After leaving the picturesque town of Sucre we headed on a 15h+ bus towards Samaipata which is a very tranquil town nestled in a valley surrounded by rugged forest covered mountains. The town was very small but had some great character and reminded me partly of some of the villages in Goa India due to its tropical scenery. So after two months at altitude we have finally started to descend so its goodbye to dry chapped lips goodbye to poor pint pouring skills and goodbye to being out of breath going up one flight of stairs but hello to sweating like a pig every time you venture outside!
From Samaipata we ventured to El Fuerte a pre-Hispanic ceremonial site that is built on a great sandstone rock with over 50 Inca ruins, not quite as impressive as Machu Pitcchu by any means but still worth a look.
Our main aim was to reach the Parque Nacional Amboro which is part of the Amazon Basin but to do this we needed to catch two buses one to Santa Cruz and then a collectvio to Buena Vista at the northern part of the park. Once in Bueno Vista it was quite difficult to organise anything but luckily with Feargals Spanish we succeeded and then we were off on a two day trek of the jungle where some of my highlights were swinging on a real jungle vine Tarzan style, diving into rock pools to cool off, climbing up a tree strangler and getting my friends who cannot swim to swim to a gorgeous waterfall and stand under it. This they said was their first waterfall experience and where else better to experience it but then I remembered all the beautiful waterfalls that litter Australia which I think were much more spectacular!
Two days in the Jungle eating one shitty cheese sandwich some crisps and some peanuts and being eaten alive by mozzies I was more than ready to hit Santa Cruz which is the economic powerhouse of Bolivia and it shows as soon as you get into the city centre with designer shops selling everything from Louis Vitton to Diesel with more items priced in Dollars rather than Bolivianos. The women here are also quite a few notches up on the beauty scale than the rest of the country but with this comes the rudeness with a lot of the locals being quite rude also their accent does not help as they miss out the letter ‘S’ in every word so Buenos Dias (Good Morning) becomes Bueno Dia and at speed it becomes even harder to understand what the hell they are saying. My highlight here was the pet toucan at our hostel that would hop around and cause mischief among the other travellers.
Bolivia has become my favourite country so far as it has endless things to see and do and the diversity of the country is really out of this world, you can go from Lake Titicaca to a bustling capital to a rainforest to salt flats to a desert to alitiplano to mountains to picturesque towns to badlands and all of this at dirt cheap prices.
I am on a 30 hour bus to Paraguay as I write this meaning that my next blog will be Paraguay based. This is where the Gringo Trail ends for most people so watch this space as it could get interesting. Highlights that my whistle stop tour of Paraguay will be Asuncion (Capital) Ciudad De Este where the electronic black market is and the second biggest dam in the world!
Add below in address bar to see the video so far of South America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJYDClSA5ug
Finally some half decent wi-fi so here are photos from Bolivia:
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