La Paz to Riberalta

Seems already very long time ago since last time we wrote here. We are now in Brazil already. Since last time we spend first couple of days in La Paz organising things. Its a really nice city, built in a crater high up on the mountains. it is the highest capital city in the world. When you walk on these small streets in the city, you never know what to expect from around the next corner, could be going up or down, or show an amazing view of the snowcapped mountains, or anything else. Really exciting place.
We had tasty steak sandwiches from the market each morning and freshly squeezed orange juice for maybe 2 dollars all. amazingly cheap, unfortunately we didnt have more time there.

We left then to ride down the worlds most dangerous road on bikes. The road is now closed for cars, only cyclers go there, as they built a new road for the cars. We started at 4500m high up in the mountains, with snow covered mountain tops all around. It was freezing cold and raining, but we didnt mind, we were cruising as fast as possible down the mountain road. We paid the smallest price possible for the ride for the agency, so we had really crappy bikes. My breaks didnt almost work at all, i had to squeeze them with all it got to make the bike stop, and even then it would just slide down the road for some meters until it stopped. Gladly not down the ravine! On average i think 300 cars were dropping off this road each year, before they closed it. Its really only a single lane, and huge trucks were supposed to take over each other. After 4 hours, we were already on the bottom safely in subtropical vegetation, in town of Coroico. We paid a little extra to stay in a nice hotel with sauna and swimming pool overlooking the mountains. We stayed with a funny French guy, who couldnt take the heat of the sauna, so he was sitting in the water bowl or on the floor all the time. :) Michal was putting so much heat that nobody else stayed there either.
Next day we walked along the hills that had coca plantations growing on them to some amazingly beautiful waterfalls . On our way back, we took the wrong path, and ended up on some almost vertical hill, that we had to slide down. our shoes were like two surfboards when we skated down like bullets through the bushes. Our legs were full of cuts.
After our trip we took a bus back to La Paz, and next morning early took a flight on a 12 seater plane to Rurrenabaque, which is the beginning of the amazonian jungle. It was quite a suprise to get out of the plane, felt like we had landed to the caribic (yeah Larry, west indies :). It was hot and humid and lushously green, and the airport was just a colourful little house . The town was lovely too, and our hostel especially. We had a great hammock place where you could just relax all day long.
Our intention was to go on a pampas trip for 3 days to see some animals, but one of the tour agencies just bought us out of the idea when he explained what the trip will be like. Exactly like a kindergarden teacher, telling kids what a fun day it will be. he even said in the end when he was explaining what we should take on the trip with us "most importantly, bring your good mood!>D" at that point we decided not to do any happy funny holiday trips.
We asked a few people around, and found a really nice little walk to do ourselves near the village on the hills in jungle by the river. It was really beautiful, and we had to cross several bridges , shift ourselves with liaans and go through tunnels. Beautiful flowers and giant ants!

next day we met a nice czech girl who had been travelling for 13 years and her husband was a bolivian guide, so we asked them if he would take us fishing. He said he was going out with some israelis to jungle for 6 days, so we could go on same boat, and see bit of jungle and go fishing then. So we signed up for that. the day began quite nicely, we went on boat, and ate some coca leaves and talked about jungle stuff. Then we went to a small community in the jungle , walked around checking the animals and plantations in the jungle. and then had lunch and made some rings from cocanut, they are really beautiful. We tried to hunt Tapirs, but didnt find any we have whistles though for that purpose, so we can try later.
Afterwards we went back to our boat to go fishing, but in the meantime it had picked up couple of more israelians who were coming back from the jungle trip and wear hungry and dirty and wanted to go straight back. the boat drivers and guides were also not on the mood to stop fishing too, so after a heated argument we lost and had to skip fishing. We were quite pissed off, because this was the only thing that we actually wanted to do. So afterwards we made even firmer decision- no crappy tours of any kind anymore!
We took a bus then Riberalta, which is 350 km from Rurrenabaque, it took us 28 hours!! It was raining and thundering when we woke up. gladly the bus was only few hours late coming to Rurre, but about 100km down the road, the road was made of mud and in the rain it was totally flooded and had tracks about 1 meter deep in the road. On one 1km strip of road we were stuck for 7 hours . Everybody got out of the bus, to dig the road, to channel the water out, to pull the bus, to push the bus, and slowly we moved along. In the end we got so badly stuck that nothing helped. It was already pitch black at night 12 o´clock, when gladly a tractor came by and agreed to pull us out. I have legs covered full of mosquito bites, and my white skirt that i was wearing is totally ruined from teh mud, and shoes are still wet.
But finally we got to riberalta, a small town that has nothing there, except we saw a flying beetle, size of a mans hand! We stayed only one night, and took a bus next day to get to Brazil. now we are stuck in a place called porto velho, which is almost european town, with proper shops everywhere, proper cars, no athmosphere, nothing to do. We want to leave as soon as possible, there is a boat going on tuesday, as its the only transport across the amazon except for flying. But the captain is asking double price from us, because we are stupid tourists and always willing to pay stupid prices. Theres not much we can do about it, since its just this boat going. we will check flights too, because we dont want to pay double what everyone else pays on the boat, but we might not have any damn choice.
Hopefully we´ll get out of brazil soon, its really expensive here, and developed, and they speak portugese, we have quite much difficulty understanding what they say. Looking forward to venezuela soon.

More photos on the bottom.
Ciao!

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