Philpott-SouthAmerica

Sorry about delay in this post but we finally had a nice place to be to write it. So here goes We caught a ferry from Isla del Sol back to Copacabana that made a slow boat to China look like a speed boat. Then onto a bus to the Bolivian/Peru boarder. Thankfully the crossing went without a hitch which was not what we had expected. Then on around the edge of lake Titicaca to Puno where we successfully brought our ticket forward from a 10pm departure to 5.30, thanks to the most helpful person in the information office who spoke good English.  After the bumpiest bus ride you could ever imagine, despite the road being sealed, and a stop to check for people being smuggled, we arrived in Arequipa at 1.30 am. Thankfully out hostel had 24 hr check in but this was it’s only redeeming feature! This hostel and the ongoing unknown parts of our trip put me into a state of anxiety which is something I have never experienced before. After two days, an ice cream at McDonalds and dinner at Burger King,

 We arrived back in La Paz after yet another small delay. Delays seem to be part of the deal when flying in Bolivia. We had an interesting few days back in La Paz. The Altitude got to me again but Gaye was all right. We weren’t expecting it to hit us again as we had been a high altitude for quite a while and you don’t loose the benefits that fast. However Anna said when she returned to La Paz from Rurrenabaque it had the same affect on her. Despite that and frequent loo visits we had a good few days checking out their city. On Friday it was an early start again and off to the bus station to catch the bus to Lake Titicaca. The bus stations are amazing with dozens and dozens of buses heading in all sorts of directions. There are a a lot of fancy overnight busses with sleeper beds and fancy recliner seats. We plan to catch one in 2 days time so lets hope they are ok. Lake Titicaca is not full of reads with read boats bobbing around. Quite the contrary. The lake is the highest significant

Another early start in La Paz had us in a taxi by 6.30 on a headlong dash to the Airport to catch the flight to Rurrenabaque in the headwaters of the Amazon. Clearly the taxi driver had a plan to show how fast he could get to the Airport but thanks to the early start, the roads were fairly clear and we made it unscathed. The flight from La Paz Airport at over 4,000m down to the Rurrenabaque at about 250m took us over a high ridge of snow covered maintains that frame the eastern horizon of La Paz and then down into the Amazon Basin.  Arriving at the fairly new airport in Rurrenabaque was interesting. We had to walk through the completely empty car park to the Airport gates to be greeted by our tour guides. They weren’t allowed in the airport grounds. The bags finally came to where we were and we were taken by tuktuk to our tour company headquarters where we met our guide Cristian, rearranged our luggage and took one bag down to the River for a 2.5 hr ride upriver to the Mashaquipe    Lo

 I couldn’t get these to load at the airport in La Paz, so here they are A hazy photo of one of the large mountains outside La Paz La Paz is in a narrow valley and this photo shows the sprawl up the steep sides of the valle A above This and te next show some of the markets in La Paz. They go on and on for miles selling everything’s from used car parts to nental floss San Francisco Church and square below