Advertisement
Published: October 16th 2011
Edit Blog Post
So we had a pretty uneventful border crossing into Bolivia, and Bolivia turns out to be the kind of place that doesn´t even have a sign saying ´Welcome to Bolivia´. Our first stop was Cobacabana, which is on Lake Titicaca and quite a nice little town. However, our first Bolivian stop was marred by the lack of cash machine, meaning we had 26 quid to last us! This wouldn´t be so bad, except we did the tourist thing in Cobacabana and visited Isla del Sol (the birth place of the Inka Gods I think) which had fantastic views of the lake, but where all the locals made us buy tickets to walk across their island. Anyway, we found our emergency euro´s and dollars so resolved our money problems and jumped on a bus to La Paz.
La Paz is not what you'd expect of a capital city, although it had all the pollution, noise and people of anywhere in South America. It did turn out to be our most sociable place though, as we went out for dinner/drinks with 3 different sets of people! The first day there we wandered round the markets, saw the llama foetus´ that locals bury
under their front porch for luck. Then we did the ´Death Road' on mountain bikes, which was only slightly hairy and really fun, although the Brazillian we were with fell off, luckily onto some rocks at the road side, and not over the edge, which is why its called the death road! Got a free t-shirt too! So now we're Pro Downhillers!
We then flew to Rurrenabaque (only 19 seats in the plane), and caught our boat to the Amazon (6 hours upstream). The Chalalan Ecolodges were amazing! White linen, fluffy towels, luxury cabins! There was a lake you could swim in, although after realising that caiman lurked round the edges, Peter was less keen on this idea! During the morning there was a (hot, sweaty) walk through the jungle to look for plants and monkeys and frogs and other jungle life, then a quick dip in the lake after lunch, and afternoon trip to a look out or for more monkey spotting, then a night walk/canoe to see tarantulas, caimen and other critters.
We did some mooching about in La Paz before getting an overnight bus to Sucre. We were assured of an onboard toilet, however this
was locked so we spent a worrying first half of the journey (6 hours) with our legs crossed before we stopped off. I´m sure we would have realised this would happen if we were local/spoke spanish! Sucre was really nice although we didn´t see the dino footprints and failed to go on a trek we planned due to Malarone induced illness.
We're waiting out the election in Potosi, the highest city in the world, as everything stops in Bolivia for the election apparently! Although not suprising as they have had something like 180 governments in 200 years (this fact needs checking!) Actually, the run upto the elections made La Paz a pretty scary place as it sounded like bombs were going off, and there were massive protests about a road being built through a national park. Yesterday we went down a silver mine in Potosi (what its famous for) which had some dodgy bits where you had to crawl through tunnels and go down a ladder which was falling apart. The miners get 2000 Bs a month which is 200 GBP to you and me! The mineral refinery had a complete lack of health and safety, with cyanide, and scary looking crushing machines that you could easily fall into. Thats Bolivia tho!
Peter´s turn next time, and will find a fast computer to give you some photos! xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.235s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 11; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0467s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb