Bolivia part 2!

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La Paz

After all the faffing around sorting out the replacement passport, (previously stolen) for which I had to get a photo taken, bearing in mind I had just been on a 4 day tour with no shower, a 10 hour bus ride with no air conditioning and then a robbery... it was not the most flattering photo, things started to perk up a bit.

We visited the famous witches market, which was....interesting! It contained all the usual jewelery, llama jumpers etc, until we turned a corner to be faced with dozens of dead baby llamas hanging everywhere. It turns out that you can buy a llama foetus to bury under the foundations of a house for good luck... I didn't see anyone buy one, we stuck to the llama jumpers.
That night at the hostel they had a card game tournement of Shithead which I ended up winning, the prize being the biggest glass of beer I have ever seen! I definitaly felt slightly tipsy after drinking it, as La Paz is one of the highest cities in the world at around 3600 metres above sea level, so the altitude made you feel slightly light headed already! It's safe to say that I slept like a baby that night!

We had booked an Amazon tour that would take us to Rurrenabaque, then touring the Amazon river looking at all the wildlife, which we were really excited about. We had the option to either fly or drive there, the flight costing £50 or a bus £6. We opted for the bus to save money even though it was a 20 hour bus ride, we had experienced longer, so we were ready for it!

The bus journey!

... We should have took the plane! It was the worst journey, EVER! What was supposed to take 20 hours ended up taking 48! First of all we set off at least an hour late at 12 for some unknown reason, then 2 hours in we had to stop to change the tyres. We carried on till 2am when we stopped suddenly in the middle of the jungle, for 12 hours! We were the only tourists on the bus , so we had no idea what was going on, surrounded by locals who didn't bat an eyelid, patiently holding their chickens or screaming children the full 12 hours.
It turned out that there had been a mudslide slightly ahead on the road and we were waiting for it to be cleared, eventually driving through it. It was a scary enough journey veering around corners full speed on a jungle road right on the edge of a mountain, even without all the slippery mud to add. Eventually we got through it and carried on our way, still a long way from Rurrenabaque.
I started to feel really ill from taking malaria tablets which was worsened by being on that bus which was full to overflowing, had no toilet, no air-con adding to the fact that we had only brought enough food and water for 24 hours, it was horrible and I had to keep running off the bus, stepping on numerous children sleeping on the floor, and heading into the jungle to be sick!
On the way a woman offered us some kind of potato which we gladly accepted being so hungry. BIG MISTAKE. I literally think it was just a boiled, rotten potato! Surprisingly not making me feel any better. I discreetly threw mine out of the window and I still have a slight issue regarding boiled potatoes now!

Eventually we arrived at Rurrenabaque a full 24 hours later than planned, and with only one hour to go before we were to set off on our tour. That just wasn't going to happen! We went to a hostel, showered, napped, ate, then went to the tour office to ask to start it the next day. They couldn't understand why, after 48 hours on a bus, 24 of those with nothing but a rotten potato, that we didn't want to hop straight in a crowded 4x4 for a 3 hour drive then a 3 hour boat trip to our accomodation! they demanded 100BOB cancellation fee and I was having none of it. We booked in for the following day, and refused to pay the 100BOB. Victory!


1st day of tour

We were all refreshed and recovered from the journey, ready for our tour. We met our guide, Mercado, and a dutch guy called Walter who was coming with us and all squashed into the car. the 3 hour drive was very cramped, but felt like a breeze in comparison ( we now beat everyone with horror stories of long bus journeys by far!).
Arriving at the river, we jumped into a small boat ready for the 3 hour trip to the accomodation. The journey was incredible! Within 10 seconds of being in the boat we was pink river dolphins swimming nearby. Along the way we also saw Howler monkeys, Camen and a hell of a lot of birds, like Macaws and Tucans and Squirrel monkeys to!
Mercado drove the boat straight to the trees and a squirrel monkey came on board and sat on Walters shoulder and rummaged through Hannahs bag.
We finally got to our accomodation, Dolphin retreat and it was lovely, sitting on stilts in the water. We settled in and watched the sunset, but I couldn't help comparing it to the one on the salt flats in Bolivia, it was still incredible, but we have been spoilt by that experience!
After that we went back out on the boat to look for Camen eyes in the dark, with Mercado shining a torch all around finding Camen when their eyes reflected back like cats eyes. He was a really good guide, telling us all about the animals, making all the animal calls and he was really enthusiastic and excited whenever we found something, as if he had never done it and seen it all before, which was lovely. We headed back to bed ready for Anaconda hunting the following day.

2nd day

5.30am start to watch the sunrise which was lovely and not too hot for a change. We had to wear ponchos and wellies as it had started to rain, as soon as we set foot in the boat it turned torrential so we had to wait a few hours for it to calm down a bit before trying again. We eventually got out, unfortuneately by then so were all the mosquitos 😞 Mercado decided not to hunt anaconda after all, and decided to go swimming instead. I was a bit nervous Anaconda hunting never mind jumping into a river I knew to contain Camen, pirahnahs and supposedly Anaconda! Mercado said it would be safe to swim as there were dolphins around which indicates no Camen. So Walter wasted no time and jumped straight in, majorly rocking the boat, making Lisa fall in. It was unbelieveably funny, I'm laughing about it even now picturing it again!
I quickly followed suit to find the water lovely and warm, if not a bit daunting, being very deep and brown so we couldn't see if anything were to come swimming at us.
We stayed in the water quite a while watching the pink river dolphins slowly come closer and closer, such an incredible experience. Soon a while had passed and we hadn't seen any dolphins nearby, I had just started to feel a bit nervous, wanting to get back in the boat when suddenly something bumped into my foot, of course I completely freaked out, immediately assuming it was a 7 metre long Camen come to eat me! Then 2 metres away up popped the victim, a pink river dolphin, the most innocent looking creature ever! My reaction to its little head bump obviously scared it away, so we got back in the boat back to the accomodation. On the way we saw a Capibara (giant guinea pig) which we named Parish after our guinea pig loving friend at home.
Back at the accomodation, the generator switched off at 9.30pm, so that was bed time for us, we didn't complain being so tired!

3rd day

We had a lie in today to the late hour of 7am ready to go pirrahnah fishing, putting mince meat on hooks which they very quickly devoured! None of us actually caught one, but they definitaly got well fed. Lisa and Hannah both managed to catch a couple of sardines, whilst all I managed was to catch some reeds.
We tried to find an Anaconda next, although Mercado told us that in the wet seaon, which it was, the chance of seeing one went from 80% down to 5%, so we didn't hold our breath! After about 45 minutes tramping around a knee deep swamp all we had managed to find was a singular frog, so we gave up and went back!
When we arrived back we saw a Camen underneath the building about 2 metres long called Andreas, Mercado told us! We all remembered hearing big splashes and loud crunching noises in the middle of the night and it became clear now what it was, Andreas having a midnight snack! I think we were all pretty happy not staying there another night after hearing that!

We left our river accomodation going back to Rurrenabaque ready to go back to La Paz the following day, planning what to do next on our travels (Peru!)
The next day, unsurprisingly, we flew back to La Paz, experiencing the typical Bolivian delays along the way. We were due on the 9.20am flight, our airport transfer arriving late and only getting us there for 9.30, we didn't miss our flight, as when we got there people were still waiting for the 7.20am flight!
We left at 12.20pm, only a 3 hour delay and a 40 minute flight, so miles better than the trip there!

La Paz.. again!

Back in La Paz we stayed at Bacoo hostel (couldn't get back into Adventure Brew, obviously more people had heard about the free beer and pancakes!) I had got an email from my dad telling me that someone had found my stuff that had gotten stolen. I couldn't belive it and made arrangements to meet the woman who had found it with help from a girl in an internet cafe who thankfully translated for us, telling us to be careful and not to give them anymore than 20BOB reward as they were bound to ask for one.
We set off to meet them in the city centre and it was ridiculously busy as they were celebrating Carnival, they had delayed it as they had bad rain for the actual Carnival date. So it was insanely busy, waiting for people who we had no idea what they looked like, couldn't speak any English, and us not knowing any Spanish, it was a perfect setting for a receipe for disaster, which it was!

We finally found the people, the whole family came along, the husband, wife, grandmother and a tiny baby, and it was instantly dodgy! They only had the plastic wallet from my bag, when they had told the girl in the cafe that they had the whole bag. In it was my passport, now not valid as I had reported it stolen, all my cards, bent so I couldn't use them, drivers liscence, yellow fever certificate, plane tickets (thankfully!), all my photos removed from the album, the written in pages from my journel, ripped out so they could sell the reamaining pages in the leather case and my toothbrush! I don't know why they bothered to bring that as it had been a week and yes I had bought a replacement by then! I thought that these people were the ones who had took the bag in the first place and then wanted more from it by returning the stuff they couldn't sell on in order to get reward money. They demanded a 50BOB reward to cover the call they had made to England which only seemed fair, but as soon as I agreed to that they wanted more. It got quite heated as we refused to give them more, and they refused to hand anything over, slowly a crowd was gathering around us and it was all quite scary and eventually even the police got involved. Thankfully the policewoman sided with us, took the 50BOB handed it to the woman, took my stuff and gave it all to me and told us to leave quickly, which we did immediately leaving the family still arguing with the police! It was a nightmare but I was so happy to get all of my stuff back that had sentimental value, not surprising that I didn't get my e-book back!

After all the drama we had been through in La Paz and Rurrenabaque, we were more than ready to leave for the next leg of our journey. We booked a bus to take us to Copacabana at Lake Titicaca and planned to party in Cuzco Peru, leaving the drama behind.

Although some of our stay wasn't a nice experience, it also made me realise that it could have been a lot worse and really, we were lucky to get any of the stuff back.

Onwards and upwards for more drama and adventures headed towards Cuzco and Machu Picchu!

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