Peruvian SIde

The gateway to Taquille Island on the Peruvian half of Lake Titicaca. Apparently this island still follows traditional customs, for example all the men wear nightcaps, various colours, sizes and style of wearing show their martial status. Another example of following customs is their notion of a three year trial marriage, where man and woman live together but the man has the ability to break it off after three years. Wonderful.

The Peruvian half of the lake also has floating islands made from reeds, the islands are maintained by putting more reeds on top of one another when ever they rot away. There have been many suggestions that the islanders are planted for tourists, I myself remain unsure of these islands. They are hugely commercialised but they desperately want tourists. The photo above shows the women waiting at the edge of their island to see if they get tourists that day, it is a lottery. The islands are very basic but have solar power and TV. Not completely sure about them but they were very cool and it was interesting to learn about them and their traditions, even if they no longer exist.

Part of the commercialisation is that I had to dress up in their clothes, yes I look amazing, the hat is incredible.

 View over the islands, there are around 60 in total, each containing 3 to 5 families.

Lake Titicaca- Bolivian Side

So after La Paz we went to Lake Titicaca which is the highest lake in the world. It is also the closest that Bolivians come to the sea so their Navy likes to ride about the lake on boats. Yes, the land locked country of Bolivia does indeed have a Navy, I thought it was a joke too. Bolivians are also taught at school that they have a national duty to reclaim their lost coast line from Chile, good luck Bolivia.

The lake is amazingly blue and has lots of islands on it, we spent a few days on the Bolivian side seeing their island, Isla del Sol. The altitude is pretty damn high on this island but we went for a walk across the whole of it, we learnt that Inca ruins are quite dull and that the Malaria tablets we are on really do cause you to burn in the sun!

Matt's cool camouflage gear. 

Nice path way across Isla del Sol.

One of the traditional reed boats that sail Lake Titicaca.

Serere

Serere Reserve - named for the prehistoric bird above -   is the most incredible place on the planet. This reserve was set up by the lady who established Madidi National Park ( a massive "protected" area in Bolivia) and was then thrown out, her name tarnished and her lodge destroyed. So rather than give up she bought her own land and set up a truly ecological lodge.

We spent 5 days in the jungle, in a rather posh cabin, eating the best food that we have had in the whole of South America. We also saw, thanks to our guide Domingo, loads of monkeys, birds and even 2 sloths. And learnt huge amounts about the flora of the jungle. It was amazing!

Jungle Peas/Bananas which tasted amazing

Cacau - Habibi the chef made amazing chocolate mousse straight from this

The lake that the lodge overlooks

Spider Monkeys - bigger show offs than Matt

The rainforest canopy, at points it was so dark that you couldn't see the sky!

Domingo our guide teaching us about jungle medicines. These ants are used as natural stitches. Harriet got "jungle fever" and was cured by a magical concoction of jungle plants and tree bark.

Matt being arty

Fresh Jaguar footprints, we also had the pleasure of coming across Jaguar pooh, we decided we would save you the delight of that photo.

The jungle flower that is seen to symbolise Bolivia because of its red, green and yellow colouring.

A SLOTH!!!! Only took 3 hours of trekking and about 2 hours of rowing around a lake to find it. More than worth it though. Matt is sure that they are in fact shaggy tree going dogs!

Capybara

 The Bolivian jungle with the Andes in the far distance.

Pampas

Our trip to Rurrenabaque, only a few hundred km away from La Paz was rather eventful. Due to heavy rains a bus was not possible, instead we took a flight in a 16 seater plane which was so small that Matt was bent double to get into it. Even better, as the Pampas are only 150m above sea level we had a good 3,000m to go down in 35 minutes, it was the weirdest plane journey ever as it never felt like we went up! After the plane we got a 3 hour truck ride and then finally got into our boat for another 3 hours, as you can see above, we were well prepared for our trip! (Or so we thought, turns out the beers were for the guides!)

Our first sighting of a pink Dolphin, we saw many Dolphins on the river. This photo made us question whether or not we wanted to swim with them though! There are definitely a lot of teeth!

We also spotted a tree climbing ant eater, even with Matt's ridiculous camera lens it still is an achievement to make it out clearly!

Many, many Squirrel Monkeys which are my new favourite animal because they are so cool!

This is the monkey which would use a Mummy Monkey and Baby to divert everyone's attention and then would sneak into Breakfast and steal food. On the first day he stole donuts, we tried to give him papaya to balance out his meal, he took one bite and threw it away and stole another donut. 

Matt showing off on the photography grounds again!

Matt's impression of an American tennis player, yes he did actually wear the cap backwards the entire time.

Frederico, the Caymen that came everyday to pick up leftovers.

Howler Monkeys- they make the scariest noise ever, it sounds like ghosts in the nighttime. 

Biggest stork ever, Matt loves them from the Pantanal.

La Paz

So while Matt was off climbing a mountain, I stayed in La Paz with Linn where we went to a ridiculously hard Spanish school! La Paz was clearly the place to be though as we got to see Jade and Jack! On the boys' return Matt achieved a new record, second to the mountain climb, of eating the world's most dangerous vindaloo, for which he got a t-shirt!

La Paz is a crazy city, which is ridiculously high at 3,300m (ish) so walking up the hills requires a lot of effort. The fact that La Paz is also one of the most polluted places in the world, where the Shoe Shine Boys where balaclavas to protect them from the smog, makes walking around the city a problem.

La Paz being the seat of Government also enjoyed a lot of lovely demonstrations and riots on our last days in the city. These photos were taken by Matt out of the hostel window, the police at one end and the protesters at the other. After these photos were taken, the miners arrived and decided to create noise by throwing dynamite in the streets and they were met with tear gas by the police. Unfortunately for us the tear gas leaked into the hostel, pepper spray as it turns out is really horrible! Luckily the demonstrations have long lunch breaks (no joke, this is South America) so we were able to work around them and planned to leave the city the next day!

One of many women in La Paz who wear traditional dress and can be seen around the city, struggling to make ends meet. However, this is an amazing city which definitely has to be seen to be believed.

Matt gets to 6,088m!

 So Colin and I decided after careful consideration to climb a mountain. It seemed like a great idea at the time. With 500 m to go to the summit it did not feel like such a good idea. It turns out that 5 months of no exercise and eating like a giant Panda are not necessarily the best ways to prepare. Who would have thought? But we both made it!

We got our first view of the mountain - Huayna Potosi - driving to the first "base camp" and were just a tiny bit awestruck. It didn't look quite so friendly as we had imagined what with the big spiky spire of ice and snow at the top.

On the way we also went past a beautiful graveyard. The graves were all of people that had perished on the mountain. NOT. But it scared us anyway.

So as you can see we had to wear wonderful clothes - in fact Harriet tells me she saw similar in London fashion week, honest! I apologies for my stupid pose in the photo above I was tired and I assume was not thinking clearly.

The climb facing us

Me looking very tired at the top, why stand on the summit when you can sit? 

La Paz from the summit

The super wide ridge to reach the top

Tarabuco

So we actually managed to time something well and arrived in Sucre, Bolivia's capital city, in time for a local Indigenous Festival which only occurs once a year. The village of Tarabuco becomes packed with people for the markets, dancing, singing and for the parade. This year Evo Morales (First Indigenous President of Bolivia) attended the celebrations and arrived in Indigenous dress dancing his way through the streets with the indigenous communities.

Dodgy photo of Morales above, he is the one wearing the strange hat (to clarify as there are many strange hats, the one with baubles on top.) Below is one of the lovely statues that the town has of an indigenous person eating the heart of a Spanish Conquerer, this festival celebrates their victory over the Spanish.

The festival is such a big deal that TV crews from around Bolivia were present. One even decided to try and interview Matt, all I could hear was 'NO HABLO ESPANOL PERO MI NOVIO HABLA MUY BIEN' (Bascially I don't speak Spanish but my Girlfriend can) at this stage I continued walking but Linn drew the short straw and was interviewed for the TV! We kindly left her to it and stood laughing in the background.

The festival turned into a shopping trip as we were unable to resist the brightly coloured markets of the village!

Matt managed to buy himself a woven belt in a desperate bid to stop his trousers from falling down anymore, the gentleman had to help him put  it on though as Matt found it too complicated. The gentleman took this job very seriously as you can all see!