Rurrenabaque - Madidi National Park - Jungle Fever

Here are some photos from our 4 day stay in the Madidi national park. It is a national park that forms part of the Amazon Basin. We opted to pay a little extra got off the beaten track a little, as the company we went through had exclusive rights to the area, all pristine forest, rivers etc.

The top two photos (hopefully thats how it will work when we publish this) are some of the animals we saw, the Capuchino (we think) monkey which travelled around the park in groups of about 30, and also a baby caymen (bit like a croc) whose mum we saw later on that night, a little to closely to our hollowed out log we were navigating the river in.

As you can see we also got on to some solid pirahana fishing (Ebs 4, Richo 3) which was crazy business. We used 2 week old beef, that had a fairly solid stink about it, and just handlines... and boys... it was on. Within 10 seconds of putting a freshly baited hook in the river, they would have either taken your bait, or realing one in. You were allowed to put your hands in the wat3er to wash them off for no more than seiously a second, otherwise you´d be bitten (as our Dutch mate Vin discovered). These things sense of smell are crazy.

Apart from the constant barrage of mosquitoes, and getting lost for four hours in the depth of the jungle as our trusty guide took us through a ¨short cut¨home. This short cut was necesarry as we were out on the river in our dodgy little canoe and we could see a storm approaching and decided to go to shore and walk the remaing ¨no more than an hour¨way home. This short cut involving hacking through walls of vegetation only to have to carefully retrace our stepps from the freshly machetteed folliage. (Richo´s dad´s compass again leading us home ... go Soul Patterson).

Having negotiated death road by mountain bike, we opted to fly back to La Paz, only to have the dodgy military plane fishtail all over the tarmac upon landing. We must be cats, and even if we are Bolivia is certainly taking its toll on our 9 lives.

We are now in Copacabana on Lake Titicaca, and preparing ourselves for a solid two days of Fiesta as it is the Festival of The Dead over here, and by the look of the street preparations it should be pretty sweet.

Thats all for now,

Ebs and Richo

la paz

These are a few shots of La Paz. The far left is a photo of llama fetus', sold at the witches market. To the immediate left is a photo of us at the top of hill overlooking La Paz (the Pom is Tony the survivor).

Corioco - Just chillin

This is the view from our place in Corico - which originally we were going to stay for only one night. This was 4 days ago.....

2 months

This day marked the 2 month annivessary of our travels. Just letting you all know that we are happy, healthy, having a tone of fun, looking forward to more, and most importantly still allive!!!

Going down death road - Adrenalin Junkies

Ok people this is our first blog in ages that has actually allowed us to comment on the photos we are showing you. Here starts the lesson.

Worlds most Dangerous Road - Basically 'Death Road' was originally and Inca Trail turned stock route in the last 200 zears. As this is the onlz road connected La Paz to NOrth east Bolivia, it encounters heavy traffic, thus the reason for on average over 100 fatalities a year. So it is not just a tourist attraction, but it is by definition the worlds most dangerous road.

The morning we started, it was sleeting there was ice on the road, it was clouded over, visibi8lity was arouind 15 meters, we all get out of the van, wet slippery, we get briefed on riding a bike, do four mexican waves and then 'Vamous' - 'We go'.

Over the next 33km we were on bitchamen paved road, and after 15 mins we couldn#t feel how tightly we were gripping the brakes as our fingers had become numb. Then we reached the start of the unpaved section of Death Road.

All our senses were against the idea, but as we are creatures of foresight, with foresight telling us if we don#t decend the mountain we will regret it. Also the idea of travelling down the muddy road in the mini van as the alternative, made the decision much easier.

To describe what we could see, the road was about 3 meters in the narrowest wide, averaging at about 5 meters across, servicing two lanes of traffic. It was clay, gravel with gutters forming from the rain, we road on the drop off or left hand side of the road, to our right was a sheer cliff face, and to the left was a white wall of fog - the abyss - every so often the clouds would part, part your false wense of secuirty, and reveal the 1000 metre drop off. At this point we would let out a little "Oh Shit". We took sharp bends, hugged the cliffs edge, got speed, heard lorry horns growing closer, to the point we would stop and step towrds the edge to allow the trucks to pass. For the 'bad' bolivian corners, there were little traffic controlling men with red and green flags.

In terms of accidents, there was one on our trip, a near head on between two vehicals, where two riders following too closely behind skidded to stop.

At the bottom covered in mud, big gritty grins, Ebs more mud than contact lenses in her eyes. We survived death road, and have the >T-shirts to proove it.

Ebs and Richo (hardcore as they come)

Bolivia

Hello all,


This is our first blog since hitting Bolivia about a week ago. lots has happened in this week. Firstly we crossed the Argentinian/bolivian border by foot, and straight away we could notice the difference between the two courties literally within 50 metres of crossing the border. The people look different, their stature was different, and all the women wear traditional clothes (and not even just for the tourists). The women wear these colourful pleated skirts, bright stockings and rubber sandals. Unfortunatly these women use these skirts to wipe themselves and concequently yolu can smell them from a mile off. All the women also have two long black plates of hair, and they use these to indicate their marital status. If they are tied together then she is marrried.

The other imediate change we noticed Bolivia was the public transport system. Unlike the wonderful bus system of Argentina, most of Bolivaia roads are one-lane gravel roads that weave in and out of the mountains, also they have roads blockades at least once a week (usually the miners protesting about working conditions). On the day we arrived there was one of these blockages so we found some other travels and took the afternoon train to Tupiza. That night we booked a tour to the salt flats and found accomadtion all within the space of about 30 mins... all seemed a little to easy.

So we set out on our salt flat tours on the 13/10/06 (Friday the 13th... which we joked at the time was a bit of a dubious date to start on.. it was.) The jeep landcruser was the same age as Ebs and had done about a billion kms on the clock, through salt.. and finally started after seriously the 12th attempt. Our driver was a Bolivian called Ricardo (champion but when asked whether he could speak English replied ¨Si¨ and that was pretty much the only thing we understood from him for the next four days.

The scenary we saw on the first day was pretty impressive, very barren mountainous land that looked kind of what you would expect Mars to look like.

All was going well until our landcruiser had a head on with a motorbike.

The roads that our driver was navigating were all single track dirt/rock/gravel/crater roads and were full of blind corners. At the exact moment we were coming around one of these corners, a motorbike driven by a 30 year old bloke, with 14 year old passenger, flew around and smashed into the front left hand corner of our truck. Ebs was of course kipping at the time, but Richo saw the whole thing and managed to let out a ¨shiiiiiitttttt¨ (not literally but almost) and curl into the foetal position.

Shit hit the fan.

We all jumped out of the truck to firstly find the older man unconscious on the ground with blood pissing from his forehead, as a result of cracking our windscreen with his unhelmeted head. The kid was silent for about the first 15 seconds, but then began to let out a series of groans whilst clutching his groin. Apparently Ricardo (our driver) had done some first aid, as when he saw the broken arm of the older man, was more than ready to try and put it back in place. The 30 year old had asked our driver to do so, and it was disgusting. OUr driver began grasped the hand of the patient, and started a series of rapid flicking movements, much like cracking of a whip, in a vein attempt to realline the bone. It was pretty disturbing to watch.

The kid was being tended to by Ebs and Sioned (a Welsh girl on our tour), and they quickly realised that the poor little champ was not in good form. There was a small amount of blood forming on the crutch of his trackpants, and we thought the worst. We all realised that both these two needed a hospital asap (with the 30 yearold having slumped over unconscious again), but the landcrusier was not drivable. THe impact of the bike had collapsed the front right hand corner of the cruiser, and the front left wheel was now locked against the car. We managed to find the jack and place it between the body of the car and the wheel and jack it out.

Another tour group then passed and, and after another 15 minutes of the guards flapping about talking to each other, they too had decided that the two patients needed doctors. Two Irish girls from the other tour were nurses, and managed to convince the boy that they need to examine his crutch.

The poor kid torn his scrotum open, and the remains of a ruptured testical were visible. They made sure the kid kidn´t know. Eventually we got them on there way in our jeep, and our group (6 of us) were left on the road for ¨no more than 30 minutes my friends¨.

So after about 4 hours they returned to pick us up and we beelined for our first night in a village.

The next few days were pretty amazing. We saw landscapes that seriously looked like they could in no way be real (as if someone had just managed to somehow photoshop them. The highlights of the second day revolved a trip to a green lake (from a reaction with the metals in the soil) a swim in a hot spring (there as a result of the volcanic activity in the area) and a night in another cosy little dorm.

On the third day we saw some pretty cool stuff, both green and red lake, with a phenominal capacity to mirror the surrounding landscape. All the lakes here were populated by hundreds of pink flamingoes that fed on the algae within the water... definitly got a couple of national geographic shots for sure.

The last day we got up to watch the sunrise over the salt flats, taking some pretty cool photos. Have just been kicked off the computer, but will try for more photos soon.

Ebs and Richo

Long time, no blog (if anyone still cares!!)

Now we just need a chance to explain ourselves. We have been extremely busy travelling from literaly the bottom of Argentina to the top, thus the reason for our lack of blogging since Buenos Aries. But now we have some tales to keep you kids on the edge of your seat.

So we left Buenos Aries to head South for the barren plains of patagonia, to hopefully get a little taste of the abundance of nature and wildlife that we were told was crammed into every little nook and cranny of this barren section of the country. Having taken a 17 hour journey from BA we arrived at Peurto Madrin, a small coastal port about halfway down the eastern coast of Argentina. As soon as we jumped off the bus we thought we would head into town for a bit of a guernsy not expecting to see anything spesh, only to be greeted by a whale just of the jetty we had walked down. Furthermore a elephant seal was just lounging about under the peer and we knew we would be in for good things.

The next day was pretty much an experience that would make Sir David Attenborough sit up and take notice. It kicked off with a bit of whale watching about 40 mins from where we were wtaying. Thought it would be pretty good, maybe catch a glimpse of a tail, or a phantom blowhole out in the distance, but what we were met with was more than just a little sureal. When we arrived at the bay itself we could literally see in the space of about 2 minutes, 4 different sets of whales crusing around a bay only a couple of kms across.

We headed out into the bay, and made a beeline straight for the nearest large floating mass. Unfortunately after gunning it from the beach to within a few metres of the beast, it decided, understandably, to disappear into the depths. Having not reared its head for about 30 seconds, our skipper announced that ¨now we go looking for more friendly whales, and we found them.

We spent the next hour and a half with two different sets of whales, both with very energietic calves in tow. Overhere, they haven{t quite caught onto the idea of just observing nature, but rather want to interact with them. This was noted as we would cruise alongside the pair , and then speed up and cut directly infront of the course they were taking, thus forsing the poor creatures to quickly dive down, underneath our vessel, to surface again on the other side.

after the boat ride was over we sat on the shore with mate (tea) and watched as the whales lulled around in the bay. The sight could have been painted by dahli himself- a serreal experience

This peninsula is also home to the natural phenomena of killer whales taking seal pubs from the shore. This is the only place in the world that this happens because of the type of errosion that occurs. The cliffs are erroded in a way that creates channels in the rock bed shore, allowing the killer whales to enter and not beach themselves as they take the seal pubs. We were out of season so we didn{t witness this ourselves. But we didn^t wade our feet in the water either.
The peninsula is like the safari parks of south america. Apart from the whales and elephant seals we saw penguins, sea-lions, emu like birds, condors, giant hare-sheep thingys. it was a really cool day.

The next day we just took it pretty easy, with a 32 km bike ride to a seal colony just outside town. It was the first national park that we have ever been escorted from, a fairly funny experience all round. (In this country they have holes in the pavement you could abseil into, and random spears sticking from the gutters, but cross a fence that is barely there and they become very concerned about your safety... interesting???)

From there we headed further south to El Calafate, a place that is famous for it´s proximity to a shitload of glaciers. We spent two days here seeing some of the most amazing stuff mother nature has cooked up in her kitchen. The moreno glacier was the highlight for us, and spent three hours watching these 15 story chards of ice collapse into the water, to form huge floating icebergs in the glacial lake.

The second day there we took a fairly pricy, but unbelievable, catamarn tour through the icebergs and glaciers that float on and flow into the lake.

From here we headed to El Chalten, a 20 year old town with a population, including tourists at this time of year, of 200 inhabitants. We spent three days here hiking around the Parque Nacional Los Glaciaries... and were both given awesome weather, and a very humbling experience. On the second day of treking around and by now boasting about being extreme treking extraudenaurs, we lost our bearings completely. To find our way back onto the straight and narrow we relied on Richo´s dad´s drug company´s promotional compass (with pink carribena attachment) and our year 3 orientering experiences. This lead us up a near vertical incline, to a needle point summit, with sheer crevasses in all directions (kick ass view though). Eb´s nagged, ¨I´m sure they don´t make everyone scale this cliff¨, only to be met by an know it all Richo who made the comment ¨it´s the Andes Ebony!!!! of course they do". Resting on the other side we met a French couple. When both parties had discussed the ways from which they had come, the Frenchman gasped "from ova sere, but ver ist yor climink gere??" The highlight of the day was hiking to the base of Fitzroy mountain, a mere 5km from the Chilean border, otherwise known as a little slice of heaven.

We are now at the opposite end of Argentina, and have just experienced the Icquazu falls... definitly up with one of the more impressive sites we have seen. Although when you think about, and impressive waterfall is just a shitload of water falling off a cliff, there was something extra about this. Eb´s made the comment that when standing above the Devils Throat (the point at which the water flow is heaviest) it felt like the earth was sucked into itself.

Have spent the last 6 hours sunning ourself beside the hostel pool, both thoroughly burnt, and although not looking forward to the 27 hour bus ride ahead of us, are pumped as about getting to Salta (a small town 8 hours from the border of Bolivia). Until next time kids, will try and get some pictures up at a later date,

Ebs and Richo