Amazon Pampas tour - Anacondas and Caymen

Trip Start Jan 26, 2000
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Trip End Jun 14, 2000


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Flag of Bolivia  ,
Sunday, May 21, 2000

The next day we booked onto a pampas tour, the pampas is much more open and would hopefully give us a much better chance of spotting wildlife. We met up in the morning with two english girls, Hanna and Anna, and a german, Gorna. We also has with us a chef, a guide and a translator (which of course I didn't need!). After 4 hours in a 4WD we took a 3 hour boat ride to our camp. I was amazed at the amount of wildlife we saw, there were so many birds including herons, flamingoes, igrets, eagles, condors to mention a few. We saw pink dolphins (yes fresh water dolphins), thousands of alligators and cayman. Yellow monkeys came down from the trees to feed out of our hands, while this was happening someone noticed a green coloured snake dangling from a tree literally inches above our boat, deadly poisonous apparently!
That evening after dinner we got back in the boat and went out in the dark to catch an alligator! I couldn't believe it, after several attempts our guide managed to lasso one, place a noose around it's snout and haul it into our boat. With it's snout roped up it became completely placid and just lay there in the boat not making any attempt to move. It was about 1.6m long and after our guide had given a talk on it and pointed out a few of it's features he undid the rope around it's snout. After a few seconds looking stunned it regained it's senses and shot back into the water, by this time we were back on dry land and it was amazing (and scary) to see just how quickly it could move on land to get back in the water.

Day 2 and we started by trekking off into the pampas, our guide was waist deep in the swamp like a real life Indiana Jones and after about an hour he came back holding a 2m anaconda, this we excellent and one of the main reasons we'd come on the tour. It turned out to be quite a shy animal and as he gave us a talk on it he sat there with it in a ball in front of him, every time the snake tried to show it's head he just tapped it and it would hide it's head away again. We also spotted a huge majestic owl which was sat up a tree with it's huge eyes shining at us.
After a fantastic lunch we went out for a spot more fishing. This time we used smaller hooks and bait and I managed to bag 7 piranhas, a catfish and a sardine which we took home for our dinner, the piranha was remarkably tasty.
Our final day was spend cruising slowly up the river with our guide explaining about the wildlife in more detail. One of the things we saw in abundance everywhere was the worlds largest rodent, the capivara which grew to the size of a large dog. Later in the trip a few of us decided to take a dip and go for a swim with the pink dolphins. I was a little concerned, well to be honest I was scared out of my wits, what with the piranhas and there were two alligators which we saw enter the water within 10m of our boat, but our guide had assured us it was perfectly safe.
That night in Rurrenabaque we were all ready for a big session, after a couple of hours at a local disco the girls decided to go home, I'm not too sure but I think my dancing might have had something to do with their decision! Manny and I decided to go in search of somewhere where the average age was over 14 years. We ended up entering a bar which was hosting Miss Rurrenabaque. Of the 4 girls there was only one possible winner in my eyes, so we thought it was a travesty of justice when one of the other girls won, it turned out our girl didn't win as she was from out of town, so much for democracy.
After 2 more days doing absolutely nothing we took a military plane back to La Paz, the views over the Cordillera Real and the jungle were absolutely stupendous.
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