To the Jungle and Back: Risky Business

Alo Ha! We`re back in La Paz, struggling to get used to being back up at altitude, since we ascended from 100m to 3600m in 40 minutes yesterday. Yes, the gringos finally swallowed their pride and took a flight, but after you read about our terrible ordeal in a bus, as chronicled in this very blog, you will understand why we took said flight. This special edition blog will also contain A Beard Update! But let us not jump the gun.

After writing the last blog, we missioned around the city a bit, marvelling at its cereal bowl shape. The city of La Paz sits inside a bowl made by some rather high mountains. But, like an overfull bowl of Corn Flakes, some of the cereal (some houses and shanty town parts) sits at the top of the bowl, on the edges of the mountains. The rich live down at the bottom of the bowl while the poor live around the edges, precariously clinging to the cliffs, about to fall into the milk below. Perhaps this cereal bowl analogy isn`t the best way of describing the city, but nonetheless its quite a spectacular sight to see a massive capital city so high up in the andes. The city itself is full of some seriously colourfull characters, from the Kolla women in traditional Inca Andean dress (long hair plaits, top hats, stockings, a long skirt and a poncho) to the gangstas pumping music in their suped up `Toyosas`, there´s a lot to see here.

We spent the day deliberating on the best way to get from La Paz down to the jungles of Rurrenabaque. The best way is, in fact, to fly there, which takes only 39 minutes. The worst way is to take the bus, which takes 20 hours and travels on what is officially known as The World`s Most Dangerous Road, or, by the locals, The Death Road. (!). A bit of background might enlighten you as to the perils of the Death Road. The road was built in the 1930s during the Bolivia´s war with Paraguy, and since then, an estimated 200 - 300 people have died on it yearly. The reason for the deaths is that it was (up until the government built a better road in 2006) the only road linking La Paz to the Amazon basin, and is thus a major trucking and bussing route. Even today, with the new road open, many trucks and busses choose to use the death road, since the distance is shorter and there are no tolls to pay. The road was built into a mountain, and thus most of the way has sheer drop offs of at least 600m straight down. There are no guard rails, and in places the cliff side of the road is eroding. This is made worse by the fact that the road is only 3.2m wide, and is used as a double carriageway. For Trucks. These trucks have to pass each other by making the one druck drive millimeters from the edge to give the other truck space. Sometimes the trucks and busses go too close to the edge, and fall a very long way down. To top it all off, drivers buy a very strong alcoholic drink at the top of the road and pour some out as an offering to Pachamama (a god in Inca tradition), before drinking whatever is left in the bottle. For good dangerous measure, the road is usually foggy and wet, and drivers often attempt it at night. Right.

We had heard of some mountain biking companies offering full day downhill biking tours down the Death Road, from La Cumbre (at 4800m) to Coroica (at 1000m), a 64km streach of downhill. Since most of the deaths are caused by the fact that trucks and busses have to pass each other on the road, we figured we`d rather have our lives in our own hands, and be on a mountain bike. So we set about choosing a company that uses the best downhill bikes possible (each bike goes for about $4000 USD), and we wore helmets (in case we fell off the 600m cliffs). We felt as safe as we could feel, considering we were risking our lives, since we had great gear and professional downhill biking guides. However, even the biking company itself was not hiding the fact that cyclists go over the edge too - one man took the plunge just 2 months ago, and at least 14 downhill cyclists have gone over the edge in the last 5 or so years. Thus, armed with our bravery and our great mountain bikes, we set off from La Cumbre early on wednesday morning. The first stretch was on safe tarmac road, which was easy and enjoyable downhill biking for 30km. Then we came to an uphill section, which we all attempted, thinking that the altitude couldn´t affect our fitness too much. We were quite wrong. After wheezing and spluttering our way up the uphill (some of it walking), we arrived at the Death Road, just as a thick fog was coming in. The road was just as dangerous as we had imagined - mind blowingly sheer drops off a tiny little dirt road covered in little slippery rocks. Early on, Nadia was riding just behind me, or so I thought. When I looked back I discovered she had lost control of the bike on a corner, and luckily had managed to fall off the bike on the mountain, rather than the cliff side of the road.

Biking down the road requires every single bit of your concentration, and even when you are concentrating, a small stone in the road can give your bike a wobble. At one point I was riding just behind Fonz, when he too lost control and luckily (with some degree of skill) managed to

have his accident againt the mountain rather than attempting to fly. We all soon discovered that once you trust the bike and go for it a bit, it begins to feel much safer, and much much much more fun. At points along the way we stopped to peer over the edge at places where trucks had (quite recently) gone over. The cliffs are heavily forested, so its easy to spot the places where accidents have happened, since the truck/bus flattens all the trees on its way down, and in some places you can clearly see the remains of the trucks and busses. Although we didn´t encounter much traffic, we did see the odd car, and also a rather large bus, loaded with locals, braving the road. $ Nadia never quite regained her confidence on the bike after her fall, and thoroughly didn´t enjoy the ride, but nonetheless she got to the bottom in one piece, although she had a bit of a bruised knee. For the most part though, we all really enjoyed the experience, and luckily we came out of it with barely a scratch. At the town of Coroico, at the end of the Death Road, we all enjoyed a well deserved beer, lunch and a swim in the hotel pool. The change in climate from La Paz to Coroico was startling, we had gone from chilly dry altiplano to sweaty humid tropical hills in a day`s riding.

Since Adam and Alex had booked flights to Rurrenabaque anyway, they returned with the support bus back to La Paz, while the three Gringos chilled out in the hotel for the evening, set to catch the bus the next day to Rurre. Nads and I decided to make our way to the bus terminal in town to make sure we could get tickets to Rurre the next day. While the terminal was nice, the bus companies consisted of a mob of Bolivians shouting at you to take their bus at their special price. After inquiring about the tickets, however, it turns out no one had any space, except for a dodgy young man who `called in a favour` and got us the `last three seats` on a bus. While he wrote (wrote! not printed!) the tickets out, Nadia and I wondered whether the bus existed at all, but since this was our only option at the time, we had no choice but to trust the man who drooled when he spoke and could not for the life of him add 90 to 180.

We returned to the hotel a bit nervous of what the next day would bring, but we forgot our troubles by swimming and enjoying the hotel sauna. The reason we were staying in a hotel was because, for starters, it had some incredible views of the surroundings, which you could enjoy from the restaurant terrace, and secondly, a room (very basic room) was only R50 a night each - since we would only be there one night we decided to enjoy it and relax. However, the slight amount of luxury we had made us hungry for more, and by 9pm we had decided to upgrade our room to one with a TV in it. The room we upgraded to did not have a TV in it, so we moved straight back to our cheap room and rested our tired bones.

Our bus was set to pick us up in the small interchange of Yolosita (7km away from the hotel), so we made our way to the bus terminal and waited for our transfer to the bus. While waiting, we noticed that we were the only tourists waiting for this bus (the others had snatched up the tickets on the more well known bus), and that many of the locals were looking at us and struggling to hold back their laughter. Four Israeli guys then arrived and informed us that they too were on our bus. As it turns out, they had also got `the last seats on the bus` as a `special favour` even though they had booked their seats a few hours after we had. Hmmm... However, the man who sold us the tickets assured us it was legit, and soon our minivan arrived to take us to Yolosita. At Yolosita, we waited and waited, continually assuring ourselves that the bus was to arrive soon, but as the minutes turned into hours, and all the other busses had picked up all the other tourists, leaving us twiddling our thumbs in the dusty interchange, watching Bolivians of all shapes and sizes urinate in plain view of us, we began to feel disheartened and slowly started to think that we had been taken for a ride (not a bus ride though). Our situation wasn`t helped by the Israelies playing some Infected Mushroom at an obscene volume and jumping around. More than once, Fonz informed us that, convinced of the ticket´s falsity, he was to return to La Paz. However, we waited it out a little longer, and out of nowhere came our bus. However, since the bus originated in La Paz, our seats had been taken by mean looking people, and we were in no mood to stand on a bus for 15 hours. Luckily, the bossman on the bus organised us some seats, although the only one he could get Fonz was in the back row, wedged firmly between a Bolivian family. I should explain that we were convinced that, since Yolosita sat at 1000m above sea level, and Rurre was at 100m, we did not have that far to decend in 15 hours and thus we would be on a safe bus, nothing at all like the Death Road. After 20 minutes on the bus, we realised just how wrong we were. We were on a road just as narrow, with drops just as frightening as the Death Road itself. Except this road had more traffic, and our bus had to travel on the cliff side of the road. It didn´t help that our seats were also on the cliff side, on the second level of the bus, allowing us perfect views of the busses wheels coming centimeters from the cliff´s edge. I have never contemplated my own death so much for such long periods of time. Fonz had become catatonic, and at one point had his eyes closed and was rocking back and forth. Nadia, for the most part, managed to remain calm, although she has later confessed that she has never been so petrified. To give you a sample of the horror - at one point we came round a corner, only to discover a giant truck facing us, with nowhere near enough space to pass. Our bus driver had to reverse back around the corner and get as close to the cliff´s edge as possible so that the truck could pass. It was a matter of millimeters, and at one point we could clearly feel the back wheel begin to slide off. This was remedied by the driver stepping on the accellerator pedal and revving us back onto the road. The locals were anxiously looking around, the Israelis were praying (not kidding), the Gringos were looking at each other very nervously. I would have been praying were it not for the fact that I am a sworn agnostic, and it would be a bit of a double standard to only invoke God when I really really needed him (Him?). The most worrying part of all was that the light was beggining to fade, and the road was not getting any better, altough I will say that at night its far easier to convince yourself that you are on the N1 between JHB and Cape Town, and not on Satan`s Little Fun Path. Conditions inside the bus were not great either - it was jam packed, with crying babies (and crying adults), sweaty, exceedingly smelly, with blaring awful music. The family with whom Fonz was sharing the back row had all decided that it was Family Urination time, and thus the Father urinated in a bottle held by his wife, while his kids took notes, and then Monica, the youngest daughter, had a go at peeing in a plastic bag, which sort of worked, except that Fonz swears he got some on him. Not wanting to be wasteful, they kept the packet, discarding only the urine out the window. A classy bunch.

After 15 hours of this hellride, with no sleep, we arrived in the jungle, Rurrenabaque. Hooray! We had survived, and found ourselves in tropical heat, in a laid back jungle town where people hardly work and ride around on old motorcycles. Rurre is in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon basin, and sits on the Rio Beni, one of the tributaries of the mighty Amazon river. One inhabitant in particular, Ronnie, the bananabread man, had some amusing things to say. An American expat who moved to the jungle 6 years ago, Ronnie dishes out reading material advancing his own, completely unsupported opinions on how the New World Order (NWO) was trying to depopulate the planet through the AIDS virus, and keep tabs on us with hidden microchips, all the while using `The World Computer`, a super powerful machine located in Belgium. Ronnie, while he made a good Chelsea bun, was not an astute man.

After having a nap at a hostel in town, we managed to get hold of Adam and Alex, who had taken the 39 minute flight to Rurre (in retrospect, rather smartly). After explaining to them our horrible ordeal, we went to a riverside restaurant to enjoy a cold beer (it was seriously hot) and a sandwich. That afternoon we visited numerous tour agenies, and eventually organised a three day jungle trip inside the Parque Nacional Madidi, an area with some of the greatest biodiversity on the planet.

That night we spent far too long in the `Moskitto Bar`, and consquently we were a bit rough around the edges the next morning. However, we sucked it up and boarded our motorised canoe - the five of us, along with another group of five (rather strange people), heading up the Rio Beni, deeper and deeper into the jungle. After three hours or so, we stopped our canoe and after a short walk through the jungle, we arrived at an ecolodge, set in a clearing in thick jungle. Ecolodge sounds rather luxurious - it was not very luxurious, but it was a pretty amazing experience to be chilling out in the middle of the thick jungle of the Amazon basin, swatting away Mosquitos the size of small pigeons, and cursing the sand flies. After getting settled in, we embarked on a walk through the jungle, the five of us being guided by a local, Juan Carlos. We had been told that Juan Carlos (JC) spoke a bit of English, but after spending three days with him we concluded that the only words in his vocabulary were ¨Pig¨, ¨Monkey¨, ¨Snake¨, and ¨Baby¨. However, he spoke clear Spanish quite slowly and so was easy to understand. His knowledge of the jungle was pretty unbelievable, and after ten minutes on the first walk, we realised that without someone like him, you would be stuffed if you got lost in the jungle. He showed us the many different trees with their many different uses - the natives use them for medicine, posion, food (not the same tree of course), shelter, fresh water, and so on. We then got the chance to make fools of ourselves and swing on some jungle vines, like Tarzan (aaah yes JC could also say ¨Tarzan¨). This was fun. Later on, we came across a huge troop of monkeys, buggering around on the treetops above high above us. After that, we slowly made our way back to camp, just in time for dinner.

That night we embarked on a night jungle walk, to experience the difference between the jungle in the day and at night. JC calmly informed us that the person at the back must stay close, since a Jaguar (the third largest cat in the world, which has giant fangs, and which hunts at night) would only attack one of us if we strayed too far behind. On the walk that night we saw many spiders (much to Nadia`s delight) and sat in silence listening to the many creepy sounds of the jungle. We then went down to the rivers edge and spotted some fresh Jaguar tracks, which propmted JC to begin tracking the beast. Suddenly, JC came to a dead stop and told us all to keep very quiet and very still. As he shined his torch into the bushes, we could see the eyes of a rather large mammel. It was not a Jaguar. It was a Tapir. To be fair though, apparently a Tapir is quite a rare thing to see, and its a rather funny looking beast, so we weren`t too upset not to have spotted the rare Jag. On our return, we were greeted with a surprise - the other group had managed to find a giant tarantula and had, considerately, brought it back to camp. I`m not kidding when I say this thing was the size of a dinner plate. I then bravely picked it up and put it on my face, while Fonz cowered in the corner. I´m kidding, Fonz touched its bum, while I wouldn`t go near it. We slept well that night, especially Nadia, who spent the night imagining she was sharing her bed with a giant hairy spider.

The rest of our time in the jungle was spent going on more walks and spotting more jungle wildlife. While trekking through thick jungle, we came across a group (herd? flock?) of about 500 or so jungle pigs. Funny looking beasts that had no clue what to make of us, and so snapped their sharp pig teeth at us and excreted a smelly substance to ward us away. We spent an afternoon fishing in the Rio Beni, trying to catch our dinner with nothing but a long piece of fishing gut and some old steak. We did not catch anything that day, and went hungry that night, having only spaghetti bolognaise and chips to eat. Rough. Our final day was spent searching out a specific palm tree from which drop many miniture coconuts. After selecting the best of these, we returned back to camp and JC showed us the complicated process of turning these coconuts into shiny rings of different shapes and sizes. The process involves precise cutting, lots of sanding, and lots of shining using clay and ashes. The result is a fantastic mahogany coloured ring. We managed to make about 7 of these rings (I managed to inflict just as many cuts on my fingers) and hopefully we`ll be able to bring some of these back with us. Eventually it was time to leave the jungle, dirty, sweaty, covered in bits from some rather exotic looking incects, but having had a great jungly time. We arrived back in Rurre and found a hostel with some hammocks strung up, for us to chill out in and rest our weary dirty limbs. That night was spent, once again, in Moskitto bar - a cool jungle bar with three hour happy hour and a barman who takes his music very seriously. Good place.

The next day it was time to part ways with our travelling compadres from England, since they had to be in Cusco in a week for their Inca Trail. Since we only had to be in Cusco much later, we decided to spend the rest of the week relaxing in the jungle and enjoying the sunshine and humidiy before having to go back up to the chilly heights of La Paz. We did, however, decide that no amount of money was worth taking that hellish bus ride again, and thus booked a flight back to La Paz. Our days were spent reading books in hammocks, eating delicious fish freshly caught from the river, buying falafels off Ronnie and trying to avoid conversation with him in case he brought up the NWO, and basically just chilling out and taking in the vibes of the lowland town. Fonz got a haircut for only R10. It looks truly awful. We also spotted the town pimp, who, every evening would drive the same four blocks over and over, his bint at his side, blasting some really bad music so that all the town would know that he was the big dog of Rurre. The funniest part was that his entire sound system was on the outside of his car (mostly on the roof), to allow for better sound escapage, thus making the music inside the car bad, but allowing more people in the town to become aware of his presence. If only the lads of Boksburg and Mayfair could see that, they`d all start putting their sound on the outside of the car, because its laak a lank schweeet idea bru. Boet!

Eventually, after a thoroughly chilled out week, it was time to catch our flight back. We took off from a dirt strip in the jungle, in a tiny tiny tiny little plane, and immediatly realised why the bus was just not worth it. From the time we took off, to the time we landed in La Paz, took 40 minutes, compared to the 20 hours it takes by bus.

Well, thats all for now. A rather juicy and exciting blog don`t you think? Scary times, funny times, urine times, its all there. You`d better have enjoyed it because another 3 hours of my life have been taken from me by a La Paz internet cafe. Those sneaky bastards. Anyway, from here we go to Copacabana, on Lake Titicaca, tomorrow. Fonz wants to baptize me in the lake. I´m not so keen. Then we head out of Bolivia and into Peru, to Cusco, to trek to the famous Machu Picchu. From there, we shall celebrate Fonz`s birthday at Mandela`s Bar in Cusco (quite fitting since it will be Mandela`s birthday too). And then, alas, the three Gringo`s shall become 2 gringos, as Fonz heads back into Brazil before making the journey home.

Here`s the beard update for ya, get voting on who is the manliest man of them all.

Aight. Im sick of here. Peace out.

Links to the Photos are available here

http://picasaweb.google.es/steveo.zogg/RurrenabaqueJungleFever

http://picasaweb.google.es/steveo.zogg/TheDeathRoad