Pampa´s tour in the wetlands

Hello everyone! I feel like it has been ages since I have posted a blog myself but seeing as Sean is much more punctual and has it a bit more together than I do (and he constantly reads over my shoulder which drives me crazy ;-), it has been more fitting for him to him to get them out!!!

We have had quite an eventful week since we left La Paz and it all began with the road to Rurrenabaque. We were scheduled for a 1030am bus ride on what is notoriously known by all travelers to be the worst bus ride in South America (Yay us!). Yet considering that the plane ride is seven times the cost of the bus ride we decided to take our chances and get on with our bus adventure. hahahahahhahaha!!! If only you could all have been there! (This is the part where we learned that people give out advice because they are looking out for your best interests!) Sean and I were running late due to the fact that I was running around town hunting down an ATM that would take my bank card which ultimately resulted in us running through the streets of ghetto-ville in search of our ¨road side bus station¨. We found it fifteen minutes late and were relieved to find that our bus had not left yet... Little did we know that Bolivian time is much like Hawaiian time only in double slow mo. We ended up waiting 3 hours for the bus to be loaded so we could leave. Finally we left around 130pm loaded down with apples, onions, potatoes, a years stock of coco leaves (well they probably won´t last you a year if your Bolivian), 20 Bolivian passengers and us.

About a hour out of town we began to see why the road was given such a bad rap. The road barely existed and what lay in its place was a dirty, rocky, narrow, winding pathway that scaled up mountains only to come down them on the other side. And to make it all the more adventerous there was a 1000 foot drop into the jungle on the left hand side of the road (which is the side our bus driver drove on so he could see the cliff´s edge).

As we drove on and up the road twisted into sharp blind corners in which double decker buses and cars came at full speed in both directions while teetering off the sides of the previously eroding cliff sides.

About 3 hours into the drive we had settled in our seats and were peacefully listening to our ipods when Sean suddenly began to shake me violently while pointing to a middle aged man two rows behind us. When I looked back I realized that he was standing in the back row of the bus peeing down the back of the seat and watching it flow down the isles of the bus. We instantly picked up our feet, slippers and back packs off the floor and looked back at him in utter disgust which I think disrupted his composed moment of relief and resulted in him stopping and pulling up his pants. Sean and I had no idea what to do or think and we sort of stared at each other armed with all of our stuff and no idea where to put it for the next 16 hours. (Its really kind of funny looking back on it now!) The most ironic part about it was the guy had nearly three rows all to himself and was in the back of the bus and could have easily peed out the window and been less discreet but instead he wanted to torment the bus with his stench and river of pee!

An hour after all that excitement our bus driver came to a complete stop in road for several minutes, which was long enough to stir up some curiousity in the bus amongst the passengers. I opened my window to see what the commotion was about to see our double decker bus´s tires sitting cautiously on the edge of a cliff that dropped hundreds of feet into the jungle.

The bus driver must have been sitting there contemplating his best choice because we remained there on the edge of the cliff for almost five minutes before he made his executive decision. And his final decision was to just floor it and hope for the best. By this time the entire bus had a head poking out of every window on the left side of the bus waiting to see what would happen - and as the driver pressed on the gas we all watched the the earth literally crumble beneath the tires of the bus. I realized how NOT-normal this was when every Bolivian passenger gasped or moaned in relief once we had all our tires back on the dirt road. The peeing Bolivian in the back took the commotion and distraction as an oppourtunity to contiune what he started earlier and finish his river of pee down the middle of the bus because when Sean and I looked back he was going at it again!

In the end we were truly amazed with what our bus was able to get through - death defying cliffs, sand dunes (which came in the morning), sharp muddy corners and steep mountain climbs. Yet considering it all it was a nauseatingly (literally, I almost puked) beautiful drive up through the Amazon basin. Jungle and mountain life mingled together creating a majestic untouched land that can only be seen by the way of the road to Rurrenabaque... THOUGH! don´t let that fool you, we took a plane back! :-)

Nonetheless we arrived in Rurrenabaque early Thursday morning and looked around the hot, tiny, dusty, chicken-filled bus stop and we were pretty clueless about where to go and how to get there. So you can imagine that we were relieved when a English speaking tour agent approached us and hooked us up with loads of information, a hostel and a tour of tiny town.

To give you some perspective of where Rurrenabaque is, it is in the north eastern part of Bolivia at the base of the Amazon wetlands known as the Pampas (the Pampas was our reason for going to Rurrenabaque) and it is hot as hell there, which is hard to believe coming from cold weather. Yet Bolivia so far has proven to have tempetures of every variation that one can imagine. I guess that´s what you get going when you have the Amazon and the highest altitude city in the world!

So once we checked in to our hotel we showered up booked a 3 day tour of the Pampas and went to catch up on some sleep from the night before. Sean was able to knock out pretty quick yet I wasn´t as lucky due to the fact that I was marinating in my own sweat. To make matters worse, our fan was broken and I needed to get out so I ditched him and toured the town myself, walking around all its four streets and the river but that was pretty much it so you can imagine how bored I got and was forced to wake him up to hang out with me.

The next day was the start of our tour. We left Rurrenabaque at 9am and teamed up with 7 others our age and loaded into a 4x4 truck to drive three hours east towards the Pampas. It was the sweatest, dirtest ride I have ever encountered in my life (Jen, even worse than when we rode on the top of that Tuk Tuk for half a day in Cambodia!). The driver stopped at a half way point for us to stretch our legs and cool off a little which is where Sean and I encountered the most creative and functional purse ever made, the unisex chicken purse!

Once we arrived at the river Beni we waited for an hour for our tour guide to show up. Soon enough our toothless Spanish speaking boat driver/alligator wrestling/ pirana catching/Anaconda finding guide showed up hurrying us into a boat and ushering us down the river. Within the first five minutes we spotted the first of hundreds of alligators that swarm the river. It was pretty cool how close we were to them watching them lay there with their mouths wide open and flashing their intimating teeth (apparently Alligators lay there with their mouths open like that all day long releasing energy and heat).

About 20 minutes and a hundred alligators later our guide, Mario, announces to everyone that the river is really low and there will be several times where everyone will have to get out of the boat and push the boat! Switching glances amongst each other we tried to figure out if he was joking or really asking us to get into the brown alligator-pirana fested waters and push the boat. He wasn´t joking, silly us!

It was quite entertaining to see 9 scared people get into the water (despite the fact that it was only ankle deep-at most knee high) dipping their toes in one at a time only to yank them out at the mere sight of a stick (I am pretty sure I was the most entertaining of them all!). Mario thought this was the funnest thing he had ever seen and tried to rest assure everyone that there had never been an alligator attack on a human in this river, but I don´t think it really made anyone feel any better!

The ride out to our camp site was the coolest boat ride I have ever been on (no offense Jono). The wildlife flourished on the banks of the river and they paid little attention to the boat passing through it. Several different types of monkeys swung through the canopies above, families upon families of Capybaras (which look like giant guinea pigs)rolled around in the muddy clay near by, hundreds of alligators eyes stared at us and birds as big as me flew about. It was really, really amazing!

Our boat ride took about 4 hours until we reached the camp and by this time the sun was setting and dinner was about to be served. We settled into our cabin rooms, washed up and then headed for the dinner table.

After dinner we headed back to the boat where Sean had his near death experience with a snake. In the dark he felt a snake slither over his foot and he jumped alarming everyone around him. He shouted snake which prompted Mario to find the snake and attempted to kill it claiming that the snake was very, very posionious and had Sean been bitten he would have died within 24 hours. Sean used this moment to dramatize his near death experience...I am still hearing about it today! As soon as we were loaded into the boat Mario took us deeper down the river for about 10 minutes before he parked the boat and disappeared in the darkness. He came back a moment later carrying a baby alligator which he showed everyone while giving us a class in alligators.

The following day we woke up early to Mario knocking at our doors telling us breakfast was ready and we were going for a hike through the Pampas to find Anacondas. We set out at 9am and it was already baking hot. There was no wind and the Pampas is like a dirty, dusty plain with tall grass and sparse trees spread about. Sean and I made the mistake of not bringing enough water and we nearly died in the Pampas right there next to the alligators who didn´t make it to water before the dry season hit... Mario was like Indiana Jones of the Pampas - he had no fear of any animal and was able to sniff out Anacondas like it was dinner. While we all fanned ourselves in the shade he was climbing trees and sticking his arms down dark, foreign holes dedicated to finding the snakes so he could show them to us. And he was good at it too. Despite it being the dry season here and his apprehension finding them he was able to spot three of them curled up in the holes of the trees, one of them even poked his head out for a picture.

Around noon we headed back to the camp and had lunch and then got back into the boat armed with Bolivian fishing poles (basically just fishing line and a hook) and went Pirana fishing. The fish were little and smart and were able to take the bait off most of the fishing hooks without being caught except for Sean´s fishing pole!

That night Mario took us further down the river to another camp that had a refridgerator and served us cold drinks while we watched the sun sink behind the trees and into the Pampa´s.

The following day we packed our stuff early in the morning and headed into the jungle for a short walk to a swimming hole where we semi-reluctantly went swimming with the alligators watching us from the shore (I was thrown in!), it was so cool and freshing yet the most paranoid swim I have ever enjoyed.

On the other side of the river Sean managed to coax an alligator from the river to the shore where he was able to get close enough and pet the top of his hed and get close up pictures, it was pretty remarkable!

Shortly after got back to camp we loaded our bags back in the boat and headed back for the river mouth. On our way back Mario suddenly shut the engine off and pointed towards the middle of the river where a dolphin discreetly poked his head up only for a short minute, it was unbelivable to see a rare pink fresh water dolphin litterally five minutes before our tour ended.

We arrived back in Rurrenabaque late in the afternoon and we immediately went straight to the showers where we desperately tried to unearth the dirt from our bodies. As the dirt washed off our bodies and the color of flesh returned we realized that we had picked up hitch hikers along the way. Yes it is true Sean and I found ticks on our skin... It goes without saying we were totally and utterly grossed out and immediately began checking EVERYWHERE for them, but fortunately we didn´t find anymore.

We left Rurrenabaque the next morning by plane, which only took a 40 plane ride over snow capped mountains making it that much more unbelievable that we had just come from the hottest place on earth.

Now we are back in La Paz getting ready to mountain bike the ¨worlds most dangerous road¨ tomorrow.

Muchos besos desde Bolivia, we love you all! Lyndsay and Sean