Lex & The City

So long then crazy Bolivia… but before I go, one quick hurrah to the excellent boys & girls at Lonely Planet. Here are a selection of my top three favorite phrases from the Romance section of our Latin American Spanish phrase book:

3) ´¡Con calme!´ – Easy tiger!

2) ´No te preocupes, lo hago yo´ – Don´t worry, I´ll do it myself

1) ´¡Más feurte!´  – Harder!

Lonely Planet, we salute you!

Unfortunately however, Spanish is very different to Portuguese, so Laura & I won´t be doing any flirting with the locals in Brazil…

Bonjamon x

I´m not a celebrity…

…get us in there! Even though we didn´t get a big pay off from Ant & Dec, we survived our month´s charity work with animals in the jungle, and it was an awesome experience.

The park we stayed at was called Ambue Ari (meaning “New start”), which is a plot of land just south of the Beni river on the edge of the Amazon Basin. They have 14 big cats that live there, 4 jaguars, 6 pumas, 4 ocelots along with howler monkeys, a spider monkey, chanchos (pigs), a tapier, a tahorne and a ton of beautiful looking birds whose names I can´t remember. Unfortunately, as most of these animals were either rescued as pets or from zoos who could not cope, they will never be able to be rehabilitated to be released back into the wild. Our job whilst there was to make their lives as fulfilling and as happy as possible.

Laura & Timo

Firstly, unless any of you had any misconceptions, let me clear them up for you – the jungle is full of stuff that stings, bites and hurts… a lot. Along with avoiding tunings from the cats (of which I received several – mostly my fault!), we had to dodge mosquitoes, ticks, sand flies, horse flies, jungle crabs, jungle snails, tarantulas, bamboo spikes, fire ants, bed bugs, piranha (obviously in the water), and severe protests from our tummies about the food & water there.

During our stay, Laura was responsible for looking after 2 ocelots called OB (nothing to do with Hollyoaks!) and Engine, and I looked after a puma called Maggie – a 2 year old who liked to sprint through the jungle and climb trees – and a 4 year old 140Kg male jaguar called Rupi – who always tried to have sex with me. My experience was much tamer than Ben´s – ocelots (who are the smallest of the wild cats – don´t worry, I´d never heard of them either!), are nocturnal and therefore my days were spent trying to persuade them to walk and relaxing in the sun whilst they slept.

Engine the ocelot

The days were long and often very hard – we had to get up at 6.30am for morning chores which included cleaning the house and feeding all of the animals that lived on site. We would then take our cats out of the cages and walk them all day until around 6pm, when we would promptly come back to the house and collapse.  Despite the long hours, the community feel at the park was great and we instantly felt part of the family. Although there was no electricity on site, we regularly went to the closest village (8km away) for a few drinks in the evening and even fitted in a ´make love not war´fancy dress party….

Rambo & Hippie!!

The exciting days were when the cats would ´jump´, ´stalk´or ´play´ with us, which are all affectionate ways of describing when they would give you a timely and humbling reminder that they are in fact wild animals and bank more of your respect!

Walking Katie the jaguar

We both had an amazing time, and would recommend you look into it if you would like to work with monkeys or big cats – www.intiwarayassi.org - it´s an incredible and rewarding experience you won´t find anywhere else in the world. Please message us if you have any questions!

We also managed to safely avoid the civil unrest taking place in Bolivia – http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/18/bolivia.ambassador/index.html - a very interesting read for all you wanna-be politicians (you know who you are!).

Until next time readers…

Laura & Ben xxx

Walking with Jaguars….

This is just a quick post to say that we are going to work at Parque Ambue Ari animal refuge (http://www.intiwarayassi.org/) for the next 4 weeks so sadly there will be no new posts for a while. Hopefully we´ll be working (well if you can call it that!!) with the big cats (jaguars, pumas and ocelots) and maybe even a few monkeys so I´m sure we´ll have many good stories to tell when we get back!

We´ve also managed to upload a lot of our photos to the internet so please have a look at http://www.flickr.com/photos/28986914@N08/2746509613/ if you get chance.

So take care and we´ll be in touch when we´re back in civilisation!

Ben y Laura xx

Leap of faith back through time

It´s hard for our generation to think of a world without basic everyday gadgets, like the Internet. Indeed, it´s difficult to conjure an image of the world without television or even cars. However, the next stop on our adventure would need us to cast our imaginations back 65 million years…

This is because 5km outside of Sucre, the capital of Bolivia and another one of our temporary homes, is the largest surviving collection of dinosaur footprints in the world – http://parquecretacicosucre.com. It was hard enough for our brains to make the connection with these 1m terrible lizard prints, but to add to the dramatic effect, the footprints are on a vertical wall – pushed up from a river bed floor when the Andes were formed.

The cretaceous park set up to raise money to preserve the prints had life size models of all of the species of dinosaurs that were found at the site, and it was amazing to stand next to the ridiculously sized creatures and try and imagine what they were up to all those years ago… (probably all at a dino disco by the look of their moves of the footprints).

We both thought that it was one of the coolest things we had seen on the trip so far, even if it did require a large leap of faith to picture the huge animals there, plodding along 65 million years ago.

One thing is for certain though, if any of the buses that we have to catch in Bolivia go any slower, then we may very well find ourselves back in time.

Laura y Ben x

Going underground

On from the frost-bitten Uyuni (fortunately with all our toes still intact), Laura and I travelled to the ex-colonial mining city of Potosi – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Rico - the highest city in the world at 4100m! Potosi is responsible for producing the the majority of the world´s silver over the last half millennium, both during and after the Spanish colonisation.

Although it was once a city of decadence and extravagance, the rich veins of silver have long since dried up, and Potosi has become an austere community of optimistic miners working in poverty and conditions that have not changed since 500 years ago. It has been estimated that around 9 million people have died mining in Potosi during that time.

The tour started apprehensively at the miners market, where each of the people on my tour bought live and extremely dangerous dynamite (nitro-glycerin and ammonium-nitrate, along with detonator) and bottles of pop and bags of coca leaves as gifts for the miners. We also bought a little TNT stash for ourselves to set off after the tour, in the shadow of the ominous Cerro Rico where the mining takes place.

We then trenched vertically through around 100m of back-aching tunnels and crevasses with our volatile gifts in tow, until we found a miner deep in the belly of the mine to talk to. Although working around 10 hours at least a day, and earning about 140 pounds a month, they are a very friendly community and he was happy to answer our question about the mining life and his experiences.

Smilling in sheer terror

After 2 hours in the mountain (enough time for our guide to get truly smashed chewing endless coca leaves), we clambered back to the surface, where hour guide (still smashed) assembled the “bombs” from our earlier purchases. After the fuses were lit, many people – mainly mental Australians – wanted to take photos with the lit gunpowder sparkling away… I however, opted for the safer unlit approach. Our guides then sprinted off up the mountain and planted them. The explosions were enormous, and shook the entire mountain!!… and I was glad none of them detonated in our tour group whilst we were inside the mines!

RUUUUUUUNN!!!

It was a very unusual experience, and I was truly humbled, certainly enough not to want to rudely photograph the miners at work as did the other members of my tour, which is why there are none here for you to peruse. Suffering from mild post traumatic stress, I stumbled onto the relatively short 3 hour bus for the Bolivian capital Sucre to travel back in time…

To be continued…

Don´t eat yellow salt!

I´ve finally been allowed to write a blog (although Ben still chose the title!) so I hope it lives up to Ben´s recent entries and keeps you entertained!!

After spending a week in La Paz due to bus cancellations and the whole city shutting down for a referendum (far too long in a hostel which brews its own beer!!), we travelled overnight to Uyuni to visit the infamous salt flats. We had been warned of the arctic conditions on the bus ride so went prepared with our sleeping bags and lots of warm clothes – definitely a good idea as we awoke to ice on the inside of the windows. We weren´t however, prepared for the lack of a proper road and spent 12 hours feeling like we were sitting on a pneumatic drill and getting absolutely no sleep!

Once we arrived in Uyuni, we found a tour group (selected purely on the basis of what meals they provided!) and were on our way. The first stop was the salt flats which were unbelievable. From the landscape looked like snow but salt snowballs definitely hurt a lot more! Unfortunately our bilingual guide spoke Spanish and erm, espangol so I don’t have much information about them but we did have a lot of fun creating the photos below!

WWF V Jurassic Park

We spent the first night in a salt hotel which looked like something from the Flintstones but you certainly needed to wear more than a tiger skin toga, there was no heating and it was about -8 degrees. For the remaining 2 days we visited a series of lagunas, ice covered lakes, volcanoes, geisers and deserts. Laguna Colorado is home to flocks of flamingos and actually has pink water which gives the birds their colouring.

On the final day, we also visited some thermal baths. I wasn´t sure if I could go in (especially as you had to get changed by the side of the pool, outside!) but eventually we plucked up the courage. Incredibly, the baths were boiling hot – very relaxing after 2 days travelling over bumpy terrain. We then drove the 6.5 hours back to Uyuni and the only consolation for our final freezing night was sampling Bolivia´s best pizza (and garlic bread!!) at Minuteman pizzeria.

Danger is my middle name

I write to you here today, as a survivor of the World´s Most Dangerous Road – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road.

Our cycle down the infamous road didn´t start well, after a blizzard started it´s downpour just as we set off up the 4000m high mountain – the starting point for our ride. This required us to descend the first 500m of the course in the “support bus” as the road was just pure ice.

It didn´t get much better either – as I was searching for a place to relieve myself in the baron mountain landscape immanently before departure on 2 wheels, and old woman appeared from no-where, rumbled my quest and started screaming and throwing considerably large stones at me. A little harsh I think.

Once we began our trip on the tarmac section of the road however, things got really bad. Everyone´s hands instantly froze in the blizzard, and no one could operate their brakes, let alone see further than 5m in front of them. To add insult to injury, at the first checkpoint, half of our group feinted due to altitude sickness. Our guide then promptly decided to pack everyone into the support vehicle until the treacherous off-road section where it was warmer.

After our guide had explained how to successfully avoid death on the road, conveyed in a rather unnecessary chain of explicit tales about the company´s only fatality a couple of months earlier, we departed down the slippery, vertigo crippling gravel track of the road that has claimed more lives (and cyclists) than any other in history.

I proceded with extreme caution around the top few bends, including the picturesque “Postcard Corner” – the deadliest drop in all of the course. After lunch, and descending far enough to be able to breath a lot better, the track opened up, which was much more fun! Although we still had to look out for waterfalls, and children holding out string across the road to trip up unsuspecting tourists.

Postcard corner

After over 5 hours of cycling, we made it down to the bottom where there was a nice animal sanctuary, and an even nicer cold beer and buffet lunch! After defying the crippling vertigo and surviving the road where we were statistically most likely to die though, I have only one remaining question: why the hell did they drive back up the same road!!!

PHEW!!

Laura & Bendy x

A deep one…

I´m afraid there haven´t been that many adventures of late readers (apart from a 3 hour border crossing to Bolivia which involved 3 police searches and obtaining 4 different sorts of immigration stamps), so I thought whilst we partied in our micro brewery hostel – www.theadventurebrewhostel.com -and put our feet up in La Paz for a few days, I would air some recent thoughts…

Whilst visiting the handful of sights so far that we´ve planned for our trip, although they have been stunning and each distinctly beautiful, I´ve noticed one striking similarity: everyone there is trying to take a picture of the landscape without any other tourists taking up any pixels. I actually even try actively to do this myself.

So does everyone, in the act of trying to see untouched parts of world, inevitably change it and make it more popular? This is similar to the question that physicists have been pondering for years (and for all you boffins out there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger’s_cat). Are we, in pursuit of the remains of history or our own paradise, actually slowly damaging them and attracting more Starbucks stores? Or does our presence raise awareness of the conservation required to keep these amazing places intact for future generations? A slightly morose thought, but one to ponder nonetheless…

Anyway, there are plenty of distractions here in La Paz lined up to distract me from worrying too much about the issues, including watching female midget WWF wrestling, bribing wardens to spend the afternoon in La Paz jail with inmates, cycling the world´s most dangerous road and partying in an Oxygen bar designed to get you high and over your altitude sickness.

So, as they say here readers, Ciao

Ben

P.s. in fact, my favorite phrase that I´ve learned here so far, which is actually a phrase in our South American Spanish dictionary, is “él es un vrigin y orgulloso de ello”, which means “he´s a virgin and proud of it”. I´ll be getting plenty of use out of that little gem in the hot tub of our hostel!