Bus Ride to Rurrenabaque

A Little Reflection on the Road:

The bus ride to Rurrenabaque inspired mixed emotions. The breathtaking natural beauty grasped me as we descend into what seemed to be an infinite wilderness--an intimate and mystifying ride through the jungle. I thought it was an exciting and humorously extreme example of what traveling in Bolivia means, but some of the other passengers found the 18 hour cliff-hugging journey less than pleasant. The prospect of falling off the edge terrified them despite the incredibly low probability and relatively consistent safety record of the buses.


It's a New Species!

The most vexing aspect of my trip had nothing to do with the road, cliffs, or the bus. My company plagued my trip. Luck bestowed upon me a rotating roster of three incredibly overweight, unpleasant smelling, and territorially aggressive men. I would argue that they could be classified as amoebas or gelatinous creatures based on the way they settled into their surroundings. Their shape, first of all, encroaches upon neighboring environments simply by virtue of the size and composition of their bellies. These mountainous rolls of fat also force nearby appendages—as if by erosion—to invade the surrounding lowlands. I, a relative molehill, found myself vying desperately simply to maintain possession of a fraction of my allotted space. I positioned myself strategically in order that the encroaching mass would make first contact with a protruding elbow or knee. Unfortunately, even my palisade of armaments generally failed to hold the ever-flowing masses at bay. How exactly chance placed me in their company, I cannot explain

Gluttony's True Form:

The most disgusting and despicable aspect of this incarnation of gluttony and ego-centrism was encompassed in a single uncharacteristically swift and decisive stroke. He took the plastic wrapping of his fatty Bolivian cornbread loaf and pitched it across my face, out the window, and into the pristine rain forests below. The bag meandered on a slight breeze, fighting its impending descent. The bag, a monstrosity, extracted from nature in order to deliver a bit of its own flesh and blood to a similarly monstrous consumer, wandered down into the basin with disdain. Monica, my guide in Coroico had told me about wealthy Bolivian tourists, and their apathy for the preservation of the local environment. Seeing this for myself filled me with violent anger that was difficult to repress. I simply stared in disgust, and thought of how the refuse of the wealthy constantly plague the poor. The story is the same everywhere.

The Gelatinous Embodiments of Bolivia's Present and Future:

A fleeting glimpse of hope taunted me at our first stop when my blob-like neighbor grabbed his pack and headed out; however another of his kind immediately replaced him, and I once again found myself trapped between the alluring beauty of the scenery and the struggle to avoid consumption by the replacement amoeba. This second turned into a third, and my 18 hour trip was a restless struggle. Ebeneezer Scrooge deserved his torment, what the hell did I do? My only guess is that I wasn't grotesque enough for the bus ride, and it was trying to teach me to embrace the gluttony that was literally surrounding me. My luck with buses hasn't been great... but I'll reflect on that more after my trip. For now, I'm focusing more on the excitement of seeing bananas and cocao in their natural habitats.

La Paz

Bussing into La Paz:

From Uyuni, I decided to head straight into La Paz. I wanted a place where I could settle for a while without having to worry about the nagging daily needs that constantly arise in small towns. Most places in Bolivia don’t even provide toilet paper. A responsible traveler always plans to have their own roll on them. I’ve found carrying it generally very convenient. Toilet paper is a cheap and effective substitute for several different things that usually aren’t worth lugging around individually. Douglas Adams emphasizes always having a towel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I’d always recommend toilet paper. Times have changed. The small and multifunctional is in right now—just look at the iphone’s success. Hopefully in the future i-products will incorporate toilet paper functionality.

World Cup Soccer in La Paz:

I had planned to lay low in La Paz while adjusting to the altitude and preparing for the impending string of future travels. This didn’t quite work out. I ran into the Danish girls again at the hostel I stayed at and ended up making plans similar to theirs. On the third day in town we attended a World Cup qualifying match between Bolivia and Argentina. We expected Argentina to win handily, being arguably the best team in the world. This was not the case. I don't know whether the altitude took its toll on the Argentines or if the difference boiled down to passion. Bolivia embarrassed the visiting Argentines and their fans 5-1 if I recall correctly. The Bolivians must have felt really good about this match, especially since a lot of Argentines are really racist against South American's indigenous population. It’s always nice to see arrogance undermined.

Getting to Know the City:

The other days I spent wandering the streets and markets with several different people I met. I went to 3 different embassies with people working out passports and lost credit cards. Only the Dutch embassy actually allowed me inside. I don’t know what embassy entrance policies have been in the past, but I found the nearly-universal paranoia hilarious. Fortunately, the weather was great and I didn’t mind wandering around getting to know the city. By the recommendations a lot of other travelers we decided to leave La Paz the next day VIA bicycle.

The World’s Most Dangerous Road

I booked with the Danish girls on a downhill bike trip on “The World’s Most Dangerous Road.” Although formerly the most dangerous road, claiming about 150 lives per year, this cliff-hugging freefall became much safer when closed to public traffic. Now, only about one careless biker per year goes careening down into the rusty vehicle graveyards below. The road is, however, still one of the world’s most beautiful. During the day we descended about three vertical kilometers, and rode from among chilly, jagged-peaked cloud forests down into the sweltering Amazon basin. The road weaves right through waterfalls, hangs over dizzying vertical drops, and reveals some incredible views of dynamic mountainous rainforest. We actually booked with the cheapest tour group, paying about $40 for the trip rather than the $100 that some other agencies try to charge. The expensive agencies claim to be safer… but with one death a year on the road, we assumed we could afford to be stingy. We were right. We didn’t die. I feel good about my cheap choice.

Ending in Coroico and Meeting New Company:

We ended the trip in the town of Coroico. The town doesn’t appear to offer anything interesting, but I happened to talk to a local Bolivian girl who was studying tourism at a university in La Paz. She wanted to show me around, practice her English, and get used to making the area sound interesting. She didn’t have to try too hard. Meandering around a mountainside over three huge waterfalls overlooking the jungle and coca farming villages left little to be desired.

Some Interesting Stuff:

We happened upon a flood giant red ants moving with incredible purpose. Clumps 20 ants wide that appeared like a flowing red and black network of rivers weaved their way across the path into the hills. Monica explained that they were fleeing from impending rain, and that normally they move slowly in single lines like the ants we’re used to in the USA. She also explained that although they have been deadly to people under extreme circumstances, the village is fortunate when they move through the

houses. In their flight they clear out all of the other insect life that infests the houses, leaving them spotless in the few minutes during which they pass. The experience was fantastic and unique. I ended up spending two nights and three days which were filled with entertainment and information. I ran into a group I’d met in San Pedro de Atacama at a hostel and travelled with them deeper into the Amazon, to the town of Rurrenabaque.

Crossing From San Pedro, Chile to Uyuni, Bolivia

The Morning of the Departure:

I ended up booking my trip to Uyuni without anyone that I’d met in San Pedro or in other places during my travels. There were 17 people in our caravan none of whom I knew. I knew a few of the people in just about all of the other groups leaving on similar trips, just no one in mine. It may sound like this was unlucky—that it might make for a lonely trip—but I found that among other less-than-pleasant people, my incredibly talkative acquaintance, Kim, was traveling in one of the other groups. Rosemary is right, things really do seem to happen in 3’s for Italians, so maybe this will my last encounter with him. He happened upon me as I waited for my jeep in the logical place: on the street in front of the travel agency. Kim kept trying to convince me that a jeep clearly marked and parked by a different agency must be mine and that I should jump aboard the random vehicle trusting blind luck. Call me crazy, but I’ll take logic over uneducated impulse nine times out of ten. I spent the time until my jeep came trying to explain to Kim why that didn’t make sense and why he should stop urging me in that direction. My attempts were fruitless. He persisted until his own jeep came and relieved me of his adamant company. My jeep arrived shortly after. I boarded and waited for the rest of the group who were almost all running very late. Apparently, although Kim’s decoy jeep failed to fool me, the group of Danish girls that delayed our group had taken the bait. We had to wait for the drivers to balance out the incorrectly distributed masses before we could head on our way.

The Group:

Meeting the people on the trip was interesting, a random gathering of strangely compatible people. There were two British women, a German couple, three Dutch guys on their gap year, another Dutch girl who had a disaster involving a lost passport, an Australian couple, me, and the four Danish girls in my jeep. Our first stop was at the Chilean/Bolivian border. I was the only one treated badly (being American), they have a special procedure for Americans where they take your passport away and send you out of the building for half an hour… just so that you can return and be told that they process your information inside the border at immigration offices. I can’t imagine a better way to start a trip than dealing with a bunch of rude, curt, purposeless, and presumptive Bolivian militia. This, however, was just about the only time I was treated badly in Bolivia.

The Sights:

After the border, the stops can be summed up as a lot of small lakes with salt or mineral deposits that made them appear various colors: Laguna Blanca, Laguna Verde, Laguna Colorada and plenty of others. Although they were interesting and beautiful at first, 2 days of lake visits really did get a little boring. We witnessed flamingos and llamas in their natural habitats, but just like the lakes they got less and less remarkable as the trip continued. We changed scenery only on occasion, taking breaks to check out some irregular rock formations and other scenery that offered a bit of variety. We mixed things up by climbing rocks and finding other ways to exert ourselves when we had the opportunity to get out of the jeeps. Fortunately we were able to pass the less interesting time in good company.

The Salt Flats:

The third day highlighted the trip nicely. The night before, they drove us out to the flats so we could look at the stars and pointed out some traditional Bolivian constellations (I think they probably made them up and simply use them to dazzle tourists). Since there was virtually no light and only a thin layer of atmosphere between us and the sky, the Milky Way formed a perfectly thick and obvious line all the way across the sky, and the patchy light created by nearby galaxies illuminated large blotches in the star-speckled sky. After a great night’s sleep, we arose at 5:30 AM to watch the sun rise on the salt flats. The rest of the day was a long drive across salt, NaCl, and sodium chloride, with lots of stops on the pristine, glistening flat lands.

We did the usual salt flat activities: lifting jeeps, standing on soap boxes, and threw in a few originals as well. The perfectly flat, featureless ground creates a depth-less canvas where everything appears 2-dimensional. After some photo sessions and short visits to the nearby sites we headed to the town at the end of our journey.





We arrived in Uyuni, a small town where there was no choice but to constantly run into each other during our planning of other trips. Inevitably a few of us ended up heading the same direction. There is a lot to be said about the people I met, and what it means to be an American abroad… but I’ll save that for later. The short version is that I met a lot of people, had a lot of great times, and saw some incredible things. I can’t wait to travel in the near future when I’ll have more money at my disposal to do other trips of this sort.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

The First Day and Night in San Pedro de Atacama:

I took the same bus from Salta to San Pedro de Atacama as a few other people I met in the hostel, but I didn't end up hanging out with them when I got there. The hostels in San Pedro were generally expensive and offered very little, so I walked around town for a few hours without finding anything that appealed. Eventually my mind asked the 'why the hell not?' question, and I walked about 3 miles out of town amongst the dunes and set up camp for the night. The sunset bathed the oasis and surrounding mountains in a rich assortment of colors and left the desert pitch black only a short time after it began to settle on the horizon.

Only short bursts of intense wind accelerating over the dunes disturbed the silent calm of the Atacama. I took time to just lay back and stare at the stars, the only visible light anywhere. We humans tend to think of shelter as a way of securing ourselves from the harshness of the natural world, but just as often we close ourselves off from the inspiring beauty that only nature can accomplish. Although not staying in the over-priced hostels that the others from the Salta crew settled for severed a few ties, I managed to take an incredibly new and refreshing experience from my decision. I woke up and hiked back into town early in the morning before anyone might happen upon a tent nestled amongst the dunes.


Cycling Around San Pedro

The Valley of the Moon:

After arriving in town I rented a bike for the day and set out on an ambitious journey. I brought food and water to last the day and left San Pedro with a map that looked like (and functioned like) a piece of 'art' drawn by a 5-year-old using Microsoft Paint. The road on the "map" persisted where the actual road jogged, a left curve drawn as a right bend. The mountains were valleys, the forks were spoons, and I ended up navigating the sights blindly. At least the terrible cartography encouraged side-excursions into unmarked, but interesting looking canyons and trails.

After finding a few cool, tucked-away places, I arrived at the aptly named Valley of the Moon. It appeared in a vastly different place than was marked on the "map"... about 5km and a full 90 degree curve before the marked location. It was, however, quite a sight. The salt that surfaced as a result of the recent rain made the small mountain range appear like a lunar landscape.

The Valley of the Nothing:

Leaving the Valley of the Moon was incredibly disappointing. I decided to continue on the circle as it was marked on the terrible abstraction that the rental company called a "map." I was supposed to see 'The Three Marias," a cave in the mountains, and meet up with the main road shortly after. What I actually saw were 3 rocks that didn't prompt a second look, a hole in the wall that didn't even provide shade at it's furthest end, and a whole hell of a lot of nothing. So I ended up biking in a desert valley for 2 hours and back over the mountain range with the most interesting sight being my hands perceptibly turning more red. The area was about as dry and visually stimulating as this part of this post. Either way, 39 kilometers later I had completed the loop having seen a few unmarked canyons, the Valley of the Moon, and a lot of rocks in varying sizes and degrees of fineness.

La Quebrada del Diablo:

Having completed the days recommended amount of riding, I of course decided to keep going. The road continued to the Devil's Ravine. A long road nestled between rock walls that sometimes towered beyond sight. The road was narrower than an average American at its narrowest, shorter than an average Bolivian at its shortest, and as awesome as the average me at its most awesome. It was an interesting thing to take a bike through, being bikable for about 90% of it's 5km (estimated) length. The only sounds that echoed through the tight rock formations were those of my rickety bike, and an occasional falling stone.

Devil's Cave, and the River from the Oasis:

An unremarkable archaeological site lay further up the road along the river that flowed out of the oasis. Pictures were not taken. Pictures were not deserved. The surroundings and river were far more impressive. Take that, mankind. Your overly-glorified achievements once again pale in comparison to the natural beauty you destroy in order to "create."

Backtracking from there was the only way to get back to town, and I barely managed to fit in the last stop on the map before sunset. La Cueva del Diablo(another inspiring and unique name...). Nestled way up on the mountainside, the cave was an interesting thing to bike through, turning pitch black for the majority of the ride through. The hillside on the other end provided a pretty remarkable view of several drastically different environments. From that height it was easy to see the river bed; the dry desert mountains; and the snow covered dormant volcanoes of the Andean Altiplano.



The Daily Totals:

Returning to town was a quick, mostly downhill journey. I had some nice, cheap Chilean food as recommended by a local man (it pays to speak Spanish), and checked into the cheapest hostel I could find. I managed to do virtually everything on the map, covering about double the distance that the rental agency recommended. I paid the difference in sunburns, since deserts really don't offer much shade.

Kilometers Biked: 96
Hours With Bike: 13
Bananas Eaten: 4
Liters of Water Drunk: 4
Percentage of Body Sunburned: 50
Total Expenses (bike, housing, food): US $22

Sand boarding on the Dunes:

After taking it easy the next day, I went out to the dunes to try out sand boarding.

I didn't stay out long on account of tiring trips back to the top of the dunes, uncomfortable heat, and a general disappointment in the amount of excitement sliding down a wall of sand provides. You have to re-wax the board every time you go down the hill. When it runs out you slow down, and sometimes catch a patch of compact sand that throws you forcefully off the board and onto the dune, which is not as forgiving as it sounds. Not all the rocks in the desert have been worn down to fine sand particles, some are still just rocks.

Either way, it rounded out the Atacama trip in reasonably fun, and inexpensive manner. The next day began a 3-day jeep trip through the Andean Altiplano to Uyuni, Bolivia.


P.S.
Blogging next to obnoxious German youths playing Mario Kart definitely isn't something I thought I'd be doing in Bolivia.