure and lost. Che Guevara, whom quite a few of these people seemed to be trying to resemble, would be spinning in his grave. Tourists. Tourists everwhere. Tourists, just like us. In China, tourists and travellers are overwhelmed by the land and the people. Even when the numbers of tourists come close to the numbers of Chinese, the Chinese locals still win - unless of course they are up against Chinese tourists! In quiet, reserved Bolivia it is the tourists who stand out, who take-over, ... read more

8th November 2005 We left Rurrenabaque and again the airline (Amazonas) had delayed the plane. After discussions with a few other people it turns out that the airline cancel flights themselves and wait for the last flight to fill up so our lost day in the airport and in Rurrenabaque was just for their gain which if they had told us we could have planed something else instead of wasting 2 days. Anyway thats the moan over and done with, we flew to Trinidad which is a bit off the Gringo trail hoping to catch a boat trip up the Rio Mamore one of the highlights of the region (according to Lonley Planet) where untouched rainforest have an abundance of wildlife. When we got there we headed straight for the travel agents that run this trip ... read more

Before I start, one thing deserves mention. Bolivia is so cheap that it is stupid. One Boliviano costs about 13 cents CAD, and you can buy a decent falafel (yes, such a think exists in La Paz!) for 10 Bs. But maybe that isn’t the best example... 620 ml of beer at a bar also costs 10 Bs. Hmmmm. So anyhow, we left Puno several days ago for Copacabana. It is a three hours to the Bolivian border, and we rode in a combi. Now, to your average person a combi is like a little, cramped bus that stops every kilometer to load more passengers onto the roof, etc. But to me, 6 foot 2 with 4 foot long legs, a combi is like a vice squeezing out my organs. My knees hurt for days. There ... read more

Rick provids the intro, whilst Becky has written the longer more boring stuff! Hola from Rick: Again thanks for all your comments on the previous blog, and yes the sights and sounds of south america are nothing on the joys of spotting a burberry cap and a silky shell suit flash past in a souped up escort xri with the sweet sound of loud bassy R&B. Well everything we have done recently has been at the highest in the world. Highest and largest navicable lakein the world (surely all lakes are navicable?), Lake Titicaca (fnar fnar), highest capital city in the world (La Paz), played the highest golf course in the world and maybe most expensive relative to the Bolivian GDP, where I was particulary rubbish (maybe due to a rather large drinking event the night ... read more