The "Inauguration" (Restaurant Opening)

Our last day in Copacabana & before jumping on the bus to Peru we decided a drink & some chips were in order. Lisa finds a restaurant & walks in, sitting down we realise that we have stumbled upon what looks like a family party & so we decide to leave... only it's not that easy as they are trapping us in & telling us to sit down. This is the "inauguration" they tell us - the first day of opening their new restaurant & we are their first "gringo" guests which they believe is very lucky for them. Beers are brought over which we are forced to down from the same glass as the local crazy man!

Everything is "gratuit de la casa" - so free! Soup with what looked like a boiled guinea-pig floating in it was served, followed by beef, rice, chips & the dreaded salad. How could we get away with being such picky eaters with 30 Bolivians watching us - they don't understand "Boli belly", they're hardened to it, not like us & our delicate foreign tummies! We managed to get away with explaining we'd had a late breakfast & so weren't so hungry. All the same they were so hospitable & we loved meeting the Bolivians who wished they were Americans in the 80s (check out that pink shell suit!)

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Lake Titicaca & Isla del Sol

We arrived at the pretty town of Copacabana which sits of the edge of lake Titicaca (Bolivian side) & spent a few days just chilling out. From here we took a boat across Lake Titicaca to the Isla del Sol (Sun Island - at such high altitude it's very easy to burn, yes we found out the hard way!). Lots of ruins and a sacrificial table!

It's hard to believe it's a lake, it's so big (3200 square miles to be a geek about it).

We spent the night on the island which was interesting & somewhat basic, especially as we went to the north away from all the tourists, we became the main attraction for the local children (although have noticed it's much easier to practice bad Spanish when chatting to the kids)!

La Paz (Part 2 - Death Road)

Back again in La Paz, but this time fully acclimatised from before & so ready to get to know it a little better... this has got to be the cheapest city we've been to, very cool!

Time to brave the world's most dangerous road (Death Road as it's commonly known due to the fact that over 200 people die on it every year) - it has now become a recreational experience for tourists, an 80k downhill ride on mountain bikes! The journey started at 4500m (good job it was downhill as our lungs wouldn't have coped) & to begin with we were riding on tarmac so we could get used to the bikes (cool ones with great suspension - good job!).

As we snaked our way through the Andes to the edge of the Amazon basin it becomes a dirt track of lumps, bumps & loose stones - the idea is that you just ride over them all (you can't sit on the saddle for this as it would just be too bad on the ass!). The road is so narrow at points, it's hard to believe that buses could actually get through.

Looking over the edge is pretty scary - 3000ft cliff drops & numerous crosses along the way, markers for the many, many accidents that have occurred over the years.

All this adrenalin & to make things worse it pissed it down the entire day, so a slippery wet death road at that! To mask our bravery, I should really add that a new death road, which is much wider had been recently opened which carries all of the heavy traffic now. Much to our relief we really only had to share the old road with fellow mountain bikers! Many thanks to Claire & Andy for this (wet but fun) experience.



At the end of the Death Road the trail leads to a little sanctury for animals who have been abused (trained to bite, steal, smell etc...). After a warm shower and some food we had fun playing with the monkeys (who especially liked Lisa) and dodging the angry parrots.

Waiting...

None stop rain for two days meant that all flights out of Rurrenabaque were cancelled until the grassy airfield dried up. Unless you fancied the 24 hour journey bus back to La Paz on a mud slick (no thanks!) then you were stranded. This meant a few days of bumping into the same gringos & going to the same decent eateries over & over. We had been warned about what is commonly known to travellers as "Boli Belly", the trick is to avoid salads (the lettuces here get irrigated by sewage water!), ice cubes, street food & generally be prepared to turn away food if you suspect dodgy hygiene in the kitchen. Anyway, despite trying to follow this advice we inevitably both got bad tummies (in fact after a visit to the hospital the other day, Mike suffered for a whole week - poor boy!).

The Bolivian Pampas

Flying into Rurrenabaque (a jungle town in the north of Bolivia) we stripped off into summer clothes (whoppeee some sun & heat at last!).








We decided to do a 3 day trip to the Pampas with the prospect of seeing lots of wildlife & we weren't disappointed!


First day we hopped into an ancient 4x4 truck, 10 minutes into the journey & two hefty iron men (sorry double Iron Men - yes these guys were hardcore!) in our group had collapsed one row of seats! After a hot, dusty & sweaty ride to the river we were relieved & excited to get out & jump into our motorised canoe that took us two hours downstream to our lodge. Along the way we saw hundreds of alligator, caimen, turtles, giant guinea pig creatures & loads of birds (don't know names as not a twitcher!).






The following day we went anaconda hunting & were luck to find two which we were even brave enough to put around our necks... it was comedy, just after the piccie below was taken the snake puked up a dead mouse!










Next activity was piranha fishing, altogether our group caught 20 plus fishes, some of which we used again for bait. The biggest piranha caught was trying to eat his mates head - nyyce! We ate them for tea & actually they're pretty good!











Waking up for sunrise next morning we went off in the canoe to go monkey spotting, except after 10 minutes the heavens opened & we got seriously drenched! The only thing to warm us up would be a swim in the warm, murky river... with can you believe it - pink dolphins! It was so amazing, the alligators won't swim near the dolphins, so they were protecting us (sweet hey)!









The journey back to town was hellish as it had been pouring all day, the roads (actually just dirt tracks) has turned to mud, which meant slipping & sliding all over the road (as if on ice) & a fair few pushes when we got stuck!

La Paz (Part 1)

After a nightmarish 14 hour overnight journey though Bolivia (unsurfaced roads, millions of potholes, dangerous driving, no reclining seats on bus, no toilet, sitting next to large Bolivian woman with 20 blankets & half a dozen babies lying in the isle!) we finally arrived in La Paz a little worse for wear. Altitude sickness kicked in & so we spent a couple of days hanging out in a hotel room feeling nauseous - the dullest part of the trip so far!

We made it out a couple of times, first of all to check out the witches market (herbal cures for just about anything, plus weird dried llama foetuses, skulls etc...), then to the "fake" English pub for a proper cuppa tea & also the coco museum - the coco leaves really help the side affects of altitude, plus giving us enough energy to leave the hotel a few times (even though they taste pretty gross)!

Salt Flats (arrival at the Salar)

The ultimate destination, the Uyuni salt flats and we could not fail to be impressed! A white field of salt that spans approx 12km squared.






We watched sunrise from the salt lake & then ate breakfast on an island covered with cacti in the middle of the white expanse.









Time to stop & take some bizarre "perspective shots"...

Such a brilliant experience, thank-you Hannah, Mike, George, Rhod, Kate, John, Liz, Chris, Suz & Oli!

Salt Flats (red lake, Dali land, flamingos, salt hotel)

Day 3 of the trip, started with a visit to the Laguna Colorada (a red lake, coloured red because of its algae) - just out of this world!






Then through desert to find these rock formations, just like a Dali landscape.









No, not a mirage, but several lagoons in the middle of the desert where the flamingos live (& we thought they were found in the tropics).









Spending the night in a salt hotel at the edge of the salt lake was very COOL & pretty romantic too, yep everything, walls, floors, bed, tables, chairs all made of salt (we licked just to check).

Salt Flats (thermal baths, green lake & geysers)

After a cup of coca tea, it was back into the truck for day 2 of the expedition...
At lunchtime, we pull up next to a river & a load of rocks & our cook gets the stove out, only to cook us the most amazing steak - pretty cool when you're in the middle of nowhere!

Then off to have a sulphur wash in the thermal baths, really relaxing & the scenery was amazing! Shame about Lisa's hair reacting with the sulphur & turning an attractive shade of yellow!









Next was the Laguna Verde, a brilliant turquoise colour, just beautiful...












Final stop was the steaming geysers. Hot sulphur steaming out of the ground with a strange bubbling silver coloured liquid in around them - could have been on mars!

Salt Flats (hitting the wilderness)

Getting into the back of a 4x4 Toyota and hitting the dirt road with 3 others, a driver and a cook we started out on a 4 day journey to the salt flats. The main highlight of the day was the Moon Valley and of course all the lovely llamas.

We stopped in a couple of villages along the way, meeting some local children to practice our Spanish on.

Getting used to sleeping at 4200m was a bit weird, feels like someone trying to suffocate you, especially with all the heavy blankets to combat the cold!

Expert horse riding to the Devils Door

Arriving in Tupiza (Bolivia) we had a day to kill until the 4 day Salt Flats tour. So we had a good old look around the local markets and tried to dodge food poisoning. Getting a big old bag of the locals cure for altitude and tiredness (Coca leaves) we then took off for a ride with a disinterested Bolivian chap to see the local sights. After about 5 minutes we discovered that when they said that these horses were "automatic" it actually referred to their ability to do the usual route in the least possible time by trotting and galloping all the way. Although slightly uncomfortable and potentially damaging to Mikes ability to become a father at any point in the future getting the big beasts running was a fantastic experience and leading us to some amazing scenery including the Devils Door, a taste of things to come...

Welcome to Bolivia...

Making some very lucky connections from Salta we manage to get across the border and a bus is waiting to take us to Tupiza, brilliant!

Within 3 minutes we find out three important facts about Bolivia, all the old women eat Coca leaves, the roads are paved by exception and bus travel is not comfortable.

To illustrate the last point the bus driver undertook a suicide overtaking maneuver of a minibus and ended up clipping the other minibus nearly off the road. This resulted in a quite entertaining bus race ending with the minibus overtaking us, blocking the road and discharging all passengers to let our bus driver know how much they didn´t appreciate his driving skills. As our plucky driver had some common sense he staying in the cab with the doors shut, unfortunately this didn´t help him avoid the rocks from the angry mob. Entertaining, especially as he had to drive another 2 hours to get us to our destination!

(Note completely smashed drivers window)

Welcome to Bolivia...

Horse Riding at the Ranch

Having just got over the thrill of para gliding we decided to keep the activities going and headed out for a day on the ranch. This consisted of learning to use the lasso, eating the most amazing BBQ meat and then saddling up and Yee Haaa!







After returning from the ranch we took in a Pena (typical folk music evening) in Salta before saying goodbye to Argentina for the last time and heading over to Bolivia.


(a Pena, don´t worry we bought the CD!)