Through Bolivia and into Brazil

Hello!

So, since last time...

From Cusco, we took a (looong) bus trip to reach Bolivia and La Paz, where we spent a nice couple of days. It's a huge city nestled in the pit of a volcano which makes for beautiful views, especially at night, as there are thousands of lights from the buildings sitting on the 'walls' of the volcano.

We met up with Bärbel, whom we knew from our Galapagos trip (she was on the same boat as us). She teaches math in a German school in La Paz, so she drove us around bits of the city - it was lovely to catch up.

It was also in la Paz, about 4 days after the actual date, that we went out properly to celebrate Gary's birthday. We went to a German restaurant so Gary was able to enjoy his favourite type of beer (German beer) and meat (German sausages)!

After La Paz, we started a few days of hardcore travel to reach Brazil. It involved another very long bus journey (thankfully, overnight) to Santa Cruz de La Sierra, the biggest city in Bolivia. We spent a night there and it wasn't actually too bad a place - nice to walk around. From there, we boarded a train which was going to take us all the way to the Brazilian border - but, since the whole train journey took about 24 hours, we broke it down by stopping over for one night in a little place called San José de Chiquitos.

San José de Chiquitos is a small Bolivian town where I don't believe they see many tourists. There were two hotels on the main plaza, one of which was full (I guess they must have had, like, two rooms) and the other one (our only choice) offered grim looking, tiny rooms for an extortionate amount of money. The owner (whom I quickly nicknamed and started referring to as 'Thenardier', given he was a personification of the famous Victor Hugo character) told us he had to pay for utilities, cleaners etc. but if it was too expensive for us, then well, we could 'aller nous faire cuire un oeuf'... So, as annoying as it was, we had to stay there.

Finding food in San José was an equally interesting experience! There were hardly any 'eating places' (let alone restaurants) open on Saturday (at least during the day). We basically survived on ice creams the whole time we were there (and I won't complain about that :)

Apart from the horrible hotel, it was an interesting experience and a place which was definitely away from the 'Gringo Trail'. There was still a mission (dating back to about 1750) on the main plaza ; very pretty in the sunset...


From San José, we continued our train journey (throughout the night) and reached the border early in the morning. We crossed into Brazil on foot and entered the town of Corumbá just over a week ago, on Sunday.

Corumbá is a reasonable sized town, but absolutely nothing is opened there on a Sunday (I guess that's the case in smaller towns in highly Catholic countries). So we wandered around for ages, looking for a laundry, a restaurant, an agency to book a tour to the Pantanal, but basically found nothing. We wanted to stay only for one night in Corumbá and leave for the Pantanal the next day, but we eventually pushed everything back to the Tuesday, waiting for the town to come back to life to allow us to run all our errands before hitting the road again.

Interestingly, although Corumbá is only 15 minutes away from the Bolivian border, no one speaks any Spanish there. And clearly, no English either (which is fair enough). So we had the joy of discovering that Portuguese, at least in its spoken form, bears no resemblance whatsoever to Spanish or French. You can try and communicate using a mix of other latin languages, but the waitress will look at you as if you were speaking Russian to her. Incidentally, Russian is what Portuguese sounds like to me :)

So, on Tuesday last week, we finally set off on a tour to the Pantanal. We drove most of the day and the last road, a dusty track with bridges about every kilometre, took us to our base camp. We met the other people on the tour (Brits, Irish, Israelis, Italians, Aussies) and after dinner we set off on a 'night safari'. The most impressive sight was this...

... it looks like the lights of a city at night, but actually these are alligators eyes reflecting the light from our guide's torch.

The next day, we set off at 7 am and drove a while until we reached a spot where we went 'anaconda hunting'. We looked for snakes in a muddy, swampy area full of high reeds, walking around in flip flops... honestly, not my idea of a good time. Anyway, one of the Israeli guys in our group soon found one. Gary had the guts to touch the thing but I personally chickened out. And I have no regrets at all!Driving further away to reach the spot where we were to have lunch, we came accross another couple of anacondas, and thousands of alligators...

... as well as other, somehow slightly cuter species.

(alright, that one is still an alligator. But seeing how it was a baby, I though it'd qualifiy for the 'cute' category)

After lunch, we took a boat trip on the Rio Negro and saw some beautiful riverside landscapes, as well as dozens of different birds.

On the last day, we went piranha fishing. At first, the results were slightly mixed for Gary...

... but after a while he managed to fish less twigs and more piranhas.

Check out the teeth on this baby!

As for me, since I don't really agree with the idea of fishing, my job was to try and keep the alligators away by poking them with a fishing cane.

We eventually left the Pantanal on Thursday afternoon last week, took a bus to Campo Grande and from there jumped straight onto a bus to São Paulo, clocking in about 22 hours straight travel in minivans and buses. We were relieved to reach São Paulo the next day in the early afternoon, despite being a bit surprised at how cold it was (in comparison with the Pantanal, where on some days the temperature reached 45 degrees).

After a rest in the afternoon, we met up with Rodrigo (an old friend whom I had met in London in 1999... it's been so greta to meet up again 10 years later, and to still get on so well!) and his girlfriend Maíra.


They took us out for dinner and then to a really cool little bar called 'ó do Borogodó', where we listened to some great live samba music. We made it to bed at about 5am, so had a rather late start the next day! We met up with these guys again, walked around the São Paulo downtown area (a strange mix... mostly a succession of very grim looking buildings. Our guidebook says it's a rough area at night, and even as you walk around in full day light you can believe that). Then we hit the bars again, firstly 'Veloso', which, we were told, serve the best caiprinhas in São Paulo. They tasted pretty good to us indeed (and to Rodrigo, by the looks of things)!

After that, we ended up in the Japanese neighbourhood, in a very weird place which I'm not quite sure how to describe: part restaurant, part karaoke bar, part pool hall... the decor was quite eery (it looked like they forgot to take down their Christmas decorations back n 1982).


Maíra and I stood up and sang 'Copacabana' together. Thankfully, I only have photographic evidence of this (Gary must have been too drunk to remember the video setting on our camera... or maybe he deliberately forgot, to spare everyone the pain.)

Yesterday, the sun finally came out over São Paulo. However, we only managed to drag ourselves out of bed in mid-afternoon (all this going out took its toll on us). We thought that we'd make up for it by doing lots of walking around today... however in the afternoon it was absolutely pissing down with rain outside. Oh well, we went to the pub to watch the football instead (The Palmeiros, Rodrigo's team, were playing).
We ended up spending the whole evening there, listening to a quality jazz band and drinking wine. What a great time we had...

Tomorrow, we're getting up early (well, presumaby!) and heading up to Rio de Janeiro, where we will be staying for nearly a week. Will update you soon!

C.