Rurrenbaque, BOLIVIAN AMAZON...

Hello all,

Thought would just write a quickie while waiting for the others on the internet.

Copacabana was lovely, although were a bit annoyed that the Isla de Sol turned out to be more expensive than we were told... oh well it´s apparently the Bolivian way! The walk from the north of the island to the south was very pretty.

Got to La Paz on Monday and decided to spend the night there, as needed to do a few errands (like shout at Barclays and close an account...) Anyways, had a lovely evening with new friends but it all went downhill after a few drinks... Think they must be very strong or the altitude affects the body, as cannot really remember getting home at 3am from the club...!

The bus journey was horrible the next day! We left 2 hours late, as the men had to load the roof with bags. There was a problem however, that the bus was too tall to drive under the wires that run between streets in the city, so the man had to climb back onto the roof and lift up the wires for the bus to pass underneath... photos to follow! The bus leaked so we got wet, we had 3 police checkpoints to go through (for cocaine?) so had our bags searched. Didn´t realise until afterwards that we had gone down the Most Dangerous Road in the World. While it was raining. The road is 3m wide (for both lanes), has no tarmac so is gravel and mud, and there are sheer cliff faces with drops of hundreds of metres. On average, 26 vehicles go over the edge a year... And we have to drive back along this again to La Paz, on Saturday night when it is dark... nice. Love the roads here!

Because of the extreme dropoffs of at least 600 meters (1,969 ft), single-lane width — most of the road no wider than 3.2 meters (10.5 ft) — and lack of guard rails, the road is extremely dangerous. Further still, rain and fog can make visibility precarious, the road surface muddy, and loosen rocks from the hillsides above´(Wikipedia - Yungas Road).

Luckily got to Rurrenbaque in time to catch the trip out to the jungle (pampas) the same day (Tuesday). We travelled in a bumpy jeep for 3 hours, then had a 3 hour boat ride to the ecolodge (lots of travelling for us!) The boat ride was amazing... saw alligators (2 nearly jumped into our boat), caimans, capabaris (or as we call them, water pigs), turtles, pink dolphins and so on. Stunning, and with thanks to our crazy guide, quite exciting...

Spent our time there walking in the pampas looking for anacondas and cobras. Survived encounters with both - luckily the anaconda was only 2.5m long - the 12 m ones live further in the jungle. Our guide, Tony, had his clothes bitten when he was wrestling by the cobra - the poison kills a man within 2 hours. He then told us how he was bitten by an alligator a few years ago. He´s quite interesting! Tried fishing for piranhas but they were hiding, so only managed to catch a white and a yellow one, plus lots of catfish. Some others went swimming in the river this morning (apparently with the dolphins, but they had buggered off). So we had a brilliant time in on the edge of the jungle in the Pampas. The lodge was lovely (luckily quite luxurious with running water, showers and loos), and we also had ´siesta time´ scheduled into our routine. Amazing! Especially after getting so sweaty walking through the pampas.

So we made it safely back (with all our limbs attached), to Rurrenabaque tonight. We are booked on the 11am bus to La Paz tomorrow morning, (we are praying it is running through the rain!) so hopefully we´ll get back to Loki La Paz on Sunday morning early. Fingers crossed.

Hope that everyone is ok in the UK and not too stressed with the run up to Christmas - surprisingly I am really enjoying ignoring it all!
Love Alice xxx