Bolivia: Free of Bolivians at Last!

For those of you who are regular readers, you realize by now that Bolivia was tough for us at times. It was a confounding mix of beautiful and difficult. However, as with most places, life became much easier when you took people out of the equation. So, we set out to Rurrenabaque, right on the edge of the rainforest, where wildlife is plentiful and people are few.

It is worth noting that it was this same bus for which we were waiting when our bag was stolen. I left Tara at the station holding on to our bags with another American couple while I went to see if I could buyback any of my stuff in the local market (didn't find any), and three older men tried to steal their bags. Fortunately, Tara was quick to grab them before they could get them. Unfortunately, she wasn't quick enough to kick any of them in the head before they ran away...

Okay, now to the pictures. The bus ride to Rurrenabaque is 18 hours despite only being about 180 miles away. It doesn't take much math to figure out that it should be about the same speed to take a donkey. However, we don't know much about caring for donkeys, so we took the bus. It travels down the "world's most dangerous road", which may or may not actually be the most dangerous. (This motto is mostly used by mountain bike companies taking trips there, but the road seems to be much less dangerous on a bike than in a vehicle.) The road is mostly along cliffs with almost no shoulder and no guard rails. Additionally, some brilliant lawmaker in Bolivia decided that the vehicle going down the cliff should always be on the edge. Here's the view:
The mountains were lovely, and as we got to lower altitudes, they started to be very green as well with waterfalls and all the stuff that you would expect when driving to a rainforest.
Once we got to Rurrenabaque, we managed to book a last minute tour with a decent seeming company for a really good price. Additionally, they read us really well and offered up free use of showers for the two hours until the tour left. We had been on back to back overnight buses, so we were sold. Two hours later, we set out for the Bolivian Pampas, which is the grasslands bordering the rainforest. It is easier to see animals here than in the forest because they have no trees in which to hide. On the way, we saw dinner.
We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that seemed to have some quasi-pet animals from the area. This guy is a peccary, which is very much like a pig in looks and actions, but isn't actually related to one. Hard to tell his size, but he is the size of a pig and he walked right under our table and laid down until someone shooed him off.
Tara loves peccaries. Had there been baby peccaries, we would no doubt have one in our backpack. This one was too big to keep, though.
This jabiru also stopped by for a visit. These birds are about five feet tall and don't take kindly to strangers getting very close. One had a huge nest right above our camp site, but none of our pictures of that one were nearly as good.
This spider monkey took a liking to one of the other guys in our group and then to me. They have a prehensile tail that they use like a fifth arm and they are very strong. This monkey seemed really friendly, but then started chewing on one of the girls. It decided it didn't like me anymore after I pulled him off the girl (she was fine--the monkey was just biting her lightly).
After it bored of playing with the tourist, it was ready for a ride.
To get to camp, we took a three hour boat ride down the river. Because it is the very end of dry season, the river is at nearly its lowest point of the year. This means all the animals come to the river for water because the local watering holes are dry.
We saw a troop of squirrel monkeys (they live in groups of about 30-50) and one brave one even came to board the boat. He left in anger when no one would feed him.
All the caimans and crocodiles (they apparently have black caimans and then some species of croc here) come to the river at this time of year. They are everywhere. They eat anything, including other crocs. We saw them from about a foot long to about 15 feet long. It was great when they stopped the boat and told us it was time to take a swim.
The real reason that we went to this area is to see capybaras, the biggest of the rodents. These rats can grow to 180 pounds and are huge. We were worried we might not see any, which turned out to be silly. We saw hundreds. Everytime we saw one with babies, Tara took a picture. They bathe in the mud at the edge of the river to stay cool and insect free (and to sometimes feed the crocs).
This one seems to be waiting for us to come get in the boat. I let Tara get in first.
One morning we spent four hours hiking around looking for anacondas. The downside of dry season is that many of the marshy areas where anacondas live dry up, so they run away. The guides tried hard to walk through the mud poking around for a giant snake, but no luck. The best I could do was some colorful fungus. We ran into another group that had seen one, so our group tied them up in jealousy and left them there to see some more anacondas.
A blurry sunset over the pampas. These are grasslands, but the grasses grow to about four feet high. We walked through a lot of it looking for snakes, and it isn't what you think of when you think grass. It's like Little Shop of Horrors grass.
We also went pirana fishing. Again. For those who don't remember, we tried this in the Amazon and caught nothing. This time, at least there were piranas, but they were tiny. I couldn't even get this one to bite off my nose.
The only bird that seemed fearless was this tiger heron. A really nice looking bird. He is suppose to eat fish, but given how unafraid this one was, I suspect he eats a lot of leftovers as well.
Here is a whole herd of capybaras rushing out of the water as we passed by. Okay, herd probably isn't the right word for a group of capybaras. I actually did some reseach just now, and no one seems to know. A BBC article also calls them herds, so I'm going to say what I usually say--I was right.
That brings our exciting time in Rurrenabaque to an end. I should say that we also finally saw pink river dolphins, which were really cool. They went back under too fast to ever get pictures of them, but it is the areas patrolled by these dolphins where it is safe to swim. They will not let crocs swim in the same water as them and they can be ferocious in their defense of territory.

After several nice days in the wilderness, we got back on the very slow overnight bus and went back to La Paz. We left La Paz as soon as we could and decided that we would deal with not having Bolivian visas because of stolen passports when we got to the border. So, we exited at the same Bolivian crossing where we entered.

The guy was nice enough and found our entry visa information in about 30 seconds. Then he looked at us and said, "You need to get a new visa stamp in La Paz. I'm not able to do it here." We told him all we needed was an exit stamp and he clearly had proof of our legal entry. And that we weren't going back to La Paz (4 hours away). He finally agreed to let us just leave with no stamp. So, we practically ran the 500 feet to Peru before he changed his mind.

The woman at the Peru border looked at our fresh passports and said that she could not let us in without an exit stamp from Bolivia. We told her the whole story and she reiterated that we absolutely must have an exit stamp from Bolivia. We said that we could not go back and asked if there was any way to get into Peru. After a moment, she decided that we could pay a $20 "fee" and the problem would go away. So, it surprised us, but we did not have to bribe our way out of Bolivia and instead bribed our way into Peru.

That wraps up our Bolivian adventures. It was a decent country, and is really cheap, but the culture is really difficult to adjust to. We have met many travelers who say that Bolivia is their favorite country. That definitely isn't true for us, but we certainly will keep some nice memories from parts of it.

Boats, Volcanoes, Lakes, and Friends! (aka Southern Chile)

I know, I know, we've fallen way behind on posting again. We have just had a spate of super-full days, endless bus hauls, and computer problems (Google decided not to let us upload pictures for a week, boo!) which have kept us from updating. So even though we're in a whole new country now (Peru!), I'll do my best to start catching you up on Chile.

When we last encountered our heroes, Andy and Tara, they were about to board this three-night Navimag ferry from Puerto Natales in southern Chile to Puerto Montt in...well, slightly less southern Chile. Here is the boat:

There are no roads connecting these two parts of the country, so our options were to spend a couple of days on the bus winding our way back through Argentina, to fly, or to go by boat...which was the slowest and most expensive option, but we had heard good things from people who had done it and decided to embrace the open sea!

The boat went mostly through coastal inlets, which were very calm and beautiful to look at, speckled with little green islands and backed by mountains on the mainland. Our first night aboard offered some lovely sunset views.

The boat was not a luxury cruise by any means, but the food on board was very good (I did relinquish my vegetarian ways, however), we made a lot of lovely new friends (strangely, there were about three times as many Irish people on board as Americans--we haven't really met Irish tourists anywhere else in our travels!) and I pulled a great coup by telling the lady when we checked in that we were on our honeymoon, so if she had any private cabins...and we ended up with a four-person cabin to ourselves.

Our room:

If that sounds romantic, well, you weren't there on our second night on board, which is when we crossed into the open ocean for about 12 hours. The boat turned into one giant rocking chair, and I'll just let you guess which one of us lost his/her lunch...and dinner...and breakfast...eurgh. (Though the other one of us did take very good care of the sickie one while s/he was being sick!)

One of the other interesting sites we saw from the boat was this shipwreck, which has been moored out in the straits off of Chile since the 1960s.

OK, so, a couple of pounds lighter and with the world still spinning a bit, we finally landed in Puerto Montt and set off right away for Puerto Varas, a cute town and tourist base for the southern lakes region of Chile. Here is the church in Puerto Varas:
The weather our first day was gray and cold, and I have to say that we spent our most miserable night so far on our trip at a hospedadje there, where the owner did not turn the heat on at night even though we had asked her to and she said she would. We woke up the next morning and it was 47 degrees Fahreinheit in our room, no joke. We thought about chewing her out in the morning, but luckily we heard another guest already doing so over the heat in far better Spanish than we could muster, so we simply left as quickly as we could in disgust.

Anyway, the day before, we did an afternoon trip to a national park not far from Puerto Varas, I forget the name. It was overcast so we didn't see much, but Andy was enchanted by the extremely blue water in the lake and river there. We nicknamed it the park of 10,000 flushes.

The next day, we stopped over for a few hours in Valdivia, a university town set on a lovely river. One of the fun things there is that they have sea lions lounging on the river docks.

And that night we arrived in Pucon, another lakeside touristy town in the shadow of the impressive Villarica volcano. We took a walk the next morning and had some great views--check out the snow-capped cone with steam flowing out!

A lot of people go to Pucon to climb the volcano, but I decided that that was way too hardcore for us and insisted that we instead go soak in the nearby hot springs, Las Pozones. I think this was a very good call.

The hot pools were set in natural rocks and were very relaxing...

Of course, Andy had to take a dip in the freezing river next to the hot springs. He only shrieked a little at how cold it was.
We spotted some wildlife, too. There were lizards everywhere...

...and I found a snake!

In the three months we have been traveling now, we have made a lot of lovely new friends on the road, but we haven't seen a single face from home. Or we hadn't, until we arrived in Temuco where my college friend (and fellow Fusion Dance Ensemble-ite!) Maribel now lives with her husband, Jose. They invited us to stay at their apartment, and could not have been more gracious hosts to us, especially considering that Jose is in the thick of a congressional campaign. (Yes, he is running for the Chilean parliament! We heard some incredible stories about life on the trail in his district.)

Here are the four of us together. The clean ones are Maribel and Jose.

Maribel cooked us a delicious welcome dinner of chicken with mushrooms, rice with veggies, and a Chilean salad of tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, and Jose introduced us to "tuna," which in Chile is not a fish, but a fruit that looks sort of like prickly pear fruit. (Pictures to come in our next foods post.)

It was SO nice to spend a couple of evenings with friends. We got to ask all sorts of silly questions about Chile, like "What does this road sign mean?"
(Apparently, it has something to do with a handicrafts market, but we prefer our original interpretation of "Frosty the snowman lives that way.")

So, as usual, we only had one full day in the area, and our hosts convinced us that we needed to get out to see Conguillio National Park, home of the Llaima volcano, a couple of hours east of Temuco. We are SO glad they did, because it was incredibly beautiful, right up there with Torres del Paine.

Here is the Llaima volcano, which we photographed from many angles. As with Villarica volcano, we could see the steam coming out of the top!

The park was dotted with beautiful lakes of amazingly clear water.

Conguillio is also famous for its araucaria trees. We had never heard of this kind of tree before--it's an evergreen with these crazy twisty branches. Some of the trees in the park were 1,000 years old and humungous.


Close-up of the tough, twisty branches.

I think this mountain looks like an orca.
Other than our driver and his grandaughter, who came along for the ride, we were literally the only people visiting the park.

The lakes district in Southern Chile was absolutely gorgeous and, as with many places we've been, I wish we'd had more time there. But the few days we were able to spend were lovely and relaxing and we are very glad we passed through. After returning to Temuco from the park and having another great meal with Maribel and Jose, we set off to Santiago, Chile's capital, on an overnight bus. Tales of our adventures there should be up tomorrow!

Back in Brazil, by bus and boat, baby!

OK, we have been back in Brazil for about 10 days, so we should probably start blogging about it, huh?

So far the defining characteristic of our travels here have been how long the journeys are from place to place, and how expensive they are. We have been spending $20-$30 a night on hotel, and most of the time less than $10 a day on food, but the cost of transport has pushed our daily average to well over $100. And I have been on more overnight bus trips than I care to count. But we have had a lot of adventures here, which I will start to recap now!

We returned to Brazil from French Guyana via Oiapoque, a dusty border town where we got stuck for 24 hours because the overnight buses to the nearest real city were sold out the day we got in. We have no pics there, as Andy had the flu and spent most of the time asleep in our sketchy but cheap motel room, with me occasionally venturing out to get him fruit nectar (vitamin C!).

We were almost the only white people in town, and vendors constantly called out to us in French ("bonjour madame!" "tres jolie, madame!"). The only tourists they see there are those coming over from French Guyana.

One overnight bus trip later and we were in Macapa, from whence we needed to get on a riverboat to Belem. Most boats take 24 hours to cross the vast Amazon delta, and some take longer. We had read that there were faster 12- and even 8-hr boats, but upon our arrival these did not seem to be in existence. The only boat we could find leaving that day was a 40-hour boat via Breves, another Amazon city. (There is no central ticket office or anything like that; you take a bus 30 KM outside of the city to the port and walk around and talk to people on different boats in the harbor and haggle for a ticket with them. Since we speak next to no Portuguese, figuring this was really fun!)

Luckily, one of the boat ticket salesmen spoke French, so I was able to get info from him and bargain his price down a little. We then had less than an hour to race around town and procure hammocks to sleep in and provisions for our trip.

Our boat, the Oliveira Nobre:


Check out the lovely his and hers hammocks Andy scored for us: $7.50 US apiece.


As you can see, the Oliveira Nobre wasn´t very crowded and our first night was really pleasant. Sadly, in Breves, we had to switch to a much more crowded boat, the Bom Jesus (though I liked to call it the Evil Jesus). Hammocks on top of hammocks, loud, dirty bathrooms, the whole 9 yards.


Even better, our hammocks started swaying violently in the night, and everyone was crashing into each other. So I climbed down and slept for two hours on the floor.

Breves, where we changed boats, had an enormous statue of a saint dominating the harbor. This is very common in South America.


Finally, though, we arrived in Belem. It was one of my favorite cities so far, and I will give you a clue as to why...


More recaps as soon as we can!