Day 55 - we flew in Bolivia and did not die

We made a special effort to be up super early on the morning of day 55, in order to bid farewell to Sucre and fly onwards to Rurrenabaque in the Bolivian Amazon via La Paz. Our efforts were all for naught, as Bolivia’s legendary flight delays did not disappoint, and we were left sitting around the airport for a good couple of hours. Luckily, we had the foresight to leave heaps of time between our two flights, and we landed in La Paz just in time to get our next flight. Which was terrifying. About 10 of us were ushered into a plane so tiny that even the tiny old Bolivian ladies had to hunch in order to make their way down the aircraft. This was possibly the coolest flight I’ve ever been on, as we briefly broke through the thick mantle of clouds about 10 minutes out of La Paz and realised that we were flying only slightly higher than the jagged mountain peaks around us. Crazy stuff. After about 40 minutes, we began our descent into endless green punctuated only by winding brown rivers snaking through the thick jungle to eventually join the main branch of the Amazon River thousands of kilometres later.

Here I was, being terrified by how small our first plane was. Little did I know.


Interior of the second tiny plane (single seat on each side of the aisle)


Suddenly, a snowy mountain peak breaks through the clouds practically right next to us


Yay trees! Haven't seen many of you in a while...


Touchdown in the jungle in our even tinier plane

Stepping onto the tarmac at the tiniest airport, we immediately began stripping off our high-altitude layers as the heat and humidity of the jungle smacked us soundly in the face. Yep, this was the jungle, alright. We were met at the airport by a guy from the company we’d booked our tour with, and it turned out that 2 of the girls on our flight were also doing the exact same tour, with the same company, as we were. We were all doing the 5 day/4 night jungle and pampas combined tour with Mashaquipe, a company which I chose because they were eco-certified by the local Green Action Alliance. Although not the cheapest option (but by no means the most pricey!), we’d read really bad reports about dodgy guides from the more budget companies doing terrible things ranging from letting tourists feed the wild animals to keeping animals in captivity just so tourists can have a look at them. None of that shit for us, thanks. After sorting out logistics for departure to the jungle come morning, we had a brief wander around the town, prepared our bags, and went to bed nice and early after a delicious dinner of Amazonian catfish (the local specialty).

Plantain salespeople on the riverbank. Plantains are the best!


Cute tree! It was nice seeing lush colourful vegetation again after so long in barren-ish highland areas


This slice of fish was about 70% as thick as my waist!

Days 50-54 - dinosaurs, because I'm a massive nerd

We are terrible slackers, and dropped our Spanish learning time to 2 hours per afternoon for our second week in Sucre. We spent another chilled-out week not doing a huge amount, but freaking out slightly as we found out that half of Peru is flooded. Although this is going to severely disrupt our initial plan to travel all over Peru and then on to Ecuador by road, our inconvenience is nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of Peruvians left homeless and totally fucked, and we’ll be able to work something out once we get to Cusco (which thankfully hasn’t been affected by the floods). To combat my Peru-anxiety, I indulged my “wtf am I going to do after travelling”-anxiety and overhauled my CV. Lame, I know. We also ate more stuff, unsurprisingly.

One morning this week, we visited the nearby Cretaceous Park, a small theme park/museum built around a cliff where many sets of dinosaur footprints were discovered in the last couple of decades. We hopped on the “Dino Bus” in front of the central plaza, and were deposited behind a cement factory. It was workers in the factory who found the footprints as they were mining a cliff in order to  obtain materials for making cement. After scientists had a good look at the footprints, a park was built across from the cliff to give the public a chance to see the footprints for themselves.

Dino crouched over a cement factory. Weird juxtaposition.


This guy looks very displeased that we are visiting


So many prints

During the Cretaceous period, much of the Andean region of Bolivia and northern Argentina was covered by a huge inland sea. The cliff on which the footprints are located used to be part of the soft lake shore, where many dinosaurs gathered to do whatever it is that dinosaurs do (in my mind, they are being purple and telling small human children that they’re a happy family). Tectonic activity led to the once-flat area folding up into mountains, which is how the footprints ended up vertically up a cliff (not because dinosaurs move in a similar way to Spider-Man). This is also how the salt flats formed - as the inland sea drained while the land rose upwards, a huge but shallow pocket of briny water was trapped, and evaporation of the water meant that a huge quantity of salt was left behind. Science, bitch!

Holy crap I love this guy so much! The eyebrow-horns! The tiny tiny Trump hands! So so great!


Theropod dino prints


The guy that left these prints would have been huuuuuuge!


This huge, in fact


Even things with huge threatening teeth look comical when brooms are leaning against them


More prints


Not a bad spot to be looking out over, dino-pal

The cutest but saddest thing to happen this week was the fact that I still don’t have a dog. One night while we were out at dinner, a shaggy little dog ran into the pub we were in. Although it was quickly kicked out, it hung around outside, and when we left, it decided to come with us. After smooching us on the legs, it followed us for 6 blocks until we got to our apartment. This was no mean feat for a single little dog (who I decided was called Pedro. It looked like a Pedro), as the 2 blocks or so around our apartment are frequented by a huge pack of about 20 or so street dogs that have no problem with humans, but have nightly vicious barking battles with dogs from other neighbourhoods. We were touched that Pedro had crossed enemy territory in order to be with us, but there was nothing we could do - our super nice Airbnb wouldn’t be very impressed with us letting a scraggly street dog into their nice clean apartment, so we had to awkwardly edge our way in through the gate without letting Pedro in. The poor little guy sat outside for a good 2 hours, occasionally scratching at the gate and crying, while I frantically looked up how hard it was to adopt a random canine travel buddy (very hard, apparently). He was gone the next morning, much to our relief. HOWEVER, on the morning that we left Sucre, we noticed a random pile of fluff dive into the minivan we were taking to the airport and straight under the seat in front of Jeremy. It was Pedro. He somehow knew we were leaving, and wanted to come with us. Alas, it was not meant to be, and the driver quickly kicked him off. We never saw Pedro again. I am now and forever filled with sadness. 

Part of the usual dog pack that hung out on our street


Scruffy lil Pedro :'(

Days 48-49 - weekends are still weekends when one forces school upon oneself

Taking a rest from Spanish lessons on Saturday, we spent the day exploring a couple of different parts of the city. First up was the Mercado Campesino, an overwhelmingly huge market a bit further out from the city centre that sold pretty much anything anyone needed for daily living. Everything except for the electric razor Jeremy needed in order to replace the one he’d lost somewhere along the way. We visited the cemetery in the afternoon. I was under the impression that this would be like the one in Buenos Aires, full of historical graves of the rich and famous. However, this one was actually still very much in use, with recent and unused graves everywhere. It was the day before father’s day, so the place must have been especially busy, and we saw large numbers of people adding fresh flowers to tombs. We even came across a funeral service, complete with a mariachi band playing mariachi Simon & Garfunkle covers. 

Graves


Ladders are available on demand for those wishing to tend to the more elevated graves


This kid (I assume) must have really been into Pokemon :(




Such a cute tomb

Later on, we walked uphill to the lookout point outside the Recoleta Museum, where we got a beer at the cafe while watching the sun set over the city. We decided to splurge on dinner after a week of cheap-ish eating, and headed over to supposedly one of the fanciest place in town - a (Bolivian-)French restaurant called La Taverne. Less than $50AUD bought us 2 huuuuuuuge steaks and a bottle of wine. Bolivia prices ftw.

View from the lookout


This steak was so huge I couldn't move for a good 12 hours after eating it


Jeremy's epic bacon-wrapped steak

We dragged our still-overstuffed asses out of bed early on Sunday morning in order to attend an excursion organised by our Spanish school. We were off to visit Tarabuco, an indigenous town a couple of hours away, where they happened to be holding their annual Pulljay festival. This is held at the end of the wet season to celebrate what I understand is the harvest and the historical defeat and possible consumption of some Spanish conquistadors. People from villages all around the region come to Tarabuco in their traditional clothing to sing, dance, flirt, and get absolutely smashed. We did none of these things, apart from maybe get a bit tipsy. Wandering around a super crowded and sun-exposed town became too much after a couple of hours, so when we spotted the beer tents, we headed straight for them in order to indulge in some super cheap beers ($6AUD for 2 litres) and delicious BBQ (such good grilled pork, my stomach still whines when I think about it).

Ponchos for sale


A stall selling the cute petticoats which are part of the traditional Bolivian cholita outfit. See here for an interesting article on cholitas. I think it's seriously cool how many Bolivian women choose to wear their traditional clothing in an authentic not-just-for-tourists way. Plus, the outfits are pretty cute (as in vaguely similar to clothes I actually wear when I'm not dressing like the slob I am).


Textiles for sale


These chickens for sale were so cheap I was tempted to buy them all, eat a couple of the unlucky ones, and set the rest free


So many colours!


Huge bags of coca leaves for sale


The crowd gathered in the main festival area


There was a tower strung with huge quantities of foodstuffs, including entire cow and sheep carcasses, that everyone danced around


Epic shoes


Epic hats


Youths in traditional garb enjoying the festivities


People playing interesting instruments


Detailed embroidery on clothes

Days 43-47 - Adventures in food and Spanish language failure

We initially signed up for 4 hours per afternoon of private Spanish lessons (separated, as my Spansh is better than Jeremy’s), and by day 3, this had reduced to 3 hours per afternoon (because learning is hard work!). Jeremy worked on the basics, while I reviewed all the stuff that I already knew and worked a bit more on my listening and speaking abilities (basically, I paid a guy to speak repetitive Spanish at me really slowly and only in 5 out of 14873489273 tenses while I tried to tell him about all the cute dogs I’d seen recently). Meanwhile, we spent a nice week not seeing too much of the city but managing to consume some interesting foods. We thought that Sucre would be the best place to eat some dodgy-ish things, as we would have a private toilet in which to have the runs in peace if required. We also "splurged" on some pretty luxurious meals, because Bolivia is so damn cheap.

A traditional Bolivian breakfast - api (thick sweet corn drink) with a cheese empanada


Picante pollo - a traditional dish of chicken cooked in some sort of non-specific spicy sauce


Mondongo - a traditional dish of pork bits stewed in a bright red sauce. Jeremy was determined to sample this at every stall in the market (he managed about 2)


The juice aisle in the market. One of the drinks they served was a crazy beer shake (not great, far too malty)


We hit up local chocolate place "Chocolates Para Ti" perhaps a little too often for their delicious ~$2AUD chocolates drinks


Ok this is probably a very controversial stance, but Bolivian salteñas > Argentine empanadas any day. Salteñas have a delicious salty-sweet flavour, the filling is slightly soupy and they are usually consumed for morning tea (most places stop selling them after midday)


A papa rellena - deep fried potato stuffed with egg and cheese.


A tucumana - a fried pastry thing filled with (in this case) veges.


An epic watermelon and goat cheese salad. Like the other 2 items above, this was from Condor Cafe, a super cheap and delicious vegetarian non-profit place that we may have ended up at far too often, where a meal could be had for $2-$5AUD and the uncooked vegetables did not result in food poisoning


We tried a "chifa" (South American-Chinese fusion cuisine) place and it was super average. Our meal was served with these weird sauces (a weird watery mayo, a weird watery sweet chilli sauce, and a weird watery concoction of non-spicy chillies soaked in vinegar)


Attempt 2 at "pique a lo macho". The chillies on this thing were so spicy I nearly died after making the mistake of putting a whole slice in my mouth at once


The queue by "Siete Lunares", the world-famous-in-Sucre chorizo stall in the Mercado Central


Jeremy looking stoked with his Siete Lunares choripan (very different from Argentinian choripan)


We had THE BEST tiramisu at this restaurant which was basically this Italian guy's living room, which had the tiniest sign outside the door and you had to ring the doorbell to be let in if the chef was in the mood for customers. The pastas and panna cotta were very good too

We also went to the movies one night, where we paid less than $4AUD each to see the new Kong (or in my case, perve on Hiddleston) in 3D. And completely in Spanish. Luckily, it’s not like this was a film that had huge amounts (or in fact, any) character development or even much exposition of storyline via dialogue. We also tried Bolivian fast food (a luxury item here, costing as much as a 3-course meal in an average restaurant), and now I completely understand why McDonald's was so unpopular in Bolivia that it was banned.

Holy crap the patty in this burger actually tasted like beef and not whatever overprocessed cardboard they put in McDonald's burgers. Because I'm terrible, I also had "the dark waters of imperialism" (not even joking, this is what the president of Bolivia calls coca cola)

Friday market St Paddy’s day, and to “honour” Jeremy’s Irish heritage, we visited a couple of “fine” drinking establishments in Sucre. After a somewhat disappointing pint in the Irish pub, we quickly left as the oonce oonce and the hordes of wasted young backpackers arrived. We shifted our disappointment to Goblin, a craft beer place decorated with murals of... you guessed it, goblins. Then it was onward to Florin, where we’d had a nice IPA a few nights ago. We were no less disappointed here, as they ran out of IPA and we had watery stouts instead. 

He's pretty tall for a leprechaun


Such a dainty beer


Beer level up!