Arrived Copacabana on the shores of lake Titicaca excited to have finally reached my destination: Bolivia. It had been a week of bussing, with an altogether 96 hours in 10 different buses. I had seen my norwegian friends and my old spanish teacher in Cuenca, Ecuador, and stayed another night in the old beloved Arequipa, Peru. It had been exhausting, but interesting. The next morning I headed out to the island of the sun to do some trekking. Being now in a major backpacking and tourist destination, I wasn't alone. Definately on the beaten track again. And this is what I had been looking forward to for the last week in all those buses: Meeting the hordes of backpackers that was rumoured to hang about in this country. The boat trip out to the island was filled with amazing views of the lake. It's a gigantic lake, couldn't see over to the far side of it. So the feeling of being in the sea was very strong, especially as we passed along the shores of the island which all looked like the shores of the mediterranean sea. But no, this is a lake. On 3800 meters above sea level. There is llamas walking about everywhere. And it's quiet. As I met up with a group of travellers, two dutch girls and an australian guy, we all agreed on this: This place has to be experienced!

Little did I know at the time that theese dutch girls would stick around for over a month, but I took a liking to them very quickly. Trekked the island, had some beers to a disappointing sunset(damn clouds) and took and early night. Trekking in this hell of UV beams from the sun at 3800msl had taken its toll, and it was freezing cold. Next morning the aussie guy, Chris, had a pretty s***ty stomach so we missed our because of this. The girls were nice enough to leave us behind though, so we had a few hours stuck on the island until the next one left. Arriving Copacabana again we realized that the girls had already gone to La Paz and we followed. Arriving La Paz on a "tourist bus" as they call them, obviously full of backpackers and such, taxidrivers jumped us as we got out. Chris knew about a hostel and so we took a taxi. About 15 minutes later we found ourselves full of adrenaline alone in a dark backalley of the outskirts of the city. We had just been robbed. A fake undercovered police officer had entered the taxi and told us he was doing a check. The taxidriver told us that this was normal, but we already sensed that this is not right. Something was definately wrong and we just wanted to get the hell out of the car, but with our backpacks in the trunk we couldn't as this would meen risking ALL our stuff. So the situation aggravated and the police guy was angry, and we slowly realized that of course the taxi driver was a part of the scheme. They stopped at this back alley, got my camera and Chris' laptop, gave us our backpacks and flew around the corner with the doors still open. It was that old feeling of "that did not just happen". But it had. We were shaken, but alright, and quickly agreed that that could have gone SO much worse. Having recently lost my passport, I was so glad it didn't happen again. The camera can be bought here as well, and I only lost a few pictures from Titikaka, but my friends still had theirs so no worries. That night we met the girls again at the hostel for a few beers and how-we-got-robbed storytelling. The next day Chris left and we all moved to another hostel, hostel Loki La Paz. The biggest hostel I've ever stayed in. 200 backpackers. We walked about the city and had quite a few Pacenjas. Tuesday night we went to see a french DJ, David Guetta. The concert was great, in a huge statium set around in the steep mountains. We had a great time and was home about 3 am. 6am we were on the road again. We had packed all our stuff before leaving for the concert, and this time we were heading up the mountain. At 4600msl we had breakfast and hot chocolate, amongst the snow and the llamas up there. Got on our bikes and headed into the mist. An hour or so later we was on the "worlds most dangerous road". Before the new road was constructed, this was the road with the most casualties in the world, giving it its name. Now it is almost free of traffic, except for those "crazy" tourists that keep going down on it on mountain bikes. It wasn't really that scary, more just fun. We were covered by mist and rain almost the whole way, making it a littlebit more scary not seing how far it was down the cliffs we were passing. Having survived the whole thing, being now "survivors of the DEATH ROAD" we jumped in a pool and had a lovely lunch down in plain jungle. The other tourists left for la paz, but the dutch girls and myself got down by the side of the road waiting for a passing bus from la paz. We were going into the jungle, with final destination Rurrenabaque, famous for its wildlife tours and jungle. The old piece of crap of a bus finally arrived and we payed our 9 dollars of 14 hours, the so far cheapest bus of my travels. Little did we know that the road ahead was the continuation of that old death road, this time without a brand new nice deroute. It was the scariest busride of my life. No gardrails. a 3 meter wide dirt road. Old, crappy bus going way to fast. Vertical cliffs of hundreds of meters cm away, not even kidding. And not a few times did we had to stop, back up and position ourselves as close to the edge as possible to let the big trucks pass on the inside. Not knowing wether I wanted to sit on the outside, looking at the stunning landscapes of the valley underneath us or be on the inside ready to jump out of the window when the soil we were standing on would give in, I couldn't deside if this was my worst busride or my most awesome busride ever. I finally desided on the latter, as we arrived Rurrenabaque safe and sound the next day. Now we really felt like survivors. Next mission was to find a group for a boattrip back to la paz, as we didn't want to go back on that bus for the 20-some hours return, and flights is kind of out of the question. After a whole day of running about, talking to every tourist we saw, we had a group of 5 people, just missing out one to complete the minimum of 6. Next morning we got on a tour to the Pampas, a wetland area around here famous for its wildlife. We spent 2 whole days on a boat touring up and down the river looking at aligators, caimans, big rodent Capybaras, loads of pink dolphins, monkeys, turtles and birds(even saw a wild ostrich!). 2 beautiful tucans landed in a tree right next to our camp and held a little show for us in the evening sun. I was mesmerized, I love these birds, my hand down favorite. We also had our own alligator right next to the camp, Pedro. Pedro is an old alligator that is always there, 10 meters away from the hammocks we would lay in. But they're not aggressive the alligators. Worse is the black caiman, a bigger, stronger and a lot more dangerous species of krokodile. So when we one night, sitting around the bonfire heard a huge splash not more than 10 meters away we were startled. We got our flashlights and flashed down into the water and there was two big blue caiman eyes looking straight back at us. Needless to say that that night we checked the river a littlebit more than usual, holding our breaths everytime we couldn't find the big blue eyes.

Pedro the Private aligator Anaconda hunt

The anaconda search the second didn't turn out, not even a small one was to be found. Wouldn't have sent my mom out to where we were though, walking in muddy water covered with huge grass, with alligators lurking around in the small waterholes, looking searching for the biggest snake in the world. I don't think any mom would even approve us going there, but the guides said they hadn't had accidents, so what the hell. Scariest thing we saw was an enormeous swarm of bees passing over our heads, making a profound buzzingsound that creeped the hell out of me. As we heard them, our guide whispered loud "get down and keep quite!". Supposedly these swarms attacks loud tourists. I don't blame them. Our stay in the pampas had been awesome and we had seen what was to be seen. Exept for the anaconda and the big cats, but those are rare sights even here. Back in Rurre we were glad that our group had now grown to 7, so we were ready to go the next morning. The group consisted of a couple from Switzerland and 5 lonely travellers from Holland, Israel and Norway. A captain, two guides and a cook greated us in the morning and in our motorized canoe we were off towards La Paz. First night we spend close to the riverside in plain rainforest. Put up our plastic roof and our mosquitonets and had some food. Our guide took us for a walk through the jungle and I got that same feeling that we had in the jungle of Peru. The forest is so quite and all you hear is birds up at the canopy. Down on the floor it is almost no sunlight, just dead leaves everywhere and no animals are seen. Unless you are lucky. We got a littlebit of luck as a monkey ant eater was going about in the trees right above our camp. The guide said they had been looking for this animal for a year, and the fact that it was now in our camp made him quite excited. Anyways, we had bought a bag of the freshest cacao you can get for money from some local indians along the way and I must say it was excellent!! No suger, no nothing, just water and fresh cacao. Tasted just like a great hot chocolate and with some rum in it we had a great night in the jungle with our candle lights and the sounds of the nocturnal insects all around. Even saw glimpts of stars through the canopy and one of the songs of lionking came creeping into my head. And the mood was less magical by our guides stories about this place. He had almost died here after being bitten by a very venomous snake. And last year they had had a visit from a scary friend, IN the camp. The jaguar had been here, sniffing around on some sleeping backpackers. Scary and beautiful. The mood was set.

Our camp and our boat for 4 days

Next day it was raining. Hard. The whole day. Almost. We were now out of the deep flat rainforest and the mountains we were heading into made it rain. At around 2pm we had a stop next to a beautiful waterfall with a great little natural swimmingpool underneath it. The thing was that the heavy rain made the waterfall big, brown and ugly and the waterpool would have drowned us in 10 seconds if we jumped in, so we stood under a rock formation having our lunch while being eaten by bugs. Some of us would be bothered by those bites for another month. But at the time, a warm bottle of vodka made us blissful and happy, even though we did take notion that "el capitan" drank the most of us all. He drove the boat better then ever though, and a few hours later we were at a big beach for our second night. Here we tried some fishing without luck and we almost got drowned as the river rose rapidly by the heavy rainfall, but all in all a quiet night around the bonfire. Next day was very nice. We almost spent the whole day on the boat, except for a visit to a this time clean waterfall where we swam about and jumped around for a while until we had to leave. We were now out of the national parks and reserves so we saw more people alongside the river. And they were all there on one mission. Gold. We saw everything from people searching gold by hand to big machinedriven mines on the riverside and the beaty of the wilderness was gone. We camped on a hill the last night, and with a little bit too much leftover tequila and vodka we got all good and drunk around the bonfire before we crept into our mosquitonets for the night. Next day was a plain boatride to the road and a jeeptour from there. The deathroad we had been so scared on on the way down was alot less frightenins from a new jeep on the inside of the road and with almost no traffic. Poor Kirsten, one of the dutch amigas, was having a great time with a huge hangover and insectbites on each part of her body. Given her situation, puking out of the window and all, she didn't complain too much and we have to give her credit for that! Back in La Paz we had great warm showers and 2 days doing not too much. I walked around and finally found the market where they sell cameras and I got a new one. We slowly found out what to do, and that saturday night, the 26th of november we left La Paz heading south. Both the dutch guy and the swiss couple had left, so it was four of us. Tal(israeli), Lizzy and Kirsten(dutch) and myself. We got on a bus heading to Sucre, mostly because I had read about a dinosaur park there and I love dinosaurs, and left behind some mostly awesome days. Now heading into new adventures, travelling fast. I realized that my trip was seriously moving towards the end having not even 3 weeks left. So much left to do, and it would show that my last three weeks meant travelling to a new place EVERY day.

City of La Paz and statue of Mr Che Guevara