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Published: October 3rd 2005
Copacabana.
View of the town from our hostal balcony. .............................................And we were so glad we did, the country is breathtakingly beautiful, we visited Copacabana ( Of Barry Manilow fame, well not really!! ) really pretty place in parts, quite unusual in others, one unusual custom occurs twice daily outside of the cathedral, the priest blesses the local cars and drivers with holy water, the cars all get dressed up in their Sunday best with flowers and beads, as do their owners, ( I suppose it beats paying for a car wash! )
After a day we travelled to La Paz, the world´s highest city, amazing location in a natural bowl nestled below a striking mountain range. We then travelled like locals on a bus for a 17 hour journey on a single lane dirt road dubbed "The most Dangerous Road in the World" due to travelling through vast mountain passes with sheer drops off the side and treacherous hairpin bends, the buses seem to think they´ll be safe if they just blast their horns before hitting the corner without having to brake too much!! This took us to Rurrenabach, in the Amazon Basin, with sore arses from 17 hours of bouncing on the back seat of a bus and
Copacabana Cathedral.
I ( JO ) lit a candle and said a little prayer for you here Granny. no sleep we immediately booked ourselves on a 2 day tour through a region called the Pampas, a river system with jungle on both sides. An hour later we were again bouncing in the back of a Land Cruiser for a 4 hour journey to the river side where we took a motorised canoe for a 6 hour slog on wooden seats, god, it´s a good job we don´t have "George Giles"......YET!!! The trip was so worth it though when we saw the prolific wildlife on offer here, the river and bank is absolutely teeming with Alligators, Cayman crocs, Turtles, Piranah´s and the Occasional Capyburra, a huge rodent. We loved our time in the JUngle, only wish we could have spent a lot more time there.
After Rurrenabaque we did a 36 hour bus journey to get us back in time for the Inca trail, slight hiccup at the start of the journey, the travel agent told us the bus left at 11am, so we got there at 10:30, put the bags on and I left Jo to go run an errand to the tour operator we used, the bus left at 10:30 though with poor Jo clinging on to
Copacabana Cathedral.
Blessing of the cars. the sides trying to stop it to no avail! I got back at 10:45 to find a hysterical Jo and no bags.....or bus! We flagged down two motorbike taxi´s and chased the bus, which was brilliant fun...Just not so at the time, we caught up with the bus at the next village!
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Ben
non-member comment
Wow
That looks so cool and im going to bolivia this summer for a month with World Challenge and were going to Rurrenabaque for our jungle phase!! Looks amazing!