We have now been on the road for 64 days, and have recently entered our third country- Bolivia. Signs of Christmas are starting to pop up, which are strange to see when we are sitting in 30 degree weather sweating the pounds off...
Anyway, onto what we've been up to... After finishing the Inca Trail we bussed to a little town near the Bolivian border called Puno so we could visit the Isla Flotantes (floating reed islands). We determined quickly that Puno had very little else to offer, so after arriving in the early afternoon by bus we hopped on a boat out to the floating islands, poked around for a few hours, returned to Puno and then hopped on another bus the following morning to Copacabana. The islands are quite a thing- they really are floating and the inhabitants have to "drop anchor" so that they don't constantly drift to shore. Most of the islands are fairly small (1000 sq ft) and house one family each. The lifestlye is quite crazy, and neat to see- one of the islands we visited even had a postal outlet! Anyway, from Puno we caught the bus to the border Bolivian border crossing where we had to get out and change our soles to bolivianos. One boliviano is 1/8 of a US dollar. Super convienient... The border crossing was extremely relaxed, and really just a nice reunion as we saw pretty much every white face we've seen on the trip so far. Just beyond the border is the tiny town of Copacabana, which doesn't have much to offer but is the gateway to the Isla del Sol. The Inca's believed this to be the birthplace of the sun. We took a tiny little boat out to the island and arrived in the pouring rain. But, the islands namesake perservered and the sun shone beautifully most of the day. We walked from the north tip to the south (about 3 hours) and then returned back to Copacabana in the same boat which is surely the slowest boat you will ever see. Typical of South American attitude, really. Rushing is not in their vocabulary.
From Copa, we took another bus (I think our 16th bus journey so far) to La Paz where we reconnected with our friends Jon and Hannah. As seems to be the standard around here, we booked a tour late at night for the following morning, and with less than 12 hours in La Paz we were on a bus heading to Rurrenabaque in the Amazon Basin. This bus takes 18 hours, travels on the Worlds Most Dangerous Road, doesn't have a bathroom, and is ventilated by the open windows which let in more dust than cool air. The first 3 hours of the trip are on the World's Most Dangerous Road, and happen to be the only 3 hours of the trip where it was abosultely pouring rain and foggy. Most people mountain bike down this section for an "adrenalaine experience", but I guarantee that going down by bus was far more scary. There is not room for 2 busses to pass in most sections, but when they do the downhill bus (our bus) moves to the outside and passes on the left since the driver can see how close his wheels are to the edge of the cliff better than the uphill driver who is on the opposite side of the vehicle. The locals were sleeping, but the 4 of us were staring wide eyed out the window with nervous laughter... We made it, and the rest of the trip was spectacular- the jungle scenery was gorgeous and, overall, worth the trip. We finally arrived in Rurre at 4am, slept on the bus until 6am, and then started our tour at 9am. The first two days we spent in the Pampas, which is like jungle, but not. It's more of a flatland, lining the rivers, but rich in wildlife. We took a rickety long boat down the river and spotted tons of birds (macaws, parrots, javirus, herons, storks, eagles etc), capybaras (worlds largest rodent), pink bellied river dolphins, howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, caymans and alligators, and more. It really was awesome to see these animals in their natural habitat. On the second day we went hunting for anacondas by wading through knee deep mud and water for about 3 hours. The classic line that came from that trek came from Hannah (the title of this blog), which I love! We didn't find any snakes, and I don't think any of us were too disappointed. To rinse off the mud we went swimming in the river with the dolphins, which was very cool. The third and forth days were spent in the primary jungle, which wasn't as impressive as we had expected. We did lots of walks with our guide who had a ton of interesting information for us, but if you just looked at the ground around you, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the forests at home. Unless you really looked up at the trees, you didn't really get that "jungle feel". The jungle in Bolivia is a mountainous jungle, as opposed to the wet jungles of Brazil which is the more stereotypical jungle you see in movies. We slept that night on some wooden planks tucked into our mosquito nets, and we four agree we have rarely felt so sticky, dirty, and gross in our lives. But, that's the price you pay to visit the jungle!
To return from Rurre we had a flight booked so as to avoid the 18 hour return bus ride. For those of you who know Cam, you can get an idea of the busride when you know that he was actually hoping to catch a tiny little aircraft from a grass strip in the middle of the Bolivian jungle to return to La Paz rather than take the bus again! Our flight got delayed by about 6 hours (the flights here only have about a 50/50 chance of going at this time of year) but by 5:30 we were gunning down the grass strip on our way home. We had to climb about 3500m to get back to the altitude of La Paz, so most of the flight was spent climbing. When the pilot got out his oxygen mask and turned to ask if the rest of us were OK, we got a bit nervous, but we landed with no problems and were so relieved to have avoided the busride home.
We are still in La Paz but are hoping to catch a bus out tonight to Sucre- Bolivia's second captial city.
Anyway, enough rambling for now...
Missing everyone at home,
Kristin and Cam.
