yep i made it into La paz about 3 and bit weeks ago, jo unforunatly got hit with altitude sickness (La Paz being a respectable 3500 or so above sea level) and spent the 5 days holed up in bed...well whats a girl to do so i hit our local english pub Olivers Travels and propped up the bar for a few ( or 5 days) until jo was on her feet again...

we decided that a trip to the warm jungle was in order and booked a tour to Rurrenbeque which is on the Rio something or other....jo decided to save her pennies and booked a 20 hour bus trip for there and back. The intrepid traveller that i am decided yeah sure i could do a 20 hour bus trip there, but hell no was i doing it twice and i'd sooner pay the 40 quid for the 1 hour plane ride to get back to La Paz...

Well to cut it shortish, i survived my trip to rurrenbeque..... making it there was the hairest thing! talk about death road, how they think two buses could pass at the same time i do not know, let alone a bus v's big lorry! we were practically hanging off the edge, four days after we got back we heard that one of the buses actually went over the side....and NO...no survivors.
unfortunalty our bus burst a tire and we had to wait 7 hours for a replacement, one of the drivers ahd to hitch into the nearset town 4 hours away and get a replacement tire, so our 20 hour bus journey fast became a 27 plus bus journey, well until we approached rurrenbeque and found that the whole town was blockaded by protesters. So we had to get off the bus and walk the last 5km into town...NICE...a few double cubre Libres did follow once we arrived in town.

however, Rurrenbeque was beautiful, the first night in the jungle was absolutely freezing, the guide thought it was funny that i stole 3 blankets from unused beds, HELLO...i could see my own breath!!!!!!...he didn't know about the 4th i took later and the extra pillow!!!!!...

thankfully the next two days and night were far warmer, even got a slight tan..well the second day we had to put our fishing skills into practice....Piranha fishing that is....

we were each given a fishing line, which had a hook at the end and a small chuck of wood at the other, and some chucks of what i believe to be cow meat but it could easily have been something else...

the aim is to put meat on hook, place in water and the moment you feel something bite, yank the whole thing out in hopes you've caught something...well yours truely was the first catch a little fishy, unfortubaly i flug the poor little fishy right into jo's....and it was too small to eat so i had to throw it back :(

so with the promise from our guide that if we caught any piranha over 20cm we could eat it (do i need more encourement then that!!!) i persevered,

the first big piranha i caught came as a bit of a shock, when i yanked it out it hit me on the side of face and i spent 2-3 minutes shouting..fishy...fishy...fishy.......and flapping my hands around like a big girl...until jo finally stopped laughing and retrieved the fish from the deck..

much to jealousy of my crew, i caught 12 small piranha and 3 large ones (1 yellow, 1 white and 1 red) , unfortunatly one of the large ones hit jo on the back and went over the other side of the boat, the little escape artist!!

the others only caught 10 small fish between them, and the guide caught 1 large red piranha..so we had 3 in total to eat....Yeah.....very nice fish i must say, not much meat but quite a creamy flavour!

so after fishing we went hunting for pink river dolphins, and managed to find 5 which are totally lovely , they have really long noses and yes they are slightly pink.....and NO we didn't eat them...some of the gringos did go swimming with them though.....and two feet away you've got crocs smiling at you...yeah i though i'd give it a miss too...

the next day i managed to get my flight to la paz, after much palaver..i.e they thought it was going to rain and too foggy in la paz and too much side wind etc they went oh just get on ( so comforting...) and after a very shaky start and middle, the 45 minute journey was over...and yet it still beat 5 hours on the death road....that says a lot right....

well i strolled off the plane into the airport and almost fainted ( i kid you not...) didn{t anticpiate the alitude hitting me that hard, normally i arrive by road...whoa....so headed straight to burger king...you know food cures most things!

jo arrived the next morning only to find me sick as a dog, so i was holed up for a couple for days, and got to have chinese take away in bed...Yippee...

Feeling a bit better i decided to get a piercing done in la paz, in my inner lobe, hurt like crazy and then went on heavy drinking session and have been sick as a dog since, shakes, hot and cold etc, self treating with antibiotic and paraceptamol which has helped, now have what resembles a slight flu, feel like i've taken a kicking"! but the piercing does look good!!!

i'm in potosi now which is where the silver mines are..me and silver..good combo, just been to teh salt flats in uyani, OMG it was freeezing! arctic weather...but very beautiful, our truck lost a wheel , literally we were skidding on the axl, is that whats its called?? round metal thing the wheel fixes around....??? and then when he finally fixed it, we got about 2 miles down the road and we ran out of petrol...had to wait half an hour for another truck to help us out and go get some petrol for us! been interesting...

so thats me to date...will let you know what happens with the silver mines, see if i can over come my claustrophobia and enter the mines...we will try and go back to cusco to do Machu Pichu maybe, bloackades allowing....

as always i will keep you up to date and i promise to try and put some more pics up..

mwah Niky