Quest Overseas - Gap Year Travel

Better late than never here are a few photos of the animals the Bolivia Gap Year Team were working with in Parque Ambue Ari last month. The whole team worked fantastically hard, ensuring these animals were fed, watered and walked each and every day of their 2 week stay. Congratulations on a job well done!

Thanks to Hugo for this one....enjoy!

This blog will be covering our time in lake Titicaca onwards, including our time in Arequipa, Colca Canyon, the desert near Ica, Villa Maria near Lima (where the other project is based) and finally the buildup to the Huaraz Trek.

Our journey from Charazani to Puno, over the Border in Peru, was not the most successful one. Our misfortune started when the bus from Charazani to La Paz was delayed until 2pm, which meant that our transnational border run was in danger. While we did get to spend a delightful morning in the hostel, sipping cold beers on a balcony overlooking the beautiful scenery we had just trekked over, this was to put our chances of making the Peruvian border that day in jeopardy.

Mid-bus journey, it was evident that Pete was becoming more and more flustered, the nervous tic in his eye going crazy, anxious drool cascading from his mouth and his hair standing on end in fear. After using a third of the group's toilet roll to wipe his face, he suggested that instead of heading on for La Paz we should try and see if we could flag down transport and get to the river crossing in Copacabana before it closed. The group decided in favour, and we rushed on, filled with hope for fried trout by Lake Titicaca. However it was not to be and we were forced to bed down in a basic hostel by the crossroads, cooking the remainder of the trek soup on their cold concrete floors, trying to get a few hours sleep before we rushed off again at 4am the next day. That morning Pete was able to have nice reunion with the Peruvian border authorities, who know him by the friendly nickname "La Mula", and we were on our way....

After a quiet spell the blogs are coming in thick and fast from the Bolivia Gap Year Team - check out what they got up to during their first week of expedition....

Expedition Blog Ice-Climbing, Death Road, the fall of Gabe and Apolobamba.

After our departure from Ambue Ari the team arrived in La Paz for a hectic first few days of expedition. The first day spent preparing for trek meant the cook team - led by Jack - had a fun day running around preparing the ingredients for the feasts we will surely be having in Apolobamba. Saskia also had an exciting day, having finally receiving her replacement cash card, only to find out (from an executive no less) that American Express does not have any representatives in Bolivia. However by the evening the sudden altitude change was beginning to get to us and a few cases of illness were ominously appearing.

The next day was ice climbing at Huyana Potosi a nearby mountain, unfortunately neither Gabe nor Jack could join us due to illness. This was particularly disappointing as it was Gabe's last activity with us. A quick bus journey took us to the foot of the mountain and from there a one hour trek to the ice slopes showed us the effects of altitude very clearly as it was difficult to walk more than a few minutes without a break except Hugo who seemed to draw strength from his magical Bolivian balaclava - purchased the day before with a large amount of tack. The Bolivians with their usual nonchalance marched up and down the other-worldly landscape followed quite nervously by the team and after some walking there was a small climb to try with pick axes followed by an abseil. Caroline scampered up and down the fastest but there has to be some kind of award for Eshans vertical abseil resembling a fat man on a water slide....

Our two weeks at Ambue Ari went by really quickly but it's safe to say that working with the animals there exceeded everyone's expectations. On the first day we were assigned our animals which ranged from Saskia and Amira the Jaguar, to Gabe and Mariano, who's about the size of a house cat. Everyone was really happy with their cats and other animals and after a few days we had completely settled in.

In the mornings we each cared for and fed different house animals. If you were lucky you got Herbie the tapir, who resembled some sort of cross between a pig and an elephant and liked to be hand fed his body weight in leaves each morning...at over 100kg needless to say he kept us busy through the early hours. If you were not so lucky, you might have the toucans, aka the ninjas...entry into whose enclosure without a broom for defense or with careless flip flop footwear could prove costly. Warm up your pitching arm however and slice up a veritable fruitbowl of delights and hours could be spent slinging fruits from distance, each piece artfully captured mid air by these big billed masters.

Better late than never. here's what the Bolivia team got up to during Week 3 - their last days learning Spanish in Sucre, and a little bit of adventure through Potosi and the Uyuni Salt Flats. They've certainly made up for the delay in sheer blog quantity - enjoy!

The treasure hunt turned out to be a huge success, with points being awarded for originality, which included "capture a titanic moment", where Gaby and Emily convinced a German couple to strike THE titanic pose atop a church as they sang the theme tune into the video camera, getting dodgy haircuts at local barber shops, riding Bolivian lions and forcing the odd sexy local to dance salsa in front of the city cathedral. 

Sunday morning was an early start so we could get a full day of spending lots of cash on llama tack in a market 2 hours away. Many jumpers were bought, Saskia snatched up a lama teddy and Gaby and Katy bought an old fashioned map of South America. This is the same market where Hugo bought the dreaded laser pen, more to come later! It's safe to say we came home with empty wallets! Later in the afternoon there was a footie game between Sucre and Potosi, us obviously supporting Sucre (Sucre obviously winning)! Diving seemed to be the order of the day, and a few questionable calls saw the ref being escorted off the pitch by riot police. Fireworks were launched semi constantly throughout the game, falling at random in the stands to explode in the faces of wary spectators....