Bolivia 1 – Delays and Sloths

I’m travelling this time with Jayne. She is a wildlife enthusiast and enjoys photography. For the next two months we will visit Bolivia and Argentina.

I met Jayne at Heathrow Airport, she had been up early to catch a bus so had already had a long day. Our flight initially was to take us to Paris then to South America. Unfortunately our first flight was so delayed, we missed our connection.

So when we landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport we made our way to the Air France desk to get alternative flights sorted, it was so late by this time we were not functioning very well. Jayne managed to tip her drinking water all over the Air France desk and our new tickets, then clearly thinking I need to wake up, managed to spit what was left in her mouth over me!

Everything in the airport was closed, a cleaner pointed the way to immigration, one solitary chap sat in an unlit booth, everything else was empty and deserted as we headed to a nearby hotel because our new flight was not till the next day.

The delay meant we would arrive in Bolivia the morning we were due to set off on a safari style tour. Luckily for us, the hotel we had booked for the night before allowed us to cancel without cost and the tour operator rearranged a pickup from the Airport instead.

We arrived in a warm Santa Cruz, a little disheveled and surprisingly not too tired (probably running on adrenaline). We headed off for the tour rendezvous at a rather lovely cafe, Cafe Typica and had our first taste of a local dish yuka, a sort of Cassava root mashed with cheese. Also pancakes and coffee!!

We had no idea how large the tour would be but it was unlikely to be more than 6 people. As it turned out, it was just us.

Jorge our guide collected us in a pickup (that I later found out was fueled by propane, much to my astonishment!) to a place between two areas called Chocolate and Salinas, some 4.5 hours away North East of Santa Cruz.

On our way we had a brief stop in Cotoca, a small town with a small square of shady trees in the center where there are Sloths! This was one of the animals I wanted to see and there were three of them in the middle of a town, with people all around! It was hard to tell who was habituated to who! People were petting one poor animal as it came down to poop!

These are three toed Sloths.

Ok I’m going to leave this blog midway through a day, partly because finding time to write is difficult and partly because it suddenly gets really busy with animals and birds.