We booked a Pampas tour whilst in La Paz for two reasons, to fill in time before our Inca Trail trek and also to see some cool and different animals. 

In the pampas you can see a huge variety of animals including, but not limited to, caiman (like an alligator), piranhas, pink dolphins, monkeys, birds, capybaras, sloths, snakes, bugs and if you're really lucky the great anaconda.



As it was the wet season we didn't like our odds of seeing all the animals, but none the less we booked a trip.

We booked our tour with Mashaquipe. It is definitely a lot more expensive than many of the other tour companies, like twice the price.. However after reading other company's reviews on Tripadviaor about how their staff treated the animals and the environment we decided to go with the more expensive option and booked with Mashaquipe. 

Mashaquipe is great as it is run solely by individuals who grew up in small jungle communities and really respect and look after the animals and their surroundings. It is a large family owned business running tours in the pampas and the jungle. 

We left La Paz Thursday midday via a plane bound for Rurrenabaque, locates in the Bolivian Amazon basin. 

We were all a little worse for wear (why did we decide to drink last night...) and extremely tired. After our plane was delayed for almost 2 hours we were taken to it. We all walked across the runway and couldn't help but laugh. We were flying in a plane no bigger than a standard 4 bed dorm w/ ensuite.... Except the plane didn't have an ensuite, and we weren't even able to stand up inside. 

We took our respective seats, the 3 across the back row. It was just like a bus.... but way smaller. The journey was roughly an hour, and the view from the window was pretty amazing going from the snow capped Andes to the green jungle below. Once resigned to the fact that we (probably) wouldn't die, and there was nothing we could personally do about it anyway, the journey was okay. And much better than a 24-48 hour bus ride along landslide affected roads.

We landed, roughly, and were taken from the runway into town via a bus from the airline Amazonas. The bus dropped us at our hostel, where we had a swim before walking into town for lunch. 

We're leaving for our 3 day/2 night Pampas tour with Mashaquipe tomorrow. Hopefully we see lots of animals!

Sunday morning we headed to Plaza Murillo to meet for one of the many advertised city walking tours that apparently was apparently still running. We headed here with our new friend from the States, Andrew (Hi Andrew). Upon waiting for 30 minutes past the walking tour's starting time we decided it was cancelled, or just plain didn't exist.

As we were new to La Paz and still wanted to explore and understand the city we decided that we would do our own walking tour.

From Plaza Murillo we checked out the various government buildings surrounding the plaza and then headed into the art museum, that was currently under construction, and resultantly had free entry.

After that we headed to a church nearby, where we bought some carne salteñas and headed up to the Yungas Markets. The Yungas markets is a huge local fruit, meat and vegetable market, and everything iss ridiculously cheap. 

At the markets we bought some apples, bananas and a bag of juice. Yes, a bag of juice. 

From the produce markets we headed towards the large central park, located in the heart of the city. And to our luck there was a huge market on. 

The market had stalls selling everything from chocolate covered strawberries and fairy floss, to fresh juices and hamburgers, to offerings to the Pacha mama, and even side show alley games. There was everything.

After spending an hour or so in the huge markets we headed to San Pedro Plaza, home of San Pedro prison, made infamous by Rusty Young's book, Marching Powder. After lurking around for a little bit we headed onwards to the witches market. 

At the witches market you can buy everything from coca leaf sweets, to relationship, travel and friendship talismans, to horny goat weed (or bulls penis powder) and finally to llama foetuses. Yes, llama foetuses. And I'm not talking a tiny foetus, or something in a jar, I'm talking some that was potentially within a week of full term and has been miscarried. It was definitely different. 

The llama foetuses are bought and placed under the foundations of a new home or building as an offer to Pacha Mama (mother earth) for good luck and safety of it's occupants. The size of the llama foetus needed depends on the size of the structure. You can get a tiny llama foetus (from very early on in pregnancy) for a small home and a large llama foetus (like in the picture below) for a large multi story complex. 

From the markets we wandered onwards, Sammy bought a beanie, I bought a diary and Sean bought a brownie. We reached our hostel exhausted from the days self guided tour.

The next few days were spent doing english lessons with Pico Verde, these were great and helped us to progress a little bit more with our spanish.

Tomorrow we’re headed to Rurrenabaque to visit the Pampas and hopefully spot some amazing animals.

We’ll report back on how it all goes.

Adios!

After our amazing Salar de Uyuni trip we headed to La Paz, Bolivia’s capital and largest city. And being set in a valley at around 3800m, it is one of the highest capital cities in the world. 

After hearing mixed reviews about La Paz, some people saying they hated it, and didn’t want to go out after dark (chicks) and other saying they loved it and wanted more time, we had no idea what to expect upon arriving in this crazy city.

Our first day in La Paz started with a little bump (very little)…. We arrived at 5am, and it was dark. 

Now obviously we know this is only a VERY little bump, but we have always tried to avoid arriving anywhere when it’s dark, and after the stories we’d heard La Paz was not somewhere where darkness appeared to be our friend. And as our bus was meant to arrive at 7:30 am we were surprised. Surprised about arriving in the dark and also about arriving somewhere EARLY in Latin America for once. I guess it was bittersweet.

We waited in the bus station for day light and headed off on foot to find our hostel, Loki. 

Upon arriving at our hostel around 7:30 we were told we couldn’t check in until 2pm… Fantastic. We lurked around the hostel for a bit, caught up on wifi matters and then headed out for some breaky, lunch and an explore around the streets with a few different people we had met on our bus from Uyuni.

That night we were all exhausted. Bed at 9pm? Yes please.

Tomorrow we're planning on doing a city tour. We'll fill you in. 

Chau!