Hola!
We’re back!
And boy, do we look pasty- we need some sun.
After a few weeks with family in UK and me (somehow miraculously) landing a great job for September, we’re back on the road, somewhat unexpectedly ending up on the northern coast of Spain. It went like this:
Me: Where shall we go?
Sam: Where’s the cheapest place out of London?
Me: Santander. I think it’s in Spain.
Sam: As in the bank? Ok, book it.
And so here we are. We landed in Santander and it was such a nice treat- we didn’t know what to expect, having done no research and (for the first time ever) not having our trusty Rough Guide. It was such an interesting place- long stretches of gorgeous coastline interspersed with cafes and pretty architecture. It took a couple of days for our Spanish to kick back in properly but now we’re back into it, it’s as if we never stopped speaking it.
The hotel we stayed at was a definite winner- super cheap and comfy with excellent water pressure (regular readers will be aware of how Sam feels about water pressure.) After a couple of days there walking our socks off, we took a bus to Bilbao- the only thing we knew about here was that there was a football team (admittedly, only Sam knew this.) Now, this is the most amazing place for a weekend break- after 3 days here we rank it way above Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Nice etc. We’d recommend it to anyone. Bilbao is seriously impressive. The whole city is so diverse- great architecture, modern galleries, fantastic beaches and the coast only 30 mins away, a great riverfront with so many cafes and bars and, most importantly pintxos.
Northern Spain are big pintxos believers- they’re a kind of tapas type dish which are available in pretty much every bar we’ve seen. On weekends, the locals really go to town and do pintxos crawls- effectively going from one bar to another (morning, afternoon, night, they’re not fussy) to drink and eat these delicious bar snacks. We paid an average of 1.5 euros per pintxos, and they were fantastic. The bar is piled high with them and you just get what you want and pay at the end. YUM!
We’ve walked an unbelievable amount- we feel totally reenergised for travelling and it’s as if we’re starting in Ho Chi Minh all over again. We’re not sure how long this feeling will last but we’re enjoying it whilst it’s here.
It’s been really warm the last few days but today was a scorcher so we took the metro 30 mins out to the coast, to the town of Getxo, to visit the beaches there. As well as spectacular beaches, there was a coastal walk (which Sam begrudgingly came on with me.) Obviously the sun makes everything seem better but we had such a great day and managed to repair some of the damage the UK has done to our fabulous tans.
The only downside to Bilbao is the price of accommodation-no matter how hard we looked we couldn’t get anything for our budget- Peru and Bolivia seem very far away when looking on Hotels.com and Airbnb. However, we did manage to get a lovely hotel for 50 a night- not ideal but it’s luxury for us and we are enjoying it immensely!
Tomorrow it’s off to San Sebastian, about 1.5 hours along the coast for (hopefully) more sun and pintxos. I’m sure there’ll be some culture too but it’s mainly for the sun and pintxos.
Photo of the Day: Bye bye Bolivia, it’s been a blast
Adventures in the Amazon!
Another tick for the bucket list- we’ve conquered the Amazon jungle and it was FANTASTIC (well, for me anyway.)
On Thursday morning we took a very scenic flight from La Paz to Rurrenebaque- if we’d taken the bus it would probably have taken over 20 hours on unpaved roads- no thanks. From there it was on to a lovely hotel with views not unlike those on the Mekong Delta and a pool. So nice. Bright and early the next day off we went on a 5 hour boat ride up river to a wonderful place called Chalalan Lodge. The ride itself was great- amazing views the whole way and we were sat at the very front so had uninterrupted views:
Chalalan Lodge is a community owned and run model for eco tourism, set deep in the Madiri National Park, one of the most bio diverse places in the world. It was set up 20 years ago to encourage community sustainability and educate tourists on the need to protect the park (it’s a pretty big area- over 19,000 sq km.) Although Chalalan does cost more than the privately owned resorts, 50% of the profits go directly to the community so that they don’t need to hunt and cut down trees in order to earn money. It has a capacity of only 30 people although when we were there there were only about 10 of us, which was really nice as it wasn’t crowded. We stayed in a ‘luxury’ cabin (see below for the jungle version of luxury) with lovely hammocks to lie in during the afternoons when it was too hot to go out.
It’s always an early start followed by a 3 or 4 hour ( very hot and very sweaty) trail. After lunch it was time for a siesta and then around 3.30, it was out again for either another trail or a canoe ride to see cayman (a cross between an alligator and crocodile,) monkeys swinging through the trees or amazingly weird looking birds. After dinner, it was back out again in the pitch black on a night hike to see a completely different side to the jungle- huge spiders, deadly frogs, freaky looking insects, pirhanas and more monkeys (there were many many kinds.) Sam was not a fan of the night hikes- it turns out that he and the jungle are not destined to be friends.
The trails were awesome- we learnt so much from our fantastic guide, Ronny. He grew up in the community which runs Chalalan and seemed to know absolutely everything about the Amazon. He could recognise every kind of animal, bird or insect from listening to it from far away (when we couldn’t even hear the sound.) Ronny showed us all of the different types of trees used to make traditional medicine and could spot poisonous spiders from about 20m away.
Accidentally scaring a jungle turtle
Hello little monkey
Cayman cruising on by
Super sweaty trail walking
Now onto the bullet ants and big brave Sam.
Think of an ant, x it by 10 and add a massive venomous sting. This is what stung Sam on his foot as he stepped out a hammock. I’ve only seen him in pain like that once before, in Bali when he slammed a bit wooden gate onto his fingers. Sam described his foot as being both on fire and broken simultaneously. It took 5 hours for the pain to subside and the staff were on the verge of giving him snake venom antidote to try and help, after all of the traditional medicines and painkillers did nothing to help. We found out afterwards that usually the sting from a bullet ant can make your whole foot swell and the pain normally lasts 24 hours. Ouch.
Model pose- before the bullet ant incident
So, although not such a successful trip for Sam, I absolutely loved the Amazon jungle and would go back again tomorrow if I could. Even the mosquitoes (of which there were many,) could not dampen my spirits!
Lake full of cayman and pirhanas
So, that’s Bolivia done and dusted. At times it’s been challenging as we’ve been so tired but overall it has been a fantastic country to visit and we’d encourage anyone to go. Although still very much a developing country and having terrible wifi, it’s got so much going for it- from stunning architecture in Sucre, to the wonders of the the salar and the amazing diversity of the jungle.
Due to family circumstances, we’ve had to put our Peru and Ecuador plans on hold and return to the UK. We hope to resume soon as we have so much we still want to see but for the moment we won’t be updating the blog.
So for now, it’s bye from us!
4 Days In A Jeep
I’m very fortunate that it’s my turn to write this post as it should be a nice easy one- we’ve just had 4 of the best days of our trip. When we were originally planning the trip we both knew very little about Bolivia, the main things being that (a) it has a really famous salt flat that’s the biggest in the world, and (b) it has a steam train graveyard. Those 2 items alone justified our entire foray into this country, and are very closely placed together in the south of the country in a place called Uyuni.
Although it’s obviously possible to do tours from Uyuni, we’d heard mixed reviews about the quality from there. We (aka Laura) did some more research and found that tours also went from the town of Tupiza, several hundred kilometers away. Although the town itself has nothing much to speak of (it didn’t have anywhere to even get a coffee,) we did get lucky with a really tasty pizza at some random place that wasn’t on TripAdvisor. La Torre tours offered a 3 night/4day tour which had great reviews. We couldn’t book until we got to the town and were very worried we’d be stuck a day or two to get on a tour but we were fortunate and got on a tour the next day.
The tours work like this; there are 6 people in a Jeep- the guide, the cook, and 4 tourists. We were very lucky to get paired with a lovely Belgian couple, Hortense and Louis, who were amazing company and really helped to make the trip be extra fantastic. We spent a lot of time in the car- we were covering 150-300 km every day so it gave us a lot of time to get to know each other, plus we were eating and staying in a room together! I can only imagine how horrid it would be if you got stuck with people you didn’t like; there were 2 Jeeps going from our company and most the people in the other Jeep would have made terrible companions. We were surprised by the amount of Jeep time as we thought there’d be more walking but it didn’t turn out to be a problem. The scenery was non-stop stunning and constantly changing and made for really beautiful driving.
The main attractions of the salt flat and the train cemetery were saved for the last day which is one of the reasons the tour works so well in this direction; the scenery and attractions get better and better each day. The photos do not do it justice, but it was a truly special experience. You’re really out in the very middle of nowhere, and quite how the driver knew where to go was beyond us. Still, he never got us lost! Neither the chef nor guide spoke any English, but we managed to muddle by with our limited Spanish and a lot of help from Hortense and Louis (thanks guys.)
It’s really interesting because the lunch stops and evening accommodation all provided a kitchen for the chefs, but the chefs had to bring everything else; gas, food, drink etc. There were entire buildings set up with these kitchens and communal dining areas. Very weird, but it seemed to work. We were certainly impressed with the evening accommodation. The tour operator had repeatedly warned us that the accommodation was very basic and low quality, and Laura had seen pictures of mattresses on floors, so we went in expecting the worst and were pleasantly surprised. The beds were all comfy (Laura had the best sleep in months on the first night) with plenty of warm bedding, and we only had to share between the 4 of us so it wasn’t like a massive dorm. We were always well fed (with plenty of snacks in the day too), and all of this came in under our usual daily budget as well!
Full of gas
I guess the most obvious question is “What did you see for 4 days in a Jeep?” It’s hard to articulate as we saw so much, we really did see everything amazing that nature has to offer. Valleys that looked like the moon, hills that looked like Mars, and so so many lagunas we lost count. Most with flamingos- which did not stand on one leg contrary to popular belief. Each day offered something new, particularly with the changing altitude- at some altitudes the plains were full of shrubbery, in others we were in fully arid deserts. We even got to go into a geothermal hot pool, as well as seeing pluming gysers firing up non stop clouds of sulfurous smoke. We took over 1000 photos, although we’ve managed to narrow it down to 300 or so (and Laura will narrow that further for the blog!)
I’ll let the photos do most of the talking, but I really do need to cover the Salar. It’s truly insane. It’s over 10,000 sq. meters in size, which meant that after our 4:30am wake up call on the last day we had to drive for over half an hour to get to the middle- the whole thing is perfectly flat and made up of patterned white salt, You can see nothing for miles and miles to the horizon, which made some brilliant mirages of floating islands. There’s so much salt that our last night accommodation was in a salt hotel; they compress the salt into bricks and built a hotel! It was really very special.
Salt hotel. Comfy beds!
Had to wake up early for this one!
This also completely messes with perspective, which means you can end up with cool perspective shots like this:
The final stop of the tour was the steam train graveyard. As you can imagine, I was quite excited, but even Laura enjoyed it in the end. Uyuni used to be the centre joining point of trains from Chile and Argentina, but when demand dropped they basically parked up all the trains and left them there to rot. It’s an incredible site, and made a great adult playground with everyone climbing on top for some awesome photos.
Whilst I think we both agree that Inca Trail remains our favourite activity, this has definitely been a close second. And in a couple of days we fly to the Amazon! This kind of sums up how we feel:
Photo of the Day: On the way to the Salar
