Both trips were amazing and had their own highlights and adventures. Floating down the river beni in a motorized canoe, surrounded by thousands of alligators and cayman definitely was one of the more exciting and scarier things I've done since being here. Floating down the river at night in a motorized canoe looking for alligators was probably one of the stupider things. For me, it was a trip of firsts - my first time really in the jungle, my first time riding a motor bike, first time seeing alligators so close up in their natural habitat, first time swimming with dolphins (pink river dolphins) and first time catching a piranha - they tell you after you go swimming that there are piranhas!!! All in all it was an amazing trip. We spent the night at a camp like hostal right on the shore of the river and even had our own resident alligator that seemed to be watching over the site. Below are a couple of photos that sum up the experience. I highly recommend anyone that is in Bolivia go to Rurrenabaque and take one of the Pampas tours as it was money well spent and an experience I won't soon forget.
Another incredible experience was this past weekend which I spent with 4 other volunteers in the Salar de Uyuni. Uyuni itself is a pretty desolate town - not too much happening, it has a plaza, a train station a few restaurants and hotels and that is about it. To our surprise when we arrived NOTHING was open so we spent about an hour or so loitering outside in the cold. The bus ride there was a bit of a mission in itself - the last 4 hours can be compared to riding a horse - literally the entire bus shakes from the bumps and rocks. Upon arriving in Uyuni we met up with our tour company and set off for a three day trek around the salt flats, deserts, volcanoes etc. To our amazement our ride was a Lexus 4X4 - not exactly something that you would expect to see in Bolivia. We started off at the train cemetery where the old cold trains have been left to die (Chile cut off their supply about 30 years ago and so they had to replace the trains with a newer technology), following that we made our way to the salar which to say the least was spectacular. It looks like ice, but it's entirely made of salt and goes on for miles and miles. Due to it's flatness it's the perfect location to take some incredible and deceiving photos and it's pretty hilarious to watch hundreds of tourists try to stage ridiculous photos of themselves - stepping on one another, crushing a banana etc. The first night was stayed in a salt hotel - which is a hotel entirely made of salt - the beds, the tables, the chairs even the floors are salt based. From there we headed out into the true Bolivian desert, drove for miles and miles and at times we would be the only ones around. Checked out several volcanoes, flamingos, thermal baths, strange rock formations and of course a handful of Llamas and even made far enough south to be a volcano away from the border to Chile. The ride back to La Paz is a bit of a long one - 7 hours in a 4x4 followed by another 12 hour bus ride but all in all definitely worth trek!
Work wise, things are going well. I have my first client meeting scheduled with a quinoa company and my next phase involves providing marketing assistance - mainly pertaining to export strategies and opportunities for a quinoa company and one of the country's largest chocolate companies. Fingers crossed that the meetings go well as they'll be entirely in Spanish :)
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