Almost jungle
Trip Start
Apr 09, 2008
1
22
115
Trip End
Apr 19, 2009
Rurrenabaque,
Bolivia
Monday, June 2, 2008
By the time we arrived in town about an hour after landing we were already late for the tour so we had to rush to get breakfast and then to the tour agency. I was quite amazed to see chris in the jeep. I met chris in Sucre and that is a long way away. Even more of a coincidence that he was on our tour and not one of the dozen others. The jeep took us towards the park and about an hour into the journey we passed the airport!
As we approached the park about 2 further hours later we stopped for lunch in a little house that was full of gringos
Camp's pet Gator
. It must be the only place to eat. Food was predicably soup followed by rice, chips and meat. The standard Bolivian food. Entry to the park was a ridiculous 150Bs or 10 pound.About 100 gringos were dumped by the side of a river we loaded all our possesions into a little boat and started up river to the camp site. On the way we saw all the wildlife the river had to offer, including stacks of turtles, the famous pink dolphins, cayman and alligators and numerous birds. We even saw a caiman eating a fish which I failed miserably to capture on film!
The place where we stayed was quite nice actually with mosquito nets and all sorts. After dinner on the first night we played cards. Chris is an excellent card player always enthusiastic and I love a good card game. The next morning we went hunting for snakes we found a heard of cows and dragonfly husk. Nothing else. Returning to camp we discovered that every other group had seen both a cobra and an anaconda. Oh well.
Our guide had an interesting method of silent guiding and even though some members of the group spoke spanish we always had to guess what was happening and where we were going
Dolphins
. On the other hand he always accomodated us when we wanted to stop and take a photo of something. We went pirahna fishing and I actually caught two pirahna and a cat fish. When I got the catfish into the boat the guide shouted don't touch its very poisonous so I let him take it off the hook, he then threw it into the bottom of the boat with all the other fish. I asked him, "Why are we keeping it?" He said "because it is good to eat". I really think that there must be a lot lost in translation because that makes no sense to me.
We also had the chance to go swimming with the dolphins but I couldn't join in because my arm was still hurting so swimming would be tough and I couldn't think of any way I could get back into the boat with just one arm. I took lots of photos and generally cheered on the others instead. We also had an evening watching the sun go down in "The Pink Dolphin", got up before dawn to hear "the dawn chorus" and had a night time boat ride to annoy caiman by shinning torches in their eyes.
After the tour was over we had a night in Rurrenbeque which is actually a really nice town. On the banks of the river it has lots of fish dishes available in restaurants. There is a pool bar and lots of other stuff. It is also hot there, I mean sunbathing hot which is a massive attraction after the time in the andes. We got the plane back to La Paz and almost imediately I felt my stomach go bad again.
