Where to go...where to go... | Kate Johnson

It’s part of the Amazon, but not what you would expect. Instead of lush tropical jungle and endless rivers flowing towards the mighty Amazon river, much of Bolivia’s slice of the Amazon basin offers visitors a less typical Amazonian experience.

For many Bolivia is hardly the first country that springs to mind when planning an Amazon trip. Yet the Amazon basin encompasses over half the country, offering pristine rainforest and savannah lands, also known as pampas. It is these savannah areas, large wetlands overflowing with animals, which draw visitors to the area.

Getting there, however, is not always easy. While the gateway town of Rurrenabaque has an airport, the dirt runway turns to mud at the slightest sign of rain with many flights cancelled during the wet season. The only other way there is via a very bumpy and nerve ranking journey along dirt tracks, even taking in parts of the world’s most dangerous road. With journey times of 18 hours on a local bus or 12 in a jeep from the Bolivian capital of La Paz, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

From Rurrenabaque, it’s three more hours along a bumpy road to the departure point where all tours of the pampas leave. After climbing into a motorised canoe, our group of eight set off down the river, spotting numerous animals and birds along the way. A caiman quickly peeped over the water, the world’s largest rodent the capybara waded through the river and spider and cappuccino monkeys swung from the trees. The smell of bananas attracted the cappuccino monkeys who jumped on our arms and heads and tried to steal the bananas from the boat.

After a couple of hours on the river, our next stop was our accommodation which was simply dorm rooms in wooden cabins built on stilts. Ours came with two resident alligators who lazily basked in the sunshine and the water beneath the cabin. As we lazed in hammocks, we watched numerous birds and even spotted a toucan.

The following day was spent anaconda hunting in a marsh area, where water climbed half way up our thighs. We spotted a sleeping black anaconda, as well as a tiny but deadly milk snake. Snakes spotted, we sailed further down the river to an area inhabited by pink river dolphins. Even though there were alligators and caimans five minutes up the river, we all jumped at the opportunity to swim with the wild pink river dolphins who gently nibbled at our feet. Our last activity of the day, after watching the sunset, took us alligator hunting in the dark. The eyes of the alligators glowed red in the dark and our guide even plucked a baby one from the water, though this isn’t exactly ethical!

By day three it was time to bid farewell to the mosquitoes, but not before we went piranha fishing. They really do have shark teeth. After only two more hours sailing on the river, three hours in the jeep and 28 on the bus, thanks to a landslide, we made it back to the animal that is La Paz. It was worth it though.

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Because safety is secondary when you're low on Rand

Having spent a highly leisurely week or so partying and wandering in South Africa’s ‘mother city’ it was time to leave. Me and my travel partner were on the final straight of our gap year and had two weeks to amble north to Johannesburg before flying home. We had booked coach tickets for the 6 hour journey from Cape Town to Bloemfontein and had a leisurely two hour wait for the coach to arrive at its stop directly behind our hostel.

Having looked at the tickets and seen 0620 printed on them I opted to stay in the hostel till 6:15 before sauntering over, this casualness being based on how little fun sitting at bus stops is and the proximity of it to our hostel. However when looking at my coach ticket I had failed to see the R (rand) symbol following 0620. This of course denoting how much the journey cost and not what time the coach departed. Dick. The coach had left at six and by the time we had worked out what had happened it was six twenty five. In the grand scheme of things this was a moderate fuck up meaning a whole heap of hassle involving cancelling/rebooking hostels, travel arrangements and our schedule for the final two weeks of our gap year.

The following shit-scary joy ride entailed cruising through three red lights, the wrong way round a roundabout and some overtaking manoeuvres that meat headed chump Vin-Diesel would be proud of.

Based on this I took what was in retrospect a fairly large risk based on our delicately balanced finances and the startling combination of drink driving, lawless roads and cars that would make your average safety conscious Volvo owner vomit, which we had experienced frequently on out travels so far. I quizzed a taxi driver at the bus stop on how far away the bus would be now and where the next stop is. In the twenty five minutes since it had left the driver estimated it would be at the next stop 26km’s away on the other side of Cape Town. He also estimated that for the right price he could get us there before it leaves again.

What then entailed was pure Hollywood. After piling in with all our belongings the taxi had to be push started for around 100m before the engine snarled into life. A beauty our taxi was not. On cue the skies opened and our taxi devoid of front windscreen wipers, seatbelts and properly closing windows began its mad chase across Cape Town. The following frankly shit-scary joy ride entailed cruising through three red lights, the wrong way down a one way street, the wrong way round a roundabout and some overtaking manoeuvres that meat headed chump Vin-Diesel would be proud of. All this in a car that would have failed its MOT in the UK around 73 years ago.

The kilometres flew by and leaving the motorway we rose over a bank to see our bus down the valley sat gloriously stationary at the petrol station. With about with a hundred and fifty yards and a T junction to go we saw the doors of the coach close and the engines fire up. Aghast, our driver gunned the dilapidated engine, screeched through the junction and blocked the coach’s exit with a skid as small crowd of onlookers cheered and whooped (no exaggeration). We flew out, waving our tickets at a slightly bemused coach driver, who grudgingly let us on to the sound of cheers. Inconvenience and death avoided with a few thrills to boot. Sure it sounds like a classic gap year yarn embellished for entertainment, but I can assure you it hasn’t! As the locals would say: ‘That was lekker bru, massive jols or what, eh?’

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Going back to September and the night before I left for university, I remember lying in bed thinking, ‘Shit. What if university is a massive letdown?’ Years of listening to fondly told stories of student days from family and friends and my own experiences as a teen visiting my older brother and friends meant I’d had several positive uni experiences. However I took a gap year and experienced a huge level of financial (pre credit crunch) and personal freedom. I remember a nagging thought at the back of my mind: what if uni isn’t all its cracked up to be? Years of being skint, having to get back into a structured regime of work and the social unknown; the enormity of it all hit me.

However my fears, as I’m sure the vast majority of freshers’ were, melted from sight as soon as I donned my first shoddy fancy dress outfit and watched someone else get too drunk for the entertainment of the masses.

Fresher’s week was certainly an experience, one that I will never forget and will remain a pleasant memory. This view I’m fully aware is in contrast to many peoples of fresher’s week, however for every single dog shit conversation about gap years/A levels/where people live and all those tentative yet ultimately doomed friendships with idiots etc there was a fantastic night out to a club you would never ever frequent again, with people you possibly would never ever meet again, all surfing a massive wave of optimism, good will and ultimately innocence. Like a rehabilitated crack addict remembering that first hit, fresher’s week was fantastic, but probably something I wouldn’t do again in retrospect.

The first term rumbled on as the party spirit barely stopping to catch breath, university life in a new city began to settle into place. After moaning about the Harvard referencing system and slowly realising that the guy next door who you thought was great in fresher’s week is a massive dick, uni life really began to take off.

At the risk of sounding like a huge tool, I found friends for life emerged from the many acquaintances id made and the buzz of being surrounded by like and able minded people as well as completely new people, perspectives and experiences made me realise why people rightly rave about university as the best time of their lives.

As if then conforming to every student cliché available, I caught Glandular Fever (from some manky Sheila no doubt) and spent December in bed playing Football Manager feeling sorry for myself and all Christmas holidays catching up on missed work and preparing for my January exams. I find students attitudes to exams fairly amusing despite the fact that I’m guilty of it. We speak of them as if they weren’t originally part of the student deal, a dastardly surprise sprung on us by the university. What we seemingly expected otherwise is a mystery? A game of ‘stuck in the mud’ to gauge academic progress with? Top Trumps against lecturers to sort out the 2:1’s from the 2:2’s? Still at my university first year doesn’t count for anything so I duly aimed for the sky and smashed in the 40% required. Ambition personified.

January saw another mini fresher’s week as students waited for exams to be marked and term to start again, only this time with friends. i.e. people they felt comfortable enough with to go out with, without the inherent danger of floundering and asking what course they do and promptly pretending to sound impressed/interested when they said ‘English’.

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