Todo es posible, nada es seguro - adventures in Bolivia
(anything is possible, nothing is certain/safe)

Anacondas, tiny planes, the most dangerous road in the world, piranhas, caimans - your favourite adventurers have done it all in the last few weeks.

We spent about 4 days in La Paz we were able to meet up with Nick who runs a great blog on Bolivia check out http://www.nickbuxton.info/ He also showed us an exhibition of a fantastic political Bolivian artist, Walter Solon Romero, read this article about him here. I wanted to find some online examples of his artwork to show you but nada, its a bit reminiscent of Diego Riviera but not just murals - very cool.

However many times you hear people describe the bizarre geography of La Paz, I don´t think anything can prepare you for driving down the road from El Alto, winding down a cliff face into a city which creeps up the walls of a massive cratar. One night we went over to the historic quarter - walking down the steep cobbled streets on one side of the crater we could see all the lights from houses climbing the opposite side of the cratar and we knew that hidden from our view at the cliff top, spread the massive metropolis of El Alto, the fastest growing city in South America. Again frustrated by our lack of language in inability to connect with the many strong political movements in La Paz and El Alto, we tried to satisfy our political cravings by reading grafitti, amongst my favourites were some slogans from Mujeres Creando (Women Creating) "the new man must be able to fry an egg" and "how can we have a revolution when Goni is on vacation?" (i think those translations are correct - apologies to MC if not). The latter slogan is a reference to the growing campaign to bring former president Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada to justice over the killings of over 67 people in El Alto during the 2003 gas war. For more info on this important campaign check out http://juiciogoniya.free.fr/inicio/article.php3?id_article=106

From La Paz we decided to head to the jungle town of Rurrenabaque after hearing the exciting tales from Jo and Reima, our buddies from spanish school. We ran into another buddy from school at the airport, Jane and together we boarded a tiny tin box which the good people of Amazonas swore was a plane. It was seriously tiny as you´ll see when we can post the photos, not even room to stand inside and Simon swears he saw sticky tape on the propellers! Those brave enough to look out the window (ie Simon) had a great view of snow covered mountains until they and us were enveloped in thick cloud, only to emerge 45min laters in a sea of tropical green jungle - really an amazing contrast.

Rurrenabaque, a small town on the River Beni is a weird contrast between sleepy Bolivian backwater and travellers´mecca complete with several "international restaurants" and "jungle bars" where its very rare to see a Bolivian customer. Global inequity aside, its still a really cool place to spend a couple of days. We headed off on a pampas tour which was heaps of fun where we encountered aforementioned pirhanas (we fished for them - Simon caught his first fish ever but Ruth topped the catch, hauling in 7). Also fishing for piranhas with us was an alligator who crept up onto the beach near our campsite every morning. Although we were assured alligators weren´t really dangerous we weren´t too keen to test out this theory. Apparently the ones to really watch out for are the caimans which can grow up to 7 metres in length and are more aggressive. While we weren´t entirely sure about the ecological implications of our guide´s absolute determination to find an anaconda which included digging up any hole which remotely looked like it might contain a snake, it was an amazingly beautiful creature when he finally dragged one out. But it wasn´t all scary creatures out there, we also saw the incredibly cute capyburras which look like a cross between a wombat and a beaver and wade around in the shallows, we saw heaps of turtles, some beautiful birds and even bats and plauges of mosquitoes ("solo mosquitos y comida (food) es seguro en pampas" said Mark, our fearless guide and copyright owner of our new favourite phrase which encapsulates all of Bolivia "todo es posbile, nada es seguro).

Returning to Rurrenabaque for a few capirinhas (my new favourite drink and sure to be a hit at cocktail nights back home) we were all set to fly back to La Paz when the rains came in, turning the landing strip to mud. We waited for a few days but not many planes were flying and we decided it had been scary enough flying in good weather so we found ourselves at 5.30 one morning standing in the mud of the Beni River struggling to load our very large backpacks into a very small and leaky motorised canoe for a 12 hour trip to Guanay. It was a completely beautiful journey through amazing jungle, cloud forests, massive rock columns that looked like that scene from Lord of the Rings (just before they fall off the waterfall!). Our problem wasn´t falling off waterfalls, but due to all the rains the river was quite high and we were going upstream (the Beni eventually flows into the Amazon) and there were some pretty hairy patches complete with whirlpools, not sure if we need to go whitewater rafting after that. But the good man Christo and his fearless navigator got us there in the end (also thanks to the young boy whose job it was to bail water from the bottom of the boat!). In Guanay I swam in the river and then we watched a full moon rise over the mountains - just one of those moments. We made it to Coroico, a beautiful mountain village. Coincidently the La Paz section of MAS was also having their regional conference there that weekend. The town was full of people in t-shirts saying "che, fidel, chavez, evo", and the indigenous flag was flying everywhere. Our hotel was just above the MAS conference site and we fell asleep listening to the conference proceedings (entendamos un poco).

The next afternoon we took a minibus up the "most dangerous road in the world" (sorry Mum!) back to La Paz. It was scary but incredibly beautiful.

Currently we´re in Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. Despite mucho lluvio (rain) it is still very beautiful. Tomorrow we leave Bolivia after 2 amazing months and head to Cuzco, Peru.

Photos coming when posible.