Robin and Hopper's grand south american adventure!: La Entrada, Rurrenabaque and Sorata

Alright, so there is quite a bit to catch you all up on since our last
entry. Let's get to it!

Before leaving La Paz, we ran into another fiesta. Lil was pretty
bummed about not going to San Ignacio de Moxos, which is said in
Lonely Planet to have any amazing party every year. But when we woke
up and walked out our door, one had begun. A big one. One that ended
up lasting from 8AM to 10PM. It is called La Entrada and is thought
by some to be the best in Bolivia. It presents all the different
cultures and their dances from across the country and snakes its way
through downtown La Paz. It is hosted by all the universities in La
Paz, and each university has a troop of dancers that perform their own
unique, traditional dance, complete with amazing costumes! It is so
funny here, but we have gotten so used to the culture; we weren't surprised
to hop out of our hostel and see bleachers appearing from nowhere,
vendors coming out from all the cracks and tons of people cheering on
the dancers. Our hostel was right on main drag of the parade, and we had
a balcony that overlooked the whole thing! We spent the evening sipping
drinks on the balcony and watching.

The next day, we took an 18 hour bus from La Paz to Rurrenabaque in order to go
explore the jungle that is National Park Madidi. We had heard that
the ride was horrible and that most people don't take the bus, but fly
with one of the local airlines. It actually wasn't too shabby at all; we have
gotten used to shearing precipes that drivers swerve too close to,
going around blind corners only too find another vehicle coming and
just missing the other car, crying babies, broken down buses where you
wait on the side of the road until they fix the clanking and you hear
"vamos" . On our ride there, the bus only broke down once... and the nearest
baby was a happy, giggling one,which means that it was a pretty successful ride.

So we arrived in Rurrenabaque in the early morning, crashed in our
hostel for a few hours and then woke back up to find a tour to go with (you can´t enter the park without a guide). We had heard that there are two types of tours: the Pampas and the Selva. The Pampas (similar to a marsh) has tons of animals but also tons of tourists and, at times, the practices of the locals are not the
best (aka catching anacondas or other animals, even killings them at times). The
Selva (jungle) was a bit more remote and we had heard the tours were more eco-concious. We just needed to find the right company. Only a few of the 24 were certified by the government and the one we eventually chose had a really charasmatic manager, who explained that the proceeds of the business go directly to the local
community. For example, the proceeds of the tour company were helping
support the local school, and as a result, his daughter was able to
attend. Done!
The tour was 3 days, 2 nights, with the first night being spent at a
community shelter and the second being further in the jungle. Our
first day, we went to a local community village by boat (really fun),
where they were making jugo de caña (cane juice) to sell in town. The
process is pretty amazing and takes a few hours with shearing the
cane, boiling it and then bottling it. Another fun thing is that if
you let the juice ferment for a week, you get guarapo, an alcoholic
version of the drink. After the village, we went to sign in the the
registration office and got some fun facts of Madidi. The park has 5
ecosystems, ranges in altitude from above 6000m to 400m and has some
species of animals (and probably humans) that are only located here.
There are parts of the park that are so remote, they have never been
explored by humans, and it is believed that indiginous tribes might
live in some of these areas, never having had contact with the outside
world. Pretty incredible.
We hopped back in our boat and arrived at our accomodation.
Pretty swank if you ask me... and the food was exceptional.
We took a small guided tour with Robin, our guide, who
told us about the different medicinal uses of the plants here and spoke of some
of the animals that inhabit the jungle. Almost every plant has some
sort of function, whether its bark can be boiled as an antidiarretic,
or if its sap can be used to heal broken bones. The favorite animal
for any person is the jaguar, which one hopes to see. But Robin told us that the
jaguar is very difficult to spot due to its ability to mimick the way
humans walk and usually stalks groups until it finds the person with
the most fear and POUNCES! (not really but sometimes it has
happened). And we went for a night walk, which turned up a night
monkey (rare here) and tons of spiders (it is kind of creepy walking
along with your flashlight and seeing all these tiny eyes staring back
at you).

So for the second day, we learned how to make artesania rings in the
morning with Robin. A lot of the locals know how to do these things
as they are pretty integral to the culture and a lot of festivities
feature such things. We made rings out of seeds from a palm tree!
Lil went a little crazy with how many she made but she really loves
her rings. We then packed up our things and headed off to the second
campsite. The group was Robin (guide), Mary (cook), Rodrigo (guy from
Chile, who has such a wicked accent it was difficult to understand
him), Lilli and I. We walked for about 5 hours and saw some capuchin
monkies and a deer (Note: seeing a deer is very rare here and only 1
in 20 groups may glimpse one while it is expected to see monkies and
wild pigs. So even though in the US they are everywhere, it was a
cool site). O yeah, and tons of ant hills, termite mounds, spiders
(EVERYWHERE) and other insects. Plus, the jungle was so immense and
full of sounds that you just wanted to walk and listen. We got to
camp, had dinner, had a lively discussion about land prices in
Rurrenabaque and contraception...long story about how we got to that
topic, but it is an important discussion to have here because STDś and
early teen pregnancy (girls as young as 12 are getting pregnant here)
are really out of control here, due to the lack of education and the
lack of condoms. While we talked, we saw some more night monkies, who
reminded Lil of small people scrambling in the trees.

On the third day, we booked it to the Macaw wall, where there were
tons of macaws nesting on the cliffs, licking the salt in order to
digest the fruit they ate during the day. Unfortunately, our cameras
really couldn't do the views justice but it was worth the effort and
seeing the birds was an incredible experience. We then made it to the
river and made a raft ..yep, made a raft. The locals here, before
engines were invented, would lash together large logs with the bark of
a type of palm and float down the river. It was sweet! It took us
about an hour to paddle down the river, standing up, with bamboo poles
as oars, but it was definitely one of our highlights, something probably not repeated in a lifetime. We then made it back to our main base camp, got our belongings and made our way back to Rurrenabaque. On our boat, there were two other
Americans, one from Minnesota and the other from Texas, who invited us
to dinner.

We had a really good time and got to hear some interesting stories.
They were married and around our age and Charles' father was
actually from Bolivia and they were in the country to visit his
extended family, as well as travel. He told us an amazing story! His
father was born in El Alto, one of the poorest districts of La Paz. He worked
with his mother on the streets until he was 6 and found a job at the
elite tenis club, as a ball boy. During the next 6 years, he honed
his skills when he wasn't fetching balls by bouncing a ball against a
wall, using a piece of wood as a racket. Then, one day when he was
twelve, he was helping a game when the instructor of a tennis club
guest was called to the phone. The guest told Charles to help him
practice and realized that he had some skill. When the coach came
back, they both decided that he needed to be a part of their tennis
club team. Sounds good but it was basically this kid was the Michael
Jordan of tennis and the club just wanted to see him win tourneys for
them. So he kept practicing and winning and eventually became the
junior national champion of Bolivia. At this point, people told him
that he needed to go to school (mind you this entire time he is still
living in the slums of El Alto). So the club got enough money for him
to send him to the States to try play in a international championship.
At this championship, he was recruited by a college team in the states
and given a full ride scholarship. And without speaking any English. Now he teaches high school tennis in Texas. Pretty inspiring!

The next day we just chilled in town and I had a pretty bad accident
during one of our walks in the streets (no blood, just a bit of
humiliation) and relaxed at a local coffee shop. And then, we didn't
have enough money to stay (not ATM here) so we headed back to La Paz.
Once again, the ride was fun (babies, broken chairs slamming down on
my knees, a creaky baggage rack held together by thick rubber bands)
and once we got to La Paz, we immediately hopped on a bus going
to Sorata.

And here comes my rant. So Sorata is known as the treking capital of
Bolivia. I was imagining Huaraz, from Peru, with tons of hikes from
town and a great feel to it. Once we arrived, we
knew it wasn't going to be great. There weren´t any fun hangouts, and most
places were filled with managers who made no effort to help us, even
when we entered their shop and wanted to buy something!
It wasn't malicious; it was that they just were indifferent to our presence.
So we only stayed for two days, during which we hiked 24 km roundtrip (15 miles) to see a cave (pretty nice)and have some awesome views of the mountains. We also met an
incredible Israeli journalist, who has been traveling for about a year
and a half and told us to meet up with him in La Paz for some good
kosher food and possibly a trek. Lil and I both agreed that we really
like hanging out with the older crowd of travelers; they are often pretty
inspiring to us because they have so many stories and have lived life
off the beaten path. And, a lot of the younger people traveling get
pretty wasted all the time, which is not really our idea of a good
time (and drinking every night is pretty expensive).
For now, hanging in La Paz for two more days, meeting up with Jacob
the Israeli for dinner and deciding what trek we want to do before we
leave La Paz on the 19th for Arequipa, Peru!
...hope all is well back in the states!

-Hopper:)

Pictures go in reverse order again...