Pampas Jungle

The jungle was incredible and so much fun. We saw lots of animals, got bitten to death by mosquitos, lounged around in hammocks and spent most of our days on a wooden motorised canoe.

Day 1:

Bit shocked from the temperature change from La Paz to Rurrenebeque, we got out our summer clothes and bikinis to start out trip. First we had a three hour jeep ride to a small village close to the river we were going to be travelleing down. We were sitting in the back, and I definately had the worst seat by far as when stepping out of the jeep, I realised I could not be that tanned, and my hair had certainly not gone prematurely grey in the space of a few hours... The dust made us so dirty, especially because our driver liked to overtake huge vans, that left behind massive clouds of dust that we obviously had to drive through in order to overtake. Also, not very good for asthmatics!
After lunch we had a leisurely ride down the river in our canoe. We also went for a swim, jumping off our boat to wash off all that dirt. Only later did we discover the other groups (which consisted of 7 people we knew from North London, weirdly enough) that they had seen several aligators in the same waters as we'd just been swimming!!
We also saw eagles, herrons, falcons, a rare toucan, tortoises, pink dolphins and a whole group of yellow monkeys! The monkeys were so cute, and one jumped onto our boat, our guide Antonio drove our boat right into the banks bushes so we were almost touching them.
We went to a field where the boys played football and we watched the sunset.
After dinner - much the same, rice and chicken, we went in the pitch black on our canoe in search of alligators and caymen. With a torch all you can see are two bright red eyes. It was pretty scary sometimes because you have no idea where they are under the water... But it was really fun, apart from the mozzzziieess.

Day 2:
On the second day we basically walked through the pampas (swamps)- an anaconda habitat in search of snakes and other creatures... Unfortunately, despite our best efforts we didn't see any anacondas because the water level was so high. But we did see a few snakes skins and an owl. It was blazing hot and the walk was incredibly tiring. Tilly said 'it was the worst day of her life' or something along those lines... this was also because we were wearing wellies that all had holes in them so there was no chance of our feet staying dry. And walking through thigh height water (also depending on how tall you are...!) amongst the reeds with MONSTER MOSQUITOS BITING THROUGH YOUR LEGGINGS (literally there were about 20 on our bums the whole time- deet does not work) was not the funnest thing we've ever done. But, it was an experience.
And lunch and lying on hammocks reading books afterwards was well deserved.

Day 3:
We had the option of waking up at 5am and seeing the sun rise and go bird watching, but we were all pretty knackered and sick of being biten by that point that we decided to get up later! On the last day we basically spent the whole morning swimming with pink dolphins and sunbathing on the boat. I stayed in the water for theeee longest amount of time, treading water and even attempted Butterfly stroke, swimming towards the dolphins, but the closest I came to one was probably 10metres. Still, it was amazing to be so close. But incredibly hard to take pictures of.


In a few days we'll be going to a place called Santa Cruz to volunteer at Ambue Ari Parque with animals for two weeks...

http://www.intiwarayassi.org/articles/volunteer_animal_refuge/volunteer_at_ambue.html

There is no electricity there so don´t get scared of the lack of blogging or facebooking for a while.

LA PAZ

We´ve been in the worlds highest capital city (3660m) for about a week now. It´s an amazing city, nestled in the mountains, well its kindof oversprawling up the mountains as well... It´s quite sunny here being quite high up, but at night it´s freeezing and I can feel my tan gradually fading away as we move into winter :(

The famous ´Witches Market´ is basically a few shops down a street selling dried llama babies, old sheep fingernails, dried flowers, cactus' and weeds... but we've managed to buy some more goodies- bags, purses, rings, cocoa leaves etc.

We mountainbiked down the ´Worlds Most Dangerous Road' which was lots of fun. Only two people fell off their bikes, one due to a broken chain, and one due to a collision round a corner. So no-one died. At the top it was so cold, even with our super cool biking gear on, and at one point when we were in the middle of a cloud, our sunglasses got so steamed up we couldn´t see a thing... But at the bottom when we emerged from the fog, it was so beautiful and hot. Though we did get very wet riding through streams and waterfalls and the beer at the bottom was well deserved. (and I used to think the Camel Trail in Cornwall was hard!!)

We´re going to the Amazon tomorrow. Enduring a 24hr bus ride there thats meant to be like Death Road, just a bit wider... It was a 80Bs bus ride there versus a 500Bs flight so we went for the budget option. Don´t know how much I´ll regret it later, but Tilly is adament about taking the bus... So in the jungle we can swim with pink dolphins, ride on canoes down the river, see anacondas on night treks etc. But more of that to come!

Missing you all so much! Can't believe it's been 2 months since we last saw you all! xxxxxxxxxx