The bungee jump was successful, in every way. For starters, the place was open. There were five of us, and we all escaped (largely) unharmed. It was a great buzz, although there is split second where I was thinking "What the hell am I doing?", before you just have to empty your mind and enjoy the free fall.
We left that evening for our next country - Bolivia. We arrived in Copacabana and we not all that impressed. We joked that the town was probably run by dogs, because after 8PM thats all you see on the street. Maybe it was closer to the truth than we thought!
But we were there for a reason - to visit the islands on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. We took a trip to Isla del Sol, the birthplace of the sun according to the Incan religion, landing on the north port. We hiked down the island to the south port, in blazing sun, over about four hours, stopping for the night in a hostel over looking the lake. We swam in the lake on both days, and it was bloody freezing - something we are all used to thanks to Irish beaches.
We left Lake Copacabana moving onto La Paz, the highest capital city in the world. La Paz is a big, dirty city with little charm. It also didnt live up to its reputation as a big party city, being pretty quiet on the Friday night. Even the Witches Market, for which La Paz is pretty famous, was a let down - its not even a market, but a street of shops. But there was one thing we were interested in doing - Death Road.
Death Road, or the World's Most Dangerous Road as it is marketed as, is famous for having the most amount of deaths on it per annum. Its no longer used as proper route for cars and trucks, with a new, safer road built a few years ago, but you can still rent mountain bikes and cycle down it. Its still dangerous too, taking over 18 lives in the last 8 years, and the latest was a Japanese girl about two months ago. Its lucky Ive done this trip already, as I can only imagine what Mum is thinking!
Anyway, we rented bikes and took off downhill, whizzing around corners that had drops of anything from 60m to 200m over their edge. If you stopped to think about it, or found yourself gazing at the scenery, then you could easily take a wrong turn. But thankfully we all kept our eyes on the road and made it safetly down in about four hours.
The company we chose, Gravity, have you finish up in an animal sanctuary, where you spend a few hours with birds of all kinds, several species of monkey, and plenty of dogs. The sanctuary also had one of the best showers we've been in so far!
After the showers and food, we were off ziplining. Three ziplines are set up across the Death Road and the valley it goes through, and we whizzed our way across each one, not without small injuries though. Sean & I both went colliding with the spring that is meant as a last resort to stop you!
San Pedro prison is a pretty famous landmark of La Paz. Its a very strange setup in that prisoners have to buy everything. If you dont have money, you cant buy a decent cell, decent clothes or decent food. The families of prisoners end up living in the prison with them, and the children can be seen leaving everyday to go to school. There is a book called 'Marching Powder' which tells the story of a British man who is put in the prison, but ends up making his money by giving tours to Gringos. We set out to get one of these tours, although its not as easy as rocking up to the door and knocking - this is South America, and bribes are necessary in some places. We got the details of a former inmate and emailed him, but he didnt get back to us until the day before we left, looking to meet us the following evening with 150Bs for bribing the warden. With Sean having left the city to go south, and Callanan not wanting to get a tour, I wasnt feeling up to entering a prison on my own, at night, so there was no tour.
But, after a few more days in La Paz, we were definitely ready to move on. We would have left earlier if we had been able to secure a flight to Rurrenabaque when we wanted, but on Wednesday morning we were out of there.
Rurrenabaque is a village north of La Paz, on the other side of the Andes, in the Amazon basin. We were going here to take a trip into the Pampas, a large area of savannah that is the gateway to the Bolivian Amazon. On the flight, we met some friends, who told us about this legendary French bakery where we should go for breakfast - and it really is legendary! We were all stuffed upon leaving, having spent no more than €2 each, vowing to return - which of course we did.
It was a bumpy 3 hours until we got to the boat - probably the bumpiest road of my life - at Santa Rosa, on the Yacuma River. There we began our lazy trip down the river to the ecolodge, being treated to an abundance of wildlife - caimans (a type of alligator), capybaras (the largest rodent in the world), piranhas, turtles, herons, toucans, storks, falcons, hawks, kingfishers, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, bats and pink dolphins. Oh, and plenty of mosquitos.
We got a couple of treats along the way too. Our first was that we witnessed the aftermath of a caiman fight. A large, black caiman (which are also cannibals), around three metres in length, attacked a smaller, spectacled caiman, who ended up limping pretty badly. We also went swimming - yes, swimming in caiman and piranha infested waters. The secret? Dolphins. They keep away both the caiman and the piranhas, letting you cool down in the silty brown water.
On day two we went anaconda hunting. In this region they can be between 2 and 7 metres long. We walked for four hours through the grasslands and the swamps, in the blazing heat. The swamp at times came up past my knee - which was annoying as my wellys only came to below my knee. Alas, we didnt find any anacondas. But this wasnt the end of the world - it showed that the company we went with arent ones to keep a snake in a bag and release it just before the tourists turn the corner. That afternoon we were off piranha fishing. Most of us managed to catch at least one, and I managed to catch the biggest one of the day. The teeth are as razor sharp as you would expect. Another ecological bonus was that we didnt cook and eat the piranha, like a lot of other tour groups, because they are essential to the dolphins who can eat up to 5kg of piranhas a day.
The food on the trip was brilliant, and we also enjoyed a few beers at both sunsets as well as enjoying a sunrise. It was on the way back to Santa Rosa that we spotted the toucans, which are very rare in the area, which made up for not seeing the anaconda - although there was no Guinness in its mouth. From there it was another bumpy ride back to Rurrenabaque, to enjoy a few cocktails. And of course the French bakery the following morning!
We are now in Uyuni, which is south of La Paz, where tomorrow we will start our tour of Salar de Uyuni, also called the Salt Flats.