Bolivia

Tuesday 29th November 2016 – I’d always been fascinated to know how bad a bullet ant bite was so at dawn I went to find one, intending to film myself getting bitten. The resulting footage, whilst of some comedic value could hardly be said to demonstrate bravery. Soon the ant was on its way again and I departed unbitten. After breakfast I showed Simon my abortive ant footage (which he thought was very amusing) along with photos of some of the animals we had found the previous night. We reached a photo of a large brown spider and Simon’s eyes widened.
“Where did you find this?”
“About a kilometre down that path” I replied.
“This is Brazilian wandering spider”
The Brazilian wandering spider is the worlds most venomous spider. Occasionally one gets shipped abroad in a crate of bananas and the media goes into meltdown about it. Finding one in the Amazon jungle was very exciting.
Our final walk through the jungle would take us to a bluff overlooking the river, a good spot for watching macaws. As we walked Simon would make the calls of birds and they would call back to him. Along the way we spotted a channel billed toucan high in a tree, a tiny black and yellow striped poison dart frog with red spots on its legs, two butterflies mating on a leaf, a stick insect and red howler monkeys.
On our way back to camp I asked Simon what was the most painful bite he had ever had. “Fer de lance” he replied matter of factly. “I nearly die”. He went on to tell us he had been with a group of tourists when a fer de lance hiding in a hole by the path had bitten him on the leg.
“How long did it take to get to hospital?” I asked.
“No hospital, I take canoe back to village. They give me sugar cane juice.”
“How long did it take you to recover?”
“One month”
Crikey, no wonder he was tickled about the ant.
Back at our lodge Alysa spotted a blue-black wasp on the ground with a spider. The spider wasn’t moving and we soon figured out the wasp had stung and paralysed the spider. We watched as the wasp pulled the spider down a hole; it’s grisly fate to be devoured alive by wasp larvae.
Finally it was time to take the boat back to Rurrenabaque. Even on the journey back we spotted lots of different birds which Simon would identify at a glance. It was a magical trip. We picked up our bags and booked a flight back to La Paz for the next morning [we felt we had rather ridden our luck of late and didn’t want to risk the sketchy bus ride back to La Paz].

Wednesday 30th November 2016 – Our taxi driver on the way to the airport told us it was a good idea to fly; two weeks earlier a tourist bus had come off the road killing everyone on board. We hoped to get views of the Andes as we made the short flight to La Paz but unfortunately it was cloudy. From the airport we took a minibus to the main bus terminal and booked an overnight trip to Uyuni. We had about four hours until the bus left so I showed Alysa the photos I had taken on my phone on our first night in the Amazon. To our astonishment we found some blurred photos of another Brazilian wandering spider. Later images show its front legs raised in strike position – I don’t think it liked me shoving my phone in its face.

Thursday 1st December 2016 – We arrived in Uyuni at about 8am and immediately booked a day trip to see the salt flats – an otherworldly part of Bolivia which is blindingly white for most of the year but becomes like a giant mirror in rainy season. We visited a train graveyard, a salt hotel and a cactus covered volcanic hill in the middle of the salt flats. The real fun to be had though was taking advantage of the lack of perspective to make bizarre photos. Our favourite was Alysa eating me out of a yellow plastic spoon. On the way we picked up a cheerful Scottish chap called Scott (I know). We all got on really well and were so busy chatting it hardly seemed like any time before we were back in Uyuni. We caught an evening bus to Potosi; it was almost midnight by the time we arrived so we found the first hotel we could and collapsed into bed.

Friday 2nd December 2016 – Situated at over 4000m Potosi is one of the highest cities in the world and predictably enough I woke up with an altitude headache. Alysa has no problems in the mountains and was absolutely fine – I suspect she may be descended from Andean llama herdsmen. After a lay in we moved from our late night crash pad to a nicer hotel opposite the Casa de la Moneda. In addition to a headache I’d picked up a nice little stomach bug, so other than short walks I was pretty much confined to base for the day. We did manage to go out in the evening which was great as all the local kids were having a parade for Christmas – small kids dressed as presents followed others dressed as Santas or Christmas stockings or snowmen etc. It was all very jolly and Christmassy.