Thursday, July 23, 2009

Yesss!

stork!

stork!

Coreen took these photos from the same place with the boar/monkey/dog chaos outside of Rurrenabaque. This stork walked right up to us, stopped like 2 feet away, opened its mouth, then sloooowwwlly walked past us to the back patio (where all the other crazy animals were) while staring at us with weirdly knowing eyes. so awesome!

Friday, July 17, 2009

the craziness of southern bolivia


the border with chile

the buses in bolivia have amazingly weird designs on the bus-backs. usually jesus would be accompanied by a mostly naked woman with a sword or something.

a skeleton of bus at the border

jon as ice

volcan licancabur, right near the chilean border, with laguna verde in the foreground. this place was really, really cold.

danger: flamingos?

calf as ice

joel and akash as shadow people

Thursday, July 16, 2009

many places before the southwest of Bolivia

la paz, sucre, potosí, rurrenabaque




This last picture isn´t so great, but I think you have to appreciate all that is going on. There is a spider monkey wrestling three dogs while an amazonian boar thing eagerly watches and tries to participate -- they were all moving too fast to take a good picture of, but still, pret-ty awesome!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Thursday, July 2, 2009

THE JUNGLE

It´s basically impossible to take worthwhile pictures in the jungle, but I have two pictures of cool insects at least, and my sweet new hat. It turns out the best place to see wildlife is in the pampas, and I will put some pictures of that craziness up later. The amazon is pretty much terrifying but really really interesting to walk around in, and extremely loud with insects and birds.


this first picture is actually from the post office in la paz, and in case you were curious (and unfortunately it´s almost impossible to see with this small picture), tigers are NOT ALLOWED

La Paz post office

our plane to rurrenabaque from la paz. this company, TAM, is actually the civilian wing of the bolivian military! therefore we had to take a taxi out to the military base, which was like a graveyard of ex-US airforce planes with wild dogs roaming these big fields of grassy garbage. we tried to get out to one of the planes to take a picture but the dogs started being imposing and scary, so we went back to the building.
La Paz

this photo doesn´t seem crazy because you weren´t in insane desert for weeks and then like 5 minutes out of la paz go into jungle with clouds and big rivers and stuff. but here it is anyway
flying into rurrenabaque

here we are in rurrenabaque -- we landed on grass!
Rurrenabaque

here´s the italian circus, wherein people balance small dogs sitting on 10 foot poles with their noses. they also have a lion, but we couldn´t see it from the outside.
Rurrenabaque

this bug was huge and pretty
Rurrenabaque

this ant was not pretty, but it was like an inch big and apparently it´s the most poisonous ant in the area. the guide also let us try this plant they use for serious insect bites where by chewing a tiny tiny bit of the root you get like a blast of some serious numbing agent. jungle!
Rurrenabaque

my sweet new hat, and my post card list that got interrupted by our game of hangman. which reminds me, i only have like 3 addresses with me (the only ones i could remember) so if you want a post card please email me yr addresses!
Rurrenabaque

Coroico, Bolivia

Coroico is a town situated in in the eastern cordillera of the Andes, on the rainy side of the mountains which is basically the western extent of the Amazon. Coffee and bananas (and spiders) grow here like crazy, and it´s only a 3 hour busride from La Paz. It used to be you had to take the "world´s most dangerous road" to get here, but luckily the country just recently opened an actual paved road where about 26 vehicles a year don´t go plummeting off into the canyon.

coroico, bolivia
coroico, bolivia
coroico, bolivia
coroico, bolivia