Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 17 - La Paz, Rurrenabaque (Bolivia)

We left Samaipata and took a three hour taxi ride into the nearest town, Santa Cruz, where we had to waste a couple of hours before our night bus to La Paz. Santa Cruz is a big hot modern city, not the kind of place you’d choose to visit. The bus trip was actually one of our best as we had a cama (lazy boy seats with leg rests) although unlike on Argentine and Chilean buses you don’t get served food and you have to wait until the scheduled loo stops to use the bathroom.

After 17 hours we arrived into La Paz, 2 hours behind schedule and checked into a hostel in a colonial house near the bus station. We walked into the centre of town and explored the markets, had a beer in the English bar “Olivers”, sought out the only Burger King in Bolivia for lunch (Rhys’s choice) and had llama tikka masala at the British Indian restaurant for dinner – oh how I’ve missed curry. We headed back to the hostel and sat in the bar with a Kiwi couple playing Uno and foosball.

Having read a sign in reception to warn us that the bar downstairs stayed open until 4am on Friday and Saturday and played loud music and after hearing the sound check on the Thursday night and feel our bed shake with the bass we decided we were too old to stay at a party hostel and to move somewhere quieter the next day.

After breakfast we headed back into the centre to search for a new hostel and to book Rhys a trip out to cycle death road (I did it last time I was here in 2007). We checked into a lovely place in the centre of the artisanal market area with a little courtyard where Rhys stayed to chill while I went to the coca museum a few buildings down and learnt lots of interesting coca facts. For instance, did you know that Coca-Cola still imports coca leaves from Bolivia and uses then for flavouring even though in 1914 they stopped putting cocaine in Coca-Cola? Or that the UK government can legally produce 365kg of cocaine but Bolivia isn’t allowed to produce any? Or that it was made obligatory for slaves in the mines to chew coca leaves because it meant they could work longer hours without getting tired?

That day there was the most incredible storm, you’ve never seen rain or hail stones like it, the streets turned to rivers. We perched in a shop doorway waiting for the worst of it to pass than ran to a little café called the Moroccan Nook for Moroccan mint tea and hummus.

Rhys was collected at 7:45 the following day for his trip out to death road – it used to be the most dangerous road in the world before they built the bypass and is often on the TV in shows like Top Gear. After 1.5 hour drive in a mini bus he spent the next 4 hours coasting down the 30km unpaved road with sheer drops. It was snowing at the top and hot enough in the Yungas at the bottom to make use of the swimming pool. A 3.5 hour mini bus drive later and he was back at the hostel, snazzy new T-shirt in hand.

While Rhys was out I took a tour to Tiwanaku, one of the most important pre-Colombian sites in South America and the heart of an empire that existed hundreds of years before the Incas. After walking around the temples and admiring the 7 metre monoliths and learning about how they shaped their kids heads into cones and cut holes in their skulls to put in bits of gold I headed back into La Paz to wait for Rhys.

Our last day in La Paz we slept in, took Rhys’s drenched clothes to a launderette then Rhys went back to the hostel to relax while I went to visit the main plaza to see the presidential palace and the cathedral. I spent a good 15 minutes sitting on the floor in the plaza having bought some grain from the street sellers for the pigeons – memories of Trafalgar Square as a kid! Next I walked to Calle Juan, one of the only truly pretty areas of La Paz where the houses of the revolutionaries have been renovated and turned into boutique shops, cafes and museums. Back in the market district I stopped for a haircut (very interesting with my limited Spanish but she did a good job). At noon I met Rhys back in the English bar for a full English breakfast and to watch the Spurs v. Man U game. We ended up talking to an English guy and his friends and stayed there for the rest of the day. I only left briefly to pop to the market to buy the obligatory llama jumper and leg warmers and silver earrings – it seems I’m much better at bargaining once I’ve had a beer.

The next morning we had a flight from the military airport at 11am, north to Rurrenabaque in the amazon basin. We climbed out of the plane at the end of the runway, no terminal in sight, collected our bags and bundled onto a shuttle into town. As soon as we got off the plane the heat and humidity hit us, so different to the cool altitude of La Paz. By the time we settled into a hostel and booked a trip into the Pampas for the following day it was late afternoon. To make the most of the sun we hailed moto-taxis for a lift up to a swimming pool at a mirador overlooking the town, the Beni River and the lush mountains of the Madidi National Park. Suffering from reverse altitude sickness from descending too quickly (well that’s what we think it was) we turned in for an early night.

On Tuesday we grabbed breakfast from a French bakery (real pain au chocolates, lovely!) before squashing into a jeep with 6 other people and our guide for the next 3 days, Marcel. Then we started the hellish 3 hour drive along the unpaved road to Santa Rosa – the highlight of the drive being seeing a sloth. Feeling jiggled to within an inch of our lives and with a headache from the fumes the lunch stop was well needed. 20 minutes later and we were boarding our wooden boat and we started navigating the Yacuma river.

We spent the next 3 hours motoring upstream, stopping to watch the birds, caiman, capybara, monkeys and pink river dolphins (one dolphin was throwing a snake around trying to stop in wriggling long enough to eat it). It was oh so hot and again Rhys proved to be irresistible to the mosquitoes who were ganging up on him and biting through his T-Shirt (60 bites before we even made camp) – who knew that mosquitoes are attracted to black?! When we arrived at our basic, rustic lodge we settled into our dorm before heading to the mirador watchtower/bar to watch the sunset. To get to the mirador you had to walk along a wooden pathway over the water, a massive crash and we looked over the railing to see a group of boys from another boat in the river after the walkway had collapsed, as it was dark and there are caiman hanging around by the bridge they climbed out pretty sharpish.

After dinner that evening Marcel took us out to look for caiman eyes glowing along the river. We had very little sleep that night, it was ridiculously hot and the mosquito nets made the beds feel like saunas.