So I´m back from the jungle... well, I´m actually still in the Jungle, but I´m back from my Jungle experience trips... I have to keep this post short and sweet cos the Internet prices here are pretty scandalous...
I am in a town called Rurrenabaque in the Beni region of Bolivia. It´s a blood-curdling 18 hour drive north from La Paz. Logging and timber was the main industry here until they discovered that they could charge tourists to take them for walks... and whats more, they could charge them in the mighty dollar... so tourism is the name of the game here. But I´ve got to say that its a very charming place and so far, it appears to be a fine example of a well-managed and regulated tourist industry.
There are a million tour agencies and the most popular trips are three day trips to the Jungle (or Rainforest) and the Pampas (the surrounding wetlands)... I did both!
I went to the Rainforest with Helen and we had a great three days... our guide was seventy years old and his name was Innocencio and we had a cook as well. We drove up the river for about two hours and then hiked inland for about half an hour until we got to our camp: a basic set-up with some tables, chairs and a couple of beds (if you can call suspended timber wrapped in mosquito mesh a bed)... beautiful setting though, just beside the river. In the dry season the river shrinks to a bit of a stream and its always crossible by stepping stones, but you can imagine the torrents that must prevail in the wet season. The river plain was great just to sit by and to read your book or just to relax... there was the rush of the stream among the rocks and butterflys dancing around all about you... quite idyllic indeed! (pic here)
Every day we went for walks in the Jungle. Sometimes, the paths were well-maintained and frequently used, but sometimes we went on the Jungle equivalent of off-piste where you really have to lay into the vines and plants with your machete if you want to get anywhere... and its very demanding work...If a path isn´t used for a couple of weeks, then the jungle starts to reclaim it and you have to fight for it back... Luckily though, we had out septagerian innocence to reclaim it for us... He also stopped every now and then and told us about some of the trees, vines and other plants... a lot of them have medicinal purposes and there are quite a few novelty trees which so some kind of song or dance which makes them exiting (for instance theres a tree whose roots just sit on top of the soil and it walks along looking for water with them)...
Surprisingly, there aren´t an amazing amount of animals in the Jungle... they tend to concentrate in the surrounding wetlands (or pampas)... We saw butterflys and frogs and some monkeys and lots of insects though! (Pics of Jungle here)
After the Jungle, Helen went back to La Paz and I did a three-day tour of the Pampas. I got a bit fucked around by the agency that I had planned to do it through, so in the end, I had to demand that they sell me on to another agency, which eventually they did. With the new agency, I got a great group of six others from Holland, Belgium, France and Ecuador... and we had a great guide, Hector.
For the Pampas, you take a three-hour arse-numbing dirt-road trip to the a wetlands river and then a three-hour boat ride up along it, during which you are bombarded with a variety of different animals and birds... We spent the first hour ooing and awing at alligators and caiman (alligator-like but bigger and less friendly)... and then Hector stops the boat and tells us to get out and have a swim... I really thought that he was taking the complete piss, but then he gets his kit off and hops in...
No sooner is he in the water, then he is surrounded by.... ..... .... wait for it..... you´re thinking alligators right... no, he´s surrounded by pink freshwater dolphins... After many assurances on his part that the alligators and caiman won´t come near us (and nip at our toes as we swim), we gingerly make for the water so as to not miss this experience... I can´t believe that I actually swam in the Jungle in sight of an alligator on the banks... (mum, I think i can authoritively say that this would of been your personal hell!)... But it was worth every second of it... the dolphins were friendly and nipped in and around us at their leisure...
Our camp was significantly more developped than its jungle equivalent and we had good mosquito protection and you could even buy beer there... After a good lunch (the food is good on these organised trips), we went upriver on the boat and got off and went trekking in the pampas for hours... When we got to real swampland, the hunt for an anaconda began... The guide took me on as his sidekick and we circled all the swamps (him one way, me another) looking for anacondas. For me, it was the highlight of the three days, quite the adrenalin rush, wading through knee-deep swamp, actually hoping to see an anaconda (and praying that I wouldn´t stand on one...).
At one point, something big splashed three or four times in the water just in front of me... it was too big to be anything but an alligator or an anaconda ... but its splash appeared to have a warning purpose... so I duly began to shit myself and made ridiculous gesticulations to Hector to get his ass over here cos I wasn´t going any closer to this creature of the deep (whatever it was)...
He came over quicksmart and plunged his hands into the water at the spot indicated by yours truly while I quivered in my boots... unfortunately (not sure about this) there was nothing there and whatever had splashed me in warning had done a proverbial runner... So we didn´t see any anacondas but it was still great looking for them..
Apart from the anaconda hunting, we also did piranha fishing, nightime alligator spotting and a plethora of other tours... we saw lots of animals: capibara (looks like a cross between a pig and a mouse), kingfishers, owls, a variety of monkeys, billions of alligators and caiman, turtles, herons, condors, hawks and some more dolphins...
Every night we had some beers or singani (bolivian spirit) and played cards or walked around.... it was a fantastic three days and when we got back here to Rurrenebaque we went out for a last dinner together and then had a cocktail drinking contest in the local gringo bar... where I got slagged for being the only one not to catch a piranha (although I did pull out a killer sardine)... (Pics of Pampas here)
Anyway, now that all those trips are over, I´m going to relax here in lovely Rurrenabaque for a couple of days before I go back to the chillier highlands of La Paz....
I´ll try to burn my photos onto a CD in the next few days and see if I can upload some of them for you...
Hasta la proxima...
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