Saturday to Monday, March 19th to 21st - the Jungle, Bolivia

We were up early Saturday morning and had our bags repacked so our back packs were all we were taking with us.  The hotel in Rurrenebaque was storing our big bags.  We walked down the street about 7:30 to go to the bakery across from the tourist shop.  It (the bakery) was amazing.  The smells alone were wonderful.  They had all kinds of pastries and breads and things like quiches and flans.  I had a quiche which was really tasty and finished by sharing a croissant with chocolate in the middle - a wholesome and delicious breakfast.

We were to depart at 8:30 according to our brochure but we sat and waited for an hour.  Then, once six of us were loaded in the 4x4 and our luggage was stored up above, we discovered we had to go to the airport to pick up two more customers who were just flying in so it was really about 10:45 before we finally started our tour.

The drive was supposed to be three hours long and it was pretty close to that over dirt/stone roads that were incredibly bumpy and dusty.  There was some water lying in spots so obviously some areas had some recent rain.  You didn't want to get to near the edge of the road with either the dry or the wet as the ground just pulled you over.  However, our driver did fine and we arrived at our lunch places safely. Lunch was good but again a lot of food: soup, rice, meat, vegetables, etc.  Their lunches are all huge.

The final portion of the drive was the same as the first.  We were very happy to have our air conditioned vehicle both to keep us somewhat cool and to keep the dust out as our windows were up.  Eventually we arrived at the drop-off point that is just on the side of the river bank.  There are a couple of buildings there, one of which has bathrooms, but the rest just seem deserted.  People sit around in the shade and that's about it.  Well, a few ladies sit at a small table and sell goodies like pop, water, chips and treats, and a few of us did make use of their services.  

And then there are the boats.  I'm not sure how to describe them but they are sort of like wide flat-bottomed canoes.  Two people can sit across on fold-up chairs (just webbed seats and backs) that are fastened to the side and there were four rows of seats.  The driver sits at the back with the motor and there is a baggage storage area behind the back seats and in front of the driver.  That's where our bags went.  Once loaded there is only about six or eight inches of boat above the water so when seated you feel like you are right on the water. However, the boats seemed very stable so I never really felt like we were going to tip over, which is a good thing when you have alligators and piranha in the water and you can't swim.

The ride to our lodge took about 1.5 hours but we took a longer route so we could see some sights.  I'll describe those later because all of our boat trips over the next few days kind of run together and I no longer know what happened or what we saw when.  I'll just summarize them all at once.  

Eventually we arrived at our lodge which was right on the water at the edge of the jungle or pampas (wet grassland area).  There were a lot of wooden buildings and walkways.   We docked, unloaded our boat and were directed to our rooms, or I should say room.  All 8 of us were sleeping in one rooms with 8 single beds jammed into it with about a foot of space between them and mosquito nets hanging over them.  The bottom four feet on three sides of the building was wood but the top portion was screen, which did allow for a breeze when there was a breeze. The fourth wall was wood and had another dorm against it on the other side.

I guess I should mention here that we are in the jungle or one of the feeders to the Amazon, the Yacuma River, and it is really hot and humid.  The temperature was always over 30 degrees Celsius and the humidity was always around 100%.  It is rainy season but they haven't had a lot of rain so the water level is not as hight as it might be.  However, there is lots of water lying around and there are mosquitos everywhere all the time - definitely not my favourite climate or environment.  The days were hot and sticky and I was always wet.  The nights never really cooled down and it was very hard to get to sleep with so many people in the room and so many outside still partying and an absolute inability to cool off.  The only good part was that the mosquito nets were good and kept the mosquitos out quite nicely. 

Our lodge was basically built around a square walkway.  Sometimes boards were missing and there were no railings in places but generally speaking it was pretty easy to get around.  This of course was a good thing since one had to walk along the walkways to get to a toilet or a shower (2 each in two different locations) or to the dining room or to the boats.  Electricity was by generator but only for certain hours and water in the showers was just a trickle.  There was one double sink for everyone to use at one point in the complex.  It too was just a trickle and the drain had no pipe in it but just ran straight out into the river so your feet often got splashed when you washed your hands.  It was an incredibly rustic environment and definitely not one that we were expecting when we booked this trip and heard we were staying at a lodge (lodges sounded fantastic in the Lonely Planet book).  Actually, I even thought we were staying at two different lodges on our two nights so I had it all wrong.  I was not impressed and had to do a lot of repeating "I love the jungle.  I love the jungle" to get through the experience.

Our meals were good though.  We had dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch in the dining room and they did a great job of making good food for a lot of people.  We had pasta a couple of times, hearty soups, meat, potatoes, rice and lots of vegetables both hot and cold.  For breakfast we had eggs, pancakes, toast (their version of it), and other things that I can't remember right now.  Regardless, I certainly can't complain about the food as it was really good.  We probably could have used more water but then I drink a lot of water all the time and others didn't seem to want it at all.

Now having made this sound really bad, I must say that parts of it were beautiful.  Once we were in the boats and moving we had a lovely breeze and incredibly beautiful  sights.  The water was very calm and with sunny blue skies we had great reflections in the water.   There were so many different shades of green in the trees, bushes and grasses, and then there were flowers too.  I have never seen so many beautiful morning glories all in one place.  They just covered everything else in some locations.

We went to the local bar - just another wooden shack with wooden walkways - for both sunsets and they were beautiful.  The bar is really just a place for all the tour groups to gather to watch the sunset.  It did sell beverages (alcoholic and non) and snacks, and it had benches for people to sit on and relax while the sun set.  The view was really just over a field wth volleyball courts and other sports fields (football I assume) but, because it's rainy season, the field was covered with several feet of water so it offered some great reflections of the beautiful sunsets.  Again I took way too many pictures.

One morning we went out early to see the sunrise.  Our guide was a bit late getting up that morning and waking us up, and some of us were then a bit slow in getting moving, so although we saw the sun actually rise, we did miss some of the most colourful parts of the sunrise.  Our driver also parked right behind another boat so that made for some really hard picture taking unless you wanted the people in the other boat in your shot.  However, I got some good shots anyway and it was a lovely time of the day to be out on the water.

One day we went for a short walk through the pampas (grass).  Our guide pointed out a few things to us but it was a pretty short walk and we didn't see much and probably could have done without the experience, especially since it was only about 20 minutes as some folks didn't go and were waiting for us in the boat.  We had to wear rubber boots to do the walk since there are many wet areas even in the grass.  Finding rubber boots that didn't have holes in them was a challenge.  I thought I had mastered my challenge but with the first step in water, right off the boat, I had a boot full of water about ankle deep.  I didn't really mind the water but I really did wonder what else might be coming in as well.

One of the things that might have entered my boot was what we went fishing for shortly thereafter: piranha.  We tried several shady spots - I think more for our benefit on a hot sunny afternoon than for the fact the piranha might be there.  We probably didn't spend more than an hour in total trying to catch anything with a bit of chicken on our lines that were wrapped around pieces of wood about six inches long (no fancy fishing rods here!), but it was a lovely relaxing time as we listened to the birds singing and the wind blowing through the trees.  We didn't catch anything but we didn't really expect to as one of the other guides said it would be a waste of time with the current heat and water levels.

The best part of that afternoon was just floating down the channels with the motor off. It was quiet and relaxing and you could hear everything around you.  I guess I should say that this was the best part as far as I was concerned.  Others didn't like it at all and got bored so they had to turn on some music on the iPhones or Walkmans or whatever.    Oh well, we can't all like the same things.

So, what did we see as we rode up and down the channels or streams of the Yacuma River?  Well, we saw lots.  I've already mentioned the beautiful flowers, mainly morning glories, that sprang up everywhere and the vegetation that included grass, shrubs and trees both short and tall.  Some of the trees and shrubs had lots of green on them and some were more bare.  We couldn't figure out how they would survive in all this water but obviously they do.  With so many different shades of green and brown and thick at all levels, they made great reflections in the calm water.

We saw lots of birds but I definitely do not remember all the names.  One of the amazing sightings was a pair of toucans.  They are incredibly hard to find and yet our guide spotted them up in a tree.  The sound of our motor scared them though so they took off.  We were just lucky to see them flying away with their big orange beaks.  We also saw little bright green parrots and some bigger incredibly coloured (green, blue, red, etc.) macaws.  Again, these were mainly flying when we saw them.  Some birds were standing or sitting still though.  The herons and cranes were reasonably still if we didn't get on close to them.  The eagles and Hawks were generally high enough up in a tree that we didn't bother them.  There were some cute reddish coloured birds that stayed mainly on the ground but they ran away quickly or flew away awkwardly when we approached.  They were not a large bird but they had long legs and when flying short distances to get away from us their legs looked very awkward and just hung down.  There was another large bird with a great crown or Mohawk on the top of his head.  He was everywhere and I think he was the Paradise Bird or, I suppose, the Bird of Paradise.  We also saw many cormorants and they are so stately looking as they just sit up in the high bare branches.  When they have their wings spread so they can dry their leaves, they look even more impressive.   And we saw many beautiful dragon flies who followed our boat and flitted among us at breakneck speed.  I never did get a good picture of one of them.  They were just too fast for me.

We saw one water snake wiggling across the water.  We tried to find an anaconda in various places but didn't see one so eventually we had to go to a spot near the bar where they had found one the day before in one of their buildings.  It didn't look too scary as the guide was carrying him around for everyone to see but then he was supposedly just a young one only about two metres long.  I'd hate to see an adult one!

In the water we saw lots of turtles - some swimming and some just resting on logs enjoying the sun.  They were definitely not used to hearing the sound of a boat motor and disappeared into the water very quickly as we approached.   The one night we went looking specifically for alligators and found a couple.  They were in the distance, although the folks at the front of the boat didn't think the distance was great enough!  All you could see were two shining eyes and that was enough for most of us given we were in such a low, feeble watercraft.  We did have an alligator and a caiman at our resort and they came around quite frequently.  You'd be walking along the boardwalk and look down and there would be eyes looking back at you.  I think these guys were pretty spoiled as they got fed a lot of food out of the kitchen - probably kept them from eating the guests.  

The three highlights of the tour were probably the monkeys, the pink dolphins and the capybara.   I think we saw three different kinds of monkeys.  Two of them, the big dark red brown howler monkeys that you could hear from quite a distance and some medium size black ones whose name I have forgotten, were up higher in the trees with lots of leaves so it was harder to see them.  The third, the squirrel monkeys, were much smaller and also hung out in very thick vegetation but they stayed lower to the ground and didn't seem to mind having humans around.  In fact, I think they were waiting for us to feed them treats.  People on some of the other boats pretended to be feeding them so they could get close to take pictures but I'm not sure anyone ever actually gave them anything.  They were wild so it probably wasn't worth the risk of being bitten or scratched.  They were cute though.  They were tiny and light brown and looked cuddly like a teddy bear.  They had dark eyes, mouth and hair on the crown of their head so the lighter patches around their eyes and ears really stood out.  While the larger monkeys were only seen alone or with one or two others, these little guys always seemed to have lots of friends around, including tiny babies riding under their mothers' bellies.

The pink Dolphins were apparently pink because of the algae or minerals in the water.  They didn't look bright pink but when they did a flip out of the water you could certainly see the pink colouring.  They were wonderfully playful things and the big thrill was to go swimming with them.  Personally I didn't try it because I can't swim, I didn't know how deep the water was, I wasn't sure what there might be in the water from a general health perspective, and of course there was also that matter of alligators and piranha.  The guide did tell us though, that if you see pink dolphins in the water you can be assured the alligators won't be nearby.  Apparently they swim in different places.  Several people did go swimming and they got very close to the dolphins and did touch them.   The dolphins didn't seem to mind having humans around and were quite willing to share their swimming hole with them.  At times, generally when I didn't have a camera, they were doing flips and rolls but generally they stayed just below the water level and surfaced only occasionally.  They were fun to watch but definitely hard to catch in a photo.

The last animal we saw was a capybara and one of the girls just happened to spot him. The guide turned the boat around so we could go back and watch for a while.  He was as unconcerned about us an anything and just kept eating away.  The capybara is like a large brown furry rat.  In fact it is the largest rodent in the world and can be as heavy as 200 pounds!  It lives on ground but is an excellent swimmer too and goes into the water to find food as it eats grasses and water plants.   This one was half submerged in the water so it's hard to tell how big it actually was but it appeared to be several feet long.  It was great to see at least one although they usually travel in large groups.  We were quite literally only about 15 minutes from our destination as we were leaving so this was our last chance.

We got back to our original departure point, waited about an hour in the shade for our driver to arrive.  He was dropping off another group who were heading out in the canoes and picking us up to take us back to Rurrenebaque.  The road didn't improve any along the way but because one of the group was not feeling well I think he did drive a bit less erratically than on the way in.  Less than three hours later we were back in town and heading back to our hotel where we very quickly had an outdoor shower and jumped into the pool to cool off.  It was wonderful after the hot sticky days without a decent shower.  Eventually we went out for dinner and then came back and tried to reorganize things (especially the dirty clothes) for our flight back to La Paz the next day.