Tuesday, June 7, 2011

La Paz

When in La Paz we stayed at the hostel Wild Rover for 44bolivianos a night in a 16 person mixed dorm. The Wild Rover is a must stay as you will come away from there with great memories and great stories. The staff are fantastic and Jack the bar manager is great craic.  We did a mountain bike tour on death road costing 880bolivianos.  We booked this through a company called Gravity which comes to the hostel everyday.  The price included snacks and a buffet lunch as well as our safety equipment and bikes and a zipline ride.  The trip was fantastic going down death road is something that everyone must do and the zipline rounded up the day perfectly.  Our guide Cody from Arizona USA had a lot of knowledge about the road and was very good when explaining how to ride death road.  We went with 2 other Irish girls that we had met at the Wild Rover.  Our group was probably 12 to 15 strong with an annoying Canadian family.  Two of the group fell on the way down but were not badly hurt just some cuts and bruises.  The Irish on the tour were the only ones to do the zip lining at Yolosa where we also had our lunch at a wildlife sanctuary.  Because we were doing the zip lining we didn't get to spend much time at the sanctuary to see the animals but because the zip lining was so much fun its a must do. 

When we got back to the Wild Rover that night we had another big night of drinking to celebrate that we had survived death road.

We did the pampas tour costing 2000bolivianos. We flew to Rurrenabaque in a twin prop plane with enough room for 20 people.  Our group was just 8 people.  Our flight was delayed by 3 hours because earlier flight had to be turned back due to fog.  Our guide was called jimmy he was up for a laugh had good English and was very knowledgeable.  After getting off the plane we had a 3 hour trip in the back of a jeep on a really bad road.  We then got to our boat and were a couple of hours on the river before we got to our lodge.  We saw loads of wildlife alligators, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, and loads and loads of birds.  We saw pink dolphins and some of the group swam with them.  We went piranaha fishing where I caught 2.  We also got to eat the piranaha there was very little meat on them and they had been very well fried.  I ate every bit of it head eyes brain and all they tasted ok.  We went anaconda hunting where we got to see 2 anacondas one small one about a meter long and another huge one which the guide was struggling to hold onto the end of its tail. Luckily enough I also got to play a soccer match at the local club in the pampas. We played in our bare feet against the guides and drew 1-1. On our way back to the jeep our boat ran out of fuel so Jimmy had to paddle, he had only one on board but we flattened some empty water bottles and use them as improvised paddles. It was so funny and we only got some fuel when another boat passed about half an hour later. Jimmy then got the piss taken out of him for not having enough fuel by all the other guides.
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Saturday, June 4, 2011

Salt Flats1

Death Road Zipline

Death Road Zipline

Alligator

Fish won't stop breathing