Time for a break!!

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Hola from Peru!



Our 90 day visa ran out for Bolivia indicating that it was time for us to leave this diverse and fascinating country where we had such fantastic experiences and met some many friendly people. We are now in Arequipa in Peru, looking forward to the imminant arrival of our friends Elie and Mathieu who are going to spend 2 weeks travelling with us!


From Conception, where I last wrote in Bolivia, we completed our ´Misions Circuit' around the east of Bolivia with a final stop at San Xavier to see it's beautiful highly decorated mission church. Then we turned right and took a nice asphalted road north direction Beni, the poorest of the seven Bolivian states situated in the tropical amazonion area of the country.




The first night on this road we stopped off in a small village of thatched roof huts called 'El Puente' ('the bridge', even though there was no bridge!) and ended up staying two days as I came down with a bad cold. The village was very relaxed, the slow pace of life encouraging us to sit around chatting with the locals and while away hours in the hammocks in our guest house. On Saturday afternoon there was a womans football tournement in the village. The village is tiny so we were extremely surprised to hear that all of the teams playing were from the village. Having said that, it seemed like all the women between 15 and 50 were on the pitch, a few had to rush off at half time to nurse their babies! The football wasn't treated as a joke as it probably would be at home though, each team was fully kitted out with their team colours, the guys came out to support and the women all took it seriously albeit in a fairly relaxed manner. There were a few vicious tackles and we wondered about the consequences of the rivalries on neighbourly relations!



The day we left the village the wind changed. The good news was that it was now a southerly wind which would push us up north but the bad was when the wind changes the climate changes completely: We went from 30 degrees and blue sky the day before to a chilling 10 degrees and dark threatening clouds. Needless to say we got drenched as we cycled to Guarayos a larger town and our next stop on the route. We rolled into the town around lunch time as floods of water were flowing across the street and turning parts of the road to mud. For the next couple of days it poured with rain so given that I still had a stinking cold, we weren't in a hurry and we'd found a nice hotel we hibernated until the weather improved. Earlier in the year we'd seen reports on the flooding in the Beni region. They often have problems with flooding during the rainy season a little further north Guarayos and 2007 was a particulaly bad year with devastating floods ravaging this already poor region.



When the weather changed we got back on the bikes. The further north the went the greener and more tropical the vegetation became and soon we were spotting our first crocodiles in the small ponds at the side of the road. It was especially interesting for bird watching as there were all sorts of birds in the marshy areas we passed including the huge Jabiru stork that we had seen before in the Pantanal. There were also groups of brilliant coloured parrots flying passed to keep us occupied. It really like cycling in a bird park!



Further up the road we stopped in a small village called Santa Maria for a break and were told by the locals that there was an animal refuge nearby run by Bolivians but with all 'gringo' volunteers. (By the way, gringo is used all the time here for anyone from outside of Latin America. It's not an unfriendly term, sometimes they call me ´Gringuita' which makes me laugh!). We were happy to have a break so we stopped at the refuge to have a look. Normally they don't do tours but the made an exception and we were taken around by a freindly young Bolivian. Birds, monkeys, tapirs, deer, and big cats that have been abandonned or rescued from the black market are cared for here and sometimes, when possible, released back into the wild. It seems like a great place. Especially impressive was the jaguar we were able to visit in the park. He'd been there since he was small and so he's used to being around people and fairly docile but still a challenging animal to look after. Each volunteer is given a specific animal or group of animals that they have to look after during their stay in the park (they have to stay a minimum of two weeks) and at least three volunteers are needed for each Jaguar because you need three strong people to take the Jaguar on it's daily walk. One to hold the lead and two to help out if the Jaguar wants to 'play'. Apparently noone had ever been badly hurt but a lot of people come way with scratches and bruises.




After two more days on the road bird-spotting, a night in one small village and another camping at an estancia surrounded by farm animals we arrived in Trinidad the capital of the Beni. Trinidad is more like a large village than a city, the roads full of stalls offering everything needed for the farmers living in the estancias around. We stayed a day, restocked our paniers then headed west on a dirt road, direction San Ignacio de Moxos. 12km out of Triniday we arrived at the river Mamore, a large navigable river that heads north into the amazon, and stopped at a riverside restaurant for some delicious fish. It was Sunday and although the food was 'relatively' expensive the place was packed with the 'better off' Bolivian families having a lazy lunch together.




After lunch and a little siesta in our hammocks (we have two very light ones) we continued on the dusty road. During the afternoon we had to cross three rivers on small boats which was quite amusing. The dusty road we were taken was no more than a dirt path through the jungle and passed marsh land and some estancias. During most of the wet season it's virtually impassable and one family we met on the way said they couldn't take the road to go to Trinidad for three months after the floods!



At the end of the day we found a small house, well more like a hut, with a friendly family and camped there at night. Its seems strange to us how these people who have only lived in this remote place all their life working on the nearby estancia show so little surprise to see two gringos roll up on their bikes asking if they can camp. In general when we ask to stay at small farms the families welcome us naturally as if it's perfectly normal that we are passing by and ask very little questions about what we are doing. Conversation is normally limited to where we are cyling to next and where we've just come from but if we mention a place more than a couple of hundred kilometres away we lose them. If ever they ask anything about where we live its usually along the lines of what food we grow there and what we eat. I like the simplicity of these conversations though because talking about us and our trip all the time can get pretty boring.



The following day was a big day for us, at the end of the morning we arrived at 10 000 kilometres on the bike!! It was quite an event, we hadn't always been sure that we would reach this point. Obviously we had to stop for a photo!



Our 10 000 km was unintentionally perfect timing as only 5km further we arrived at the village of San Ignacio de Moxos. We'd come here because we'd heard that the festival here at the end of July is one of the most important in Beni and one of the most interesting in Bolivia. The festival dates back to 1689 and celebrates the patron saint of the village San Ignacio. Its the big moment of the year for the locals and we could feel the excitment in this normally sleepy village as we arrived. The parades started only a couple of hours after our arrival with dancers called Chasqueros, dressed up as old men with odd shaped wooden canes, wooden face masks and leather hats with fire crackers on dancing round the main square. Later in the day there were more processions with other men and some women dressed up as 'Macheteros' the traditional amazonian hunters in spectacular costumes with huge parrot feather headresses and bells around their ankles. They were followed by several other groups of dancers: older women in traditional colourful dresses, young pretty girls dressed in 'Pocahontas' type two-piece costumes and other young people dancing around a kind of May Pole.



The festival was a lot smaller than El Grand Poder which we'd seen in La Paz but much more accessible. There were lots of spectators but you could still move around the village and chat to people easily and everything was quite relaxed. The processions eventually ended up in the church where all the dancers went to worship the statues of San Ignacio. We met Manuel there, a young Jesuit from Germany who is currently working in La Paz organising religious and cultural exchanges between Germany and Bolivia. We'd met him before on the way to the festival and he'd invited us to come and find him in the church building where he was staying. After the mass we went to have a drink with him in the parois and we met a lot of the other Jesuit priests. It was good to be reminded of the religious importance of the festival to the people as you can easily forget about it with all the partying in the street.



In the evening there were more processions, food and drink stands, lots of games on the main square and lots of drunk revellers. The climax of the evening came around 11pm when fireworks were let off, with a fair few heading directly into the crowd around. The Chasqueros began running through the crown with the fire crackers going off in their hats sending sparks flying over all the spectators and if that wasn't enough another type of fire cracker that was like a burning paper tube was thrown abount the crowd in all directions with people picking it up when it landed to throw on elsewhere. We kept our distance! I don't think anyone was actually hurt but a fair few people came away with small holes burned in their clothes.



The next morning after the mass attended by all the village, San Ignacio was paraded around the main square followed by more dancers, before being returned to the church where he'd stay for another year. Then everyone wandered off for lunch. When we ventured out after a little siesta at 3pm the main square of the village was deserted as everyone was crowded around a grassy field in the village to see the 'bull teasing'. Very dodgy scaffolding made of wooded branches lashed together using vines had been erected all around the field and places where being sold for the seats on the scaffolding. By the time we arrived it was already pretty full. We stayed with our feet firmly on the ground crouching among other spectators to see what was happening in the field. We'd been warned the show wasn't that great and we found it was a bit ridiculous. Bascially a bunch of the drunk men in the village were gathered in the field waving T.shirts, towels etc and and throwing cans at a poor confused bull. They were acting brave and trying to provoke the poor animal who wasn't really that ferocious. The bull ocasionally made a run for the men and to my great satisfaction and much laughter from the crowd sometimes managed to poke one of them with his horns or knock one over.


These drunken festivites went on for the rest of the afternoon but we didn't watch long as it was a bit of a shame for the bull. Fortunately although they tie the bulls up at the end and abuse them a lot they don't actually kill any of them which was reassuring to know. Apparently there were no major injuries among the men at the end of the day either, one was apparently unconcious for a short time after being knocked down but it was probably more due to the alcohol than the force of the fall. The second day finished with some more dancing and general partying in the town.



The festival went on for three days but as the third day was meant to be similar to the second we decided to head off in the morning. We were running out of time on our 90 day visa and being a long way from La Paz and the border, we had to take the bus out of the Beni to Corioco near to La Paz. The journey was terrible, squashed at the back of an old bus on a really bumpy road. We spent all day and most of the night on the bus before being dropped at the junction to Coroico where there were only a few drink stands at the side of the road at 2am in the morning Obviously we couldn't cyle the 8km to Coroico in the dark so we curled up on the floor in the corner of a drink stand and slept lightly to the sounds of lorries roaring past.




In the morning, feeling awful, we climbed and pushed the bikes up a huge hill to the village of Coroico and collapsed tired in a comfy bed. Coroico is in the tropical yungas region of Bolivia. At almost 2000m altitude its a hilly paradise of birds, butterflies and tropical plants. There are many small picturesque villages in the Yungas, many making a living from growing coca. Coroico is one of the biggest villages in the area and is fairly touristic but still very relaxed. We found a fantastic hostal called Sol and Luna which has a few small cabinas set in a beautiful tropical garden above the town and spent a relaxing few days there, reading in the garden, and going on some very hilly bike rides and walks around the area. It was also the independance day festival whilst we were there which consisted of lots of parades by school children in the streets and some more fireworks. As the Bolivians themselves say, there are a lot of festivals in Bolivia!



Finally we couldn't stall any longer. We'd come to the end of our 90 days in Bolivia and we had to go. We caught the bus back up to La Paz and the following day crossed the border to Peru. On the bus in Peru we had our first glimpses of the Lake Titicaca but didn't stop as we needed to get Arequipa for the imminant arrival of our friends Elie and Mathieu. Our bikes and our legs are now going to get a break for a couple of weeks as we visit Peru with our friends in a more traditional style!!



Love to all and keep in touch!



Rebecca

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