Puno in Peru to La Paz in Bolivia
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
1
5
22
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
La Paz,
Bolivia
Monday, October 20, 2008
When we left you last time we were on the truck travelling to Puno, which is where all Lake Titicaca trips start from on the Peru side. It was a busy town, like all in Peru, but really had nothing to offer us away from the two day Lake trip. Lake Titicaca is famous for being the highest navigable lake in the world at 3800 metres. The border between Peru and Bolivia runs through it's middle and it is the only place where, land locked, Bolivia's Navy operate (after they lost their coast to Chile in a war). The trip started early in the morning, with 17 of us charging through town on pedal-powered rickshaws and it was all very Whacky Races.
The first part of the trip was to the "floating Islands" by boat
R - Bri, Tobs, Morgan and Steve
. They were originally started 500 years ago, when the Inca's came to the area on their 100 year charge through South America. Rather than give in to Inca rule, the locals took to the water, originally on reed boats, that have evolved over time into islands. They are an amazing piece of engineering that completely rely on the reeds that grow in abundance in the shallows on the lake. We had a demonstration on how they build and maintain them, which in a nutshell, goes like this. They start an island by digging up reed roots in blocks, which they then tie together, making an island for a family, which is about 30 by 50 metres. These are then anchored to the bed of the lake, so they don't go to sleep in Peru and wake up in Bolivia! The islanders then take the reed stems and leaves and place these on top. Walking around the islands felt a bit precarious as you could feel it move. They constantly add to these, thereby maintaining the quality of the surface. The Islands start out life about a metre thick, but as time goes by and reeds are added, this increases until after, approx 50 years, the Islands reach the bottom of the lake, then they burn them and start the process again, or they get wet feet! As you can see by the pictures, the families then build small houses on them for them, which having been inside, seem quite cosy. Some also have solar panels, providing electricity light, radio and one family even had a TV! The Islands were quite immaculate, but commercial, however they use tourism to their advantage and without it may not have been able to survive
S - The roads disappeared!
.From the reed islands it was back to the boat to travel further into the lake to the Island of Amantani. The view was lovely along the way, but it was a bit like being on the slow boat to China, due to the boat being powered by a converted car engine and as the boat had no clutch could not get out of 1st gear. On top of this, the rope from the steering wheel to the rudder broke, so we spent half an hour bobbing around in circles, while the 'captain' came up with a quick fix.
So, after 3.5 hours we made it to the island and were introduced to our host for our homestay, who was a friendly looking lady called Olga. I say she was friendly looking, as the Islanders only speak Quechan and a little Spanish, and whilst our Spanish had improved a bit during the trip, our Quechan was non existent, so communication went back to basics of acting out scenarios, which both of us and Olga and her family were quite good at! The accommodation was very basic, but the family made us very welcome. Now we had met our family, the locals challenged us to a game of football, six a side, with rolling subs, with first team to three winning. Easy you may think, but not when you're playing at 3800 metres above sea level!!! Taking the altitude into account, I opted to go in goal, a good idea until the locals took the lead, albeit after about 5 mins
T - We survived!
. Undeterred, I continued in goal and the tourists started to work their way into the game, using our subs effectively. Then, all of a sudden, I opted to play out of goal due to me having "taken one for the team". What? You may ask. Well, I made a decent save with my foot, pushing the ball onto the post, but then, with my legs far apart, the locals striker whacked the ball towards the goal and scored. Unfortunately, it went in off my unmentionables!!! A stint on the subs bench ensued, followed by the tourists comeback, first Nik (I think) pulled one goal back, then Toby came off the subs bench to equalise, leaving a tense finally, during which both sides could have won, but eventually it was Brian, who walloped the ball passed the local keeper, giving us victory, something our guide said never happens!!!! Following our famous victory, we all set off, with a sense of pride and a realisation why Fifa have banned international matches above 2600 metres, to the top of the hill to watch the sunset. From there it was back to our homes with our families for dinner and then, we all got to dress in local outfits, so we could all go off to the "disco" for the evening. It was a fun evening, with local music, that our hosts tried to get us to learn local dances to. Suzanna and I will not try and pretend we were any good.
The next day, we had breakfast and where on our way
U - Death road short film
. A brief but interesting visit. From that island, our boat, with rope to the rudder fixed (we reckon he just tied a knot in it) took us to another island for a tour, the island was famous for its embroidery (So Suzanna tells me) and also had a clever way to identify their people's marital status by colours of skirts/hats that they wore, it would revolutionise the dating system back home for sure, although we were told that some of the married men still wore single men's hats!!!! After a flying visit of this island, it was another 3 hours back to Puno for one night before we set off for Bolivia. The land of just about the highest of everything.So, the next day we had our first border experience, which appeared to go ok. That was until our guide Adam disappeared for a while and upon returning we found out he had been locked in a room with no windows, while immigration tried to imply one of the notes he had given them to pay for his visa was ripped (Ads had given all crisp notes) and they got quite aggressive with him. This put the woollies up our guide as you can imagine, did I mention he is American which was why none of the rest of us had any issues? After we had left Bolivia the political situation kicked off and American tourists were being flown out of the country, its unknown how Ads got on getting back into the Bolivia on his latest trip. Ads - update us if your reading this
V - Grass landing strip
!After the border crossing, we arrived in La Paz, the highest capital city in the world at 3700, this made climbing the stairs to our hotel room breathless!
That night we had an early farewell night out with some of the gang, as this was the jumping off point for some of them. It was a memorable one till the early hours, where sufficient drinks were had that everyone danced, including Jay who initially the locals looked on in awe as he showed them how Latin dancing is supposed to be done and then later in amusement when Jay got a little hot and showed us another type of dancing he could do (no photos will be released, as we want to stay with Jay when we visit him next year in Aus!).
Two more days in La Paz followed where we said goodbye to our mates Jay and Nik, thanks for your company we had a fab time with you both.
La Paz was a bit of a manic town but the atmosphere was good, but it lacked in good cafes and restaurants.
One of our free days we spent apart, (ahhh I here you cry), I spent the day doing a cycle ride down "Death Road", which is also known as the most dangerous road in the world!! This refers to the time it was a main road (they now use an alternative) and there were between 200 and 300 deaths a year!! The main problem is that it is gravel and narrow with cliffs to the left that go straight down about 200 metres (check out the video taken on our journey back up, which gives a good idea of the drop)
W - Boarding the boat carefully
. Having said all that, it was a fab day. We travelled 68k and dropped around 3500 metres and as you can tell and see in the pictures, I made it!! Suzanna chose the more comfortable option of the La Paz city tour and I will hand over to her so she can tell you what it was like. SD - Toby forgot to mention that it is still very much death road as the last person to die whilst cycling was 3 months ago at the time and that people have gone over the edge by trying to wave at the camera which you are told not to do and also from hitting the wrong break. I definitely made the right decision not to do it!
Anyway, the city tour was really interesting as we had a great tour guide, which makes all the difference and kept my mind off Toby falling over a cliff on death road most of the time. Our guide explained the current political situation was volatile, which turned out to be spot on as we later found out. We were shown how the classes in La Paz are split by altitude, with the rich living lower down in the fishbowl and the poor higher up, we were driven through the rich area which looked similar to Beverly Hills, very cosmopolitan. This was very strange to see, as you would have never expected it to have existed having seen the centre of town where we were staying, which looked shabby, dirty and typical South American. We visited Moon Valley, which gets its name from the landscape, which is made from sediment and where it has eroded it look like the moon
X - Does he look hungry?
! Thousands of years ago it used to be the sea, so sea creature fossils can still be found. Finally, we visited the witches market where you could buy an offering to the gods and your essential dead baby llama (gross).As I have the computer, I'll finish this blog instead of Toby, plus he's been cooking dinner and is now watching TV!
From La Paz we headed back north but this time by propeller plane to Rurrenabaque, the plane only seated 35 people approx and you could see the pilots, making me quite nervous. The flight was less than an hour and instead of passing over mountains, we passed by mountains and then landed in Rurrenabaque on a grass landing strip!
Having flown down to pretty much sea level the weather was hot and humid.
We boarded 4 by 4's to take the bumpiest road so far to the Pampas. Along the way we had a toilet break, which after I had used it, someone discovered an animal sitting behind the toilet, which looked like a big rat (sorry not more specific), note to self check the toilet for creatures whilst in the Pampas!
A lunch stop followed and whilst having lunch a very drunken parade passed through the main street, apparently as part of the celebration they had a bull fight but the matador had died, they must have been celebrating his bravery or something like that.
After 3 hours along the very bumpy dusty road, which I had managed to somehow fall asleep along, we arrived at the river and boarded our unstable narrow canoes carefully as a large camen sat basking in the sun on the opposite bank
Y - Cute Capihauras
! The boat ride took another 3-4 hours and along the way we saw an abundance of camen, crocodiles and alligators (I'll call them all crocs for the purpose of the blog), as well as birds, monkeys and capihauras and turtles. We arrived at our very basic lodge for the night, but we were straight back onto boats to the local bar, down the river, watched the sun set, over drinks and chocolate. On the way back our guide Rambo(nickname) took us to see all the crocs, sitting on the banks, all we could see were tens of red pairs of eyes, waiting for their dinner, night time is hunting time. This was quite unnerving on our unstable little boat in the dark, particularly when our guide put the boat within touching distance of the banks. In the midst of telling Rambo that myself and Lee were uncomfortable being so close, Lee falls off her chair and gives us all a fright. Luckily, she stayed in the boat just dipping her arm in the water, unlucky for the crocs!
After Lee's fall Rambo finally listened to us and turned the boat back towards our lodge, we floated back without the engine on to listen to all the Pampas sounds and see all the fire flies lighting up the night which was nice, but difficult to relax totally, as I still felt nervous about the number of crocs that were around!
That night after dinner, we crashed in our dormitories and had a lazy morning the next day lying in the hammocks watching the wildlife. We skipped the anaconda hunting that some of the group went on since neither of us are a fan of snakes. In the afternoon, we went Piranha fishing which none of us were any good at but Rambo caught two, so we got to have a look at their sharp teeth even though they were just little Piranha's. That night we watched the sun go down at a bar and after dinner sat by the fire and rested in the hammocks
Z - Turtles
!The final day we went to look at the pink dolphins, which are mostly only in one particular part of the river. They were definitely pinky mixed with grey, but you really didn't get a great view of them, as one the river is dirty and two they are not like the usual dolphins and don't show themselves out the water very much, so no photos I'm afraid. There was an option to get in the river and swim with them, which to our amazement tourists did, we hoped that they had had their jabs and that the crocs sitting on the bank weren't hungry that day, crazy fools!
On the way back up the river the usually placid crocs gave us a show by swimming towards the boat, banging into us and thrashing around in the water.
We then took the bumpy road back again, boarded the propeller plane taking off on the same strip of grass as before and flew back into La Paz.
So finally for you readers we get the blog into another country, but we are sill very very behind soz. Next update we'll tell you about going into the mine in Potosi and blowing it up with dynamite, this trip is certainly testing my nerves!
