Bolivia: Shake what ya llama gave ya!

After a few days of hard earned R&R following the Inca Trail it was time to hit the road again and head to our next destination – Bolivia!

The extremely elaborate border crossing between Peru and Bolivia

We caught our first “cama” bus – a bus that has seats that recline all the way back so you are laying down – epic. After a surprisingly hassle free border crossing into Bolivia we arrived at a tiny town on Lake Titicaca called Copacabana and thanks to our thorough research we were completely unaware that it was one of the biggest days of the year for Copacabana. We had stumbled across the celebrations for the 1^st of May which made getting a hostel room quite difficult and surprisingly expensive. The rest of the afternoon was spent wondering around the streets checking out the celebrations which mostly included people dressed up in strange costumes dancing around to music played by marching bands – all of whom were getting drunker as the day progressed.

The festivities we stumbled across in Copacabana

Tom watching yet another parade - one started every 15 minutes from different parts of the town

The main drag - heaps of marching bands and drunken Bolivians in costumes!

The next day we made the trip out to Isla del Sol – a tiny island near Copacabana that was supposedly the birthplace of the Incans. We took a cruisy 4 hour walk along the island, including the purchasing of 3 separate tickets along the way – classic Bolivian efficiency - and made it to the south end of the island. Here we managed to snare a hotel room with views of the Andes and the sunrise for a wallet busting $13 – god Bolivia is awesome. Unfortunately our boat ride back to Copacabana was not so awesome, the boat was so crowded some people had to sit on the front with their legs dangling off the boat, the driver at some point decided he had something more important to do so handed the controls of the engine over to a passenger and the only local on the boat thought the front of the boat (in view of everyone on board) was a suitable place to urinate from mid trip. Needless to say we were happy to see dry land and hopped on our bus and headed off to La Paz!

Our few days in La Paz were an absolute shambles of lost credit cards, dodgy travel agents and surprisingly delicious Thai food. Our bank card was “retained” by an ATM and resulted in us pleading with the reception lady at our hostel to ring the bank so we could get it back – which thankfully she was able to arrange, although being in Bolivia meant it would take 4 days! Despite the chaos we did manage to fit in a trip to Death Road, the road that used to connect La Paz to some other random Bolivian towns, for a quick spot of mountain biking. The day involved us hurtling down a dirt road on the side of a massive cliff on bikes, although the both of us are hardly renowned for being dexterous cyclists we managed to make it all the way down without breaking anything. It was an amazing experience, the views were ridiculous and the drive back to La Paz on the “new” road was a whole other experience in itself.

Tom all decked out in his biking gear checking out Death Road

KG at yet ANOTHER drugs checkpoint on the "new" Death Road

Some dried llama fetus' in the Witch's Market in La Paz

Speaking of llama - Tom trying a llama schnitzel - delightful!

After our time in La Paz came to an end we headed up to Rurrenabaque – a tiny little town that tourists use as a base to explore the Bolivian section of the Amazon jungle. The journey to Rurrenabaque was quite the experience, we flew with TAM which is basically the arm of the Bolivian air force that caters for travellers. We took a taxi to the air force base in La Paz, went through absolutely no security whatsoever, had lunch, checked in and got aboard our 30-year old military “plane” that has been converted to carry passengers. 30 minutes later and 20 years off our lives we had arrived at the Rurrenabaque airport: a strip of grass and run-down wooden hut.

The "plane" that took us to Rurrenabaque - a 30 year old ex-military plane

KG standing outside the Rurrenabaque "airport"

We spent one extremely sweaty, mosquito riddled night in Rurrenabaque before heading out on our trip to the jungle. Our trip started with a 3 hour ride in a glorified canoe with an outboard strapped to the back of it and cruised up the Beni River to our lodge. The next four days were spent wandering around the Amazon jungle, sweating our plums off and getting severely harassed by all manner of flying insects.  Our first day was definitely highlight-filled as we stumbled across a local hunter and his beheaded pig and dead monkey, and at dinner a giant tarantula cruise through the dining room mid-meal – Tom managed to keep the squealing to a surprisingly low level.  Over the course of the next few days we saw a boatload of animals – heaps of monkeys, wild pigs, macaws, more tarantulas and even a puma – we rode a raft made of a logs down the river (an early capsize threatened to ruin a few holidays but everyone escaped unscathed), we spent a night in the jungle sleeping under mozzie nights in a shelter made of some logs and a tarp. We even managed to slip in a spot of fishing – the results of which can be viewed below.

Tom showing off the whopping piranha he managed to reel in  (not pictured: the even smaller sardine KG landed)

A tarantula - this was one of the smaller ones apparently...

Some wild pigs that invaded our camp to eat our scraps

Katherine romping around the jungle in her ultra-fashionable poncho

A  red macaw 

A red howler monkey checking out the action

With our time in the jungle done we decided to head back to civilisation, AFTER another hair rising flight back to La Paz and a relatively painless 12 hour bus ride we made it to Sucre. After the initial depression resulting from the discovery that our “hotel” had no hot water we made the most of our time in Sucre by doing absolutely nothing but sleep and eat for 2 days!

Finally recovered from our time in the jungle we decided to that we should probably do something with the rest of our time in Bolivia, so we hopped on a couple of the shittiest buses on earth and made our way to Tupiza, where we would do a tour of the largest salt flat on earth, the Salar de Uyuni. It was also the location of our first hot shower in 10 days… delightful. We spent the next 4 days hopping in and out of a mid-90s Land Cruiser driving around the mountains and plateaus that make up the Bolivian highlands, we spent most of the time around 4500m above sea level. It was 4 day of freezing weather, hordes of llamas, even colder weather, some of the most bizarre landscapes we have ever seen and some of the worst music that Bolivia and Peru have to offer. The final night of our trip we stayed on the edge of the salt flat in a hotel, oddly enough made out of salt, so we could get up at 5 bells in the morning to watch the sunrise. The last day was spent cruising around the salt flats, which are absolutely gigantic, trying to take stupid pictures of each other (some are below) and finally heading back to Tupiza for a much needed hot shower – oh wait, our “hotel” didn’t have hot water due to the weather conditions – assholes!

Tom grossly under-prepared for the weather conditions at 4,855m above sea level

Warming up in some thermal baths - not a bad spot for a drip

One of the 4x4s bogged - that is a seat belt just removed from one of the cars they are using as a rope

The "Rock Tree"

Some llamas checking out the passing gringos - those thing on their ears are for indentification

KG making the most of her time in the salt flats - wrapped up in a sleeping bag playing The Sims

Katherine blending in with the locals

Laguna Verde - it was as cold as it looks

After 3 weeks in the amazingly cheap, incredibly friendly and generally awesome country that is Bolivia, it is now time for us to head off to Argentina – the land of steak and red wine, should be a pretty tough couple weeks. We also have a guest coming to spend the next few weeks with us, Ross, KG’s brother is coming over for a quick jaunt – should be epic!