Los Amazonas..

(I´LL POST PICTURES AS SOON AS I CAN)

So, since the last post, I´ve traveled from Arica, Chile, into Bolivia. I spent 2 days in La Paz, the capital. It´s a huge city at 11,000 feet (give or take). Walking around, it was difficult to breathe. There were a good number of tourists and a large majority of the women in the city dress traditional Bolivian style. I stayed in a hostel in the middle of the Mercado de las Brujas (Witches´Market), where among normal tourist-y things, they also sold potions, coca leaves, and preserved bird and llama fetuses to ward off illness, fight curses, and things like that. No I did not eat a llama fetus. I did happen to meet a cool Peruvian couple and a pretty nice French guy, and I may end up meeting up with the Peruvians later on..

After La Paz, I went north in Bolivia to a small town in the Bolivian rainforest called Coroico. It was beautiful, but small and in the middle of the mountains.. hence nothing really to do besides hike, so I spent only one day there. I took a quick hike (I´m alone, I can´t go too far without some kind of company) and had some good eats (3 course meals, breakfast/lunch/dinner all under $1 USD).

The next morning I took a 3-hour taxi ride from Coroico to Caranavi, Brazil. The taxi ride, which I paid about $2.50 for, ended up being 10 people in a 5-person car. I shared the front passenger seat with a very (very) large traditional Bolivian woman for 3 hours on bumpy, unpaved, rainforest mountain roads (I now know more about traditional Bolivian women than I ever wanted to). I wouldn´t have minded spending the extra buck or two for a bus if I had known what I got myself into. Once in Caranavi, I had planned to not stay there, but rather take a bus to Rurrenabaque, Bolivia, more north. There you can access the Amazon. Looking in my wallet, I realized I had almost no money on me. Caranavi was a very small town, and the bank there couldn´t process my card. Great.. To make it short, I ended up waiting for 6 hours in an extremely hot, dusty, and noisy bus station for a bus to ¨Rurre¨, and got on the bus ONLY because the lady at the ticket window thought I was lindo and charged me much less because she felt bad I had little cash. A $10 bus ride (no, I didn´t have that much) ended up being $6.. A big discount in Bolivia.

The bus to Rurrenebaque was overnight, 12 hours of bumpy unpaved roads. Some bumps literally threw me out of my bus seat, not the most pleasant ride of my life, but better than the taxi. Arrived in Rurre at 6:30 AM, and at 9:30 I was in an offroad Jeep on my way to the Bolivian Amazon for 3 days.

It rained incredibly hard for the first day, and we trudged through mud to our canoe, and then had a two hour ride to camp. Luckily once in the boat, the rain subsided. In an attempt to keep this short, I´ll try to just post pictures of some of the stuff I got to see up close (tons and tons of alligators, cayman, river dolphins, capybaras, different birds, monkeys, pirhanas, anacondas...). We went animal watching on the river a few times, trekked in the swamplands and jungle, and fished for pirhana (and ate them for lunch). I even swam in the river with dolphins, huge alligators, and cayman. I´m alive, and tomorrow I may possibly arrange to go into a different, thicker jungle tour, but I´m not sure yet, and I´m still in Rurrenebaque.

As above, I´ll try to post pictures as soon as I can.

Yes the pirhana was tasty. No I don´t have malaria.

Paz,
Brian


UPDATE: I am going into the jungle for the next three days. I´ll post pictures and more info when I get to a bigger city. Paz y Amor to you all.