La Paz / El Alto

Posted bythomas ottoPosted inUncategorized

Awesome towns at around 4000m above see level and insanely steep streets. They have gondolas for their public transport.

Best public transport ever.

I managed to pull into this town without driving right through the market. Fun thing about this place, we are going to “camp” at the airport!

Surprisingly quiet.

Airport is at 4050 meters, so I don’t care how close we are to the equator, it’s cold up here, and even colder at nights. Clean bathrooms!

We head to town and book our jungle tour then stop at the highest Irish pub in the world. They don’t have Guinness on tap and they are basically the pub with no beer as there were no new supplies during carnival. I however got the very last Guinness.

I’m so high.

We eat some Mexican food then use the gondola to get back to the airport for a chilly eve.

Next morning we make our own gondola city tour and check out some sites.

Their lines are named with color, not number. Unlike Chicago, there is a black line and a white line.
Anyone seen Otto?
Which line has the intermittent contact? I’ve actually seen worse in London.
Pigeon square. If one touches you, you have to burn that limb off.
Michelle. Since 88. Match.
Had possibly the best lunch ever then we were too full to move. Gondola on home before it rain/hails/snows.

Madidi National Park

We booked a multi day trip to the Madidi National Park, the rainforest section of it. Good news, we were parked really close to our flight :). Going from 4000+m and cold to just a few meters and sweltering rainforest needed a bit of adaption though.

The plane has to slalom the cones during takeoff and landing.
Swimming with panoramic views is one adaption.
And then a 3 hour boat ride to the forest. A 3 hour tour… a 3 hour tour…

To where I learned that Rurrenabaque is just on the eastern tip of the national park, and our boat ride, went east! WTF. Tired of not as advertised. Our tour was legit though, with the group that established the place as a national park and we weren’t doing just some bird watching.

Michelle got stuck. Almost everyone did, cannot stand still for a second. Mud was a bit more than ankle deep. Water a bit more!
Our room for a few days. Nets or not, a LOT of bugs got in. Bed had a mosquito net.
A walking tree. They actually walk around the forest.
The non-Porsche Caimen waiting for someone to fall outta the canoe.
Froggie disturbing me doing my business.

While the jungle was great, I highly recommend not going during wet season. That was a lot of mosquitos, insane. Guide said we got lucky with them too. The spiders were living it up. After froggie we had a medium one in our bathroom. Originally it was gigantic till later we saw one that was enormous but that later was replaced by an even bigger one.

There are a lot of birds and animals in this picture. Find them all!
Flying monkeys!
Can’t think of a single 12 Monkeys quote.

Lots of birds, lots of monkeys, lots of bugs.

Spank the monkey!
Don’t let the monkey get hurt, monkey…monkey!
Ants in my pants.

Ok maybe the Live Photo’s look better on the phone than here.

Also did some Piranha fishing.

First catch.
Nice catch.
It’ll turn into dinner before a prince

And of course the fish was eaten.

Long bumpy boat ride back, with then a took took and finally a jungle flight, and back at 4000+m and neither of us could breathe or sleep. Good times.

One last stop in Bolivia, Lake Titicaca!

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