The next morning Alexis and Jonny arrived. Alexis was taking his TAPA holiday from being a farmboy in Puerto, whilst Jonny had flown in that morning from England (well, via various other places) after returning home the previous Tuesday for his Grandad's funeral. He was glad he went, and he seemed back to his usual cheeky self. We rushed around buying food and typically left to catch our bus to Rurrenabaque 20 minutes later than scheduled, with five minutes in which to make a 15 minute journey. Fortunately, in true Bolivian style, the bus didn't leave until about 12.15pm anyway, a good hour and a half after it was due to depart. It was not a pleasant 19 hour bus journey - very bumpy, rather smelly, and increasingly hot and sweaty as we descended over 3,000m to almost sea level. Ellie brought her travel sickness pills, which produced some rather entertaining effects. Half an hour after taking one I couldn't stop giggling and felt very lightheaded. I'm sure they'd be classified in England.
Somehow or other, I seemed to be one of the most organised amongst us, and had to chivvy Alexis and Jonny away from their coffee and empanadas into town to get us a jungle tour. They started calling me 'mum'. They assured me it was an affectionate nickname. We had to wait around for ages for the jeep to pick us up, and I was knackered so waited with the bags whilst the others went to sort out exchanging money and flights. Jonny, bless him, felt sorry for me and managed to persuade a coffee shop to let him bring me a tray of coffee in china cups!
The journey to our jungle lodge was beautiful. We were taken some four hours by boat - a long, narrow canoe-type boat with an engine and thankfully a roof - along the river Beni, one of the tributaries to the Amazon, from the shores of the little jungle town of Rurrenabaque into the heart of the Madidi National Park, just inside the Amazon basin. On either side the dense green vegetation of the rainforest, often blanketing abruptly rising hills, contrasted with the sparkling water and the blue and white mottled sky. It was a long journey, though, and we were all glad to finally get out of the boat.
The lodge was very basic. Built in a clearing some 100m from the shore of the river, it consisted of several wooden shacks, one of which contained a dinner tablen seperated by a thin partition from the cooking area whilst the rest housed several wooden beds. There was no electricity or running water. Thankfully, all of the windows and doors were mosquito-proofed, and every bed had a net. Everything smelled of dank, though, the result of the inescapable humidity. We took the room of six beds whilst the four girls with whom we were sharing our tour took the two rooms of two. There was a race for the four hammocks.
After lunch, our guide Antoine took us off for a hike into the forest. It was already 5pm, so our scheduled afternoon and evening hikes were squeezed into one, and we had to take our flashlights. Antoine was a good guide, although, speaking in Spanish, his subtle jokes were lost on most of our group. Despite Jonny's limited Spanish Antoine had already picked up on his cheeky ways, and the two of them developed a running joke in Spanish that went something along the lines of, ¿Que mujer siempre sabe donde esta su esposo? Una viuda. (Which woman always knows where her husband is? A widow.) Not the best joke in the world, but being one of the first jokes Jonny had understood in Spanish (though it took him a while) he found it hilarious. Antoine pointed out various different trees, plants and evidence of wildlife. We saw the walking man tree (it covers about 6m per year by growing new roots and planting them further towards the light, whilst new roots arguably have a fallic resemblance), lots of poisonous and non-poisonous funghi, the jungle viagra plant (whose powers Antoine attested to), a "chicken" up a tree (some sort of fat jungle bird), deadly giant ants, and various other natural phenomena that I forget.
I slept incredibly well that night. Even the girls next door could attest to that. Apparently I snored a fair bit. A real bed was heaven after a sleepless night on a hot, bumpy, smelly bus, and I don't think I'd really caught up after Huayna PotosÃ. Though I did have to go for a pee in the middle of the night. It was terrifying but I'd drunk so much water in the evening that I just couldn't hold it in. I managed to ignore the rustling noises in the surrounding jungle but I couldn't stop myself running back into our little hut, scared.
After an amazing breakfast of all sorts of yummy Bolivian delights (made all the more delicious thanks to Jonny's gift of Marmite from England - love you Jonny), we headed out for another jungle hike. This time we heard and glimpsed through the vegetation several wild pigs, some brightly coloured parrots, and some monkeys. Antoine found us some vines to swing on (very Tarzan and Jane), and a couple of rivers to cross. I'm sure we saw various other rainforest things, but again I forget. It was very enjoyable. After lunch, a bit of jungle frisbee and a swing in the hammock (Alexis took great delight in swinging my hammock as hard as he could and making the whole hammock house construction sway worryingly, choosing only to hear my terrified giggles rather than my broken protests), we all got back in the boat to return to Rurrenabaque. We were with the current this time, which made for a much swifter journey.
On reflection, the jungle had pleasantly surprised me. It was much less oppressive than I'd expected - probably because it had been cloudy it was really quite cool, and I didn't get bitten at all. Still, it was nice to get back to civilisation and have a (tepid) shower.
Rurrenabaque is a very touristy town. Every other building is a tourist agency or a restaurant. We were definitely doing the touristy things that week, and in true gringo spirit we found the most gringo bar-restaurant in town. Mosquito Bar served cocktails (half price during Happy Hour between 7pm and 9pm), pizza and pasta, but the best bit was three pool tables. We were embarrassingly shit. Ellie and Jen were the first to call it a night, and Jack, Alexis and I weren't much later at around midnight. Jonny, however, was hitting it hard. We left him attempting to take on three Americans at pool, teamed with an Irish guy who looked even more pissed than he was. He got back the next morning at about 6am after being invited back to the Americans' hostel for further fun that involved dubious weed, good coke and several quadbikes. His hangover lasted two days.
He had one day to recover, though, as there was some sort of strike going on in the province of Beni (in which Rurrenabaque is located) and none of the tours to the Pampas were leaving. Well, that's not strictly true. Jack and I (having volunteered to get up stupidly early and find a tour whilst the others enjoyed their lie-in) did find one agency that offered to take us. The proprietor proudly showed us his printed A4 piece of paper that supposedly granted him passage as a tour guide. We were right to be suspicious, I think. The people at Indigena, with whom we'd done our jungle tour, said that any vehicles attempting to leave Rurrenabaque risked being shot at. Over breakfast we decided that losing a day was preferable to losing our lives, and went back to bed. Since nothing was open because of the strike, we had a very lazy day in the hammocks, reading, playing cards and laughing at Jonny's self-induced misery. He couldn't even summon up the energy that evening to flirt with a bunch of Irish girls he'd been chatting up the night before, and went to bed at about 9pm. That night's pool was a little more successful.
The next morning we had to do the rounds of agencies again, to find one that would take us on a pampas tour for two days rather than the usual three to five, at an affordable price. Most said no or offered us a price we didn't want to have to pay, and one generously sized Jewish American tour agent did plenty of running around and talking on his walkie talkie but couldn't come up with anything appealing. I ran into a couple of fellow former Worcester College students that I didn't even know were in South America, which was bizarre. We ended up passing them several times during the tour, and I ran into them twice later in La Paz. Small world. Eventually we opted for Anaconda Tours.
An agent in a tour office in La Paz had warned us, when we contemplated booking a tour with them in advance, that Anaconda was the Israeli tour agency, and that most European tourists didn't like being grouped with Israelis. This was the first time I'd become so aware of the Israeli-rest of the world divide when it came to travellers, and since then I've noticed it more and more. Israelis really do group together, and yes I suppose some of them are pretty loud and obnoxious. On the door of the ladies' toilet in the hostel I stayed in last night I noticed a lot of anti-Israeli (and corresponding pro-Israeli) graffiti, such as "Why are Israelis so loud?" and some rather more offensive comments.
Unperturbed by what the travel agent had said, and attracted by the nice price, we signed up. Plus, Ellie and me shared a bit of a crush on hairy, mysterious Israelis.
Getting to the pampas was another long and very bumpy road trip, this time in a jeep. Jonny, still unrecovered from his bender, was not a happy chappy. We finally arrived at the bank of a river, where clusters of other gringos were awaiting their turn to get into long narrow motor-powered canoes, this time without rooves. Somehow we jumped the queue and, being only six rather than a standard group of about ten tourists, zoomed down the river at a rate of (hehe) knots, a look of macho glee on the face of our guide. I feared for the river wildlife.
The pampas, as far as I understand it, are tropical wetlands near to the jungle. It's true that, if animals are what you're after, the pampas rather than the jungle is the place to go. In the entire length of the river, we saw countless alligators and caimans, various types of exotic birds, pink river dolphins, plenty of turtles, and several jumping fish that frequently landed, flapping frantically (as was I in these situations), in the bottom of our boat. We stayed in a lodge on stilts with a bar and lots of Israelis, and spent the evening playing Yaniv, an Israeli card game. We went to see the sunset in a field a short boatride away, and the guide brought a football to keep us busy. Bad move. The sunset was beautiful, and the football and volleyball was fun, but the mosquitoes were neither. In those 30 minutes I acquired 43 bites, which continue to itch me a week later. They are the only 43 bites I got. Yes I counted them.
In the dark, we went out to spy alligators' eyes with our flashlights. Apparently they're active at night, that's when they catch they're prey. Providing them with six fresh young humans didn't, to me, seem the best idea, and after the initial excitement of seeing glowing pairs of eyes everywhere around us, I was quite glad to get back to our little stilted home. The next day, we went out on the river again to swim with the pink dolphins and fish for pirhanas. Neither activity appealed greatly. The former sounds quite nice written down like that, but in reality involved jumping, scantily clad, into a very brown river with alligators in sight no more than 20m away and in which we knew there were pirhanas. Yes there were dolphins, and we did get quite close to them, but it was not dolphins that brushed against my legs. I'm just hoping I haven't caught any fatal parasites. Being a vegetarian, fishing has always slightly repulsed me, and I was not persuaded to entice fish to spear themselves with a hook at the end of a string this time either. Even though they were pirhanas with vicious looking teeth. (Apparently these ones never attack humans.) Jen, a fellow veggie, was with me on this one. We watched, mildly disgusted, whilst the others had a go, and I squealed every time a fish came near me.
It took us even longer to get back to Rurrenabaque than it had to get to the pampas. Our driver had to keep stopping to collect bits of the roof rack that fell off. We ended up squeezed between all our rucksacks after he decided, wisely, to give up on it. Alexis provided much of our entertainment that night, deciding to shave off his 2-month beard but leave his moustache. He looked very French. Jonny provided the rest, wearing a high-knecked black jacket despite the heat after burning the front of his chest bright red sunbathing in the boat. Despite applying some cucumber cream as often as he could, it was as painful and red when I last saw him on Tuesday morning, and probably still is. Plonker.
We'd opted to fly back to La Paz the next morning rather than face another nightmare bus journey. The airport is tiny, and flights are often delayed because rain renders the grass runway too muddy for planes to take off. We were lucky; our flight was only delayed by a few hours because of a small backlog from a previous cancellation. Nevertheless, I was concerned to watch three men, including the pilot, have to push the plain out of the mud where it had stopped in order to get it to the start of the runway. It was a tiny plane, holding about 25 passengers. We could see straight into the cockpit, and there was no need for flight attendants. We could feel every bump. It was pretty scary. But the views - first the vast Amazon, then, in minutes, snowy mountain ranges - were spectacular. In thirty minutes, we were back at 3,600m in La Paz.
So that was the jungle. I'm still taking the malaria pills, I still itch, and I'm definitely getting checked out for parasites when I get back.
1 comment:
Wow that is a great article.. I' m enjoy it.. good post
Post a Comment