Amazon Basin to Peru (Arequipa, Peru)

You´ll be happy to hear, I survived the Death Road! It´s a dirt road, a major highway, that runs North down the mountains out of La Paz. The real way to get down it, as a tourist, is on a mountain bike, however, given my history with bikes and my ability to crash them (just ask Monika about how she found me in a heap with my bandana blowing in the wind in Mallorca) without the interference of obstacles like rocks, mud, ice, 1000 foot sheer drops into lush valleys, speeding buses, huge trucks, and so forth, I opted for the bus. Apparently bikers go over the edge every few months and other forms of transport a few times a year. The death toll is something like 100 people a year. Not easily alarmed by this point in my trip, I found the bus experience to be plenty terrifying. The road is only one lane wide which means when vehicles encounter one another head on, one is forced to reverse along the edge of the cliff to the most recent slightly wider turnout area so they can squeeze past eachother and continue on. The turns are literally hairpin tight and in taking them, the tires don´t always all seem to stay on the road itself. The driver going downhill drives on the left even though you really drive on the right in Bolivia in order to be able to gauge the edge better by being right on top of it. Sitting by the window and cliffside I often couldn´t actually see the edge of the road because we were too damn close to it. And it got dark so much of the trip was in blackness. Getting to the smooth flat grasslands outside of Rurrenabaque at 4 am was way more exciting than it should have been.

Rurre is a tiny town at the edge of the jungle and the pampas, the marshy wetlands, of the Amazon Basin. It´s pretty out of the way so it doesn´t see huge numbers of tourists, but like those weird tiny places in India, it does see huge numbers of Israelis, and all the tourists it does see go for the sake of jungle and pampas trips. The pampas trips are more popular than the jungle because of the opportunity to see wildlife up close. Very close. I found a company that seemed alright and set off for the pampas the next day with an English couple, an older American-Australian couple, an English girl named Anna, an Australian named Olly, and 2 English 18 year-old boys who thought provoking aligators with hands and rocks in the dark was a fun game - but that´s another story. It was a 3 hour rough Jeep ride to the river and by the time we got there we´d seen 1 huge anaconda, 1 sloth, and a family of capibaras which are apparently the largest rodent in the world - they look like massive guinnea pigs the size of regular pigs. Upon reaching water we hopped in a long wooden boat and were off. We expected to see aligators, like maybe 1 or 2 in my mind, but by the time we got to camp we´d seen at least 40. They´re not particularly gigantic, maybe 3-7 feet long, but they´re still aligators and they´re absolutely everywhere. There were also turtles and monkeys and all kinds of birds - tucans and cormorants and jabirus which stand about 5 feet tall and absolutely shower you with feces when they shit on you. Which I know for a fact because it happened the next morning at camp bringing my total number of times shat on on this trip up to 4 and setting the record for amount of birdshit that can possibly cover one person at one time. And in fact, it covered Jack, one of the English boys, in equal if not greater quantity in the same blow. Nasty.

The first night we watched a beautiful sunset from a conveniently located middle of the f-ing jungle bar with a boatload, several boatloads, of Israelis. We boated back to camp watching stars, fireflies, and glowing aligator eyes with equal amounts of enthusiasm. Dorio, our guide, kindly serenaded us with his horrible voice and a plastic bucket. Sleeping took place in a semi-screened cabin of bunks with lots of mosquitoes and laughter and little actual sleep. The next morning we set off on a 5 hour walk through the deep wet grass in search of snakes. Don´t ask me why this is a good idea, but it´s what you do in the pampas. They give you galoshes to wear, gumboots or Wellies, depending on your nationality, but mine were extra special in that they had an enormous hole next to the big toe. This of course, wasn´t discovered until the mud got deep and wet. We trucked along in glaring brutal sun, sinking at times up to our knees in stagnant muck, before we all agreed we had a long way back to the boat and though we hadn´t seen a single living thing, we should probably turn around. Just before we got back to the boat we happened upon a cobra. Not huge, but a cobra. The idiot guide tried to catch it and missed and it reared up to strike Anna who expertly froze and it slithered off before the idiot guide did actually catch it and let everyone excitedly ooh and ahh and touch it. Then we went back to camp. The afternoon was excellently spent lounging in riverfront hammocks and when the relaxing part got old, seeing how high we could swing them without killing each other, falling out, or collapsing the thatched structure supporting them. In the afternoon we went swimming! Did I mention the aligators? Yes, well apparently they don´t go where the pink dolphins are. Yeah, right. We swam in opaque brown Amazon tributary water surrounded by funny-looking long-nosed pink dolphins and then got out to find a huge aligator 50 feet up the riverbank. The next morning, very nearby, we went fishing for pirhanas. Granted they were small, but again, still pirhanas. That morning there was a very big aligator actually in camp, between the dining room and the boat. People fed it. How none of us got eaten by something, anything, in 3 days in the pampas, I´m really not sure.

By the time we got back to Rurre we were very hot and dirty and ready for a drink. Anna and Olly and I hung out at the appropriately named Mosquito Bar (I am literally covered in a disgusting connect-the-dots of bites and scabs by the way) and played pool and had a great time. In the morning we all went our separate ways. Actually, unwilling to tempt fate in an effort to re-survive the Death Road, everyone just flew to La Paz on a bunch of different flights. The flying experience (tiny plane, grass airstrip, etc) didn´t exactly provide an overwhelming sensation of safety either, but it went alright.

La Paz was a one-night business affairs stop for me which included purchasing my ticket out of Peru. From this fine country I just entered, I go to Belize to meet my good friend Amanda, but you see flights to Belize are very expensive. So with some great suggestions from various assistants I determined that a flight to say, Cancun, with a bus connection from there to Belize, might be more affordable. I was already laughing nervously at the thought of touching down for even a day in Cancun, Mexico, when things got even more exciting. As it turns out, the cheapest flight from Lima to Cancun is conveniently routed through.... Houston, Texas! English and Starbucks and McDonalds and Texans - can you say PANIC ATTACK? If you should happen to find yourself passing through the Houston airport on July 17, you can look for me. I´ll be the one huddled in the corner muttering to myself, that is, if I´m not more catatonic than Cameron in the hot tub after the Ferrari goes out the window.

From La Paz I took a horrible tourist bus of Israelis to Cobacabana which is a cute little town on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The next morning was the winter solstice and Aymara New Year, Aymara being the predominant indigenous population of the Lake Titicaca region, so I got up at 5:30 am to hike up a nearby hill with the entire village. There were pan flutes and drums and prayers and fires fueled with drinkable rubbing alcohol, and beer both consumed and sprayed wildly in prayer. Bolivian hippies danced on the rocks and a film crew recorded the entire event. It was freezing. When the sun cracked over the mountains everyone turned their palms to it to welcome the new year. It was quite a spectacle which I felt lucky to witness. When it was over I packed up my daypack and walked 4 hours to the end of the penninsula. Sun at altitude is a bit stronger than I´m used to so I burned myself rather intensely which was stupid. Along the way I encountered a nice village lady returning home and walked with her for a bit, chatting about family and life and assuring her that no, I´m not afraid to ´andar solita´. Then I caught up with a nice girl from Atlanta and her Austrian friend and when a local man told us the road over the mountains might be more fun than the road that follows the lakeshore, we listened, making the whole event much more challenging than it needed to be, but indeed beautiful with awesome views of huge snowy mountains in Peru, and various islands in the icy highest lake in the world. From the end of the penninsula we hired a boatman to take us, and 2 funny girls from NYC (oh how I´ve missed American sarcasm!) to Isla del Sol. We stopped to see Inca ruins and beautiful views on one tip of the island and then zoomed over to the Escalera del Inca, a painfully long and vertical flight of stone steps, up to the village of Yumani. The island is tiny and isolated and sees mostly traditional life and donkeys and a handful of tourists. I spent the night in a 15 Boliviano room (less than $2) looking out at the most incredible view of the lake and mountains you could imagine. The next day I walked a bit more than 2 hours to the north tip of the island to see more ruins and then walked back. Totally quiet and peaceful and sunny and gorgeous. I took a boat back to Copacabana and exhausted and cold and dirty, splurged on a $4 room with a cozy comfy bed and a private and scalding hot shower which was a real wonder as even tepid luke warm enough to get in at all nevermind even thinking about washing your hair water in Bolivia is hard to come by.

In the morning it was on to Peru. I was sad to leave the color and landscape and tranquility of Bolivia really, but the border crossing was painless and the bus ride to Arequipa tolerable if delayed. We got in late, but luckily I made friends with the one other gringo around, an Austrian with a mohawk, so I didn´t have to wander alone in the dark being warned by every second person about the dangers of theft and worse. Now we´re staying in a lovely rooftop room in pretty colonial Arequipa where the sun shines 360 days a year. Yesterday I visited a famous monastery with pretty blue and orange walls and secuestered nuns. Of course, there´s been a little bit of soccer to watch, and today I squeezed by a parade in order to get myself to the impressive fruit market, an overwhelming display of all manner of delicious-looking tropical things. Tomorrow I´ll go see mummies. We´re in major countdown mode at the moment because one Nicole Koleshis arrives Thursday morning in Cuzco! I can´t wait.