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Published: August 9th 2008
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Hi all,
Nick here: Our next adventure takes us to the heights of the andean cordellias, and then deep into the jungles of the amazon basin in Bolivia.
Having essentially acclimatized to the altitude, and getting into the swing of traveling in bolivia, we had actually decided to travel from Uyuni to the silver mining town of Potosi. However due to road blockages by the campesinos (peasants) and minders, we had to strike this off the itinery. Uyuni is a great place to visit the salar, but there is bugger all else to do there.
So a quick few investigations and we found out we could leave on a train at 2am in the morning. Apparently there were tickets but we weren't able to buy them until the ticket office opened. Guess what time. 1 am in the morning. Not exactly the easiest time to get confirmation that you have a ticket. Especially when the power goes out regularly in the night.
Well, having found out that if you take the back door entrance to the train station there was already a line buying tickets at 12.45am, we managed to grab a few of the remaining tickets.
Lucky we checked that back door... never accept anything at face value.
So 7 hours in a rattly night train forced me to take a sleeping tablet, which due to the altitude stupefied me well into the next day. Not easy to haggle your way around bus stations and taxi drivers in this state, so i left that to rin, and i was just a drugged packhorse.
After a few hours of relaxation in La Paz at our HQ Arthy´s Guesthouse and a few hellos to our great host Ruben, we decided to jump on a late bus to Sorata about 4 hours north of La Paz. A decent of 1500m back off the antiplano in a minibus with Ayrton Senna, gave us thrills of excitement with the whole minibus of cholas quite amused at how close we were all to launching ourselves down a 400m embankment.
You have to realize that when a paved road is put into service into Bolivia, that just means you can go faster and now use the whole road, "because its now got white lines to protect you". And if your a bolivian microbus driver, who drives that route every day...
Ooohhhh cheap fireworks
Im always a sucker for cheap fireworks. On the festival of San Jaun i was showing the kids how to tape multiple rockets together to get 2 stage burns. Very amsusing. well you have your personal best time to consider as well. Kieren perkins im sure cut a few corners trying to shave some seconds off his PB.
Our time then was spent chilling out in Sorata, launching quite a few fireworks at the festival of San Juan, and taking in the views of a spectacular trek up to a 5000m glacial lake. I have to admit i am quite the sucker when it comes to cheap fireworks. I also took head of the lessons that Richard and I learnt when we were kids and making our own gunpowder rockets. That is how to make multistage arianne 5 style inventions using multiple individual fireworks. They and I likewise were quite impressed when we broke through the palm tree altitude barrier in the main plaza de armas.
For those of you not experienced with hiking above 4000m.. its tough. For those of you who regularly crack off 6000m plus mountain ascents.... my hat off to you. Thats quite hard core. At 5000m, even with some good acclimatization the dry cold air sucks the moisture out of your lungs while you hike dehydrating you rapidly. So you have to drink lots
of water and carry it also. Also as you climb your body gets confused with how much oxygen its getting. You start holding onto water in all the wrong places as well.. like your brain, and your brainstem starts getting pushed into your scull. This brings on much of the problems at altitude of headaches nausea and other body function problems. That said the views are stunning and the effort worth it!
So from the heights of Sorata we then plunged into the jungle of Bolivia at Rurrenabaque in the Amazon Basin. Our time at the Serere lodge near Madidi national park could be explained in many ways, and most would take quite a few pages of text to explain the types of animals we saw, their behaviour, the moments of peace, the moments of childlike wonder. Hard to do without perhaps a publisher and editor to help you catch the subtle nuances and communicate them. So for starters here are a few photos of the animals and locations around the lodge to wet your appetite. The rest of the stories will have to be held for moments when we can sit down for a drink together, and you
Dealing with the affects of lunch and altitude
Having just climbed over a 800m before lunch, Rinske and Tracy our alaskan friend, take a break while the pack mules refuel can ask me how to make a baby-cappachino-monkey-squealing-in-a-jaguars-mouth-to-call-the-other-monkeys noise. 😉
Then there was the moment when Rinske said yes to my propsal to marry me.. and all the wonderful that afternoon moments leading up to that point. Heres a little timeline of the location in the photos.
So on that note, we will leave you till our next adventures and more stories to follow. Hope your all well and we do think about our friends and family heaps while we are on the road. Please keep up the mails and we hope to hear from you soon.
Love and good health
Nick and Rinske
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Jeremy
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Obscure way to pass on the news??
Brilliant trek through Bolivian mountains and jungles! Some awesome photos, can't wait to check it out first hand. But did I miss something? Is it /really/ just in the photo comments that you obscurely pass on the news of your engagement to the masses? :) So mysterious, oh great Drugged Packhorse... ;)