Sunday, July 13

Imagine a cold and misty morning on a mountaintop only 150 meters lower than the Mont Blanc. Add to that one of the steepest valleys you have ever seen and winding down the mountian a very narrow dirt road going down to more tropical conditions at around 1.200 meters. The road used to be one of the main transportation routes from the east of Bolivia to La Paz. Also keep in mind that it's Bolivia so security rails or whatsoever are virtually nonexistent. Therefore, lot's of trucks who tried to pass each other didn't make it and tumbled down. Do you have that? Then finally imagine us cycling down that road in those conditions(!); yes we survived going downhill with a mountainbike over the officially "most dangerous road in the world". There were years in the past where up to 300 people per year died. To reassure you; it's still pretty dangerous because you can slip over the edge, but (truck)traffic is almost zero since a new road was opened not so long ago.

The trip was exciting but we had extremely good bikes, a downhill-expert as a guide and since we can cycle through the center of The Hague without accidents, it turned out we were one of the more advanced cyclists in the group.

After this trip we decided we liked the tropical conditions and so we went to the north eastern part of the country (Rurrenabaque) where tropical rainforest exists. The forest is connected to the Amazonian rainforest and the rivers contribute to the Amazon river. We spent the first two days in the middle of the jungle; the camp can only be reached by boat and it took 3 hours to get there. The accomodation was very basic but it was very interesting to experience a 'real' jungle with its dangerous as well as medicinal plants, giant toxic insects (including a tarantula spider, brrr) and bad smelling, noisy and potentially dangerous wild pigs. According to our guide we even saw the silhouette of a puma during our night walk. When we came back we went to a different environment; pampas/savannes. The difference is that there is less vegetation which means more potential to spot wildlife. Our guide was very knowledgable and it was great fun to learn more about and see lot's of birds, monkeys, caymans, capibaris and ... an anaconda! And we've swum with pink river dolphins (don't worry, they keep the caymans on a distance). We've also fished and ate piranha's and simply enjoyed sitting in the boat and looking at the wildlife.

Back in La Paz we decided it was time to move on in the direction of Peru. We slept on the Isla del Sol where according to local Inca legend, the sun was born. The Isla del Sol lies in Lake Titicaca at around 3.800 meters and exploring the island was exhausting since after our week in the jungle we weren't as good acclimatised to the altitude as we were before. Although the Inca sites were a bit disappointing the views were great: the deepblue lake with the islands in the middle and the snowy peaks of the Andes in the background.

Bolivia has positively surprised us. We didn't know much about the country before we came, but the nature is extremely diverse: desert, salt lakes, Andean mountains, lakes in many colours, jungle and tropical areas. And then we haven't even seen the east and the south of the country. Living in Sucre gave us more insight in the cultural and political situation. The people are poor and not the friendliest we've ever met, but as usual, that's very generalistic and we've met many nice people as well. We can definitely recommend Bolivia as a travel destination!