AspiringNomad

As I leave Rurrenabaque on the night bus back to La Paz I have mixed feelings about my time in the Amazon.

I have watched the sunrise and sunset in one of the most magical places on earth both for the diversity of animals and fauna that thrive here but also the huge impact the Amazon has on the whole world. I have seen anaconda, sea eagals, endless amounts of caiman, pink dolphins, capybara, squirrel monkeys and the two hostel cats (they have to get a mention!)
But despite all that, there was an underlying worry amongst the people who have grown up and currently live here. Over the last 3 months, they have not seen one drop of rain and as if the natural fires were not causing enough problems, a corrupt government are persuading the people of the highlands to go to the lowlands and burn the vegetation to make way for more farm land. The man at our hostel had told us it is due to a deal that Bolivia has made with China which involves exporting lots of meat. A deal, it seems, that they can’t keep their half of unless they have more farmland.

Seeing and reading stories like this from home is fairly upsetting but when you arrive to the jungle and you witness first hand the consequences of these actions, it is truly heartbreaking. I saw the remains of animals that have been burnt to death due to the fires that pass through the grasslands, walked through river basins that should be a couple of meters deep and seen animals that should have been more hidden but had come to the areas where there is more water.

After reading the first paragraph of this blog entry to Emily as we sit on the night bus back to La Paz, I realise it may be a little too heavy for a casual Thursday read! However, it just didn’t feel right talking about my trip to the Amazon without addressing what was really happening here. But, I promise from now on, I’ll lift the mood!

I need to rewind a little now, though, back to Peru. Following our night bus to Puno, we managed to book a homestay for the following night. We spent a day in Puno wandering the streets and took a stroll to the edge of the lake.  It was here that Emily and I decided that 6 weeks and 5 weeks travelling, respectively, was too long to have gone without a good cup of tea. Therefore, I went on a hunt to find some ‘Tè Negro’ and UHT milk. Fortunately, Puno had a really big supermarket and they sold Lipton English Breakfast tea bags. Even better! We sat in the hostel feeling pretty smug as we sipped on our tea with chocolate biscuits. We went for some food with a couple of friends that we had made back in the Sacred Valley (at Ivan’s place) before getting an early night ready for our homestay.

We were collected at about 7:30am from our hostel on a little shuttle bus to go to the port. We all boarded a boat and headed to Uros, an area of floating islands on Lake Titicaca. We went on to one the 100 Uros islands and met the families that live there. They have recently had solar panels installed, which meant the small house we went into (despite being made of straw and no bigger than Arron’s bedroom) had a TV in the corner!

We left Uros and headed to Isla Amantani which was where we were going to be staying for the night. 2 hours on the boat lead us to the natural island. Although it is a lake, it is so big, as you look out, it feels like you’re looking across the ocean.

We waited at the port as our guide read our names out and paired us to a host Mother or ‘Daddy’ as he kept saying (which made us laugh!)

Emily and I were paired with Flora, a host mother, which we were pleased about! We were sceptical about being paired with a local host daddy! We introduced ourselves and she was soon to tell me that she couldn’t pronounce my name. That was the end of that conversation and we climbed up the island to about 3400m above sea level!

It was a quaint little plot of land that was scattered with a few buildings topped with tin roofs. Our bedroom door opened into a courtyard that had panoramic views of the lake. Our bathroom was just round the corner from our bedroom. We had to wash our hands and brush our teeth outside in a temporary sink that she had set up for us.

That evening, we headed to the top of the island. We were told on the way about the indigenous people of the Amantani island before reaching the summit for sunset. For good luck and good health (according to the locals), we did 3 laps of the church at the top in an anti-clockwise direction. Let’s face it, who wants to risk bad luck on themselves! Quite willingly, I stormed around the church 3 times and then found a good seat for sunset.

As the sun went down, I soon realised that shorts was probably not a smart choice of clothing! Everyone else had their hats and gloves with them and there was me, marching down the island in my cycling shorts! A German guy did ask if I was cold as I sped by, but I told him that being cold is just a mindset and carried on to the square at the bottom to get a hot chocolate…. to warm up!

We then had a delicious homecooked meal prepared by Flora and devoured the quinoa soup and cheese, veg, and potato dinner. (Peru has about 4000 different types of potato, so it’s quite common for it to appear on your plate).

Once full, we were ready for La Fiesta! Flora dressed us in traditional clothing, which she had been sporting all day. I had a white shirt with embroidered flowers with a green mid length skirt that tied around the waist. We were then fitted into a waist belt which was beautifully embroidered with green, blue, pink, purple and white. To top it off, we were given a shool to wear over our heads or shoulders. Then we headed to the town hall with all the other tourists and hosts mothers and ‘daddys’ from our tour provider and others for a dance. Flora soon had us up dancing. Her daughter, Violet also joined us and was holding our hands as we danced.

To our surprise the local band who was the live act started a rendition of the Macorena! Emily and I seemed to be the only ones who knew the moves and so in our stride, we proudly took centre stage and everyone joined in and copied us and one another.

That night, Emily and I set our alarm for 3am. Without any light pollution, we wanted to see the sky. As we stepped out into the little courtyard, we looked up for a few minutes before we both woke up too much. The sky looked incredible, completely littered with stars, well worth the early wake-up call.

We were up for breakfast at 7am, and it wasn’t long before we had to depart from our host mother and Violet. They walked us to the port, and we were off to the Isle of Tequile. About an hour across the choppy waters, we arrived with no sickness. We had time to wander around the farmland and small streets before meeting at the main square to learn about the differences between the people of this island compared to the people in the surrounding area. They wear different clothing depending on their relationship status (real-life dating app)? They also produce a shampoo using a plant only found on the island (and Arequipa), which means they never go grey! I personally could help thinking that if this was true, it wouldn’t be the first time I heard of this magic shampoo!

After a delicious Trout lunch, we headed just over 2 hours back to Puno. As we returned back to the hostel in Puno, the owner (who I had given the English breakfast tea to) was asking lots of questions about the it. It transpired that all the staff had tried it when we had been away but not added milk. Naturally, Emily and I offered her a cup of English breakfast tea made by us and it was a resounding thumbs up (obviously!)

4am the following morning we were up to catch our 5:30am bus to La Paz. Unfortunately, in true South American style, the timings are not quite to what the rest of the world work at and our bus actually departed at 6:30am. Therefore, we had to sit in the rugged bus station in Puno listening to vendors selling tickets to ‘Are, Are, Are, Arequipa!!’ Not what you want at 5:30-6:30am.

We crossed the Peru/Bolivian boarder at about 9am and arrived in La Paz a couple of hours later. Emily introduced me to her friend that she had made on her previous travels who happened to be on the same bus as us and we headed to our hostel. We checked in and had chance to call home and chill out on the roof. Unfortunately, my experience was tainted by an Italian man who seemed to have had a few heavy nights in La Paz and was still on the beers. Not taking ‘no’ for an answer, I had to interrupt Emily’s facetime to eventually escape the idiot. Hopefully, I won’t be bumping into him again any time soon. There is always one who has to ruin it!

We decided to meet up with Emily’s friend Shaun, after we had some food at a restaurant in the city centre. La Paz is a noisy, polluted and busy city. It has a lot to offer when you get into the right areas but you wouldn’t want to walk around at night by yourself. We ended up in an Irish bar to Emily’s disappointment (cheap cocktails and comvenient) and after a few too many, we headed back to the hostel via a local chicken shop, which apparently I insisted on going to.

The following day, we had a few chores that we needed to get sorted before our tour to the Amazon. Money, toiletries, laundry and some snacks were needed before getting our 13hr night bus.

Whilst running our errands, we went to a supermarket in the city. As we entered, we were called to come back to the entrance to leave our bags in lockers before we were allowed to go in! We then joined the slowest queue I have ever been in to purchase about 5 items. Emily and I were at the end of our tether by the time we reached the checkout woman who declined one of our purchases. We’re not sure why, but we had to say goodbye to our chicken empanadas at the till (whoch we were pretty annoyed about) and leave with our other bus snacks.

As we left La Paz, it started to rain very heavily. We were running through the streets outside the bus point in search of some kind of food (with ALL of our luggage). We wanted a takeaway chicken shop (there seems to be a theme here) and managed to grab some nuggets before boarding the long ride to the edge of the Amazon rainforest…