Santa Cruz

Sometimes you get a bit travel weary on the road and need to take a break. A vacation from the vacation. We choose Santa Cruz as our holiday destination. There is no real sightseeing to be done, no interesting museums but it is Bolivia's largest and richest city with plenty of restaurants, cafés and shops. We found a lovely hostel with hammocks to relax in, green patios and two funny tucans to rest our eyes on.

What else could a girl need?

Beautiful tucan

Even tucans get a bit shy sometimes...

Yarden is raving about how good it is to be back in civilisation and is calculating how much money we'll need to be able to retire here. I'm focusing on what kind of food we'll have for the next meal. The first night we had an amazing steak dinner, second night pizza.I believe we are ready for another meaty dinner tonight. And in between meals, it is actually possible to get a decent cup of coffee here. Santa Cruz are scoring high points from the Cohens!

Modern city, modern art

Sloth

Well, I know I said not much happened in Trinidad but just a couple of minutes after these photos were taken a police officer came and grabbed this little fella for being in the wrong place. Brutally he was carried by the skin of his neck to another location, the northeast corner of the plaza. He did not attempt any resistance yet the police officers were still poking him with their sticks when he tried to climb over the fence...

24th of September

We've missed a lot of holidays and celebrations on this trip - Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, surstrommingspremiar, kraftskivor and a few birthdays. But we have celebrated 24th of September!

We are not really sure why, but everyone else in Santa Cruz celebrated it so we joined in. The celebrations mostly took place around the main square, cleverly named Plaza 24 de Septiembe and contained army and police marching quite haphazardly, schoolbands playing and a lot of waving of green-white flags.

Bolivian VIPs

I had no idea my husband was so interested in schoolbands, he didn't want to leave...

Some israeli participation, in form of the Rangers' guns, was seen. Nothing swedish anywhere in sight though.

Off the beaten track

Most tourists fly to Rurre and then back south to La Paz. We decided to go east instead, to Trinidad. So, the day after coming back from the Pampas-tour we got on a minibus that would take us to San Borja, half-way to Trinidad. The roads in this area is a nightmare, covered with a thick layer of fine dust, sometimes more bumps and holes than road with cows and horses walking around. You drive on the side where the road is best at the moment, which to me always seems to be the wrong side. After 5 hours of driving we had finally driven all the 150 kilometers needed and stopped in San Borja. Not much to see, a nice plaza and an ice-cream parlor was the best bet. Insteadwe decided to take a taxi to El Porvenir, another 1,5 hours to the west.

El Porvenir is a biological research station that was built by an american university during the 1980-ies but that has been more or less abandoned for the last 10 years. About twice a month they get some visitors we were told by Walter, the man who is taking care of the place. After a very simple dinner we laid in our hammocks for a while before going to sleep.

At 6 am we were woken up by a cacaphony of parrots outside our window, fell asleep again and were woken up by Walter at 7 am who told us breakfast was ready and our guide and horses were waiting for us. A 4 hour ride around the reserve was scheduled so we got up on the horses and rode off to the Pampas. We saw capybaras, birds and tons of cows. I even saw a cockroach crawl under my T-shirt and didn't scream! I also saw two austrich-like birds, but from quite a distance so I guess it could in fact have been cows as well... However, we looked like cowboys, or at least felt like it!

Two horses and some capybaras in the background

Birds waiting for death

If that isn't two cowboys I don't know what it is...

This is how happy my horse was after the ride - look carefully...

After lunch we walked down to the main road to see if we could catch a ride further west. And, after only 20 minutes a jeep with 3 men in their forties from Santa Cruz stopped. They gave us a ride all the way to Trinidad and refsed to accept our attempts to pay for us. On the other hand we had to live with the seventies disco music that they seemed to enjoy a lot.

Our main reason to go to Trinidad was to catch a boat up Rio Marmoré for about 5 days but no boats were leaving until 3 days later so we decided that would be too much for our quite tight schedule and dropped the boat idea. Other than that not much happened in Trinidad. It is not really a tourist destination so people actually came up to us on the street and in restaurants to ask where we were from and kids were fascinated by my "white" hair.

Trinidad

The Pampas

Bolivia is an amazing country in many aspects. One of them is the variety of altitudes. La Paz is about 3km a.s.l but when you head north east (hopefully on a plane and not along the death road) the altitudes drop to almost sea level so fast that from the plane it looks like a shear cliff. The Amazon basin here is about 200m.a.s.l (reaching sea level at the eastern coast of Brazil) and it is divided to jungle and pampas, the flat wetlands which are flooded during the rainy season and are home to many different animals.

We took a 3 days tour to the pampas in which we stayed in a cabin on the riverside and traveled mostly by a small boat along the river in search of wildlife. We also went on a 4 hours walking tour to search for Anacondas.

Apart from that we had an early morning and a late night boat rides to hear the different sounds (howling monkeys and such ..) and a couple of rides to nice bars, comfortable located on the riverbank and serve cold bear to thirsty tourists.

One day we went fishing for Piranhas, caught quite a few and had them for dinner.
We saw a lot of birds (Ibises, Storks, Herons and also some predator birds), monkeys, Capybaras, Alligators, snakes and even the local pink river Dolphins. Here are some Photos:

A turtle train

Me and an Anaconda we found


Crazy two headed birds


Pink river dolphins


Small river bird flying


Aquatic bird taking off

Alligator

Capybara

Marabu

Little yellow monkey

A Piranha that I caught (Karin caught more ..)

Welcome to the jungle

The jungle from Rio Tuichi

After lingering a couple of days extra in Rurre it was finally time to get out to the jungle. In 1981, an israeli guy named Yossi Ghinsberg lost his group in the same jungle and had to survive on his own for more than a month before he was finally found. So, let's not tell the israeli mum where we are going until we get back...

We got into a boat in Rurre - Yarden, I, a Czech couple and our non-english speaking guide. Fortunately it turned out that the czech girl spoke spanish so she translated what the guide said into czech, her boyfriend into english and we all understood most of it. Of course, being in Bolivia, the guide knew most names of animals and plants in Hebrew as well. After 3 hours on Rio Beni and Rio Tuichi we arrived at our camp - a few cabins, dining room and bath - very simple but ok.

Our cabaña

In the afternoon we went for our first walk. For 4 hours we walked through thick, green and hot jungle where you don't get one quiet moment. The sounds from cicadas, birds and any other type of animal was really loud, quite surprising. We saw birds, spiders, wild pigs, a snake and even a turtle. To quench our thirst we drank water from a liana and the guide told us about different medicinal and toxic plants.

Downing a liana

Turtle

Tarantula

Snake

Beautiful butterfly

We came back to the camp for an excellent dinner and then Yarden and I went for a night walk with tthe guide. In the pitch black night, only lit up by our torches, the stars and fire flies our guide managed to find frogs, spiders, birds, crocodiles and tracks from puma, jaguar and tapir. Walking along the river, gleaming eyes of crocodiles where everywhere, luckily they aren't very big so no worries. The bigger animals decided not to show up so footprints were all we got. 2,5 hours later we came back to the camp for some sleep.

Tiny crocodile

Dragon fly

The second day contained a 3-4 hour walk in the morning, followed by lunch, siesta and a much needed swim in the river. Then it was time for "artesania", handicraft. The guide and the czech girl where frenetically making rings and necklaces from different kinds of nuts. I made my husband a wedding ring ("it's not comfortable" - does he think that marriage is about comfort??) and the guys were sleeping and reading.

Having fun in the jungle

More fun in the jungle

The last day started early so we could walk a few hours before the temperature became unbearable. This time we walked up to a view point where we could see the jungle from above and hear the howler monkeys howl. In the afternoon we got back into the boat and went to a place to watch colorful parrots screaming loudly before heading back to Rurre.

Look carefully for parrots

Finally some really bad Rio Tuichi jokes:
- The mosquito bites I can stand but the river is Tuichi
- We swam in the river but didn't enjoy it, it was Tuichi

Trees, comes in all shapes...

Rurrenabaque

Only 40 minutes by plane from La Paz is Rurrenabaque (or Rurre as most people call it). It feels like another planet though. While La Paz is a busy, big city that gets cold as ice at night and located at such high altitude that you start to breath heavily as soon as you climb a couple of stairs, Rurre is in the middle of the rainforest, hot and humid, sleepy and easy going. From La Paz you fly in over the snowy Andean peaks that quickly changes to the lush, green Amazon basin. Sweat covers you the moment you step onto the grassy landing strip.

The Andes, so close you can almost touch them

Nice little plane

The town itself is located net to the river Beni and surrounded by two national parks it's a really popular place for tourists. Travel agencies that arranges jungle- and Pampas tours are everywhere. Of course we did both (more about that later though). Unfortunately we had to stay a bit longer because of illness but it was quickly over and now we are up and running again! Other tourists aren't as lucky as us, you can see them sitting on the streets with the orange pants and dreadlocks, trying to sell there handmade jewellery. Some people just don't know when to stop travelling...

Who needs a bridge really?

View from our balcony over Rio Beni

The witches market

There's a quaint market in La Paz called 'The Witches Market'. Well, it's in the tourists' area so they mostly sell cloths, fabrics and other souvenirs of poor quality but they also sell bizarre substances, dead animals and llama / alpaca fetuses. Here are some photos:

Vendor of dog sleeped magical herbs

Should Karin get a fetus?

Or a frog

Or maybe a decorated armadillo

Where do all the naked Israelis come from?

Bolivia is a popular destinations for israelis. This is extremely visible in La Paz. You see signs, menus and recommendation letters in hebrew everywhere. When going for dinner the first night, Jason, an american that we have traveled with for a while, went into a restaurant to check out the menu and came back and said that it looked like a good place. So we went in. And where met by an israeli restaurant with a few menus in spanish, the rest was hebrew! the strangest thing though were the walls that were covered with photos of naked israelis posing for pictures in the salt lakes, the jungle or on a beach. It seems like some kind of mass psychosis. Maybe it's something that happens to your brain when the sun hits the salt crystals in the huge salt fields wher most of the pictures were taken? Maybe they didn't have to pay entrance if the took off their clothes? Maybe their heads are messed up from being in the army? We don't know, maybe the same thing will happen to us when we reach the sslt fields. If so, I promise you will be able to see the proof on a wall in El Lobo restaurant in La Paz.

People of La Paz

I strolled around the Plaza Pedro D Murillo, where the presidential palace is, and observed the different types of people (with a long range lens). Here are some photos:

Sleepy vendor

Playing (making noise) for money

Begging for money

Masked shoe-shiner (plenty of those here)

Eating local treat (jelly and cream)

Children of a booth owner

Examining the pigeons

Local woman