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We had a decent couple of days in the attractive city of Sucre, exploring and recharging the batteries after the relative trauma of the Potosi mining experience. The town is full of colonial buildings all painted in white. Despite it‘s history, it had a much more modern feel to it than the other places we’d visited in Bolivia, with good shops and tourist facilities and a massive group of teenagers hanging around in the main square like you’d find in any self-respecting British town or city. Whilst we were there we took the opportunity to do a bit of the old cultural stuff, with a visit to the extremely detailed, if not way too detailed, textile museum (brilliant for the textile enthusiast, not quite so for us) and La Casa de la Libertad, where Bolvia’s Declaration of Independence was debated and signed. We also climbed The Eiffel Tower - or at least a scaled down mock-up that forms the centrepiece of Sucre’s main park.
Having decided that a 12 hour Bolvian bus journey was too much physical and mental pain to even contemplate, we decided instead to fly the 45 minutes north west to La Paz. Joining us at the
airport was some professional football team, who boarded a flight to Santa Cruz. Autograph hunters were flocking around them but I was too slow off the mark and just missed out, which made me a little bit sad for the rest of the day. I have got over it now, considering I have no idea who they were. The flight was quick (so quick we were given our in-flight food before we even got on the plane) and pain free. We touched down at the highest airport in the world, which stands 500m above the highest capital city in the world, and I hadn’t even had the chance to eat my complimentary muffin.
Our first view of La Paz was from the back of the taxi just after we left the airport. The road winds down to the city centre and gives amazing views of the small buildings relentlessly covering the huge valley, surrounded by snow-capped peaks. The brown-red buildings cling to the hill sides as they tumble down towards the bustling city centre. We spent the afternoon trying to get oriented, which was no mean feat having got used to towns and cities laid out in perfect block
Famous footballer at Sucre airport
Is this or is this not Juan Sebastian Veron?!grid systems. La Paz is more of a jumble, choc-a-bloc with cars, minibuses and trucks. The traffic is the most crazy we’ve seen since Saigon, but instead of little scooters it is full of vehicles that could do some serious damage. In Saigon they’ll generally get out of your way if you cross the road. In La Paz they won’t.
We met up again with my cousin Sarah in La Paz, and she suggested going to San Pedro Prison near the centre of town. This is no ordinary prison - the prisoners basically have free will to come and go and they have their families living within the prison. Tours of the prison are now illegal but traveller’s fable has it that if you hang around in San Pedro square for a while, a prisoner will approach you and offer to take you inside the imposing stone walls. Rumours were rife that the tours stopped a couple of weeks ago after some tourists got locked inside. With Sarah’s encouragement, we decided to give it a go anyway, locked away our valuables and went and sat on a park bench, waiting for a murderer to come along. We waited for
a while only to be approached by the local drunk so we pretended we had to be elsewhere and left, only able to wonder what life is like behind those gates.
Having been knocked back by the criminals we went for a wander around the tight La Paz alleyways, and browsed The Witches Market, but we weren’t tempted enough by the Leopard skins or Llama foetuses (an offer to the gods that will bring luck and riches) for sale. Other La Paz highlights included the Coca museum, which was really interesting and explained in no uncertain terms how the humble coca plant wouldn’t have such a bad reputation if it weren’t for those druggie Gringos.
I have been desperate for a good curry for a long time, and ever since I’d heard that there was a curry house in La Paz, it was at the top of the must do list. I became even more excited by the lure of ‘the world’s most dangerous vindaloo’, so called because it is a wildly spicy curry in the highest curry house in the world, and when I found out it came with a free T-shirt for those who finish it,
there was no way I was going to resist the rare opportunity to get a curry-induced adrenaline rush. From the first mouthful I was in sheer pain but adopted the tactic of shoving it to the back of my throat and swallowing, hoping not to trouble the poor old tongue too much. I ploughed through it with my mouth feeling like it had been struck by lightning and sweat pouring from my face, and by the time I reached for the last forkful of gunpowder my stomach was experiencing a civil war. It was a bitter-sweet moment when I was handed the winner’s T-shirt but a real downer the next day to find out it was ill fitting, and not worthy of my status as a curry eating machine.
With the guts working overtime we went with Sarah back up to La Paz airport ready for a flight further north to Rurrenabaque, deep in the Bolivian jungle. Unfortunately for us, all flights had been delayed due to bad weather at our destination, making a mud bath of the grass airfield. We clung on at the airport for six hours before we got the good news that we could fly.
The journey was amazing. We went in a tiny 19 seater plane that took us between mountains and over the jungle canopy before touching down on the bumpy field at Rurrenabaque 45 minutes later. Catherine sat up front near the pilots and was rather uneasy with the constant beeps coming from the cockpit. We landed on the bumpy field with no dramas but with Catherine’s stomach firmly lodged in her mouth. She assured me afterwards that she was all ready to step in an take the controls had the need arisen. The airport was a far cry from the sparkly world of Heathrow, as it consisted purely of a little green house with the front room being the check-in desk, the patio area being the departure lounge, the garden being the luggage reclaim area and the toilet block out the back being the toilet block out the back. It was great!
We went to Rurrenabaque to go on a three day trip of the wildlife-rich pampas, which was great. After a four hour life-sapping 4x4 journey along an awful dirt track we got on a small, long wooden boat that jetted us around the Pampas for three days. We
were with four other people, three of which were OK/good and one a little bit fond of himself. Let’s call him ‘Connor’ for the purposes of this blog, because that was his name. He got a bit upset when others wanted to sit in the front and when he didn’t get his way when playing cards (actually, thinking about it, he sounds a bit like me). The scenery on the Rio Yacuma was excellent and the wildlife even better. We saw lots of monkeys, a toucan, brightly coloured macaws, kingfishers, a sloth, eagles, vultures, hawks and turtles. None of those caused a cold sweat but when we stopped within arms length of huge Alligators and saw them waiting on the bank with their jaws open we sat very still. The best animal though had to be the pink river dolphins. I didn’t even know they existed, but there they were, powder pink and popping up above the water surface by our boat. Even better than just seeing them, we actually got to swim with them, and they weaved in and out of us, occasionally having a nibble on a foot. It wasn’t the ‘life changing’ experience that some hippy types
would make out, but it was pretty cool.
The night sky out there was just incredible, thousands of stars so clear and filling the heavens. Another of our group, Paul, gave us a guided tour of the constellations as we cruised in the pitch black with alligators lurking in the reeds and bats swooping before us.
On our trip we diced with danger again when we waded through a stinking, mosquito filled marsh searching for Anaconda. We spent about two hours scouring the muddy infested expanse for some seven metre long killers, but much to Catherine’s relief, we didn’t manage to find one. We did see a huge shedded skin and about twenty thousand mosquitoes though, who made sure we had something to remember the jungle by when we went home. Catherine’s bum looked like an acne pizza face in the immediate mozzie aftermath, but it’s recovering now. We also met those Beano / Austin Powers favourites, the piranhas. In fact we fished for piranhas (totally against the national park guidelines). It turns out that they do like flesh, beef in this case, and they do have very nasty sharp teeth. I don’t want to boast but I
was the only one - apart from the guide - to get a bite in the whole two hours. I don’t mean to boast even more but I caught two whole piranhas - sorry Connor! What a fishing legend I am. My two were granted their freedom but the guide’s weren’t so lucky and they were promptly grilled and served up for lunch. They tasted a bit bland really, such a let down for such a feisty fish.
The tour finished with another awful 4x4 trip, only broken by the suddenly exciting ‘Guess who I am game’ and three bags of ten pee crisps.
We left Rurrenabaque in the tiny plane again, bound for La Paz. As we sat in the departure lounge patio waiting for the plane to glide down from the tree tops an amusing sight was a flock of pigs inhabiting the runway, and having to be chased off by the local air traffic control man. Luckily for us they exited stage left and we were able to climb back up to 4000 metres, and the dull altitude-induced headache that comes with it.
Yesterday we got a bus across to Lake Titicaca and the
town of Copacabana. It took two hours to leave La Paz’s busy streets and the coach kept stopping to pick up or drop off the odd random bowler-hatted local but we made it eventually. Today we went to La Isla del Sol, in the middle of the Lake. We had a good walk with amazing views over the calm, peaceful waters of Titicaca, which was good preparation for the dreaded Inca Trail, which starts in a week. Hiking at altitude is hard work, especially with the sun beating down.
Off to Peru tomorrow, our final country - good job as the funds are seriously drying up!
Stay Safe
Nic
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cat's mum
non-member comment
It's him
Ian says yes it certainly looks like Veron!