We flew from La Paz to Rurrenabaque to avoid the 22 hour bus ride over dangerous roads (its the rainy season and most roads are washed out or experiencing continual landslides) and though we paid substantially more, we don´t regret it at all. The flight was anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes in total, depending on the size of the plane. Our flight to Rurrenabaque was in a tiny plane that you couldn´t fully stand up in and there were strict baggage weight limits. To say the least, I was nervous. But obviously we survived.
Rurrenabaque is a small, quiet town flanking the Yacuma river, with not much going on besides hosting tourists looking for excursions into the jungle. We flew in a day before our 3 day, 2 night tour in Pampas National Park was supposed to start, so we had some time to explore. We didn´t know how exciting just exploring was going to be. Since Carnival was still going on (its like a 4 day solid thing leading up to Mardi Gras) kids were lining the streets with waterballoons and foam. This all would have been fun and good, except some of the ballons we soon realized were filled with dyed water or even blood (pig or sheep or something). We had only brough limited clothing for our 5 days away from La Paz, so suddenly a trip to the market became much more exciting than we cared for it to be. The final straw was when we saw some locals actually throwing rocks at each other. We spent most of our first day in Rurrenabaque in the comfortable hammocks at our hostel and cooking in the communal kitchen we had.
Pampas Tour, Day 1: The first day was a long travel day. We met at the travel office in Rurrenabaque, and after waiting more than an hour for another group member who flew in that morning, we started off on the bumpy, muddy, 3 hour drive to Santa Rosa. It would be just too convenient if everything went smoothly though, so of course we noticed that the Land Rover was making noises and the driver kept stopping to check the distributor cap under the hood. We stopped for about 20 minutes at one point to, I don´t know, wait for the moisture in it to dry out? (Jon should be writing this portion, I know poop about cars). Once that was ¨resolved¨ we thought we were home free, but no, we got a flat tire. We waited in the car in the pouring down rain for the driver to get out and fix it. Fifteen minutes later, we were good to go with the tire, but wait, the driver had left on the car headlights and the engine wouldn´t start! After much exasperated trying, we sat back, mosquitos buzzing around us, rain pounding on the car and our guide who was sitting shotgun started chuckling. Laughter erupted from the rest of us, what a hilariously shitty situation! It was resolved easily enough, after another several minutes of trying, the engine magically started and we were on our way again.
When we finally got to Santa Rosa, we had a late lunch and then loaded into the narrow wooden boat that would be our means of transport for the next three days. On our way to the lodging site, our guide took us through many different channels of the wetlands until I was thoroughly lost, but showed us some incredible wildlife. So many kinds of birds, from eagles, to hawks, to herons, to cormorants, to funky looking oversized turkeys with mohawks. We also saw our first camen, alligators, turtles and the famous pink dolphins of the Amazon! We also got really close up to black howler monkeys and yellow squirrel monkeys.
The lodging itself was extremely basic and was essentially a series of wooden, slippery boardwalks connecting dorm houses, bathrooms, kitchen and dining area and common room. Everything was stilted and we were about 4 or so feet above the murkey water. This was all fine, except for the fact that the narrow boardwalks didnt have railings (difficult squeezing two people past at the same time), were mostly wet with little traction, and had broken or missing planks along the way. And if the only threat was falling into some shallow, gross water below, that would have been fine too. But the guides and cooks continually fed alligators and caiman scraps from the kitchen. One alligator was named Pedro, and he was about 5-6 feet long, and rarely left his spot beneath the boardwalk at one of the main intersections of dining area-dormatories-common room. The annoying thing was that all the guides told new comers that Pedro was plastic (that´s how little he moved) and a few people were going to stick their foot down to touch the plastic alligator, and only didnt because someone else had noticed slight movements in Pedro´s eyes and overall position. Nothing said from the guides though, we had to figure this out on our own...doesn´t seem very responsible. There was also a caiman, this dude was about 8 to 10 feet in length, stationed beneath the walkway connecting the kitchen and dining room. Suddenly going to the bathroom in the middle of the night got 100X scarier.
But, we found out on the first night that the food was really good and, well, that makes everything better.
Pampas Tour, Day 2: Our morning trip was to a small, muddy island, home to a herd of cattle to search for the rare Anaconda. This black and green snake lived up in trees and in logs, so our guide grabbed a stick and started poking around. After 30 or so minutes of searching, we didn´t find an anaconda, but we had seen a poisonous, white spider that caused paralysis, a fruit who´s dye is used for tattooing and a lot of cow poop. Technically, we had seen an anaconda slither across the road the day before on our way into Santa Rosa, but it was hardly a fleeting glance (and I might have been the only one besides the guide to see it). We did however, find a big yellow cobra back at camp when we returned for lunch.
The afternoon trip was a swim with the pink dolphins. It was nerve racking getting into the opaque, brown water that we knew contained anacondas, piranas, alligators and camen as well, but our guide assured us that as long as there were several pink dolphins around, they were the top predator and most others would stay away. The pink dolphins would come right up under you (which was a suprise since you couldn´t see your own hand under an inch of water) and investigate you. They were curious creatures, and so soft. Sometimes they would let you hold onto their tail, until they got bored and then they would flap a bunch of water in your face. The younger ones got a little bitey though, not breaking any skin but unpleasant enough coming from an invisible source beneath you in jungle waters. After being bit by sea lions in the Galapagos, I had had enough of these pissy water mammals and got back into the boat.
Our late afternoon adventure was to a solid patch of marshy land to watch the sunset. Overpriced beer and chocolate were sold here, but we resisted and just enjoyed being on solid land and seeing the pinks and oranges in the sky.
That evening, after dinner, we went out on our night excursion, armed with headlamps and flashlights. We spotted several camen with their glowing orange eyes in our light beams, and our guide even surprised us by pulling a baby one onto the boat. No one knew it was on the boat, and I was sitting in the back of the boat right in front of the guide. In the darkness, he rested something on my shoulder, and whne I reached for it, I found a slimy, moving tail! He wasn´t really supposed to touch the animals like that, but it was cool to see one up close. We also saw an owl that night and sat for a while with the boat motor off, listening to the symphony of frogs and watching the lighting storm on the horizon.
Pampas Tour, Day 3: Our last day out started with pirana fishing. We didn´t catch anything, but in all fairness, our guide said we wouldn´t. It is rainy season, and right now, the deepest parts of the main channels are about 9 meters, and they could get about 20cm deeper. In the dry season, the deepest parts of the main channels is at about 1 meter. So wildlife is a lot more consolidated in the dry season, and its easier to catch piranas. We were disappointed, but on our way back to camp, we did get to see some capibaras!
The rest of the day was spent packing up, motoring back to the mainland and driving back to Rurrenabaque. Back at our hostel in Rurrenabaque, we celebrated with a cold beer each and showered off 3 days of insect repellant and scum.
The next day we were supposed to fly back to La Paz at 2pm, but due to weather our flight was delayed until 6pm. We had time to explore the town (free of flying, blood-filled water balloons) and found some great little cafes and bakeries with cheap and tasty food. There was a French-owned bakery with chocolate filled crossants, sweet apple pastries, creamy mushroom pasteries and vegetarian quiches. There was also an Italian-owned pizza shop that sold delicious slices of thin crust pizza for 6Bs (less than a dollar). We enjoyed our chilled-out day away from mosquites before getting safely back to La Paz. We´ve spent one night at the Adventure Brew Hostel here, and in a few hours we will be on a 16 hour bus ride to Sucre!
No comments:
Post a Comment