Day 1: Enjoy the market of La Paz and stay in the luxury of La Comedie.  I flew in to an icy Altiplano and was driven down into an exotic tangle of streets down the sloping gorge – the world’s only real Andean city!  La Paz is one of those cities that has to be seen in person – almost unbelievable to someone like me.  I checked in to La Comedie and had a bit of luxury, and went out to introduce myself to the local ladies --- and returned gasping to the hotel five minutes late with Altitude Sickness.

Day 2: Journey from the frozen Altiplano to the Amazon jungle all in one day.  I’m a writer by trade, and I thought that the scariest thing in life was a blank page.  Actually, it was the bus journey to Rurrenabaque, the last real town accessible by road.  One begins in the clouds, and through a tortured system of zig zag switchbacks, descends through the cloud forest and into the jungle…quite simply one of the most amazing journeys in my life.  Rurre, where there are few cars, is one of the fascinating Jungle Towns there are…and I know. I lived in the Amazon once for nearly 6 months!  In his diaries, Fawcett describes how the frontier city was filled with foreign adventurers and a Texan gun fighter on the run – and that was in 1911!

Day 3: Arrive at Chalalan, and jump in the lagoon like I did.  The journey to Chalana is a six hour motorized canoe journey.  Have you seen Aguirre the Wrath of God?  Watch it and then do this.  Bend after endless bend through the green wilderness and you start to understand how Percy Fawcett a famous British explorer, could vanish so easily…until you arrive in the evening at Chalalan just in time to jump in the lagoon – one of the only freshwater lakes in the rainforest and from where you can see basically all animal life one has ever imagined.

Day 4: Explore the jungle.  From the lodge, native guides take you on trails deep in the rainforest.  The amount of plant and animal life is extraordinary here – not for nothing is the region known as the most ecologically diverse part of the Southern Amazon.  You can spend five days here, and I did!

Day 5: Return to La Paz in triumph!  Now you can all those things that you forgot to do, like buy some trinkets in the Witches Market, see the famous prison where Western drug traffickers have been held for years, and visit the bars of this fascinating city.  Don’t forget to check out all the places around Soppocachi!

Details to come

• If you are scared of spiders, you will lose this fear.
• Don’t go with a preconceived idea of luxury.
• There’s no electricity out there, remember.  And its better for it.
• Bring heavy valium if you’re scared of drunken bus drivers.
• Caranavi, where the bus stops on the way to Rurre, is where all the Organic Bolivian coffee that you buy in the West comes from, and is known as The Gateway to the Amazon!