The end of our Bolivian adventure

Today was the day that Emma got on a plane to go back home from La Paz, and the day that I left Bolivia in completely the opposite direction: for Chile. I suppose she had to go back for her viva at some point, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier this morning as we said goodbye for another eight weeks. (I know, it's not that long, I'd just got used to having her around and I loved it!)

Bolivia is a country that we both came to love. It is undoubtedly my favourite country so far, and I'm sure it will stand out as one of the highlights of my trip. As well as the wonderful natural landscapes that we mentioned in the previous blog, and those that we saw on our trek last week, we came to love La Paz. It is a completely chaotic city - absolutely mental - but great fun to be in. Plus, you can get a half hour bus ride for 10p, which I think is great. On our trek we walked from a 4850m pass all the way down to the Yungas rainforest which stretches through to the Amazon. Along the way we saw huge butterflies, and I managed to see something I spent tens of hours trying to see at Los Cedros in Ecuador without success: a Capuchin monkey! Needless to say I completely failed to engage monkey habituation protocols (ie scratching yourself, eating leaves and so on), and the monkey scarpered before Emma could get a look.

In the time since we returned to La Paz from our walk, we've done some fun things. On one day we mountain biked what is officially designated as 'The World's Most Dangerous Road'. Until two months ago when a new and safer road (no less than twenty years in the making) was opened, this un-barriered road - in parts only one vehicle wide and with drops on one side of up to 300m - was the only transport route between the country's capital and basically everything to the north east. Our guidebook informed us that this road had an average of 26 vehicles per year disappearing over the edge. Well, it's fun to mountain bike from 4700m down to 1000m in five hours! And we've got the t-shirts to prove it. Yesterday we travelled back up to the pass at the start of last week's trek to catch the captivating views of the Cordillera Real, since pass was clouded over when we went the first time. When we weren't doing these things, we were exploring La Paz, experiencing some of its lively markets and colourful craft shops. We also splurged on a nice hotel for the last couple of nights. Before you snort in disgust, I ask you: would you pass up the opportunity to stay in a suite in a 5 star hotel in a capital city for 80 dollars a night? (On the topic of dollars, I'm loving the exchange rate that I've had for the last few months, because all prices here, even ones in local currency, seem to be pegged to the dollar).

This morning I repeated the trip I did nearly three weeks ago to meet Emma in Santiago. I'm now sitting in Arica, where I'll catch a flight down to Santiago tomorrow. On Friday evening I will finally be waving South America goodbye when I board a flight to Christchurch, New Zealand, via Auckland. I feel that with the border crossing out of Bolivia earlier today, I was prematurely saying goodbye to South America. I'm afraid that what I've seen of Chile just doesn't cut it compared to everything else I've seen. I might as well be in Florida - the roads are actually wide and don't have pot holes, the sun is relentlessly hot and there are McDonalds and Blockbusters everywhere. I'm sure Chile has its charms, but it doesn't fit in with everything else I've experienced in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. I've lately felt that my Spanish has improved a huge amount and I've been enjoying speaking to the locals in Bolivia. I'm going to miss improving on my Spanish, and to that end I've bought Harry Potter 1 in Spanish to try and improve my reading and vocabulary.

I'm looking forward to meeting up with a travelling friend in Santiago tomorrow, Nina, who I've repeatedly bumped into over the last few weeks. Then it'll be over to NZ, where I fully intend to go and live in the wilderness for a few weeks before my family come over to visit at the beginning of April. I will be armed with a mountain hut pass, in an attempt to see how cheaply I can live in a country I'm expecting to shock me quite considerably with regard to prices of things. It feels very strange and quite sad leaving South America. From initial feelings of anxiety and a bit of excitement about travelling on this continent, I've found I absolutely love the place. I hope that the rest of my travelling lives up to this experience (albeit most likely in different ways). Still, I can't wait to experience a new country, and the one that I was looking forward to most of all before my trip began, at that.