Nature & Nurture

Well, a 7 hour journey. I wish I could say, "Never again," but we have to go back! I´ll post about the journey later, first I wanna say about where we are. This is Caranavi, and they do reckon they have a claim to the Garden of Eden stuff. I think they might be right. I´ve never seen so many butterflies in my life for starters, and every colour and size. Some are yellow underneath and purple on top and as big as my hands, others are white and then ultraviolet blue when the sun hits their wings. Others are electric blue, or bright orange, or crimson, or every shade of yellow, or black and pink, or you name it, I´ve seen one that colour today!

Also seen tons of ave marias which I reckon are eagles of some description. Bloody huge until I try to take a photo and they suddenly turn into small black dots! The countryside is totally stunning, I just wish we hadn´t had to drive that road to see it! As we came out of La Paz and hit 4500m, you hit La Cumbre (the summit) where the peaks are covered in glacial ice. There was a lake and then....yeehah....at long last, a herd of llamas! Phew, I thought all I knew about Bolivia was wrong! So, seen me llamas, and the women in multicoloured shawls and black hats, just not together! So, that´s blown that image of Bolivia right out of the water.

There was quite a lot of snow on the tops, even though it´s not really winter yet, and it wasn´t exactly warm - I was wearing a tshirt, big thick woolly jumper from Tarabuco, and my fleecy coat (Oh and jeans and boots of course!). Now I am wearing the tshirt and jeans and would far rather be in a swimming pool - it is cooking, must be up around 30+degrees. In fact, that is the weird bit, it truly is how you would imagine ´tropical´ - banana trees eveywhere, vines hanging down from trees, butterflies everywhere, and bloody hot and humid! And not how I imagined Bolivia Central. Well, actually we´re to the east of La Paz I think and about 600m up. So, we´ve dropped nearly 4000m in total.

The hotel Jatata has a pool, and of course this time I´ve left my swimming costume in Santa Cruz - last time it was my coat! This is quite a big town, truck heaven as of course anyone who can make it here probably has to fix their vehicle! It´s market day so I´m off to buy shorts, a cossie, and some sandals. I think I might have persuaded Liang that we do not need to leave for Coroico early tomorrow morning and that we could possibly chill out here a short while. After all, there I was in the jacuzzi bath in a 5star hotel at midnight just to try and make the most of the facilities and I was in the hotel less than 12 hours in total. Now it´s sunny and hot and I want to swim and sunbathe a little and think about everything without worrying about what is coming round the next corner.

I didn´nt get to sleep until 3.30am anyway. The altitude really got to me and I drank every bottle of water in the fridge before my body would allow me to close my eyes at all. I have never ever been that thirsty in my life and I started worrying my brain would explode at some point but I think it´s still as useless as ever!