La Paz, the Road of Death and the Amazon

Update: 16

I never thought I'd see myself teaching. The only time I ever went to the front of the class was to get punished. Tuesday 25 July was no ordinary day. After a visit to the Coca Museum - learning how to make cocaine and that although the US and its War on Drugs creates the biggest stink about Bolivian farmers growing coca leaves, they and the usual suspects - i.e. the First World - are the only countries allowed to make the stuff. Coca-cola still imports something like 500 tonnes of coca leaves a year. Oh, the double standards...

But back to school. We walk out of the museum (not high, we were only observers) and get accosted by about twenty sixteen year-olds who are on assignment to catch gringos and practice English with them. This is not unusual and has happened to us before in Cuzco. What was unusual, was the invitation back to their classroom to meet the principal and attend their lessons. So there we were, while you were at your desks forwarding emails, standing in front of a class drawing a map of Africa trying to explain that even though I'm "Blanco", I'm from Africa. Things started getting complicated after I explained that my country has 11 official languages and the girls (what is it with sixteen-year-old chicks?) wanted me to translate "Te amo" (I love you) into all of them. Afrikaans was easy enough - Ek het jou lief - but all I can remember from my one year of Zulu at fourteen was that "Tractor" and "Motorbike"  took the onomatopoeic "Ugandaganda" and "Isitututu" respectively. They thought this was hilarious.

I also shared my only Spanish joke - the one about Sylvester Stallone - with them. They all laughed, but I was sixteen once, and I know they weren't laughing with me....

***

One of the famous "things to do" in Bolivia is the the bike trip down "The World's Most Dangerous Road". I've been sceptical about this investment of the equivalent of 3 nights accommodation from the outset. In hindsight, I was spot on. Firstly, no one's audited this statement. If I was going to take a stab, I reckon the road from Haifa to Beirut takes a lot of beating. Secondly, all the tourists going down on top-of-the-range bicycles are a lot safer that the locals crammed into 1970 model buses that haven't been serviced in as long. And they don't even get t-shirts. That said, it's a bumpy, single track sand road with a sheer drop on the left hand side and a haunting collection of crucifixes and bouquets that fly past you at regular intervals. Terrified, we started off with all our faith in our guide who obviously knew this road like the back of his hand and would keep us at a safe pace out of the way of on-coming traffic with his elaborate hand signals. Hand signals were explained before we took off:

• Right hand in the air meant - RIGHT

• Left hand in the air meant  - LEFT

• Right hand held straight up meant - STOP.  

I tried to ask whether RIGHT meant GO RIGHT or A CAR IS COMING AROUND THE CORNER ON THE RIGHT which requires fundamentally different behaviour, but language issues forced me to have faith in my own ability to ride a bike and leave it at RIGHT, LEFT and STOP. Not totally comfortable with my understanding of the professional's direction, I took the tried and trusted approach of DISREGARD ALL SIGNALS AND JUST BE CAREFUL. Luckily I did.

The first few kilometres were pretty straight forward: a fairly decent tarred road. I started to have doubts about the guide when he showed the first sign of an inexperienced cyclist. Common sense dictates that when you're flying down a hill, and you see another taking shape in front of you with no reason to stop, you gun it as fast as you can and let your momentum carry you some of the way up the next. Our guide stopped us all at the bottom to regroup and then informed us that we "now have 6k's uphill". Thanks a lot. If you'd left us alone, we'd have 4k's...

I guess he was only doing his job and eventually we made it to the start of "The Road of Death". Drum roll. Did I mention the the sheer drop on the left? As a guide, you'd expect to be concerned for your charges' safety. As a charge, the thought of worrying about your guide doesn't cross your mind when you hand over the equivalent of the average Bolivian's life savings for a day of fun.

It was only probably 40 minutes in to the drum roll "Death Road" before I - actually we both - realised we'd probably done more mountain biking than Carlos and shouldn't be concerned with any misunderstanding of hand signals. Coming around a corner, he (signalling LEFT) flew off the edge. My first reaction was to grab my camera, but I do travel photography and not reportage, so I thought I'd better help him. Leaning over the edge, I see Carlos hanging onto a bush with one hand, his bike with the other and his feet propping him up on - fortunately - a small ledge. I value a Bolivian life at $1,199. When I asked him to give me his hand, his terrified reply was "Take the bike! Take the bike!"

In case my description of the severity of the drop hasn't done it justice, when Carlos finally did get pulled back up, his tracksuit trousers did. Drenched. Hats of to him that he only wet his pants. I would have shat myself. 

My suspicions that these were a bunch of cowboys trying to get money for nothing were confirmed about ten minutes later when, hanging onto my ferociously vibrating handlebars, I was literally taken from behind. How I managed to retain possession of my testicles as my bicycle seat flew off is something I try not to think about, but the three seconds it took me to stop have haunted me since and the severity of the near-missed pain still gives me goose-bumps. I can still picture those moments as if they unfolded in slow motion: A cliff, a gravel single track, 40 kilometres per hour, two feet on pedals and a metal bar bouncing to the rhythm of a dangerous tune millimetres from any children I plan on having.

Needless to say, we were both happy to finish. A final assessment of the day is that cycling down this road has been made a "must-do" by guidebooks, that's all. It's over-rated and  a waste of money.

***

It's not so much that we had altitude sickness, rather we were just sick of altitude. Two-and-a-half kilometres closer to sea-level than La Paz, lies Corioco. Green; abundant oxygen; a spectacular view over a valley; a warm, gentle, sunny climate and a German restaurant that churns out cheesy noodle dishes makes for very happy travellers. Resting our rattled spines in the sauna of the Hotel Esmeralda and wasting three days at the pool was just what we needed before embarking on possibly the most uncomfortable nineteen hours of our lives.   

I know I've written about bus trips often and if this ever got published I'd have to edit them, but this one really is something worth noting. If you're bored of my bus stories skip these next few paragraphs:

To get from Coroico to Rurrenabaque (Roo-ren-na-bukkie) involves continuing on the same Road of Death as the bike ride. This time not on a bike, but in a sort of late seventies model school bus. There is no toilet on a school bus. As if descending from the heaven that is Hotel Esmeralda through the various levels of Dante's Inferno, at 1pm we trekked down the hill to the office of the bus station from where we'd be taken by taxi to the police station at the bottom of the hill where the bus from La Paz collects passengers. The taxi, it turns out, was another of those twenty seaters that are sold as sixteen seaters and for ten minutes as we rolled down to the drop off, I watched our driver, a gold-toothed sixty-something chat up an indigenous twenty-something in traditional dress. That in itself was none of my business, but his not watching the road was. Little did we know that this was the most comfortable we'd be until breakfast. 

So at a quarter-past one we were ready and waiting for our bus. At about two, a wedding party started arriving at the town hall next to us. At two-thirty-ish, it started raining and for the next hour fifteen of us huddled - standing - under a corrugated iron roof trying to avoid the flying mud. Three-thirty saw a loo run: first time in my life that I've had a whizz standing next to a bloke doing a number two over a hole in the ground. What is protocol here? I don't know, so I smiled at him, he smiled back, and for a brief moment in time, we watched each other go about our ablutions like it was any other day. Four o'clock was about the time when the first happy hats started getting put back in their boxes and when the bus arrived at half past, I think it would be fair to say we weren't overly jovial.

There is no place for manners on a Bolivian bus. Tam and I stood back and allowed everyone to board only to find that the bus was overbooked by two seats. So, with us standing, the bus began its sixteen hour descent further into hell. We mentioned to the English tourists that they were sitting in our seats, to which one replied that if she stood up, she wouldn't have a seat. I'm not sure why, but apparently her agency not issuing a valid ticket had become our problem. Fortunately we were able to rotate seats with some other girls and the four hours to the next town were spent standing and sitting in turns.

I felt an evil sense of satisfaction when, after what was to be our only stop, I forfeited time outside to make sure I was first back on the bus and sitting in my legitimate seat and Miss "I won't have a seat" realised.

"Oh, are we moving around now?" She asked.

"I don't know," I replied, "I'm just sitting in my seat."

"Well now I don't have one..." she pleads, with panic starting to show.

"Is this your bag?" I say handing her back her bag.

I didn't make a friend, but I hadn't realised making enemies could be so satisfying.

Like I said, that was our only stop. Like I said, there is no toilet on a school bus. The depths of Hades were reached at about 2am, six hours after the seat incident. Clinching for an hour, some of us (all tourists - Bolivians have bladders of steel) forced a toilet break when the bus stopped at a narcotics checkpoint. Negotiating mud in the dark, I was grateful to be a man. The girls, already uncomfortably squatting in a shadowy quagmire a few meters away (for there was nothing to hide behind!) probably recognised this as the moment of Lucifer himself arriving when the driver started revving the engine and hooting and the conductor shone a torch on them to hurry up. Did I mention that we'd paid for this trip?

We arrived, battered, exhausted and suitably miserable in Rurrenabaque at 8 the next morning. There is an airport here, and irrespective of cost, we are flying back.

Ok, no more bus stories. Until next time...

***

The reason for coming to Rurre (they call it that too) is because from here jungle and Pampas access are relatively easy. Many people do a few days in the Pampas and then a few days in the jungle. The Pampas are, I suppose, a kind of flat wetland. Easy crocodile and bird watching. The jungle is a little more serious: vegetation that can swallow you, insects that can do the same and, if you go with the group that took the guy enduring his third day attached to a drip and fighting salmonella poisoning in the room next to us, you might even see your guide washed away to his death by one of the mighty Amazon's many tributaries. We opted for the Pampas. To hell with the jungle - we still want to see Argentina.

Our trip was excellent. Game spotting from a boat is my cup of tea. The little walking we did was to find an anaconda in some marshland. The two hour amble through waist-high grass wasn't too stressful and I keep fantasising about how we'd see, from a reasonable distance, a seven metre long, tree-trunk thick sluggish snake that didn't bite, but constricted it's prey. I think all of us were keen, as there was much banter and nonchalance. 

The first snake we found, I say "we", ok the guide - was a docile looking metre long black thing. He picked it up by the tail and held it out to Amar, one of the guys in our group. Amar took it by the tail and started carrying it over to those in the group without Wellington boots - the two girls - who couldn't venture into the marsh. (Although I was wearing boots, as a gentleman I felt it my duty to stay with the girls should they need assistance in an emergency). A few paces in, the snake started licking his hand and, understandably, he dropped it. The guide, annoyed that he was dealing with a big girl's blouse, quickly picked it up again. This is when things changed. The docile black thing turned into a grumpy cobra, flared its head and latched, teeth first, onto/into his arm. With blood showing through his white sleeve, we all - from a few metres - asked if he was ok. "Don't worry," he said, "I have antibodies. Many bites. But you," pointing at us, he did the universally recognised hand-in-front-of-throat-sideways-death-motion, "twenty minutes."

I didn't think this was a good time to point out that only a rubbish snake catcher gets "many bites".

He did, eventually, after disappearing for twenty minutes during which we thought he'd died, reappear with an anaconda. About a metre-and-half and a little bit more agile than I'd expected. Needless to say, the trek back to the boat was significantly quieter as everybody scrupulously analysed the ground before every step.

Day two involved some fishing. I love the irony: "Indians Eco-friendly Tours" is the name of our agency. How do they take us fishing? We tie bits of meat to hooks and if we're lucky enough to pull out a piranha, we throw it to the nearest croc. Only one of us caught a piranha. He's six foot two, South African and can whip a fish out of the water on his second cast....

Rurrenabaque is too pleasant to rush from, so not being in a hurry, we stayed for a week. Warm, good food, a happy vibe, mucho oxygen and hammocks make for some quality reading time.

Feeling a little guilty about being so close and not visiting the jungle, we spent our last day doing an easy, relatively bug-free zip-wire canopy tour. This involves getting strapped up in a harness, clipped to a cable and sent at 60km/h across and through the tree-tops. Sort of like a latter day Tarzan. I'd recommend this as a way to get some jungle fever, but gents, beware: the English tailor's famous question when measuring up trousers of "Which way do you lie, Sir?" translates in Bolivian pidgin English to "Mind your ball" (Yes - funny that they use the singular), but the two seconds between the warning and the rapid tightening of the harness are not enough to reassess your position, and the first zip-wire may be covered in some discomfort.

I think that's enough genital and toilet commentary for a while. We're back in La Paz now (after a magical forty minute flight in an eighteen seater, leaving jungle at 1,000m and landing between snow-capped mountains at 4,000m. Fantastic experience.) We're going to find an immigration office this morning to extend our visas for another 30 days. This place is too good.

Heading south next. Until then...