Kris, Line, Axel and I - all San Miguel volunteers- squashed ourselves into a jeep with three other travellers from Japan and made the sticky dusty bumpy trip to Santa Rosa in the pampas. The pampas is a wetland region in
Bolivia
that is largely underwater in the wet season but shrinks to a system of
rivers and lakes teeming with wildlife in the dry. We had
booked a three day tour and were hoping to see lots of animals
that we had missed out on in the jungle because of the dense
vegetation. Three hours down the road and five minutes into the boat
ride we had already seen alligators, caimans, turtles, squirrel
monkeys, capibaris and lots of 'thingymabob' birds. The alligators and
caimans (not that we could tell the difference) were so common that
soon we weren't even bothering to stop for them.There was a real swamp atmosphere that night as we drifted slowly downstream towards cold beers at the Sunset bar, lighting up the lurking
amber eyes of
crocs with our headlamps along the way. We met our first South African
travellers over a sweaty game of volleyball where World (ie. all the
gringos) played Bolivia and World won. We cooled down listening to our
guides singing bluesy tunes to the accompaniment of guitars, spoons and
alligator skull washboards. With sore heads we left early to hunt for Anaconda! A bit of a problematic issue as fewer and fewer are being sighted and no-one has an explanation as to why, although it seems obvious that the unsustainable tourism practices have a lot to do with it! There are stories of guides disappearing for a few minutes to return with their successful 'find': a poor starving snake that they have kept stashed in a bag to show the eager anaconda-hungry tourists. We had made it perfectly clear to our guide that
we would have none
of that dodgy business. So hip-deep we waded along the silted banks of
a waterplant rimed lake where hundreds of crocs floated in the
distance. After two hours our guide accidentally stood on one and we
got a chance to see it's head before it managed to slither away.
Exhausted we returned to camp to recover by drifting downstream again
to one of the few spots that, for a change, wasn't infested with crocs
and that being due to the lithe pink creatures known as river dolphins.
We all nervously slipped in to the muddy water to experience the
sensation of swimming with dolphins. Mad!The last day and an early start to catch a hazy sunrise (from deliberate fires by farmers to green their pastures) and we are rewarded with the
whole range of
monkeys: squirrel, howler and capuchin. Then it was off piranha fishing
to catch our lunch but they were all pretty dismally bitesized. In the
afternoon it was back to Rurre, 'real' life and a BMW with problems!
Again Axel has to spend the day getting his hands greasy - the piston
chamber is layered in a grimy soot which we think is a combination of
bad fuel and high altitude inefficiency (too little air). Better than
the suspected engine seizure but geez we didn't think the fuel was so
crappy. We have a room in a big airy hotel run by an israeli who speaks
german, hebrew, english and spanish. It has a beautiful view over the
river and that evening a rainstorm lulls us to sleep with the curtains
flying across the room on it's cool breezes.Now it's time to say goodbye to Rurre and return to the high altitudes of La Paz and then onto Peru. But not exactly the same way we came...