We then set off, and soon arrived at our campsite where our guide Manuel insisted that it was perfectly feasible to pitch 5 3-man tents in a 3m by 3m area on rock with a 40 degree incline and no water. Luckily after some hunting around we found a far better campsite and survived our first night. This was the pattern of our main treck, at first trecking through the cold, windy, cloudy mountains and Manuel repeatedly lying to us about our campsite, on another immortal moment he confidently informed us that a shallow puddle would provide 14 people with all the drinking cooking and cleaning water they needed, another time he claimed that if we walked too fast his Incan god Appachu Mama would kill us for disrespecting him. We suspected he was lazy. After 2 days of mountains where we saw many eagles condors and other big birds and walked perilous mountain paths we entered the the 2nd stage of our treck, the cloud forest, expectantly.
This was in fact not as great as it sounds, for all we did was walk down a dried up stream bed with jungle to the left of us and jungle to the right of us, thick jungle where you could not see more than half meter either way. But it was certainly a new experience and exciting at first, but after a while it descended into drudgery and hard walking. Finally after 4 days we arrived at our destination chulumani and we managed to find ourselves a very reasonable hotel. The next day we went on a mad bus journey, where Bolivians would randomly jump on and off the bus aswell as the bus breaking down every now and then and the engine being opened and hit a few times. However the bus journey was certainly surreal if not long, we started in the warm jungle and 5 hours later where high up in La Paz at about 2 degree C.
The next day it was off to do our jungle phase, taking the plane from la paz military airport to rurrenebaque, again from sub zero temperatures to 30 degrees C! We were all thrilled at the warmth and the group mood lifted dramatically, and on finding a nice hotel we had a good lazy meal and went to the local swimming pool which was great fun. The next day we took a 5 hour jeep journey to the beni river, where we got onto a long hollowed out boat and spent another 3 hours moving to our campsite, along the way we spotted many exotic birds, alligators, Capybara the worlds largest rodent aswell as experiencing the magic of being in the jungle on the river. We arrived at our campsite and decided to set up camp by constructing a rudimentary shelter out of tent sheets. Luckily it never rained or we would have been soaked.
That evening we went on a night boat cruise were we saw alligators eyes gleaming under torch light, the stars and, well not much else. But it was certainly a magical experience to be out on the river at night with the bright moon and stars and the chirping of insects. Suprisingly the night air was cold, and we were all unprepared for this having left our sleeping bags in la paz so we were all very cold at night. The next day we got closer to crocodiles and monkeys and in the afternoon we learnt about the various fauna of the jungle. We then went on to watch a beautiful sunset over the local swamp and of course we took the obligatory group photo, nude, well with socks to hide our modesties. The next day was probably the best of the whole trip.
In the morning we went searching for anaconda. None of us at the time realised that the only effective way to find anaconda is to trudge through a mucky river which is so brown u cant see anything at all, your boots squelching as you sink up to your knees into the riverbed mud and somehow through all this your meant to concentrate on what your stepping on, at any moment expecting to step on a 4m snake and when u do continue to stand on it despite it thrashing around and wait for a guide to arrive. Certainly an interesting method. Luckily however, we managed to spot one bathing itself in the sun amongst the grass and so we were successful and still relatively intact. In the afternoon, we jumped into the river and swam in it where not 5 minutes before alligators had been bathing-we’d scared them off by attempting to ram them with the boat. When in the water pink bottle nosed dolphins arrived and it was certainly magical to swim with them, even though you could feel the baby piranha nibbling at your skin. Luckily the bigger ones didn’t attack, although we did get our chance for revenge later on when we went piranha fishing.
Piranha fishing is certainly an extreme sport. The extreme comes in when u try and kill the things. To fish, we simply held hooks with little bits of meat on them into the water and instantly the fish began to bite, the difficulty lay in waiting for the big fish to bite and ignore the nibbles of the little fish. We had the bright idea of eating our piranhas, so that we wanted to kill and keep the ones we caught for cooking later on. On catching the fish we then threw them onto the river bank to die. They didn’t die, instead they insistently attempted to flop back into the water, no amount of slapping or stick beating was effective, and even thrusting a knife through them had little effect so as a consequence we had about 10 piranhas flapping around half beaten to death all trying to get into the water where they would only be devoured by their comrades. Eventually, we tried cutting the head of one of them and after some effort finally managed. For now at least it would no longer try and get away although we did discover that the fish had swallowed 3 hooks and about 5 meters of line. We then went home to eat, and as a side dish we tried to prepare the fish. This was impossibly difficult, despite razor sharp hunting knives and a lot of brute force it was extremely hard to gut and skin the fish so that we were left with some flaps of meat but mostly bone, but still we fried them and ate them. It wasn’t too bad. The next day we drove back to rurrenebaque and after a good nights sleep we were off to la paz.
For the final part of our trip, the rest and recreation phase, we went to lake Titicaca where we treated ourselves to hotel rooms with ensuite bathrooms and comfy beds. The day of arrival was spent wandering around getting to know the town of Copacabana (the beach in brasil is apparently named after this town) and buying some souvenirs.
The next day we visited the island of the sun which was a little disappointing as there was not much to see culture wise. In the evenings we went to eat at different resteraunts always on the look out for something new, although unfortunately there was not much of a bolivian cuisine so we ended up with a diet of pasta pizza and steak, which wasn’t too bad! The next day we went for a sail on the lake and bought those final presents and the next morning we were off to la paz. On our final day we said goodbye to everything, and it was weird leaving something that we had become so used to, yet we were all longing for home and its associate luxuries. That evening we splashed out on a final meal which was certainly exceptionally good and shockingly cheap by our London standards. The next morning bright and early we left for the airport and the long journey home, and 30 hours later after leaving our hotel we arrived at in England, happy to be home and in the world of safe drinking water.
I wonder if anyone will notice the clever colour scheme of the site?
Click and choose what you want boys and girls:
Pictures of the acclimatization treck
Pictures of our time in La Paz
The main treck
The exciting jungle phase
Rest and recreation on the shores of Lake Titicaca
The piss head section. Although, of course, we dont officialy drink on trecks and never do we disgrace the good name of the school. Even though recent school events would suggest otherwise... Ahem.
