The fish aren't biting

No ridiculously early start today, so we could enjoy our final breakfast at the lodge before heading off to some of the smaller side-streams to try fishing for piranhas. Once again, this sounded more impressive in theory than it was in practice, as what fish there were were bloody tiny and seemed content to nibble at the edges of our bait without actually taking it properly. Still, wasn't too unpleasant sitting in the sun occasionally stringing the line out. Until the sun did a sudden vanishing act and we looked up to see a mass of dark clouds gathered across half the sky. Even Roberto looked faintly perturbed by this, so we packed up in short order and headed back at full speed for the lodge. And not a minute too soon - the rain started just before we got back, and was pelting down quite impressively by the time we had finished getting our bags ready for our departure that afternoon.

We had a bit of time to just chill out in the hammocks before a relatively early last lunch and the order to saddle up - Roberto was determined to take advantage of a break in the weather and get us back to the embarcation point at Santa Rosa as soon as possible. Once there we had a certain amount of "hurry up and wait" to go through until another Indígena vehicle (a Toyota Land Cruiser troop carrier this time) turned up to collect us. We pitched in to get the bags stowed under the tarp on the roof ASAP and then piled into the vehicle, where Jen and I found ourselves amongst those on the bench seats at the back of the troopie - this was ok to start with, but the effort to not slide off the bloody seats as we bounced back into town and the general uncomfortableness meant I was either sore or numb in several important places by the time we eventually got back to Rurre. On the bright side, there was way less mud than before, but the dried track meant more and harder bumps.

Once back in town, we paid a quick first stop at Amaszonas' offices - despite my fears from the day's rain, they were still expecting flights to be running the next day, so I paid a small admin fee and got my flight brought forward to the Wednesday afternoon, and started to dare to hope that I would be spared the bus back. After that, we dumped our bags back at El Curichal, cleaned up a little and then headed out to the bus station, to get the ticket back for Jen, who was, for reasons of budget and , in my opinion, masochism, going back at ground level. With this done, we found an internet cafe with a CD burner so I could make Jen a copy of the photos from the trip (and some from the salt flats) to replace those she had lost with her various departed cameras. Finally it was time for dinner and some drinks, the former courtesy of a little place called La Perla de Rurre, which Roberto had recommended, and the latter at the Moskkito bar, which proudly proclaims itself the "original travellers' bar in Rurre", and turned out to produce some quite pleasant cocktails. And then it was time for bed.

(No) Snakes on the plain

The early night was necessary as we were up at 5:30am to pile back into the boat and head out through the waterways in search of any early risers amongst the wildlife and then to catch the sunrise. In aid of the former, Roberto was poling us along the river so that wildlife wouldn't be scared by the motor noise. Unfortunately, not all groups shared his view, so we were soon overtaken by noisily buzzing boats as other groups headed out from their respective lodges. And it turned out that our caution and attempt at being more ecologically sound cost us slightly, as when we got to the best vantage point for seeing the sunrise unobstructed by trees and the like, it was to find it instead obstructed by a boatload of travellers standing to get the best pictures. Pesky tourists....

After the sun was deemed to have risen sufficiently high that it was no longer worth trying to sneak photos past people's hats, we headed back to the lodge for breakfast, then geared ourselves up for one of the "feature activities" of the trip, going looking for anacondas. Now, those of you familar with said snake might have some of the same reservations I did, to whit, how wise is it to be wading hip-deep through what is effectively a swamp looking for one of the world's biggest snakes, one which is quite capable of consuming a human? My reservations were brushed aside, however, principally by the scorn with which my worries were met by Jen - another occasion on which more backbone might have been handy.

The first step was to pop into one of the other lodges and load up with wellies - like me, the rest of our group were not overly enamoured of destroying some of their only footwear this side of the Atlantic. I didn't hold out too much hope for this, given that I am generally larger than your average Bolivian and that it seemed unlikely that there would be any boots sized for my feet. Imagine my glee and surprise to find that they did indeed have some boots large enough for my oversized paws, and thus that I wouldn't be subjecting my poor Tevas to yet more abuse. Unfortunately, that was the high point in terms of both glee and comfort for the day, as it turned out finding a snake that isn't in the mood to be found in a swamp of high grasses, sucking mud and thigh-deep water is an exercise in futility. One, moreover, punctuated by the attentions of seemingly millions of bloody mosquitoes. Was not a happy bunny by the time we gave it up for a bad idea, not even after seeing a couple of rather large owls.

After we offloaded our boots, went back to the lodge and had lunch, I was finally getting back to my usual affable self and no longer swearing repeatedly as to my opinion of swamps, mosquitoes and snakes. This was good as the afternoon's activity promised to be somewhat more enjoyable, that being to go swimming with pink river dolphins. Now, I'd been a little nervous at the prospect of swimming in a river that I knew also contained caimans (and supposedly anacondas...) but Roberto reassured us that their teritories did not overlap, so we were safe to swim around the dolphins. Not sure I was 100% convinced, but it did enough to get me in the water.

This is where the joys of interacting with wild animal come into play once again, as although we could see them broaching around the lagoon we were in, they almost never felt brave enough or inquisitive enough to actually come up close to us - one of the other guys, Miguel, got splashed a few times by one frisky individual, but otherwise they kept their distance. The water itself was relatively deep, so given my utter lack of talent at swimming I stayed fairly close to the boat anyway, or found a submerged tree whose branch I could use as support. So, no up-close encounter with dolphins, but much more enjoyable than hunting mosquitoes in a swamp!

On the way back, we actually spotted more dolphins, so some of the group piled in for another attempt at getting close, and what with this and making a stop to have a look at a sloth that Roberto had spotted high up in a tree, we once again weren't back in time for sunset, though we were much closer this time. I headed over to the bar at the lodge's mirador, the Pink Dolphin, to get some post-sunset piccies and was surprised to discover that Tash, our Kiwi friend from Rurre, was there having booked herself on a tour the day after us. We had another chance to chat after dinner, when Jen and I joined some of Tash's group in teaching the German couple in their boat the rules of Shithead - that was an amusing test of my German skills, trying to come up with the words for the rules of the backpacker's favourite card game. However, we were interrupted in this by Miguel telling Jen and I that our group was about to head out looking for caimans in the dark. We had either forgotten this or just never been told, so there were several frantic minutes in which we attempted to at least partially insect-proof ourselves and put on some longer clothing before heading out. Again, for one of the feature activities, this was a bit of a damp squib, as Jen and I couldn't see a single caiman during our little cruise (though the others claimed to have seen one at one point). Once we got back, the dining area was closed so Jen and I finished drinking the last of our "babies" in our own enclosure before getting some sleep.

Off to the Pampas

Luckily, the pampas trip was not of the "up and off at crack of dawn" variety, so we had time to get breakfast before we go. This was particularly useful as Jen is actually more attached to her breakfast than I am to mine, so they would have had two very ratty individuals in the jeep had we not been able to feed. We ended up just across the road from where we had eaten the previous day, in a plac called Narguila which turned out to be Israeli Central for Rurre. The food was still good, though.

When we turned up at the office, though, it was to find that we had been merged with another couple of groups - the people who were supposed to be on ours had not made it due to problems with flights from La Paz (déja vu anyone?), and so the two of us from Inca Land were in with people from Indígena and Shayna in a combined group. Thus, all our mucking about and agonising about which company to go with was utterly useless, as we ended up back with a guide from the company (Shayna) we had looked at first, although travelling in a vehicle from Indígena. This latter turned out to be very useful, as the road was in a shocking state but Hugo, our slightly mad driver, ploughed our Nissan Patrol through pretty much anything, also stopping a couple of times to fix another vehicle that was having troubles.

Having watched trucks, pickups and the odd land cruiser getting bogged or otherwise messed up along the way, we weren't all that upset to arrive late at the embarcation point for the boats, on the principle that at least we'd got there. At this juncture, the loss of Jen's hat prior to boarding the bus from Yolosita became slightly more urgent, as the sun was beating down and the boats had a grand total of zero cover. So I succumbed to my occasional chivalrous instincts and lent her my much-abused bush hat, deciding that my bandana would have to suffice for the trip.

And the boat trips, it has to be said, were the best bit of the pampas tour overall - the weather was generally fine, the breeze from our passage kept things comfortable and we saw plenty of wildlife. Jabiru storks gliding majestically over the waters, caiman hiding from the day's heat under bushes, eagles perched on the highest trunks, cormorants diving for fish, ninga-ningas looking frankly ridiculous with their faux-punk feather arrangements on their heads, flapping from bus to bush, and monkeys charging through the greenery to look at our boat and jump on the bow when we got in close and fiddle with the flag-staff from which fluttered the obligatory Bolivian flag. Really, a great way to spend an afternoon.

The only slight downside was that, because we had started so late and seen so much, we didn't make it to the ecolodge in time for sunset, and instead observed it from the river. Not necessarily a bad thing, though slightly less convenient for my attempts to get my usual dozens of photos of the sun's disappearance. Once we finally did make it to the lodge, it was after dark and the mosquitoes were rising in force. Roberto, our guide, pointed out the dorm that the group would be staying in and then pointed me and Jen to a separate "room". "But we're not..." we started, before deciding that actually having out own little enclosure (it's hard to call something of which half the "walls" are mosquito nets a room) would be a good thing in terms of being able to spread out and keep our stuff more secure. Obviously the lady at Inca Land tours had decided we made a nice couple as well. Though in fact, the setup was a twin with mossie nets over each bunk, so quite how much use it would have been to an actual couple is debatable, especially as the aforementioned nets had all the sound-blocking properties of a piece of paper!

It was soon time for dinner, which we took in the dining "room" with the other group who'd arrived the previous night, which turned out to include Terry and Fran, the Irish couple I had met in Coroico. Small world, and all that. After feeding time, Jen and I put paid to another of our "babies" whilst chatting with Roberto about the next day on the trip, and then everyone retired for an early night.

The Imaginary Couple

You probably don't need me to tell you that I failed badly to get much sleep, despite Jen nabbing some space in the row in front so I could spread out across the back seats - the unfortunate spacing of the seats, the gaps in between them and the associated pointy bits to dig into my back, ribs etc meant that I had had maybe an hour or so of sleep by the time dawn came and I could see the landscape through which we now bumped and juddered. Jen, meanwhile, slumbered on regardless. The aftermath of this led to my christening her the Dormouse.

We eventually bounced into Rurre around 10:15am, 18 hours or so after leaving Yolosita - this for a journey described in many guidebooks as taking around 13-15 hours, when we didn't even have any major hold-ups. I was by this point doing my familiar post-bus impression of a zombie, and was thus overjoyed when the guesthouse Jen and I had singled out as our preferred choice for the stay turned out to have a lady at the bus waiting to meet people. So we shouldered our packs and headed off across town in the once-more-unfamiliar tropical climate, headed for El Curichal. Here we were to have the first of various experiences of people assuming that the two of us were a couple - once we'd assured the staff that no, we didn't need a cama matrimonial (the wonderful term for a double bed) and a multi-bedded room would in fact be perfect, we dumped our bgs and headed into town to try and sort out our tour for the next day.

I should explain at this point that the principal reason for visiting Rurre is to go on these tours, which are generally classed as either selva (jungle) or pampas (grasslands). The former go into the Parque Nacional Madidi, the latter into the Reserva Municipal Pampas de Yacuma. The former are intended principally for experiencing being in the jungle itself, seeing the plantlife, the latter are far more focused on seeing wildlife, which has rather less places to hide in the savannah grasslands that make up the "pampas". Given that both Jen and I had decided we were more interested in animals than plants as such, the decision to do a pampas tour was a fairly easy one. Somewhat more vexing was working out which of the many operating companies in town to use.

The lady who took us to our guesthouse had recommended one company, Shayna Tours. The guy working around there had recommended another, Donato Tours. Some friends had ben with Indígena Tours and recommended them. Another friend who'd travelled there had suggested looking at Bala Tours. And then, once we finally managed to sort out getting Jen's traveller's cheques (surely these days the most useless thing you can take travelling) cashed, at a hardware store for some unexplained reason, a British ex-pat married to a local lady suggested we try Inca Land Tours. All too confusing, as most of them offer almost the same thing for almost the same price. In the end, we went with Inca Land Tours, after an hour or so trying to work out what the hell to do.

With the essentials for the day done, I retired to our (twin) room and crashed out. Four hours or so of kip later, I felt mostly back to human, and shambled out of bed to find Jen chatting away with one of our fellow guests, a Kiwi lass named Natasha, or Tash to her mates. We sat around, chatted for a bit, exchanged tales of how wonderful the trip down on the bus had been and commiserated about how weird it sometimes feels as an older backpacker surrounded by some of the pubescent wonders who are on the road these days. Then my stomach's rumbling reminded us it was dinner time, so Jen and I headed into town for dinner.

Our eventual choice for food was the Luna Lounge, a funky place with big, wood-beam and thatch roofs and an open-ir dance floor in the middle, but one which, like most of the town, was dead as a dodo on Easter Saturday. However, we were made to feel warmly welcome by a garrulous fellow who marched up to us with the menus, insisted we sit down and then introduced himself as "Johnnie 5". Yes, 80s movie fans, that is as in the robot in the Short Circuit films. Turns out he was the manager. And that it had been his birthday yesterday. And that he was still apparently a wee bit pissed. And that he ordered the waiter, who was having a fit of religion and didn't want to serve alcohol over Easter Weekend, to give us a couple of cocktails at Happy Hour prices. And that he thought we made a very nice couple. "But we're not..." we started to explain, but he was having none of it. Very nice food, though, even if there was some confusion whereby "Johnnie" had taken my order for fish and I got served up with chicken - when I queried this with the waiter, I was told that there was no fish. Hmmm.

After our slightly surreal dinner experience, we stocked up on some supplies for the jungle, notably including a few bottles of vino, and headed back to the guesthouse. Carrying said supplies, notably the bottles, involved cradling the overworked carrier bag to my chest, which Jen decided made me look like I was holding a baby, so our bottles of wine were christened "the babies" for the remainder of our trip. And back at the guesthouse, we promptly set about re-packing our bags so we could fit everything needed into the daypacks, and drank the first baby, chatting with Tash whilst doing so. Nice and chilled.

The road to hell

Having had my dreams of a lie-in once again dashed by what I can only refer to as "that bird", I got my bags cleared out of my room and went for some breakfast at the Back-Stube, the German-owned cafe across from my guesthouse, which proved both tasty and timely, a pleasant exception from the normal rule in Coroico whereby it takes the best part of an hour to produce a plate of pasta. After this, I took final advantage of the internet to write up a spot more of my journal before I headed over to the tour agency who had organised my ticket. There I was greeted by the twin news that they had not, as they announced previously, been able to definitively reserve me the aisle seat that I had requested, and that I was not in fact the only crazed gringo taking the bus journey to end all bus journeys. Or rather, I was the only gringo, but there was a gringa. When she turned up shortly thereafter, I met Jenny for the first time.

As it turned out, what with waiting 20 minutes or so in the back of a minibus whilst they did the usual trick of bellowing the destination at anyone passing in the hope that they would suddenly realise "Oh yes, I really wanted to go to Yolosita and just didn't realise it yet..." and buy a ticket (even weirder than this is that nobody ever turns up until about 30 seconds before the vehicle is due to leave, when suddenly you get swarmed!), and then another 3 hours or so at Yolosita waiting for our bus to make an appearance, we had plenty of chance to get to know each other even before the wonders of the bus trip. In fact, we didn't spend the whole time at Yolosita chatting, as I was nervously hanging around near the police checkpoint, trying to make sure the bus didn't go without us and goggling at the sheer chaos that is Bolivian driving practice. The checkpoint itself consisted of the Bolivian equivalent of PC Plod sat in his little brick hut, operating what Jen and I came to term the "hi-tech Bolivian gate" which blocked the road - said gate consisted of a section of string/rope running across the road; if one loop in it was hooked over the nail on the front of his box, the road was blocked, if the other was hooked on, it hung loose across the road and vehicles could pass. A work of genius. Drivers queueing up behind the rope had to go and show him their papers and once satisfied, he would let them through. However, they were not above charging for the open road whenever the string was down, via the wrong lane of the road if necessary. In fact, as per usual unwritten Bolivian rules of the road, there are always at least 3 lanes of traffic on a 2-lane road anyway, and you'd sometimes see a vehicle coming up the road, waiting for the string to be released and then waiting further whilst all the vehicles in the wrong lane on the other side pulled out into the traffic. Barking. When the bus did finally turn up, it turned out that the details of make, license plate etc we had been given were totally wrong, and we were rushed on as the bus was already an hour and half or so late. In fact, we were so rushed that Jen forgot her flowery hat and the bag of coca leaves that had been kept in it. D'Oh!

Jen works on a very simple principle: she does not want to spend winter in the UK again if she can help it at all, so works for 6 months or so saving whatever she can then runs away for several months over the winter. Nice plan, thinks I (don't worry Mum and Dad, I'm not seriously planning this, honest...). She's also very much of the "wing it" school of travelling, whereas I subscribe to the "practically swallow the guidebook and plan like crazy" school. She's a Londoner and loves the place, I was glad to be out of the Big Smoke. Annoyingly, as I was to find out, she can sleep just about anywhere, including crazily bucking Bolivian buses; as those of you who read regularly will be tired of hearing, I have trouble sleeping on any kind of a bus whatsoever. Still, we got past these difficulties, and actually got along quite well.

Some of that, mind you, may have been due to the "shared peril" scenario of actually surviving the road down to Caranavi. As I mentioned when discussing my trip down the "World's Most Dangerous Road", since the new road got finished, there's little or none of the traffic that got that road its name present any more. What I hadn't realised until about 10 minutes into the journey was that that road very much still exists, in the form of the section from Yolosita to Caranavi. Crazed lorry-drivers, narrow passing points into which the bus must reverse (I was quite glad to only realise afterwards that because we were in the rearmost seats, we were probably hanging out over 400-odd metre vertical drops a few times!), iffy visibility as it got rainy, a delightful surface mix of mud and gravel - all par for the course on this road. And this went on for around 4 hours, as we crawled the 75km into Caranavi. What relief we felt on arrival was tempered slightly by the realisation that Caranavi was a one-horse town missing its horse, that we would not (as we had hoped) be able to buy ourselves some wine to self-anaesthetise, and that the options for food in the vicinity of the bus station consisted of chicken'n'chips, chicken'n'chips, chicken'n'chips or chicken'n'chips. Surprisingly we had chicken'n'chips. I chivalrously left the last beer in the fridge of the restaurant for Jen, but she responded by asking the waiter nicely and he disappeared off to fetch me one, it turns out actually popping into a next-door place to buy it!

Filled up with our spectacularly unhealthy dinner, we gathered our courage and clambered back onto the bus, ready for the onward leg to Rurre. By this time, the light had gone so we could no longer see what potential perils awaited us, but this actually made it a bit more relaxing. Or rather, it would have been relaxing, had the bus not been nouncing and jolting every 10 seconds or so as it growled its way over the ridges towards its destination. Deprived by this less-than-restful motion and the lack of onboard lighting (apart from the seating lights which strobed intermittently in green and red, giving the unwlecome impression of a runaway mobile disco) of the ability to read or anything, Jen and I continued exchanging tales, jokes, philosophies and occasional mild epithets until the next stop, at Yunguyo, by which time it was around 11pm. After this, Jen curled up and miraculously dozed off, whilst I began my regular battle for any kind of rest on the omnibuses of this world.

The calm before the storm

I decided to make full use of having a room to myself and sleep in as late as possible. The rooster in the yard across the alley from my room, unfortunately, decided that the dawn needed to be greeted very enthusiastically, and then embarked on an "anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-

better" crowing contest with a competitor a few houses over that continued, on and off, for the rest of the morning. So I got plenty of time in bed, but rather less sleep than I'd hoped, and the waking hours were spent working out various different recipes for chicken to which I'd like to subject the pesky beast.

Once I emerged from my cocoon, I decided to aid my economy drive by having the set almuerzo at the little local joint down the alley behind the hotel, which resulted in massive bowl of soup plus chicken and rice for about a quid. Result. Although I was subjected to the telenovelas (melodramatic Spanish-language soaps) that the family was watching. Feeling suitably stuffed, I caught up on the internet for a bit, read for a bit, and then decided to make some use of the pool while I had access. Though as it was late afternoon, the weather was cooling and the pool was unheated, I didn't stay in that long. Back in a normally-clothed state and heading out for dinner, I got chatting with a Dutch girl staying at the hotel called Kerrin, and we ended up deciding that if the service was as slow as usual, it'd be better to have someone to talk to whilst waiting, so we might as well go for food together.

After looking around a couple of places, we ended up back at my dinner spot of the night before, where the service was, if anything, even slower, and my food was decidedly uninspiring. Not somewhere I'd recommend. Still, having refuelled, we popped into one of the little corner stores so I could get some supplies for the dreaded bus ride the next day, and some wine for the evening - thus fortified we headed back to the hotel and stayed out chatting on the terrace until the weather closed in and we retired to a little table under cover. Once I'd exhausted the wine, though, and the weather just seemed determined to get worse, we headed back to our rooms and crashed out.

Into the Yungas

One of my other reasons for choosing to stay at the Adventure Brew is the free pancake breakfast. Oh yes, no cold, halfways-stale toast and dulce de fricking leche here, we got pancakes. Thus fortified, I took yet another taxi over to Villa Fatima, where I dumped my main pack with the minibus company and popped over to the road to indulge in more cheap, fresh Bolivian fruit juice. Yum. Eventually, only about 15 minutes late, the company had stopped trying to sell yet more additional tickets and departed, heading via the new road down to Coroico. This would have given me a chance to better enjoy some of the scenery from the early bits of the bike ride, were it not for the truly dismal weather. Ah well, you can't have everything. The final approach to Coroico, from Yolosita (one of the towns down in the valley where the bike rides actually finsh), was dead steep, switch-backing up the side of the ridge on which Coroico perches - as with a fair number of towns in Bolivia, the setting is nothing short of spectacular.

After staggering up the ridge from the bus station to the plaza with my packs on (an activity that would have had me wheezing and on the point of death in La Paz but here just left me a bit hot and bothered), I grabbed some lunch at a little restaurant called Back-Stube (yes, it's co-owned by a German) and then checked myself into the Hostal Kory, a place just over the plaza with a terrace making full use of the amazing views and a decent-sized swimming pool. Luxury indeed, and a single room still only cost me a fiver a night. Bolivia's great! (except some of the buses and roads...)

That afternoon I had a leisurely look around town (it doesn't take long, Coroico's pretty small and the centre is all perched precariously near the ridgeline), sorted my onward ticket to Rurre for Friday through an agent in town, caught up a bit more on my journals, and then went to grab some food at one of the pair of restaurants on the square both called Pizzeria Italia. Utterly unoriginal name, and to be honest the slowest service I've had in Bolivia, which is a reasonable claim to fame. After this I went back to the hotel, where I ended up chatting on the terrace with an Irish couple, Terry and Fran, and a German guy whose name completely escapes me, drinking the odd glass of wine and then heading back to the plaza to play pool above one of the restaurants and then at the Moskkito Bar (their spelling, not mine), which we had to ourselves - normally, that'd be cause to up and leave, but when it means you get to monopolise the pool table, kinda handy. In the end, I left the others there about midnight and headed back, as I was feeling tired again. I must be getting old.

Groundhog Day

An unfortunate case of Groundhog Day. I decided to try and pre-empt the "call back in 15 minutes" syndrome from Amaszonas by actually going to the airport and sitting in front of their desk so that I could not be ignored. So I got up, checked out of Wild Rover (for the 2nd time in 24 hours) and got a radio taxi up to the airport, during which I got yet more Spanish practice in, courtesy of Willy, my affable driver. I have decided that taxis are definitely good for my Spanish. Having arrived at the airport, I was informed by the lass at check-in that, surprise surprise, there were no flights for the morning and I needed to get back to them by 1pm. I informed her that I would be staying in the airport, went to get myself some breakfast from the cafe, and then set up my perch opposite the desk, reading my guidebook. Unfortunately, by around 11am, said lass was coming over and explaining that I had better go back to town, as there were going to be absolutely no flights that day. Bugger.

At this point, I slightly lost my cool and asked the young lady if there were, in fact, going to be any flights to Rurrenabaque that week - unsurprisingly, she replied that she really didn't know what the weather was going to do, and I'd just have to wait or cancel. So I decided to cancel. In a fit of pique, I decided Rurre could go hang, and I'd go to Amazonia in Peru or Ecuador instead, and I hailed another (expensive for Bolivia) taxi back into town, though I changed hostels, reasoning that the Wild Rover would not be the best place for me to make a sensible examination of what needed doing. So instead of a hostel with an Irish pub, I moved to one with a microbrewery, the Adventure Brew. Well, I reckoned it was a step towards good sense, anyway.

A bit of research online revealed the worrying fact that the companies doing equivalent kind of trips to the Amazon region in Peru or Ecuador cost about 3 times as much. Hmmm, thinks I, maybe I have to start thinking the unthinkable and considering the bus ride to Rurre. So I went to chat with the lady at the in-house travel agency at Adventure Brew, who commiserated for my suffering but advised me that at this time of year, maybe 80% of Amszonas' flights get cancelled or moved about for one reason or another. She also advised that the bus to Rurre could be just a bit uncomfortable, or it could be hellish, but realistically it was about the only option I had. So, order of business for the afternoon became (1) go and see the pesky airline and get my refund done and (2) sort myself a bus ticket.

The first item on the list immediately ran foul of siesta, as the office was closed for lunch when I got there. Grumbling about what else could go wrong, I headed off in search of refeshment myself and, disdaining the multitude of offerings of fried chicken, ended up in a little Chinese place called El Dragon Dorado, which was very helpfully showing the Arsenal - Villareal game from the Champions League, so I got a cheap and tasty meal and to watch some football. Clearly things were getting better. They got better yet at Amaszonas, where they helpfully offered to refund just the outbound half of my ticket, and keep the return valid, with a free change of date, meaning I could still hope upon hope that I would only have to take the bus one way.

Now, those of you who read these pages regularly will no doubt be wandering, after all the bus journeys I have done this trip, what had me so spooked about doing another one - after all, a 20-hour bus journey is a 20-hour bus journey, right? Erm, wrong. The road to Rurrenabaque makes use of the parts of the World's Most Dangerous Road which are still in the condition that led to that name being awarded, and then on bumpy, rutted, unsealed roads across the wilds of northern lowland Bolivia. And the buses are pretty poor. Not horrific, not actual chicken-bus poor, but nothing like the attempts at comfort and luxury to be found on mainstream routes. Certainly not something I would want to subject myself to overnight. But it was that, pay through the nose later, or give up on seeing anything of Amazonia. So I resolved to bite the bullet and do it.

However, to try and soften the blow a wee bit, I decided to split the journey a little bit in Coroico, a town near the foot of the mountain bike ride, so my next stop was across town in the suburb of Villa Fatima, from whence said buses depart. Or, to be more precise, minibuses, as the Coroico service actually uses my old friend, the Toyota minivan. Luckily, by booking the night before I managed to get the spot in the front next to the driver, drastically increasing the possibility that I would arrive in Coroico still able to make use of my legs. Having spent much of the afternoon organising this, I hopped in another cab back to the hostel, and this is where I had the "reverse bump start into oncoming traffic" incident that I mentioned before, which resulted in me walking back the last part, a task that took longer than expected due to Plaza Murillo (the square by Parliament and the Presidential Palace) being closed off by riot police due to some of the frequent demonstrations here.

Back at the hostel, I got chatting with a Peruvian guy who had studied in the US called Edi, and a Yank named Pete, a conversation which continued later in the hostel bar, where I got my complimentary nightly glass of their microbrew beer. The company is called Saya, and they brew a handful of beers, of which I tried three that night, the Colonial (they call it a Kolsch, I call it a light summer ale), the Negra (they call it a Bock, I call it mmmm...Malty) and the Stout. I also partook in the night's bar activity, which was Movie Charades - they split us punters into two groups and we had to take it in turns to act out movies picked from a hat. There were supposed to be "punishment shots" when we got things wrong, but everyone got them right for about the first 5 rounds, so they decided to give us the shots anyway! In the end, our team sealed a narrow victory, helped by some truly inspiring mummery (I was quite proud that it only took them about 15 seconds to get me doing "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"!). Some of the guys headed on after this, inspired by Pete's claim that he knew "a really good seedy bar" nearby, whilst I had one of my occasional moments of good sense and headed for the sack.

Cancelled departure

A frustrating day. I got up, packed, checked out and was ready to go to the airport to get my flight to Rurrenabaque. However, on checking with reception, I found that, as happens quite often, the flights were not operating as normal that day. This is principally because Rurre airfield is, in fact, a field. So when it gets soggy, it's not safe to operate a plane from it. Obviously. The airline informed reception that we should check back around 1pm, when they would have the forecast for the afternoon in and have a better idea if any flights would be going. So I headed off to get in some internet time and Skype home. Back at the hostel, I ended up liaising with their travel desk rather than reception, who seemed to get the response, every time they rung Amaszonas, of "not sure yet, call us back in 15 minutes". This went on, on and off, until around 4pm, by which time it was obvious I would not be flying that day, but the airline tried to put me on the 0615 flight the next morning - I refused this and, after some haggling (during which I threatened to cancel the ticket and rebook through the hostel, who showed seats available), they agreed to put me on the 1105 flight the next day. Deja vu. Luckily for me, the laundry service at the hostel was running late, so I just managed to chuck the entire contents of my bag in the wash. I then headed over to the market area to the Vertigo shop, where I picked up my CD of pictures from the trip, then had a look around before grabbing some food at a little Chinese place called Jackie Chan's (yes, really!) and heading back to the hostel.

Turns out Monday night at Wild Rover is Quiz Night. I caught up in the bar with Trif and Cec, two fellow Brits whom I'd originally encountered in Sucre, and when Trif headed off to play pool (after a disagreement with Cec and I over the nature of addictions - don't ask, you don't want to know) we were joined by two other English girls, Amy and Rosie. Stuck for inspiration for a team name, we had a stroke of genius and acronymised or names - Cecily, Rosie, Amy, Pat. CRAP. Had a nice ring to it. Such a nice ring, in fact, that we won the prize for best team name and got given a round of shots for it. Sadly, we didn't win the actual quiz, our academic skills unfortunately being slightly surprisingly let down by a sub-par limbo display by Rosie. At any rate, a fun night was had, and I once again gave in to my less-sober instincts and went on for a post-hostel-closing drink, although this time I was a wee bit more sensible and made it home safe and sound in time to get a reasonable amount of sleep before another attempt at getting my flight.

The World's Most Dangerous Road

Once again reminded of the things I make myself do for fun whilst travelling that I'd never do normally, I was out of the hostel by 6:30am on a Sunday, headed for the rendez-vous of my cycling group at a little cafe called Snack Cordillera. Having been ultra-organised, turns out I was slightly early and had in fact arrived at the same time as the owner, who was just opening up. I got sat down at a table whilst he carried on setting up, and thus experienced a slight sigh of resignation when three loud, very obviously Israeli (this will make sense if you have ever encountered them whilst backpacking) lads came in and sat down at my table. Oh dear. Nothing against individual Israelis, but put them in packs and they can be utter horrors: rude, pushy, obviously insensitive to locals and quite happy to jabber loudly at each other in Hebrew the entire time, freezing out anyone else in the vicinity. And then, salvation - turns out they are with the other company that the proprietor does breakfast for, Radical Rides. This becomes even more of a relief when another 4 of them turn up. Meanwhile, I am joined at the Vertigo table by a Brasilian couple, Paolo and Mariana, and two Germans, Johanna and Alex. I also somehow manage, despite being the first there, to be the last to get my food, but such is life.

By around 8am, our guide, Cello, had turned up (his name is actually Marcelo, but since that is also our other guide for the day's name, his name is, as he puts it, "like the big violin") and we loaded into the company's minibus and headed back, ironically, to the Wild Rover, to pick up the remaining 3 cyclists - 3 more Brits, Mark, Dan and Meghan. Meghan almost wasn't going to go because of stomach upsets she'd been having, but as it was their last day in La Paz so she wouldn't have another chance, decided to give it a go. We trundled up through the upper suburbs of La Paz and out towards the pass at La Cumbre, where, at 4,700m altitude under a slate-grey sky, we got kitted out, being equipped with elbow- and knee-pads, full helmets, balaclavas, semi-water-proof over-trousers and flourescent orange safety jackets. Beautiful. Combined effect of this over the top of my own gear was somewhat akin to crossing the Michelin Man with Darth Vader and painting part of the result orange, but such is life - it still wasn't as unflattering as rafting gear usually is. After a relatively short safety briefing, we were off onto the tarmac of the main road that forms the upper part of the ride. The grey overhead soon turned into drizzle, and this, after we had passed the narcotics checkpoint, into something between a light rain and hail which stung anything exposed - I ended up pulling my goggles up from around my neck, reasoning that even though they tended to fog up, this was better than squinting so hard that my eyes were almost closed! Right from the off, I had been within a couple of riders of Marcelo, who was leading the group, a position I was to stay in for the rest of the ride, surprising myself as much as anyone else with the pace I was keeping. It was also lucky, as it meant I was safely ahead of Mark when his bike took a slide out from under him around one bend in the wet - he was fine, got up and kept going, but that was a wake-up call to stay alert and not take anything for granted given the conditions!

Once we reached the Unduluavi tunnel and the place where we had to get our tickets for the road (the local government assesses this fee to help cover repairs to the road and future provision of toilets and the like given that it is now used almost exclusively by cyclists), we loaded the bikes back up onto the roof of the minibus and piled on in for another 10 minutes or so as we negotiated the only slight uphill section of the road. By the time we were ready to offload and suit up again, we were off the pavement and onto the gravel, and we were given a few more safety pointers before heading out again. And this, to be honest, is the more spectacular part of the trip, as the road, sometimes easily two lanes wide, sometimes scarcely one, always rough gravel, and at times with 400-500m vertical drops off to the side, snakes and twists down the side of the mountain. It is generally acknowledged that there are only two ways to go down: pretty slow, or pretty fast. The former has the obvious advantage of more reaction time, the latter means that you are close behind the guide and hence can see which line he is taking, and also catch any of the hand-signals he gives out for information and warning. I went firmly for the latter approach and loved every minute of it, despite one or two moments when I hit loose rocks with my rear wheel or slid slightly on the gravel - the sensation of speed was amazing, and it also meant that I got a chance to admire the scenery somewhat whenever we occasionally stopped to allow the group to bunch back together after getting strung out. We had snacks at one point, and sandwiches for a kind of light brunch just across from some of the waterfalls that fall across the road, one of the more interesting hazards to navigate! I also had one of my periodic nosebleeds then, which slightly alarmed the guides, but I explained somehow in broken Spanish that I get them a lot and they clear up quickly, and when it did, that was all alright.

After that break, we had a few sections on the flat, where I discovered that downhill bikes aren't really that well set up for such exertions, being designed principally to cushion the bumps as you let gravity do its work. Still, we made it through those, and the sun, which had been teasing us for much of the morning, had now finally broken through properly, so I was glad to have divested myself of most of the less-necessary outer layers of clothing that had served their purpose of stopping me freezing on the upper road. The dust was also picking up as we got to drier parts of the road, and we had the added joy of crossing a couple of streams. I was slightly put out when, on the last one of these and only five minutes from the end, my chain broke but they popped me onto Marcelo's bike (it wasn't really worth bringing the spare down off the roof at this point) so I could finish the ride, down at the depths of 1,100m. At the end, we handed back our bikes and all of our kit, and then took advantage of the little local stand selling cold beer, a most welcome offering. Once all the kit was stowed, we were driven to a little local hotel where we could have showers and make use of the (slightly green-looking) pool to refresh ourselves, and also take advantage of the late buffet lunch on offer. Unfortunately, I found out later that I had also served as lunch, for the local sandfly population, but such is life. Somewhat bushed after a long day, I actually managed to doze for some of the trip back up to La Paz (taking the new, paved road, not the one we had come down), before waking and catching some of Cello's tales of events and accidents on the road over the years (he's been guiding there for 7 years now, working for 3 of the companies). I continued my over-consumption of food for the day by having the barbecue back at the Rover, and then ended up discussing the Troubles in Northern Ireland with an American lass from Boston called Hayley, which was interesting, but reinforced my policy from back at Uni that one should never discuss politics, religion, football or Northern Ireland with strangers....

Sick as a dawg

Ow. The logical corollary of my over-enthusiastic revels was that when I finally woke up on the Saturday, I felt in no fit state to do anything even remotely requiring physical exertion - my wondrous immunity to alcohol-related headaches continues, but when your stomach is doing somersaults and you have all the energy and willpower of a day-old puppy, this isn't the biggest of compensations. I finally dragged myself out and wandered around town for a bit, giving in to my cravings by having lunch in Oliver's Travels, the self-proclaimed "5th best bar in La Paz" and "proudly 100% fake English pub", where I had fish and chips. After that I wandered around part of the markets, before deciding arbitrarily that since I was still feeling pretty awful later afternoon, and would thus almost certainly not be drinking later, Sunday would be the obvious day to do "The World's Most Dangerous Road", the mountain bike trip down the slopes east of La Paz. So I went around checking out a few of the companies offering the trip before finally deciding on Vertigo (www.vertigobiking.com), where I gave in to temptation and signed up. Then went in search of an ATM to find the money to pay for the trip, and for my excesses the previous night. This done, I had one of the most unhealthy meals of my time in South America, giving in again to the grease cravings of the morning after and getting food from Pollo Copacabana, one of the numerous Bolivian equivalents of KFC which crowd the streets of La Paz (and which, bizarrely, gives you fried banana as well as the deep-fried chicken and chips). Back at the hostel, I had a quick chat with Scott and Jesse, who were engaged in the latest round of what was apparently a long-running chess competition in the bar, had a beer in an attempt to get the benefits of hair of the dog (it failed) and then went to bed early. It is a measure of how knackered I still was that I managed to get off to sleep before 11pm, in spite of the noise from the regular Saturday night party at the bar.

Benders - a bad idea

So, after another hardly-sleep-filled night, we pulled into El Alto, the upper part of La Paz, just after dawn. I shall divert at this point into another of my occasional geography lessons, as La Paz only makes sense when you understand where it is. The city sits in a high-altitude canyon, where the ground drops away 500m or so in a steep incline from the surrounding altiplano, which is at a dizzying 4,000m above sea level. It was built there after the Spanish discovered gold in the stream running down the canyon, and they chose to build on the slopes rather than the flat for the protection it afforded them from the winds of the altiplano. Nowadays, the main city of La Paz itself, with around three-quarters of a million inhabitants, crowds the walls and floor of the canyon in a dizzying blanket of brick and light, whilst El Alto holds around another 800,000, and is the fastest-growing city in the country (and one of the fastest in the whole of South America). The main link between El Alto and La Paz proper is a toll highway which carves down the side of the cliffs, and it was down this route that we rolled with the sun newly up, and I decided that La Paz has to be one of the most stunningly-situated cities I've ever visited.

After taking a cab from the bus terminal to my hostel, I also started on my steadily increasing respect for La Paz cabbies. We in the UK tend to be quite proud of the competence of black cab drivers in London and their need to pass "the knowledge" test, but La Paz's bizarre topography and pervasive one-way system demands a similar level of knowledge. They're also generally quite garrulous and chatty, especially if they find out you can speak a bit of Spanish - given that I was staying in a very Anglophone hostel, the majority of my Spanish-language interaction in La Paz was probably with cabbies (waiters don't count, ordering a meal doesn't actually use much conversational skills). However, it is quite important to be discerning - the official radio cabs are generally well-looked-after and have a very good chance of getting you where you want to go; the "unofficial" ones (basically just private cars with "taxi" stickers on the side!) can be utter pirates. Or can break down whilst halfway up a seriously steep hill, as one I took did, leading to the driver freewheeling backwards into oncoming traffic whilst trying to bump-start the vehicle. Needless to say, after this I have exclusively taken radio taxis.

So, on to my hostel: the Wild Rover. Yes, it's Irish-owned. Big surprise there. It's dorm-only, not private rooms, and it's famous as one of the "party hostels" of La Paz, so basically full of backpackers who are usually either getting drunk, drunk, hungover, or just arrived from a long bus ride or day trip and in need of a drink. Its bar is "unofficially the highest Irish pub in the world", and does fry-ups, shepherd's pie and the like, with a TV showing all football, rugby etc. It's the kind of place that backpacking snobs who can't stand being around too many other gringos and fantasise lovingly about getting off the gringo trail can't stand, and that gap-year or career-break party animals in search of those with similar instincts love. It's bad for your wallet and your liver, and doesn't help your Spanish very much. But it can be very good fun, especially if you're wanting to run loose for a few days. Needless to say, I spent rather more time and money in there than was really good for me, but I had a pretty good time whilst doing so.

Unfortunately, though, one aspect of its being very popular is that if you arrive early morning off a bus there's a fairly strong chance that your bed won't yet be available, so you end up, as I did, hanging around the hostel's common areas in a state rapidly approaching that of an extra in Shaun of the Dead, in limbo. After fighting with some ridiculously slow e-mail at a place around the corner, eating some of the usual backpacker breakfast in Bolivia of bread and jam, I was comforted by the appearance around lunchtime of Ben and Dee, my friends from travelling in northern Argentina, who had got back from the jungle the previous day. And who, on finding the bar in my hostel, decided that they would have a drink. And would I join them? Oh dear, there goes what little is left of my willpower. I had a beer. Finally my bed became available, and I could put my bags in there, but instead of following my original plan and getting some kip, I decided to carry on drinking with my mates, and the two Yanks, Jesse and Scott, from my bus, who had also miraculously appeared at the Rover (along with an Aussie lass, Nicole, who it turned out was on my glacier trip in Calafate, and Sarah, the English girl who was in my dorm in Salta the night after Ben and Dee left - the Wild Rover is also a worryingly big nexus on the "it's a small world" side of travelling). So Ben, Dee, Scott, Jesse and I took a break from drinking mid-afternoon to go up to one of the miradors (lookouts) over town by taxi, then wandered back down and agreed to meet up for a drink later that evening - I was joining Scott, Jesse, Sarah, Nicole and two other girls they had been travelling with (Karolin, a German, and Kate, an English lass on her gap year) and going for a curry (there is a British-Indian curry house in La Paz, the Star of India...), a trip which Ben and Dee would have joined had they not already been there the previous night!

The curry was a welcome attempt at a flavour of home, although the Naan bread was sadly disappointing, and I was distressed that I found the Madras really quite hot, possibly reflecting a fall in my spice tolerances whist away - Argentina in particular just does not do spicy food. As might be expected, we had a few more beers with the food, I was less-than-surprised to see half my salt flats tour turn up for a meal as well, Ben and Dee popped in after their food to say an emotional farewell (although as Dee is planning on moving to Bristol, there's a fair chance I'll see them again before too long!) and then it was back to the Rover. Where we drank a bit more, and then got into the spirit of the "Fools" fancy dress party. Unfortunately, the better attempts at jester costumes and the like had already gone from the dress-up cupboard, so I ended up wearing a green dress and a santa hat over my other gear. It is a probably a measure of quite how drunk I was getting that I apparently gleefully described myself to one lass as "Maid Marian's Ugly Transvestite Cousin". By 1:30am, I was suitably drunk that I was persuaded (I don't think it took too much effort) to go on to a late bar called Traffic. A place from which I eventually staggered home, in possibly one of the dumber acts of my time travelling, around 4 in the morning. Eeeurgh.

¡Libertad!

Hostelling International Sucre are to be commended for being one of the relatively rare breed of hostel that takes into account its guest's likely behaviours when setting its rules on check-out. Noon is a much more sensible check-out time than 9:30am or some of the other things I have been quoted by hostels down the years. Means you can lie in until 10:30 or 11 if you've been out, and still get out of the room in time. So I was feeling in a remarkably cheery mood as I popped my bags into storage at the hostel for the afternoon and went into the city for a last bit of exploring before my bus out of town. First stop was the Mercado Central (Central Market) where I again sampled the remarkably cheap and filling local food, and then I raided the fresh juice bars, where I got a very nice freshly-squeezed orange and pineapple juice for about 60p. That's one thing I will really miss about Bolivia - the wide availability of cheap, fresh fruit juices! The absolute antithesis of Chile, where anything that looks like juice in a supermarket is more like very sugary squash...

Having refuelled myself for the day, and banished any lingering demons from the previous night's beer intake, I headed over to the main Plaza, intending to go to the Casa de la Libertad (Liberty House museum), only to find that it was closed over lunch, so I popped back to my favourite internet cafe, where I was surprised to meet Jenny and Nadia, the two Irish girls from my unintended Karaoke-fuelled evening a couple of nights previously - I'd thought they had left town, but no, they were still there, held by the gravitational pull of large quantities of alcohol. At any rate, having caught up quickly with them, I headed back to my intended destination and had a look around the site of the signing of Bolivia's Declaration of Independence in 1825. The building itself was originally part of the Jesuit University, parts of it having been built over 400 years ago. It's beautifully whitewashed, like almost all public buildings in Sucre, such that on a sunny day the reflected light within the courtyards is quite dazzling. It's all signed in Spanish with nothing in English, but I was gratified to find that I could understand the majority of what was happening anyway. One stereotype that held up to a large extent was quite how many of the numerous Presidential portraits in the Hall of the Senate had captions beginning "General...". Quite a difference from the current incumbent, Evo, references to whom appear in graffiti all over Bolivia, the majority positive but a sizeable smattering of negative stuff as well. There was also an interesting temporary exhibit on the War of the Pacific, the struggle in the late 19th Century which saw Bolivia lose its only coastal territories to Chile, and about which the Bolivians are, not terribly surprisingly, really rather bitter. It still gets mentions in newspaper comments on relations between the countries, and pretty much every Bolivian Presidential candidate vows to work towards the return of El Litoral. Bolivia even still maintains the staff of a navy, despite not having a coastline (if you don't include the shores of Lake Titicaca)!

Fortified by a revised knowledge of Bolivian history, I finished the afternoon by finally getting the required padded envelope, finding the post office and sending hom the backups of my photo DVDs from the trip thus far. I then headed back to the hostel, walking in the end because I couldn't find where the bloody micro-buses were supposed to go from, and thus getting to really appreciate how much it had been worth the 5 Bs it cost me each time I got a cab back in the middle of the night! There was a fair bit of steepness involved. I then reclaimed my bags and waddled back down to the bus station, where I checked my main pack in and went in search of some snackage - I had a premonition that food on even a cama service in Bolivia would be either poor or non-existent (I was right). Waiting around by the bus, I got chatting briefly with a couple of Americans, Scott and Jesse, but once on the bus they were a fair bit farther back so we weren't able to talk any more. We were "treated" to a series of very loud (dubbed in Spanish) films, neither of which I can actually remember, and I struggled as ever for sleep. This wasn't helped much by the "rest stop" we made at 2am, to survive which I ended up getting a freshly-made fried-egg-and-chip sandwich from a little old lady running a stand in the middle of the night at the point various of the buses crossed paths between Sucre and La Paz. What a job...

Justifiable Schadenfreude (take that, Diego!)

I awoke at 1pm, praising whatever Gods keep an eye on errant, alcoholic backpackers for leaving me still the sole occupant of my dorm. After making myself feel slightly more human, I headed into town and once more to Florin, where I had a late brunch (ok, it was lunch - you can't have brunch at 3pm really...) watching the game in the company of a sizeable portion of the British nationals currently in the city. Not the best game of football England will ever play, but we won. The crowning joy, though, was that we caught the end of the Bolivia vs Argentina game. We'd seen quarter of an hour or so of it at half-time, in which we caught the equalizer that brought the Argentines back to 1-1. At that point, many of us thought that they were bound to go on and win from there. So we were very pleasantly surprised to see the scoreline standing at 4-1 to Bolivia when we switched over after the England game. When the fifth and sixth Bolivian goals went in, with Diego Maradona looking ever more like a toad that has swallowed something deeply unpleasant, there was much rejoicing.

In order to avoid the evening turning into quite such a messy one as the previous night, I took a break from the beers to go and climb up the hill to the mirador by the La Recoleta monastery, which gives fantastic views back over the city - the whole "white city" name is due to the majority of buildings across the centre of the city being painted white, with red tile roofs, making for quite a striking vista. After that I ambled back into town, went back to my internet cafe from the previous day and finished uploading my photos from northern Argentina onto Facebook. I then headed over to Florin again, around 10pm, to meet up with Stephen and Mike, two of the lads I'd been watching the footie with, and have a cheeky Happy Hour drink or two. They had been joined by Megan, a Canadian girl who'd done her salt flats tour at the same time as me, and who had been travelling with a group of three other English lads. I have to admit they were not quite as much to my liking, reminding me a bit too much of some of the sloaney types who colonise Bristol Uni to an unhealthy degree. We then joined an American couple, Kevin and Erin, and a couple of Peruvians, Jesus and Marcelo. Erin and I ended up chatting with Jesus, who was a really nice guy, and it was quite nice to realise I'd now got to the point where I could have a conversation all in Spanish with someone, however halting my words might sometimes be.

Once everybody had fed and we'd run out of happy hour, we moved along to another of the Dutch-owned bars (the fact it's called Amsterdam is a clue...), where there were some local musicians playing folclore - so flutes, pipes,miniature ukelele-like guitars, etc etc. In the end, it came down to Kevin, Erin and I hanging around the longest, after the set had finished and the bar had technically closed, drumming along on the tables while the flautist spun up another tune, and drinking with the band and the owner. And then it was 4am. Weird how that happens. So I went back to my hostel and my bed.