Over the River and Through the Woods

see all photos »

This entry is going back a while, to Semana Santa weekend. I think Spanish class makes me lazy in my blogging.

So Semana Santa is the weekend of Easter and as a result I had a three day weekend. This gave me the opportunity to take a trip to Coroico, which is one of the most scenic areas of Bolivia, and only three hours from La Paz.

The trip started off when I met the rest of my group at the travel agency and we piled into a jeep for our off-road drive to our eco-lodge. The other three were all Bolivians and were very friendly. They also let me practice my spanish with them.

see all photos »

When we arrived we recieved a quick tour from the owner, Fernando, had a little time to hang out and then began a hike. During the hanging out time I became involved in a very competitive game of foosball. After that, whenever there was a break in the action, the group was playing foosball.

Our hike was interesting, instead of over the river and through the woods it was in the river and through the jungle. The hike started out on a trail, but soon we were wading through knee to waist deep water, with a strong current and scrambling over boulders. I would describe it as walking up a narrow mountain river. Besides the fun of climbing up or sliding down the rocks into small pools we also were able to stand underneath a powerful waterfall. The only downer to the trip was I had forgotten to remove my passport from my cargo pocket. It was soaked, but after being dried out recovered well.

see all photos »

For entertainment that night we played a dice game very similar to Yahtzee, my team lost 2-1.

The next day was for rafting. I felt that the boat was overloaded by two people, which wasn´t a big deal, but I found it a little ironic when our guide made the joke that the boat´s name was the Titanic. The river had a few decent rapids, but after Nepal wasn´t much of a thrill. Although two people fell in and both times it was my job to pull them back in.

After the rafting we walked to another waterfall. This time it was mostly over big rocks. The waterfall was extremely powerful, the spray from it made me feel like we were walking through a hurricane. I had a ton of water in my face, could barely see or hear anything and when we arrived behind it our guide gave us instructions on how to jump through it and into the pool below. In the end, he was the only one to do it. I probably should have gone for it, but the walk behind the waterfall had left me so disoriented I could barely think, and the one thought I did have was ¨I don´t want to jump through this stupid waterfall.¨

see all photos »

After he jumped and the rest of us walked back Fernando teased me a bit and I was ready to go back, but the moment was over. Next time I guess.

Nothing was planned for the third day so my three new friends and I took a walk down to the river, through the jungle. When we got back we were all hot and sweaty. I looked at the pool and figured the perfect thing to do was to jump in. It felt really good at the time. The next week I was a little sick for about three days, I´m pretty sure I picked up something in the water.

see all photos »

The ride back to La Paz was very scenic, and we had several views of cocoa fields that were harvested for narco-trafficking. I was pretty worn out, and as a result was to lazy to try to follow the conversation in spanish. On top of it all I got a free t-shirt, so now I´m up to about five shirts, although the next time I send a package home I plan to go back down to two.

I´ll try to catch up with my last two weeks in Bolivia soon, since this week I´m going to have a bunch of adventures in Peru and it would be nice to be all caught up.

see all photos »

Hope the weather´s warming up back home, it´s cold here at night, but nice and sunny and warm during the day.