Bolivia Part 1
Hola! people from around the world.
I am now sat in an internet cafe in the Amazon region of Bolivia (Rurrenabaque), to explain how I got here and what I have done before now will invlove me starting a new paragraph. Please bare with me.
Thanks, — Leaving Cusco I set off on a journey which cost me 70 Soles, stole 15 hours of my life and forced me to listen to children of different cultures´ crying. The bus drove back 7 hours to Puno (where I spent 4 days there 2 weeks ago) and then proceeded onto the first of my border crossing experiences somewhere in between Bolivia and Peru, as I live on a poxy Island somewhere to the west of Europe I have never experienced crossing a border where you can physically step on one side and proclaim “I am in Bolivia” then get forced back by the hordes of women carrying anything from wool to cows, and think “Bastard, back in Peru again”. This rigmarole lasted a good hour as at first I forgot to get an éxit´ stamp from Peru, so faught pointlessly to Bolivia just to get catapulted all the way back to Peru. After repeating this process a few more times I jumped back onto MY bus and sat the remaining 4 hours until I arrived in La Paz.
Arriving in Bolivia, or at least La Paz, was excellent. Everywhere I went in Peru there was always someone trying to grab me and force me into their hotel (sadly not beautiful women), or people shouting at me to get into there taxi. Bolivia was the complete opposite. Jumping in a taxi with an girl from Israel we checked into a hostal and read the ´Lonely Planets´ comments on Bolivia´s capitol ” The highest capital city in the world 3660m…….blah blah…..It´s nearly impossible to get lost”
So, after 2 hours of getting lost and walking up and down through La Paz attempting to find various locations we finally managed to book our trip for ´the most dangerous road in the world´ and found our way back to our hostal.
The next day we were crammed into a bus with lots of other people, bags and other bits and bobs and drove to the top of the mountain to start our 5 hour constant (excluding 20 minutes of uphill) downhill challange. After around 40 minutes of overtaking trucks, cars and other slower-than-us vehicles on tarmac we arrived at the start of the dirt road and as we were so high up (around 4600m) the visability was shocking, all we could see was around 5 meters in front of us and when you are riding on a road which is large enough for 1 car, with drops of 800m on your closest side this isn´t the most disirable of conditions to be speeding down there, but, being a very adventurous or either stupid person I joined the fast group and basically followed our guide down this hill at break neck speed, overtaking trucks with around 10 centermeters between the truck and the cliff!
For lunch we stopped at the point where an Israel girl fell to her death a few years before, she was riding on the right hand side of the road (drop is on the left) and as she went round the corner a truck came from the opposite direction so she panicked and swevered to avoid (as you would) but fell off the cliff to her death.
This was also the the point that I noticed that the I.D number on my bike was ´13´
So, I survived the death road, got a T-shirt to prove it then stayed in a small town called Corroico.
The the next day I went against my guide books´ advice “Riding a bus on the death road at night is suicidal” and spent 15 hours on bumby roads, at night, to reach where I am now, Rurrenabaque.
I have just returned from a 3 day trip ($20 a day) to the Pampas (wet lands surrounding the jungle, in the heart of the Amazon). Here I saw aligators, piranahas, those big rodent things (see my pictures), snakes, thousands of birds, frogs, stroked a sloth, swam in the Amazon with fresh water pink dolhpins (plus aligators and piranahas). Went fishing for anancondas, (in waist high water with our feet), found a black mamba, fished piranhas, fed monkeys and basically had the most amazing time ever !
Tags: Bolivia, Travel
Rob Hasler
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