Bolivia The Pampas

A few days recovering in Taganga it was onwards and downwards to La Paz. Sad to say goodbye to Al who was off to Peru, but all good as we will be seeing her for Christmas in Buenos Airies.

Upon arriving in La Paz, we got our usual "we dont like this place" (which happens to every new country) and made a rather hasty decision to make our way to Rurrenabaque, to do a tour of The Pampas. Later we discovered that this was actually in the Amazon Basin (proof of the amount of research that went into this decision). All we knew was that Rurre was an 18hr "local" (whatever that meant) bus ride away and the tour involved swimming with PINK dolphins. The bus turned out to be 20hrs, horrendous, and swimming involved the ugliest dolphins you have ever seen along with some pirhanas and crocs. Erm... no thanks. I was under some illusion that we would be swimming with dolphins in the sea... apparently not in a landlocked country Becky!

Upon arriving in Rurre after THE bus journey, which had driven 10miles an hour the whole way and involved the most disgusting toilet stop you have ever come across in your life (the cleaner, who wasnt really cleaning, was wretching as she mopped the floor... need I say more?) we arrived and had a couple of hours before the tour started. Hardcore. It took ages to get to the river (being the amazon) and finally to camp...

The first evening we arrived at camp and saw our bedroom, toilet and shower, Flo and I looked at each other and said "too soon after The Lost City!". It felt like we had never left. Obviously a completely diffferent experience and alot easier, but all the things we had hated about the trek reared and slapped us in the face, whilst Al was busy sand duning in Peru, here we were slapping on the bloody mozzi soap every 20 mins. Great!

In fairness, the trip was amazing and we saw all kinds of animals. Pink minging dolphins, endless crocodiles, monkeys, turtles and birds. It did get a bit boring after a while "oh look, another bloody crocodile!". But it was a great experience. Our group was somewhat dull, but we had met Crazy Sue on the bus ride down and she had a brilliant group. One guy, Yoshi Marley from Japan, is cycling around the world in 5 years! So during the evenings we would hang out with them, and make our own fun during the day on our boat.

The highlight was on the first night where we went crocodile eye spotting. In the pitch black of night we went out under the stars with our little torches to see the glimmering, somewhat scary eyes of hundreds of crocodiles. Cool, but the best part was when Ronnie our guide, turned off the engine, and us all our lights, and we just gazed up at the stars and watched all the fireflies light up the sky. That was pretty cool. Lowlight: Every mozzie in the world decided to come and play in the pampas those three days and it was a bloody nightmare...

Oh hang on... no what was worse than that was realising that I was constipated and had not been to the "loo loo" as F and I call it in 6 days. Oh Dear...