Bolivia - The Amazon, Festive Cheer and much, much more!

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So Bolivia, what can I say about it apart from it was incredible and a close contender as one of my favourite countries I visited! Without doubt it has the potential to be absolutely breath taking. The countryside itself is so varied with everything from the Amazon rainforest to permanently snowy peaks and the beautiful Isla de Sol it was one of the most effortlessly photogenic countries I have ever visited. The really sad thing about Bolivia is that the beauty of this country is marred by the Bolivian tendency to toss rubbish out their houses, cars or really whenever they are at the time. It makes Bolivia the dirtiest countries I have visited. I remember being on a trip and our guide finished his lunch and launched the rubbish over his should down the cliff behind him. It really wouldn’t have taken that much effort to put it in his pocket and take it away with him. When I asked him why, he simply said “In Bolivia we do it differently!” there isn’t really a lot you can say in response to that is there? Once you get away from the residential and touristy parts of Bolivia you can see how stunning a country it actually is.




My first stop in Bolivia was La Paz and my plan was to spend Christmas there, it’s a big city and the hostel I was staying in had over 300 beds that were all full with a further 150 people on the waiting list. I wanted to go to a large hostel, if I wasn’t with my family I wanted to be certain there were at least plenty of other people I could spend Christmas with. I arrived a couple of days early and as trips were running on Christmas Eve I decided to book myself on a trip to cycle the Worlds Most Dangerous Road (WMDR). What else was there to do? In hindsight I don’t really know why I desperately wanted to do this trip, I am not a strong cyclist and my balance is pretty poor at the best of time. The road is a single lane track covered in what they call “Baby’s Heads”, in normal language these are loose rocks that can launch you over a cliff up to 600m high if you hit them at the wrong angle. At one time this was one of the main roads through Bolivia and the yearly average of deaths on the 40 mile stretch was 200-300 people. However these days the road is rarely used for vehicle transportation as a safer alternative road has been built and instead it has been opened for the tourism trade with 100’s of backpackers cycling down it. On average there is still on average one death a year as tourists accidentally cycle over the edge. In 2011 a Japanese girl died when the breaks on her bike failed due to poor maintenance, the company that was responsible was never prosecuted and they continue to run the trip. Needless to say I didn’t book with them and found the most expensive tour operator with the best safety record I could find. After all the horror stories clearly I didn't fall off over the edge and had an amazing day.



We got picked up from the hostel and there were 6 of us on the trip, 3 guys and 3 girls. To make sure we got used to our bikes before we started cycling down the WMDR we were dropped at the top of this hill and we had a 7km cycle down this road packed with speeding buses and lorries. It was freezing with snow both falling and lying on the road (we were at an altitude of about 4,600m). Luckily the snow melted pretty quickly as we lost altitude quickly as we cycled down the road. With no more adventures that me having to emergency stop before I hit a cow crossing the road (it sounds like a really bad joke but it actually happened) we ere finally given the OK to head towards the WMDR and begin the actual cycle.



When we got to the top we got our final safety briefing (e.g. don’t get off your bike on the cliff side of the road, always look at the road as you cycle the way you are looking etc) we set off. For the first mile or two I was petrified and clutching the handlebars of my bike so tightly that my fingers actually seized up. Then suddenly I forgot about the ridiculously steep cliff about 1m away from me and started really enjoying myself. We were a competitive group so everyone was speeding down the path. It was such a good feeling with minimal uphill and an empty steep downhill road in front of you we all went pretty fast.



It took about 2.5 hours to get to the bottom but it felt like we had been cycling for about 30mins. After all my worrying the night before I couldn’t believe how easy I had found it (I think I got about 1hr sleep worrying about cycling off the edge of the road). After a quick swim in the river at the bottom (as we had dropped to an altitdue of only 2000m above sea level it was boiling hot at the bottom of the road, a complete contrast to the snow at the start of the day) it was time to get back in the truck to head to the hostel. Then I realised that we had to get back up in the van and drive up the road. Having barely looked at what was beside me as I cycled down suddenly when someone else is driving up it it’s a different story. Every so often the guide would say “Look to the right” I would look and there was nothing there, the wheel was literally cm’s from the edge (the path is only 3m wide and the truck wasn't that much smaller). Normally I would have been pretty scared but suddenly I started feeling sick, initially I thought it was car sickness but after 2 hours of driving in which they had to stop about 6 times so I could be sick it was pretty clear that I had food poisoning. I can honestly say that I have never had a worse journey in my life, the road was bumpy, I was sitting above the wheel and it was a bumpy drive and to make matters worse 2 of the guys in the van had started drinking some local spirit that smelt terrible. It all made things so much worse.



If I am completely honest Christmas Day was miserable, on the 23’rd Dec I had gone for a meal with 3 Australian guys and we had tapas which we all shared. We don’t know which specific dish it was but by the evening of Christmas Eve we were all in bed with severe food poisoning, one of the guys had to get out a doctor in the middle of the night to treat him. We all sat together during our Christmas Day meal and between the 4 of us I don’t think we would have finished a single roast potato, we just looked at our food and pushed it around the plate. The really sad thing is that the three guys are Jewish so it was their first (and I think only) Christmas celebration (apparently they just wanted to see what the fuss was about). They thought Christmas was rubbish.



By Boxing Day I was ready to leave La Paz and despite still feeling pretty sick I decided to get away from La Paz and retrun to properly experience La Paz for New Years Eve. The safest place to ensure that your tour guides were not drunk over the festive period was apparently the Amazon jungle (I was told that this was because it was hot there so everyone was happy, personally I wasn’t convinced but our guide was definitely not drunk so its either true or we got really lucky). The trip itself was incredible, we spent 3 days on a canoe sitting on little camping chairs. Everywhere you looked there was animals who were not hugely bothered about us floating past and watching them. At one point we were stopped by the bank and I looked beside me to see a monkey with a small baby on her back sitting 2ft away looking at me.



There were just so many highlights of the trip, just going to the Amazon was an ambition of mine but to swim with endangered wild Pink Dolphins that would swim up under you and then rush to the surface to splash water on you and then they nibbled on my toes (the first time one of the dolphins got near my feet I didn't realise it was there so accidentally kicked it on the head. Yes, I kicked an endangered animal on the head! It actually didn't seem to mind and came back to continue nibbling my toes for the next hour or so), we fished for Piranhas (we didn’t catch any), searched for Anaconda’s (we didn’t find any) and found crocodiles on a night boat trip using just torches, we were about 2ft away form them. It was just incredible! Anyone going to Bolivia has GOT to do this trip. Before I knew it the 3 days were over and I was on the worlds smallest plane flying back to La Paz in time to begin my New Year celebrations.



La Paz was a crazy place to spend New Year, there were people in my dorm going straight to the bar at 1pm when it opened and leaving when it closed at 2am (not me for anyone wondering). One of my least favourite moments on the entire trip happened during this period, the girl who slept in the bunk above me came back really drunk and was sick al over my bed, clothes. both my backpacks and my lonely planet guide. I was understandably furious when I got to my room and found out. The next morning was New Years Eve and I had to find a laundry willing to wash my clothes in a rush. I did but it wasn’t cheap (luckily the girl who was sick was so embarrassed that she paid for it all). The only funny thing about this story was I was in a hostel in Peru about 3 weeks later and someone started telling me this story about a friend of theirs who had been sick on someone’s bag and bed, he was telling me this story! I officially part of a backpacking urban myth.



There were 4 of us who celebrated New Year's Eve night together and it was really different from what I would normally do we wanted to get away from the normal backpacking crowd and went to a local Salsa dancing club. I salsa danced until the sun rose (literally!) and actually was surprisingly OK at it as well. It was a fantastic night and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to celebrate it with; there were 2 Brits, a Peruvian girl and a Brazilian guy so it was a really diverse group. At some point during the night I also managed to win a pair of pants which I found hilarious the next morning.



After the New Year celebrations had died down and the buses were judged as being safe to travel on again it was time to leave La Paz and head for Sucre in the south of Bolivia. My main reason to go was I really wanted to do some hiking there, after the excesses of the festive period I really wanted a couple of days of excercise. Sucre is a pretty, colonial town but I found there wasn’t that much to do. Due to it being low season there weren’t many tourists and this was evident not just in me being unable to find a single company who were running a hiking tour due to no demand but also the desperation of the locals to sell you something, anything would do. My favourite moment was one of the local boys who polish men’s shoes for a living tried to polish my flip-flops. When I pointed out I could just put them in the shower I thought he was going to cry. So as a compromise I bought some chewing gum from him instead.



After 2 days there I was ready to leave Sucre and go somewhere else so I jumped on a bus to Potosi. Potosi is officially the highest town in the world and you can feel the altitude. Just climbing a flight of stairs makes you feel physically sick and dizzy. It constantly feels like your body doesn’t have enough oxygen to survive. It’s a really tough place to visit, I can’t imagine what it would be like living there. So what is the big deal about Potosi? They have working silver mines that you can go and visit. All I can say is that it is an eye-opening experience. I have never been down a mine before and don’t think I would be rushing back. People frequently have panic attacks due to the altitude and if you have claustrophobia I wouldn’t even consider going down.



The conditions the workers work in are appalling. As the mines are not privately owned but run by several co-operatives there seems to be little regulations and absolutely no health and safety regulations. The workers drink a spirit that is 96% proof (I tried a sip of it and it was the most foul thing I have ever tasted, it stripped the saliva out of mouth and my taste buds didn't work properly for 48 hours afterwards) and they seem to be drunk most of the time, they constantly chew on coco leaves to prevent them feeling hungry (its considered dangerous to eat using your hands due to the chemicals you can find down the mines), there are also lots of different groups working independently in the mine using dynamite with no thought for where others might be working nearby, asbestos is everywhere and it is boiling hot, with little oxygen and incredibly dark. Imagine spending 8 hours a day in those conditions. The life expectancy is appalling (although slightly higher than the workers who work in the silver processing plants due to the strength of chemicals that they work with) despite this though the men of the town are eager to get jobs working down the mine as the pay is incredibly good. Apparently every female in town is desperate to marry a miner as they would have a high quality of life with the money they bring in. It was a hard thing to see but I am glad I experienced it I was really happy to see daylight again though, the first breath of fresh air was probably the best one I will ever had.



That evening it was time to take the night bus to our next destination a little town called Tipiza really near the Bolivian border where my friend and I (who I met in Sucre and then I re-met up with in Potosi) were planning to book the famous Salt Flats trip. First though we had to get there and the bus trip was a bit of a disaster. Our bus left at 9.30pm and we were expecting to get into Tipiza at around 5am in the morning. The plan was to find a café to drink a coffee and then wait until the travel agents booked and try and get on a tour ASAP. For some reason though the bus arrived really early and we unexpectedly arrived at 3am. Having been kicked off the bus so early we decided to try and find a hostel with 2 beds we could sleep for the remainder of the night. Having met another couple we jumped into a taxi and went off in search of a hostel. We went to 2 hostels to find that they were all fully booked (apparently it was the start of the Argentinean uni holidays and all hostels and hotels were full). After 10 mins our taxi driver had had enough and he tipped us out the cab and refused to drive us anywhere further, he wouldn’t even take us back to the bus station. There was only one thing for it, we walked back to the bus station and we decided to sleep in the bus station. It was actually the safest option, there were people there, toilets and more importantly we met Ruffles the dog there.



We first saw Ruffles when we were hunting for hostels, he was trying to get into one of the hostels as we were talking to them to see if they had spaces for us. Once we got back into the taxi and drove round the corner we noticed the dog was chasing behind the taxi, we thought it was weird but in general dogs chase cars and trucks in South America so we didn't think that much about it. When we settled down in the bus station we noticed him again. He was a tiny little scrappy stray dog but he was really alert and seemed very intelligent for a stray. He walked into the building then we saw him sitting down, looking round he spotted us and walked straight over. I don’t know why by he wouldn’t leave me alone, I would go to the toilet and he would insist on coming into the cubicle. He slept under my chair and when I went to look and see if anything was open he came with me jumping up to get stroked all the time and every time I sat down he would jump on my lap. I fell in love! I spent a lot of the night working out ways of brining him back to the UK but quickly realised it wasn’t practical. I then spent a lot of time trying to persuade Bolivian families in the bus station to take him home with them. I almost convinced one couple but they were worried about their newborn baby. In the end I had to sneak out when he was asleep. I couldn’t say good-bye to him when he was awake, it would have broken my heart. So for those of you who thought I would fall in love when I was away, I did with a dog I named Ruffles!



When morning came we managed to find a room and book a tour before 7.30am. So finally we were safe and all organised for the next stage in our epic tour of Bolivia. The Salt Flats tour is the highlight of many people’s time in Bolivia and I have to say it was a close call between that and the Amazon. The first day we were driving through what I can only describe as the Wild West. All it needed was some tumbleweed and it would have been complete. The first day was long; we were driving for about 12 hours. Myself and Maarit (the Finish girl) were sitting in the back seat and we had virtually no leg room. It was slightly better for Maarit but at 5 ft 8in I struggled to get any feeling in my legs. Saying that we were on the trip with a German couple and he was about 6ft 3ins and could barely stand up if he sat in the back for longer than an hour. Saying that our truck was quite a bit better than some of the other ones.



The three days were completely different, after the first day of Wild West country we then moved into a purely volcanic high altitude plain. One second it would be sunny, then snowing, then hailing, then raining again. It was incredible. One of my favourite sites were the geezers. We stopped at this place that had hundreds of them, all you could see was this bubbling mud with hot steam coming out. The one instruction we were given was don’t try and get into the geezer as they can be around 200 degrees hot. We were all laughing saying that no one would be stupid enough to jump into one when suddenly out the smoke we saw this guy trying to climb over the geezers. Our guide went mad trying to get him to turn back but apparently he didn’t speak good enough Spanish so he kept on going. When he finally reached us safely he asked me what we were all shouting about. I asked him what the hell he was doing and he went “I just wanted to see how hot they were”. When I told him the temperature he visibly paled. It pains me to say that this idiot was British!



The part of the trip that I was really looking forward to was the Salt flats and this was saved for our last two days. The Salt Flats are just that a huge plain (100m’s sq wide) made of salt and in the wet season (which is when I visited) there is a cm deep water across the entire area and it reflects the sky above so you almost get a mirror image. Amazing for beautiful photographs and also really good for jumping shots (that’s why I have taken a million of them now). The third day was my friend’s birthday and I had managed to get hold of balloons (I had to mime the ballons to the shop owner much to her amusement), cakes and wine so we could celebrate a little bit. By a sheer stroke of luck we managed to get beds in a hotel made entirely of salt (literally everything, the bricks in the wall were salt, the tables, chairs and bed frames) and whilst not really environmentally friendly it was a really nice way to spend our last night and a unique night for Maarits birthday feast.



The final day we spent taking photos on the salt flats in fact by the end of it I was exhausted with all the jumping and pretending to stand on giant Coke bottles. It was fun. As we were about to leave suddenly a truck drove up and some locals jumped out dressed in traditional costumes to film a music video for a local band. It was hilarious, we started out just watching but by the end in the background of the video there will be a huge group of backpackers dancing traditional Bolivian dances between the local dancers and the Bolivian equivalent of a supermodel. Yes, I was dancing and it was a really fun way to end the trip. Sadly that was our last afternoon on the tour and then it was time to jump on a bus back to La Paz and say a sad farewell to Maariet when we arrived as we were both heading to seperate destinations.



My final stop in Bolivia was Copacabana that is the gateway to the beautiful Isla de Sol. The Isla de Sol is on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca and it’s stunning. Beautiful clear waters, tiny little villages (there are only 150 permanent residents on the island) and Inca ruins. I took the boat to the North side of the island and walked to the furthest northern peak and hiked right the way through to the southern peak. It was a full day of hiking and then I spent the night on a little village on the south of the island which gave me a good view of the sun setting and rising and as you might have seen on Facebook thousands of photos of it (and I selectively choose the photos to upload, I have 100’s more). I decided after seeing how fantastic sunset was I woke myself up at 5am and climbed the nearest hill to watch the sun rising. As I was happily (or more groggily) sitting there someone in the village below unleashed this half dog/half wolf that rushed up the hill barking and growling at me. I was sitting on a rock and I thought if I moved I would startle the dog that was crouched in front of me making a growling sound I have never heard before. I genuinely thought I was about to be attacked by a rabid dog. Suddenly though he stopped growling, stood up and then trotted off to sniff around the hillside. So I stood up and swiftly made my way down the hill to pack my bags and leave the island (I was planning on leaving anyway so it wasn’t entirely because of the dog).



The next day it was time to leave Bolivia and head back into the south of Peru as I started to slowly make my way back to the Lima for my flight out of South America.

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Photos

Swimming with the Dolphins
Just before they came and nibbled my feet!

The Amazon croc!
He lived right next to our accomodation!

Pyrana Fishing
I didn't catch anything!

Salt Plains - Sun set jumping shot
It was so fun that we went into a jumping shot frenzy!

Me standing on a coke bottle
How small am I?

Sunset on the Isla de Sol
It was a sensational sight!

Tiny Maarit!
The Salt plains are p[erfect for shots like this!

Daning on the Salt Plains
For some reason we just wanted to dance!

Isla de Sol - The cute Donkey
Just because it is cute!

The Isla de Sol
During the day it was equally sensational.

Me on the Isla de Sol - Sun Rise
Proof that I was actually there