Bolivia to Peru and lots of Islands

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Hey all, here´s what we´ve been up to since the last update.. I warn you its wuite a long one (again). Sorry! If you cant be bothered to read it just click on the links (or cut and paste) and look at pictures!

LA PAZ

We spent a looooong time in La Paz which is Bolivia´s capital and probable one of my favourite cities I have ever been to. Apparently 50% of people who visit La Paz love it and the others hate it! We thought it was amazing. Its really chaotic and completely surrounded by huge snow covered mountains with steep streets and lots going on. You can buy or do pretty much anything there and it is really really cheap!

We stayed in the same hostel as everyone we have been travelling with which was loads of fun, especially because the hostel had its own bar. It was also one of the guy´s birthday while we were there and we all decided to buy him silly presents, such as a pizza big enough to feed 15 people, a Barney the dinosaur costume (which he actually went clubbing wearing) and a Bolivian birthday cake with bright puple icing which was probable the most disgusting cake I have ever eaten in my life!

We spent a lot of time in La Paz´s market which is actually huge, about the size of a village, and you can buy absolutely anything there. And I mean anything because La Paz doesn´t actually seem to have any real shops - all the locals just buy everything from the market! We bought a few too many cheap DVDs (40p each!) and I got some little pumps for GBP1.20 which are still going strong!

Ben and the boys also decided to go and play football as they were getting withdrawal symptoms and there was a big enough group of them. It cost them about 50p to hire the pitch but they could only play for about an hour because it was so difficult to run around in the altitude. They came back absolutely shattered it was like they´d run a marathon or something!

La Paz was also the only place for ages that we could go to the cinema - so we did, 3 times - and the first time since home that we could eat curry so we did that too with Kate (Hughes) which was really great and it was brilliant to see her.

RURRENABAQUE
From La Paz we hopped on a 45 minute flight to Rurrenabaque to do a tour into the jungle. To say how close they were the two places were completely different. Rurrenabaque was kind of like the Caribbean! It was really hot and humid and the scenery looked like something from Jurrassic Park! Everything was green and tropical and laid back. We did a 3 day tour of the pampas with the 2 Belgians and one Dutch girl that we had been travelling with and there was nobody else in our group which was brilliant! The Pampas tour was absolutely amazing the only problem was that there were loads of mosquitos )but no malaria!) at night and we got bitten to shreds as it was so hot it was hard to cover up. Our 3 day schedule went like this, sorry to make you all jealous!

Day 1
Jeep to the boat where we sailed down the Amazon in the sunshine. We stopped to see which are like guinea pigs but the size of sheep! Picture here http://www.hedweb.com/animimag/capybara.jpg and then tiny yellow monkeys who came right up to us to take banana out of our hands. They were the cutest things and really bright yellow colour, picture here http://www.fietspad.de/berichte/americadelsur/images/bolivia091.jpg

In the afternoon we went fishing for piranhas! Id never seen one before and even though they were quite small they were really scary. We used raw meat as bait and their teeth were really big compared to their size and very sharp like this http://www.extremescience.com/images/piranha.jpg . Our guide told us that there were so many of them in the Amazon that they would easily kill you if you fell in. All this talk got me quite scared so when I eventually got one on the end of my rod I screamed and flung it in to the boat then started jumping up and down to avoid it flapping around and biting near my feet. It was quite funny. Especially when the guide just walked over and picked it up with one hand. But he was an expert! I caught 3 piranhas in total and Ben caught 5! We ate them for tea which made me feel much better hehe

Then we went to a look out point to watch the sunset which was really amazing, very pink and purple. After tea which was amazing and 3 courses we went crocodile hunting! Well they were actually caimans which are like little crocodiles. We could see them because their eyes shine in the dark and I got a bit scared when our guide took the boat right up to them! I was about a metre away from one at one point and was so scared it would jump at us but it just hovered while we took a picture then disappeared under the water.

Day 2
Anaconda hunting! I was not too taken by this idea because I don t really like snakes and it involved walking for 3 hours through calf length mud which got into your wellies and socks … I even had to throw out the primark fluffy socks I was wearing they were so digusting afterwards. But we did see an anaconda when there was only about 40percent chance that we would! It even bit our guide! Lucky theyre not poisonous. It was about 2 and a half metres long and when I felt it it was all muscle and must have been really powerful.

In the afternoon we went swimming with the pink dolphins which really are pink! Look.. http://library.thinkquest.org/5343/Images/motherwithbaby.jpg They were really playful and there were about 15 of them all around the boat and playing with an empty bottle that we threw for them. It was also a little scary because the piranhas only stay away when the dolphins are there so were praying that the dolphins wouldn’t disappear!

Day 3
Up at the crack of dawn literally. 5am. We went out on the boat to hear all the animals come out and they made an absolute racket, especially the birds. We saw some really huge ones which were taller than me and a wing span of much bigger than that.

On the way back in the jeep the driver suddenly whacked on the breaks and jumped out. We were all very confused and followed him wondering what on earth was going on. He had stopped because he saw a sloth in the trees! We could see it really well and apparently they are REALLY rare. Only about 20 percent of people that go on tours to see them manage to and even then theyre usually quite hidden by the trees. This one was straight in front of us and really cute and cuddly like an oversized teddy bear! Even our jungle guide got really excited to see it.

COPACABANA
This was a bit of a hippy place which we weren’t really keen on but we found the best cheap hotel room which was huge with 5 windows showing panoramic views of Lake Titicaca! We hired pedalos on lake Titicaca which was quite funny because they were all shaped like Donald Duck and in the evening we climbed up to the lookout point. This was hard work in the altitude but worth it because we saw the sunset at the top and the reflection on the lake which was really beautiful.

ISLA DEL SOL
From Copacabana we got a boat across to Isal del Sol which was really beautiful and had a beach with pigs on it because there was a large farming community there! We went to see the Inca labyrinth which was impressive and funny because a flock of sheep had invaded it to eat the grass and also saw a real Inca sacrifice table where they used to sacrifice children which was quite surreal. We then did a three hour walk as Inca trail practice from one side of the island to the other. It was a really nice day and the views were great, the only slightly annoying thing was men who jumped out from behind rocks in the middle of nowhere and made you buy a ticket to go into the other part of the island! When we got to the Southern side we found a hostel with a balcony over lake Titicaca and watched the sunset over the lake before going out for a pizza in one of the little restaurants. It got FREEZING cold as soonas the sun had gone in and the whole of the island seemed to shut down so at 8pm there was nothing else to do but to go to bed!

PUNO
Peru! ! ! ! We didn’t really see that much of a difference going from Bolivia to Peru…or nothing like the huge difference between the richer European style countries like Argentina and Chile and the poorer Bolivia. Bolivians and Peruvians have similar ancestry and traditional dress so it wasn´t that obvious we had changed countries apart from the fact that there are LOADS of tourists in Peru - probably more than weve seen in the rest of South America put together!

There wasn’t much to Puno itself but we found a hotel with private bathroom, TV and dvd player and view of the town for only 4pounds each a night which meant we could test out the dvds we bought in La Paz! We booked a 2 day tour to the nearby floating islands from here.

ISALAS FLOTANTES
We went to 4 different islands in total the first 2 of which were completely man made in the middle of Lake Titicaca. There are only around 15 families living on each and the islands is made completely of reeds! When the island starts to lower they just put more and more reeds on the floor! Its really crazy how it works… heres a bit about them that is quite interesting and only v short to read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4123926.stm …
The whole set up of the islands is one of the strangest things I have seen especially because the few families on each one have been there for centuries. Even more strange though was the next island we visited which was a natural one. We got there part way through the wedding celebration of a young couple. The celebration lasts 4 days and everybody gets so drunk they cant move for the entire tour days apart from the couple themselves who have to sit in the house for 2 days and 2 nights straight without smiling, talking or drinking! It was very strange! Also most couples there get married when they are about 16 and Start having children at about 17 or 18. When we saw some of the local “young people” we assumed they were in their 40s because they looked so old and had 3 children each! We also stayed over a night in one of the host families on the biggest of the floating islands. That really was an experience! Our lunch was potatoes and “cheese” but not like any cheese I have tasted. Ben´s potato was black and mine had a maggot in it! Also the toilet didn’t have a flush and was a good few minutes walk from the house at the bottom of the garden! Then in the evening we had to get dressed up in traditional dress possibly the most unflattering clothes EVER´and we had to do Peruvian DANCE! Here is the traditional dress the picture of us in it wont upload but this should make you laugh enough imagining it! http://img3.travelblog.org/Photos/26211/155518/t/1118995-Local-Mothers-1.jpg It really was quite funny though because our whole group looked absolutely ridiculous! Later we climbed to the top of the mountain to see the sunset which was probably the best ive ever seen heres an example of the pics http://photomondiale.com/images/0044/0044637_01_small.jpg

CUZCO
We are currently in Cuzco which is the archaeological capital of South America because it has so many Inca ruins. We have already been on a city tour to see quite a few of them including the biggest which is called “Sachsayhuaman” which sounds very much like “sexy woman” if you try to pronounce it! It was big temple with stones as heavy as 12 tonnes and nobody has any real idea of how they managed to put them there! We also went to the Sacred Valley where there was a HUGE temple and inca faces carved into the walls to scare enemies off. It was really impressive but also quite strange how the buildings and irrigation systems etc that the Incas used are still being used today! We also went rafting down the River Urubamba with 3 of the boys we´ve been travelling with for a while and the rapids were grade 3 to 4. It was really great fun, especially because the guy got me to sit right at the front of the boat while we ´surfed´a wave. We paddlesd into it really quickly then everybody jumped to the front of the boat (on topo f me!) and i went actually into the wave! Which was pretty cold. Then it started raining REALLY heavily and was quite funny because we were almost caught in the middle of a storm and trying to paddle against it. Luckily the sun CAME out for our lunch and to dry off! Yesterday we said our goodbyes to the group we have been travelling with which was quite sad because we had been together for about a month. Today and tomorrow we are going to visit some of the nearby touristy things such as museums and the market and are taking it easy and getting ready for the Inca Trail on Friday! Will let you all know how it goes

Sorry if this was really boring


Lots of love

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