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Published: January 26th 2009
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After a week in Sucre I decided to get back on the road and go visit the jungle. The journey would be fairly straightforward: get an overnight bus to La Paz, Bolivia´s capital, then hoof it straight to the airport and fly to Rurrenabaque, from where I would do a 3 day tour of the jungle/pampas area.
The bus journey was reasonably pleasant - they showed a terrible movie, and in the middle of the night we were offered the opportunity to disembark for 20 minutes to use a terrible toilet. I popped a couple of sleeping pills and managed to sleep most of the night (diazepam is the drug de jour of night time bus travellers but I have been coping ok with strong antihistamines so far).
We reached La Paz around 7am and were treated to a special wake-up call - the playing of a Michael Bolton video (followed by Bon Jovi). Luckily, we were soon in the bus station, and I jumped in a taxi and went to the airport, feeling smug about avoiding La Paz and very excited about the prospect of hot sun and wildlife (so far, all of my time in Bolivia has
been spent at an altitude of 3,000 and 4,800m and so its not that warm and can be downright uncomfortable with the altitude).
The staff at the check-in desk soon wiped the smile off my face though: turned out the flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Rurrenabaque. The runway is a field, and when it rains it turns to mud, and all flights get cancelled. This was on the Saturday and had I known that I would not fly until the following Wednesday I think I would have given up there and then (or maybe taken the bus instead, but at 20 hours minimum on an unmade road you definitely need diazepam...)
The next few days were spent ringing the airport, checking every few hours whether a flight was going to materialise soon, and in between my calls to the airline, I managed to have some fun...
On Sunday, I went to the wrestling in El Alto, a city just above La Paz. There was the usual pantomime stuff (men in masks throwing each other around), then they brought on the midgets, men in gimp masks, women wrestlers, and finally an Australian guy who had
volunteered to fight. He was a complete novice, but did a terrific job (apparently he had been given a 2 hour crash course beforehand).
On Monday, I did a little shopping and came across the Mercado de las Brujas, or witches´ market. It´s pretty distasteful stuff - skinned snakes, big cats and bears, baskets of toads (well they could have been frogs but it was hard to tell) and dried llama foetuses. Witchcraft is meant to be big business here, but I just saw tourists taking photos.
In the afternoon, I got the call I was waiting for - I would fly in two hour´s time! So I checked out of my hotel and jumped in a collectivo (minibus) and headed to the airport. Halfway there, we had a little road rage incident with a coach - not sure who started it, but the coach would swerve in front of our minibus and then stop. As soon as we pulled out to overtake, it would swerve sideways and try and push us off the road. It was absolutely terrifying, especially as the road is on a sheer drop. Luckily, we soon reached the toll booths on the edge
of the city and this gave us an opportunity to get ahead of the coach.
So I arrived at the check-in desk, shaking but relieved to be flying... but the shifty faces of the airport staff said it all: the flight had been cancelled a few minutes earlier due to rain. So after a near-hysterical rant at the staff, I turned around and made my way back to the city, this time in a private taxi, thankful that at least my journey back to the city would be safe. Or so I thought. Taxi driver was initially happy to drive me back to my hotel, but then changed his mind and dumped me and my luggage on the edge of the city. I was boiling with rage, but soon flagged down another taxi and this one took me within 5 minute´s walk of my hotel (that seems to be about as much as you can expect here!)
I should have given up on getting the flight by now, but had managed to find some detailed weather information for Rurrenabaque on the web. Tuesday, apparently, was terrible all day but Wednesday was looking better so I rescheduled my flight
for Wednesday and booked a cycle trip for the following day.
My cycle trip was on the death road, a stretch of 69km and regarded in some official capacity to be the most dangerous road in the world. An alternative route has now been built, but before this opened, the death road claimed up to 300 lives a year. The road is unpaved, incredibly narrow and has very steep drops throughout its entire length. The cycle trip is one of the most popular day trips you can do from La Paz, although the companies offering the trip vary a little in quality and price...
I was a late booker, and so ended up with possibly one of the poorer quality tour companies. We were in a group of about 20, mostly made up of twentysomething guys who were severely hungover from the night before but terribly excited about doing something craaayyzeee on their holiday. We started at an altitude of 4,700m, and the first hour was on a paved road, wet and misty with the occasional truck or bus going past. It was absolutely freezing and visibility was poor, but most of the guys were happy to overtake
without warning (we had been told to call out when overtaking someone as its impossible to see what´s behind you). A few minutes into the trip we had our first accident, where a guy nearly slammed into the back of a truck when his front wheel detatched itself from the spokes. More accidents followed: people braking too hard and too late and flying down the road on their backs, people landing in the bushes, and all the time no warning from the guides about the fatal accidents that happen involving cyclists every year on this road. The worst accident happened when two guys hit each other (and were lucky not to go over the cliff); one had a few square inches of skin removed from his arm and the other a broken collarbone. I think it was at this point that the idiots in the group realised that they might have called it the death road for a reason!
The scenery was breathtaking throughout the journey and by the time we reached the bottom of the road at 1,300m the climate had changed to tropical and sunny. I was really, really relieved not to have fallen off (although had
Finger puppet group photo
I bought these in La Paz and they really cheered me up. a near miss when someone lost control and cycled into me and nearly sent me over the cliff). I did laugh on the way back to La Paz though when the guy sat next to me said he really enjoyed it but felt sorry for the women cyclists as it must be really hard for them. This, from a guy who hit the deck twice, and none of the women in our group fell off at all!
And the following day my weather predictions came true: the runway at Rurrenabaque was dry and we flew.
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