Photos from Bolivia pt 1

Pierre and Pamela dancing at the town party.

Found this jem hidden in the archives. Helen examining her soon to be meal in Ilha Grande. Fun times Helen.

Ginger´s Paradise and the Fonze.

This is the ever so safe bridge across to Gingers Paradise. One of the Kids at Ginger´s fell off this when they were younger... Its like 4m high...

Hitching from Ginger´s to Semaipata on the top of a truck full of grain. We just jammed out the semaipata blues with Pierre, Cedric and Andreas.

Me Sliding down one of the natural waterslides... There are also a bunch of rapids that you can cruise down in the river...

Steves lovely swollen foot from midgy bites... tasty

Cami and 2 dutch girls staying at Ginger´s with us.

This is the sunset from the Death train... How Pretty.

Semaipata from the hill where our hostel is. Pretty little town.

Bienvenido Bolivia

So we made it to Bolivia.

A document of our quick and efficiant overland trip:

32 hours on a crowded bus.
2x taxi trips back and forward from the bolivian border
25 hours on the Death Train
1 more taxi trip into santa cruz. What fun.


The Death Train was kinda cool, in a horrible sort of way. Its rumoured to be called the death train for one of two reasons. 1) The amount of people who have sat on the top of the crowded train who have fallen off and died. 2) after 25 hours on the crowded mosquito infested train you want to kill yourself and everyone around you. (im putting my money on this one)
Nice scenery though.

So we spent a few days in santa cruz recovering then headed south to a little place called Semaipata. Luckily for us we heard about a little organic farm in between the two called Gingers Paradise.

So we jumped off the semaipata express early and ventured into Gingers Paradise, and we have been there ever since, about a week and a bit now. Its been really cool, basically you stay in the guest house, work from 10-2, eat lunch then spend the rest of the day swimming in the river or doing whatever you please. Its great fun. Also its a proper organic farm, only solar electricity, all vegie meals (schocker!) made with food grown on the farm.

Hopefully ill include some photos at the bottom, its really amazing. Its owned by an Chris an ex american punk rocker and his bolivian wife, and his 3 kids (the youngest girl being named ginger- hence the name). So we play music every night, and play with their pet mono (monkey) which ginger carries around like a little baby, and there are generally new people every day or so to meet etc etc.

We are actually in semaipata now, having finally made it, but only for a quick rest stop to rest our poor itching limbs from the masses of jungle itchy things. (My ankle is actually swollen from all the bites and me scratching them). Then we are heading back to Gingers to help a New Zealand couple look after the place for a week while Chris and Sol go on Vacation... Should be fun.

Ill try and put some photos up soon with a bit about what we have done at ginger´s.

Ciao Ciao

Steve & Cami

photo time

Here are some photos of what we have been up to over the last week and a half -














This is Ipanema beach. Ipanema is the suburb of Rio we stayed in. It is one of the much nicer suburbs you can stay in, there are a lot of fancy shops around (like Louis Vuitton) and it is much safer than some of the surrounding suburbs. The beach is one of the most beautiful in Rio. On the mountain in the distance is the favelas which is where the extremely poor people in Rio live. These are houses without running water or electricity. You can do a tour of these places but we didnt get a chance.



















Here I am with Jesus. Hes a pretty cool guy. Really realllllly tall. The views of Rio from where we were, 700m up, were amazing. We pciked a great day to go, our friends went two days before and literally couldnt see any of Rio and only see Christ every now and again when the wind changed...














This is also on Ipanema beach. On the b each people come up to are and try and sell you things like food and drinks but also jewellry and clothes. I bought a dress off this dude. Its very pretty (in case anyone was wondering)














This is the amazing bay of Ilha Grande. This island was so beautiful and untouched. The only buildings were right at the edge of the island and mostly consist of restaurants and posadas whichg are guest houses.














This beach is called Lopes Mendes which was on the opposite side of the island from where we stayed. The side of the beach we stayed on faced the mainland of Brasil so it didnt have any waves but this one had quite rough surf.














A MONKEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I dont know what kind. BUT LOOK HOW CUTE! there were 4 or 5 of them in a tree.














The floating restaurant. Some guy pulls you over in a boat.














Our favourite bay at Ilha Grande. It is a bit cloudy in this picture but it was really beautiful and the water was so nice.














HAAAAY. us on the floating restaurant. this picture should be with the pitcure of the restaurant but im sorry it is too hard to move photos around on here.














On the way home. Thats helen in the purple dress. She is an absolute champion. It was very sad to leave Ilha Grande but the cool boat made it a little better.

RIO and Its Beautiful Inhabitants

hey guys,

Its been a busy week or so in brasil so that has been the delay with posting some more stuff. But this should be a big one so you can all sleep easy tonight.. i know how worried you have been...

Ok so ill try and do this chronologically.

After florianopolis we left for the big Rio, which was the most expensive bus trip so far, we got ripped off so bad. so 18 hours later we hit Rio. The city of Beautiful people wearing no clothes. Here we were really lucky, we legged it to the (so called best) hostel and met 5 of the coolest people we have thus far encountered. Helen (eng) & Craig (ireland) who we were sharing our dorm with, and Tim & Nikki (eng) and Liliana (Switzerland) who were also in the hostel. It was with these people that we ended up drinking with in our room while outside it poured down and water leaked through our ceiling (hitting the fan and lightbulb on the way through).

Day 2 of Rio we all hit the beach to the famed Ipanema, (aka girl from ipanema), where i attempted to play soccer with 4 soccer mad brits while cami and the girls just lay in the sun and bought stuff from the beach vendors. So fast forward a few days and here are the highlights:
1) getting to see christ the redeemer on a nice cloud free day (sucked in craig, nikki, tim, helen and liliana)
2) having beers on the rocks of ipanema and copacobana while a vendor showed me how to play a bamboo saxaphone.
3)watching the ´sunrise´ from ipanema beach at 530am, which turns out is non existant due to the high rises in the way. Thanks Bert.

Ok so then everyone has to leave; Tim and Nikki for Chile and Craig and Liliana for their respective home countries. But Helen stays on with us and we head to Ilha Grande for both my and Helens Bdays (hers being on the 2nd of May) How Convieniant.
Ilha Grande is about 2 hours south of rio, and a short speed boat trip.
Note to Elton: Cruising through the harbour on a speedboat to Ilha Grande i finally got that warm feeling that you were talking about when i had all those issues with my charming ex boss.

Anyway we ended up in a little possada (hostel/homestay thing) run by a 50 yr old surfer with no voice and huge amounts of enthusiasm. We named him Raspy.
We spent the next three days just sipping beer on the beach and enjoying calamari and chips in the loverly brazilian sun. On the second (Happy Bday Sarah), we went out for a nice dinner, so we all got as dressed up as possible, assisted by helen who was only on a 10 day holiday and thus carried the largest suitcase known to man.. But we ended up having the nicest dinner on the beach, complete with Caprinhas (a mohito type drink) and stuffed calamari for Cami. Post dinner we headed for the next bar, which we had some trouble locating. Cue Raspy who was out on the town with a dozen of Ilha Grande´s most eligable bacholors. He directed us to some authentic brazilian club where no one spoke english and everyone on the dancefloor was about 50 or 60. Whatever, we have now been to the most authentic brazilian island club ever.
Ohh and i forgot, pre dinner we saw a comotion on the wharfe in town and as we went over it turns out it was an almost impromtu capoheria(sp?) display with all these little local kids. Eventually the big dogs came out and did some crazy stuff it was awesome, but it lasted about 3 hours... needless to say we got hungry and went for dinner before the end.
Hmm what else happened;
Oh yeh on Ilha Grande we were warned there was no ATM, so we thought we were adiquately prepared. Ofcourse after 2 days we ran out of money and were contemplating heading back to the mainland to pick up more, but (ever up for the challenge) we decided that would take too long so we decided to save our last 30 reals and try and use credit card for the last 2 days for everything possible. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!
Oh yeah. We also got to have lunch on a floating restaurant. It was on our second day on our way back from a lake on the other side of Ilha Grande, a charming little floating restaurant pontoon, complete with its own little pully taxi service. Good fun.

So my Bday was a little more chilled thanks to the slight hangover we were all feeling, but cami and helen got me some little presents and then we just lay on the beach most of the day. Dinner however we ended up at a pizzaria somewhere, and after ordering our beers and pizza we waited for about 1 and a half hours for our 2 pizzas. (we did get an extra beer and a rose made out of a serviette for my bday compliments of the waiter). Regardless eventually we were so starving we demanded an explanation. Apparently there was a small miscomunication between us and the waiter and although we pointed to the menu asking for 2 pizzas he didnt think we ordered anything. 2 hours down the drain. Thankyou very much. Whatever we enventually got fed somewhere else. all good!

We are back in Rio now staying at a different hostel. It was a bit grey today so we have just sorted out our travel arrangements for tomorrow. We are getting on a bus to the Brasil-Bolivian border which will take around 30 hours. Fingers crossed there is some nice scenery or a couple of movies (although they will be dubbed in Portuguese so thats not a huge draw).

Might be quite a few days before we can get in contact again. Cami wont have any phone reception in Bolivia (or so shes been told) so we will be relying on internet. Hopefully in Bolivia we will be able to use pay phones to call internationally, unlike here where you cannot.

Lots of Love to everyone and happy mothers day to those who it concerns
Steve + Cami x