High and Dry in LaPaz

LaPaz is a big teaming city located at over 12,000 feet. Gay is sleeping off minor altitude sickness, as we are spending three full days acclimating before moving on to more hiking.

The entire central part of the city is filled with crowded markets. We ambled through several today awed by the indigenous people and all of the wares they are selling. The stuff ranges from the sublime (beautiful fruits and woven goods) to the bizarre (potions and shrunken llama heads). Gays small bag was slit, but contained nothing of value. It is a real hassle to keep your guard up all the time. I keep most of my money right near the family jewels in a money belt. My assumption is something of value will be either lost or stolen. We travel pretty light and have nothing other than our diaries and pictures which have much value. This is on la quenta of traveling light in Latin America.

There is a lot of poverty in Bolivia. The higher you go up in the city the poorer the neighborhoods. Driving in after midnight was pretty scary. The area outside town looks like a soviet nightmare and entering the burg with a bad attitude made it look like a scene from a horror movie. Alas, a good nights sleep and sunshine brightened our attitudes. The city is full of indeginous people who make up 90% of the population. The mountains surround it and the sky is very blue.

We are staying at the Hotel Rosario which is one of the many way stops on the gringo trail There are many fellow travelers including a group of volunteers from the airlines who are delivering supplies to small villages. I am working in a small internet bar and cafe which is part of the hotel. It is a good oasis in this exciting; albeit confusing and sometimes frightening city.

Communication now is so different from 25 years ago when we traveled around South East Asia for several months. We had no mail or contact with anyone other than Terry Leeds who wrote us in Katmandu with Duck Football scores, and news of the Yankees. I guess some things change and others stay the same. We still here from Terry when we are on the road, but the Duck scores seem like good news. Now we have the internet and inexpensive telephone services which make traveling and sharing so much more interesting. Adios!

Adventure, Danger: Hiking, Boating, Jungle Walks

Our adventure continues. Five days in Banos at the base of an active volcano in a quaint Ecuadorian spa-vacation village with lots of biking was a great respite from Spanish 200. We then took a pigs, chickens, and peoples bus to an eco-lodge run by a young couple from the United States. We hiked around a volcanic lake similar to a small Crater Lake, and through villages which could only be reached by foot. We enjoyed The Day of the Dead in a remote village and headed for Quito.

We stayed in a beautiful small hotel, The Casa Cultura, and flew to the silva, aka jungle where we took a combination of bus and boat four hours to the Cuyabeno Reserve about 60 miles from the Columbian border. We missed a guerilla attack on 30 tourists by three days and arrived dumb and happy to enjoy Gods wonders in the form of anacondas, monkeys, tree frogs, many birds and lots of small critters. We are now back in Quito after hiking, biking, boating, and jungle walking 14 out of 15 days.

It is off to Bolivia this evening so this report will be short. There are lots of stories to tell so Gay and I will share the task of providing information. I must start with a description of the jungle adventure.

Visiting the jungle was on my must do list. Just the word "silva" or "jungle" creates several visual images. The trip was well researched and I felt absolutely no fear about going to, Cuyabeno Lodge, located in the Cuyabeno Reserve on a big fresh water lagoon, Laguna Grande. The flight over the mountains to an oil town, a two hour bus ride and then a two hour trip down the Cuyabeno River was really fun.

We saw swarms of butterflies, morpho butterflies, tropical birds including Macaws, and completely enjoyed the refreshingly cool journey in a long canoe like boat propelled by an engine. Ferns and palm trees, along with a multitude of jungle plant life covered the river. At some points it seemed like we were going to get eaten by the silva, until our boat was spit out into the river. We had to duck to avoid getting hit by branches. We saw fresh water dolphins as we entered the lagoon. Wow!

We arrived at the lodge in time for sunset. We went way out into the lagoon, away from the caimans, and pirahnas, but near the large fishing bats which hovered above the water. We then plunged into the water for a nice cold swim.

Our guide, Louis, took us on hot sweaty walks in the jungle and took time describing the bugs, plants and birds which surrounded us. He was an exceptional expert guide who had his binoculars stolen just three days before.
We stayed in open thatched buildings which were perched on a hill. Constant bird calls, frogs croaking, and bugs chirping provided a whole new demension. The food was good as were our companions a Belgian couple and two women from Ireland. We wondered why there were not more visitors.

Other guests had hit the road earlier in the week. We were in ignorant bliss and did not know that three days prior a group of six bandits, probably a combination of Colombians and Ecuadorians had pirated six canoes which bring tourists to the lodges in the area of the lagoon and held some of the guides and tourists at gun point for over three hours. These terrorists stole cameras and money to the tune of $40,000. Our guide lost his $1700 binoculars. I will continue the story when time permits. You need to know we were in no way endangered, but without police or military involvement began to wonder if this was a trend. I am really wondering if we would have gone had we known of this raid. The answer is probably no. As one of my kids friends, who is a real adventurer without the wisdom gained from life aptly put it: Chuck needs a safety net. We would have missed a beautiful experience. This topic will probably turn into a short story filled with lurid tales of the jungle.