Don't trust the Bible 16 Apr

We, your two happy little travellers, find ourselves in a little town called Oruro. There is no train from La Paz to Tupiza. The line, left over from mining, starts in Oruro and heads south. That was the plan, catch a morning bus from La Paz to Oruro and then board the 15.30 train to Tupiza.
The Bible ( Lonely Planet guide ) was consulted, and a time and route were planned. We even bought our train tickets from La Paz office ( had we actually looked at them things might have been different ) and scouted the route to the bus terminal for the morning. So Monday morning rolled around, we checked out of Loki and headed off to the bus terminal. Jumped the 8am bus for the 3 hour trip to Oruro, which in fact took 4, it took us an hour to get out of La Paz.
Everything was looking great, have a spot of lunch at the best place we could find and then amble on down to the train station and wait. We got back to the train station at about 14.00, got a nice seat in the sun and waited for the other passengers to arrive.
No one did.... But that isn't a problem over here, because they were still letting people get on the 8 am bus at 830. Eventually at 15.00 we dragged out our train tickets to have a look at them. One number immediately struck us as odd. 17.
17th in fact. 17th, no that can't be right. We are going on Monday the 16th. The Bible said that the trains ran on Mondays and Fridays only. So I checked THE WATCH........ 16th it said. Ok so I mustn't have changed the date when we crossed the date line. Jo got out her phone........ Monday the 16th....... did she change hers?
Ok something is a bit funny here. We looked up on the big white poster size board where the train times are, Martes 15.30. Ok no problem there. .......
What does Martes actually mean? Right so you probably know more Spanish than us two, because you will have correctly worked out by now that Martes does in fact mean Tuesday. Another hint could be that Monday is Lunes, Monday, Moon-day, Lunes. I see no bloody connection. I mean its not rocket surgery, and neither Jo nor I are in fact and never will be rocket surgeons.

At the train station.

So ooppss. Out came the Bible, yep it says Monday and Friday trains only.
I'm not trying to point the finger anywhere here..... but it is all Jo's fault. Either that or the town planners got together and worked out a nifty way to get travellers to spend a bit of time in this town. I can just see them sitting around their council table, after having a siesta from 11am to 4pm. ' All those in favour of shifting the train time table one day say si' , the roof collapses from all the shouting and they all go home for the day knowing that they have done a good job ......
Ok so we were stuck in Oruro. No problem, we can make this work. There's not much to do here , yep kind of reminded me of Nazca. By the time we checked into the hostel had a bite to eat and beat Jo at some cards, about time too, I teach her a game and she flogs me for a month. It was time turn in.
We had a walk around town in the morning, but I wasn't sure if the town got going or stopped around this time, it was almost impossible to tell. Checkout was at noon, and after this we just went to the station to wait for our train....... again. This time we saw people gathering from about 1.30, so we felt like this would be the correct day.

Probably the most interesting thing I can say about Oruro, is that it is a palindrome.

Jungle Trip 8th to 12th Apr

Chalalan, is an ecotourism lodge in the middle of a rain forest. Two people on our Inca trail had been there and recommended it to us. The story of the place is quite long, but well worth it.
Sometime in the early 80's, four people were rafting down the Tuichi river in Bolivia. Their raft turned over and one of the people ( I don't know what happened to the others ) found himself lost in the jungle. He was in there for 18 days before a hunter from a remote community found him and took him to his village. They half fixed him up and then took him on a three day trip down river to Rurrenabarque, a small town on the Beni river. On the way they stopped at a traditional staging point for the villagers, Chalalan. This is a small lake that is spring fed, so is independent of the rivers and has clean water pumped into it constantly, there is one outlet which eventually reaches the river. This created a haven for wildlife and to the villages a great food source when travelling to Rurre. They stopped there for a couple of days , and while there the idea of a tourist camp took hold. I'll cut the story a bit short here. They got finance ( 1.5 mil) but only if they got help in setting everything up. The Bolivian gov stepped in and said that a foreigner wasn't going to own any part of it. It was eventually settles that the local community would have ownership.
This is where we roughed it.


It took them five years to build two buildings,m and when the agencies wanted more money to help the locals, the locals had a meeting and basically told them to stick it. So they finished the project on their own. They needed to get final inspections, but basically they finished they remaining 10 buildings in 6 months where it took 5 years to build two. Every single one of the 80 families in the community helped in this, and they were rewarded with part ownership. The breakdown is this, 50% own by the community ( now 120 families ), 49 % owned by the 80 families that built the place and 1 % owned by the church..... just because.
It is quite a small operation still, but needs to be, otherwise the animals would leave. That is the whole point of this place, to keep it forever if possible. So much pressure was put on the Bolivian gov that they created a national park around the place. You do get the feeling that they are passionate about the place, when they tell you that you must shower any insect repellent and sunscreen off before you go for a swim in the lake, so that it is not polluted. Now even the local don't hunt here, so i suppose that eventually the number of wildlife will increase.
The other very important thing they do out here, is to NOT interfere with the animals. The don't touch the at all, just observe. Some places catch anaconda and other animals, but they are getting harder to find for this exact reason, at Chalalan it will get easier. Unfortunately there are no anaconda here, and never has been but there are plenty of other animals to see.

8th apr. Our flight was leaving at 4.30pm. We got a call qt 11.30 asking us if we could be down there early due to bad weather in Rurrenabarque, could we be there at 12 for a 1pm flight. We had packed all our gear so this was no problem. Check in was good, and we got on the plane ready to leave at 1.15. Took off and then circled La Paz before landing again. The weather had closed in around Rurre, and we weren't going anywhere. We were told that the flight had been canned and to come back tomorrow. mmmmm great.
We rang the America Tours office and they said they would get back to us. So we went back into La Paz. Our bed had been given away,. so we went to another place where we had stayed. He was full as well, all he had was a room with one single bed in it and no key for the lock on the door. That was ok because we didn't get any sleep that night so why would you need to lock the door. America tours, did get back to us and said ' No problem we just shift the whole tour one day '.
Mountains just outside of La Paz.

9th. We went back to the airport, our flight was the 2pm one this time. Everything was great we got on the plane, went down the runway, and then suddenly powered down. At least yesterday we got airborne. They assured us that it was a minor problem and they would try to fix it as soon as they could. They were as good as their word on this and we finally took off for our 40 min flight at 4.30. It might only be 40 min by plane, but it is a 16 hour bus trip, and apparently not reliable ...... ?

A Chalalan rep met us at the airport, took us to the offices and made sure we settled into our hotel for the night. We had to be at the river for a 730 start the next morning, but don't worry I will come and get you.

10th. The boat trip was to take us 1.5 hour up the Beni river, the another 5 up the Tuichi. The wet had just finished so the river was flowing fast.


Skinny boat, 6.5 hours... brrrrrr.


I wasn't too keen on the boat, it was very long and very skinny, I suppose it needed to be this way because of the flow. We stopped at about 11 for a snack and a loo break, there weren't any actual loo's, so some of the group said they would wait, but you get the idea. There were 5 of us, one American and another two Australians. We got there at about 2pm, had lunch and a talk about the place and then took off on our first walk. Jo and I had our own guide and the other three had another. We walked around the edge of the lake, heard a tree fall through the forest, which we had to later walk around. The mossies were thick and the tree had stirred up loads of ants. A canoe had been taken to the edge of the lake for our return trip, we were covered in bite already and we'd only been there five minutes. On the way back in the canoe we saw a group of yellow squirrel monkeys coming down for their afternoon drink. We just floated on the lake watching them. We also saw some brown capuchino monkeys as well.


Yellow Squirrel Monkey.

Dinner was very good, in fact the food overall was good I thought, and then we were all heading out on the lake to look for caimans. Yep they said it was safe to swim during the day, but not to swim at night. the way you spot caymans is to hold your torch at eye level and pan around, their eyes glow back at you. The girl in the boat in front of me, Lisa one of the Australians, said she couldn't see anything. I gave her my torch, told her how to look....... gosh ... she said and threw the torch back at me. The whole lake was alive with eyes. They were all babies, but they were still there. We were looking for the big one, a 4m to 5 m beast. One of the guides stood up in the canoe and started making baby distress calls. Splash, we had found the big one. The eyes were huge, but it didn't do anything but watch us. Me being so brave, blacked out at this point, we just drifted in close to the caiman. I wasn't exactly in my comfort zone. I am here writing this so everything worked out fine.
That was it for day 1, we headed to camp and to bed. The facilities here are incredible, when you consider how remote you are. It was easy to forget that you are in the animals home and not your own. The cayman had certainly brought this fact home to me.

11th. A heavy trek was waiting for Jo and I after breakfast. We were to cross the lake and then take a trail that crossed two small rivers, before heading back to the lodge. We hadn't walked more than 50m before we were soaked through with sweat. The reason for crossing the rivers was that this was where the black howler monkeys lived. Apparently you don't get to see them very often. We could here them in the distance and managed to get in front of them. Only because of the guide were we able to sit under the trees and watch the whole group pass over us as the fed. They did spot us and change course, but we were no threat and the one that stayed behind to keep an eye on us didn't seem too bothered about us and then raced off to catch the group. On the way back Sergio ask if we wanted to try Piranha fishing.

Piranha fishing.


We said sure ... where.... He said here, in the river we just crossed. The river we just crossed... oh my god. We didn't end up catching any, so I think this was a good thing, and we hot footed it back to camp for lunch and a siesta.
We had another canoe ride in the afternoon, and saw more birds and monkeys. This was much to our liking, we had deck chairs set up in the canoe and were paddled leisurely around the lake, in the shade.
We had a night walk after dinner, back down to where the large caiman lives. It was out in the water, but it was much better seeing it from the land than the water. Jo freaked out at the taranchula nest, so I didn't get to see them. That was ok because there is another nest in camp that you can see, the hairy little buggers, well they're not that little. We had a party, thanking us for coming, much drinking and dancing and went to bed about midnight.

Not a bad way to travel, we certainly did it tough in the jungle.

12th. The boat rip back only take 2.5 hours but we did get to see some cappiburras on the way. We had a 1pm flight back to La Paz. We had the option of a 5pm one but I thought it would be best to get out of there while we could. Lisa and Andrea were supposed to come back last night, they are staying at the same hostel as us and were on the5 pm flight, they didn't turn up?

If I could do it again I would spend a bit more time at the lodge, say another day or two. We weren't told we could stay longer by the tour group booking us and had already booked flights, and I would spend a day in Rurrenabarque, there are more things to do than we had time. 1 full week should be enough.

WMDR 5th apr

We just got back from our ride down the worlds most dangerous road. It all started when we got all organised and booked our bike trip and jungle tour in the same day as coming from Copa. That was ok because we had a rest day before we went down the hill. We had decided on one of the most expensive companies to help us down the road, someone had gone off the mountain not 3 weeks previous. I asked if it was Roy, but they said no. The plan was to do the bike trip and then stay a couple of days at a town called Coroico, recover there and then head to the jungle.
Gravity assisted mountain bikes is who we went with. They offer two types of packages, $75us full package and $55us essential package. For the full package you get, wind jacket, pants, $2500 front and rear shocked mountain bike, goggles, buff( for the dust we were told ), helmet, gloves, animal footprint chart and one triple strength condom ( because you never know ). I was curious as to what the essential package had and was told a front shocked only bike and a helmet... maybe.. so we got the lot.

Jo all dressed up with somewhere to go.

We met at a cafe in La Paz at 730, got on the bus and headed up the hill out of town. I'm not sure if they use a poor grade fuel over here, but smoke was belching from every exhaust . The hour on the bus saw us go through a couple of checkpoints, one of these was to let the authorities know who was on the mountain, what for they wouldn't say. I told Jo it was so they could greet you by name when you got to the bottom, I think she bought it. We finally reached the start of the ride, it also happened to be the highest we had ever been on land, 4700m. Yep we were starting our ride amongst snow covered hills, I won't call them mountains because we were just about on the peaks anyway. The ride is 22km of road then 44km of gravel, the WMDR.

We all tore off down the hill. The was a lot of misty cloud to start with, which soon turned into rain. We were soaked through before we hit the drug checkpoint, this stops cocaine processing equipment reaching the coca growing areas. Jo and I were at the back of the group on the road, the riding position of the mountain bikes, wasn't quite to my liking on the road, I had my knees around my ears, but everyone was going very fast, so the 22km was over quickly. Then it was on to the WMDR. A few months ago they open a new road around the other side of the mountain so most traffic now uses that. The downside to this is that, the traffic that still uses the old road goes a lot faster, and everything coming up has right of way. Once on the gravel I felt a lot better, it is where the bikes came into there own. I moved from back of the pack to around the middle, the bikes had so much grip. We were constantly fighting a loosing battle with mud in our faces and fog on the inside of our goggles, cause lets be honest sight is probably the most important sense for this activity. We started riding at about 9am and finished covered in mud, soaked to the bone, yet with massive grins on our faces at 1.45pm, that was one of the hardest things, concentrating on not smiling while riding and getting a mouth full of mud for your trouble. Our ride had taken us from 4700m down to 1200m over 66km, gravity assisted alright.
We had showers and some lunch, this was at a wildlife refuge place. They had some monkeys, birds and a boa constrictor, all rescued from different places. Jo was is heaven, she was also surprised at how much she enjoyed the ride. Who knows I might even get her on a bike yet.

This was apparently the biggest size they had.

PS. we have a disc full of photo's from they day, but we only took these two on our camera.

La Paz 3rd of Apr

Catching the bus from Copa, was a bit different, I guess every bus trip we have is different. We had to cross the lake in one spot. It wasn't the biggest bus around but quite serviceable. The crossing itself was pretty cool.

This is what our bus travelled on and yes that's our bus.

We had to get off the bus and catch a small boat as our bus struggled across on a little barge. Once everything was on the other side of the lake, we continued on our way to La Paz.
Very unlike Jo and I, we went straight to it, trying to book our jungle tour and the trip down the worlds most dangerous road ( WMDR).

Copa.... Copacabana. 3rd April.

1st to the 3rd of April.

My arm was just recovering from the belting Jo had given it for me saying Lake booby brrm brrm all the time. When she started belting me for singing the Copacabana song all the time. To be honest I was completely sick of it as well, but it got her all riled up every time, so in my opinion it was well worth it.

We were crossing into Bolivia on the next leg of our journey, and had heard all kinds of stories of corrupt officials and the like, so we were not taking any chances with our luggage. However the border crossing is a little different, well it was for me, we pulled up in the bus and had to get off. We walked up to the police post had our passports stamped for exiting Peru and then walked up the road 200m to the Bolivian side to get stamped into that country. Our bus was to drive on through and meet us on the other side. This was supposed to take 5 mins, there was a friendship parade going on between the Peruvians and the Bolivians, complete with soldiers on parade with weapons.

Guards on parade.

If we hadn't seen the smiles on their faces we would have thought they were going to fight. This meant that our bus took more like and hour, with our luggage ' safely' stored on the bus. It all worked out ok and all our bags were in fact safe. I did see the same shoe shine boy on both sides of the border, he must have thought my shoes would have gotten dirty walking through the border. I guess he must have duel citizenship or something, but I didn't see him get passport stamps. The border guards on both sides quizzed us quite a bit on kangaroo's before they let us through, maybe they thought our passport were fake or something.
After checking that there was actually ink in our passports, apparently it is a bit of a trick of the Bolivians so that they can hit you with an on the spot fine later in your travels, we bordered our bus and hit Copacabana.

View of Copa from on high looking sth and down at the town.

Apart from Cuzco this place was the best we'd seen so far. It is smaller than Puno but with a much nicer feel. For $10us we got the best room we had had so far on our trip, I didn't have a tape with me but it wasn't far off being bigger than our apartment in London. I secretly wished Jo had held off a day being sick so we could stay here, but these are the hardships you face while travelling I guess. Everything was cheaper, so we kind of splurged on the meals a bit, for what we payed for an average meal in Peru, we couldn't spend the equivalent on the most expensive thing around.

View from the same hill looking nth.

Jo was soon feeling much better, but not quite up to climbing the hill right on the edge of the lake. It is a 140m climb talking about half and hour each way.The views were absolutely fantastic, you could see right across the lake to Puno, more than 100km, they said it has something to do with the thin air. I could certainly vouch for the air being thin, I kept having flashbacks to the Inca Trail.
We hung around for that day, organised a next day bus to La Paz and retired to our room thinking ' I hope the rest of Bolivia is this laid back '

Puno 31/3

Arrived 28th left 1st apr.

You could see the Lake as we came into town. It was the first day bus that we caught, so we saw plenty of the countryside as we went along. West of the mountains is all desert, dry and very dusty. Once you crest the peaks ( 4330m, highest point so far ) it starts to turn green. No plants to be seen, just grasses, but green no the less.
The town looked a bit run down as we came in and I gave Jo my usual ' where the hell are you dragging me now ' look. But I must say for a small town it was quite good. The main.... I can only call it mall...... They have paved in about 200m of shops, no traffic to be had at all. It was good to walk around without the threat of being run into by a taxi. I say run into because the cars are so small that all you would get is a nasty bruise, but it would still be nasty.It took Jo approximately 12mins to sniff out the bakery in town, so we found ourselves having coffee and cake on the first afternoon in Puno.
The next day we took a half day trip out to Sillustani.

Veiw of tombs.

It is on another lake about 40mins from Puno, but that could mean that it is within 5km the roads being the way they are. It is a site with some pre Inca burial tombs on it. Its a cool place with great views of the lake that it is on.
The biggest puppy of them all.



A full day tour, of the floating lake and an island in the middle of Lake Titicaca, was what we had planned next. Jo had wanted to spend a night with a local family on one of the islands, but I didn't. It was the over night thing that bothered me, one couple we talked to had said that they stayed overnight with a family that didn't speak Spanish either, just Quechua. So I didn't really fancy the idea. I won and we just did a day trip. It was essentially the same without the overnight stay.

Floating Island.


The floating island was great. They have built houses and everything on to of floating reed islands. Apparently they throw new reeds down every 20 days or so. The floating platform ends up being 1.5 to 2.5m thick and it sags when you walk on it, well it does under my weight. They have a little trap door in the reeds, just for tourists, where they throw a rock tied to a string, just to prove that they float. The rock went down 15m before the string went slack. We even got to ride across on one of the reed boats.


Then we had a long boat ride out to another Island where about 4000 people live. Had lunch there and walked across the Island to our boat, which had gone to the other side of the Island to pick us up. It took a good three hours to get back to Puno.

Our boat is awaiting.

Jo had tried to book a fancy place in Copacabana, but they were full, so we decided to wing it, this from the girl who was reluctant to set foot in Sth America without guards.


Jo got really sick from the food on the Island we think and we had to spend an extra day in Puno, but she was well enough to travel the next day to Bolivia.

Arequipa 27/3

Nothing really happened to us in Arequipa, I think we were too knackered from our two night bus trips in a row. Plus we had 80 channels on a tv. We did go and see Juanita, the frozen girl from the mountain top, that was pretty cool...... ha ha ha, frozen girl..... hahaha.



Main plaza in Arequipa.

Anyway the only other thing we had planned to do was visit the Colca canyon. One of the deepest in the world. We went to a travel agency but were put off by the thought of another trek. They failed to mention that you can do a two day visit on bus, that would have been us. So we decided to give that one a miss. We were almost justified when we ran into two of the guys from the Inca trail, they had just come back from the canyon and said it was harder than the trail. Jo and I looked at each other, satisfied that we had done the right thing after all.
I was more excited about seeing lake Titicaca, so we shot off to Puno.