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Published: August 20th 2006
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Eye eye!
The Elephant Woman Rather like the speed of connection at the internet cafe I´m writing from, it´s been a week of highs and lows. The latter are behind us - hopefully - but one way or another the last 10 days in Bolivia have definitely been our toughest to date.
Last time we wrote we were on the point of catching a plane to The Jungle, and that´s where the lows began. The local airlines are about as reliable as Frank Lampard, and we spent a day fruitlessly waiting at the airport for a plane that was never going to take off while the ground staff shrugged, joked and were generally well punchable.
As a consequence of this, we ended up going drinking that night with an Irish guy who´d endured the same wait as us. And as a consequence of that (or rather, the draft beer I was foolishly knocking back), I got food poisoning - not a dodgy belly, but proper flat-on-your-back, not-going-anywhere food poisoning. I felt queasy when we finally boarded the 14-person plane to Rurrenabaque (a laid-back frontier town that´s the gateway to the Bolivian Amazon) the next day, just about held it together as we touched down
Pool
Rob going through hell with food poisoning at the grass airfield there, threw up as soon as we´d disembarked and ended up spending the next two days in bed. Perhaps in sympathy, Adele was stung on her forehead by a mosquito the second we set foot in our hotel room; that night it swelled up so much that she couldn´t see out of her right eye, so we made a right pair. And it was a shame, because lying by a pool in the Amazon for the weekend really shouldn´t seem like hard work.
Things improved pretty soon, though, when we went on three-day expedition to the local pampas. A jeep takes you three hours into the interior via the hilarious main highway, a riot of dust, potholes, piles of rubble in the middle of the road and games of chicken with oncoming lorries. Then you take to a fairly primitive wooden boat for a couple of hours´ sailing along an Amazon tributary, slap on the insect repellant, spend a couple of nights camping in lodgings like old-style school temporary classrooms, and come back. Simple, eh? Not quite, thanks to our best efforts.
The pampas tour itself was brilliant, because we saw all kinds of
Jungle Jim
Oi-oi! Jimmy brings Burberry to the Pampas incredible wildlife up close: caimans, alligators, yellow and capuccino monkeys, anacondas, tiger herons and amazing jungle-pig things called
capivaras. It was about 36 degrees, so walking was hard graft, but we did great stuff like swimming in the river alongside the caimans with pink dolphins supposedly protecting us (there was definitely one in there, but I´m not sure he gave a monkey´s about us) and fishing for piranhas; we even caught three of the vicious little sods, and Adele´s managed to bite somebody.
There was incredible wildlife actually on the tour with us, too: four beardy, sweary, funny Irish blokes who taught us a great song about ex-Republic legend Paul McGrath (ask me when we get back, but it´s to the tune of the ´12 days of Christmas´), a slightly mad guide called Fernando with the world´s worst laugh, and a couple from Bromley called Jimmy and Sharon, who were without doubt the most entertaining people we´ve met to date.
Armed with matching Burberry caps and the biggest suitcase you´ve ever seen, they spend six months every year travelling all over the world world on the back of fat profits from the string of properties they let on
Anaconda
Enough there for shoes and a handbag the south coast (it could be you Mark, all you need is the Burberry cap and the cockerney accent..., ah, maybe not, then). But God knows what the world makes of them: they insist on conversing by standing 40ft apart and shouting at top-volume, speak nowt but English and - better still - comedy pidgin Spanish. But Sharon topped everything with a Pinteresque rant on our first night in the jungle which ended with her shouting, ´Do you FACKING speak ING-LISH?!´ at the guide, who seemed both perplexed and amused by the whole thing. And the thing was, they were absolutely lovely people, let´s just hope they never decide to go into the diplomatic corps.
So after three days of good food, good company and all-round good experiences, we headed back up the Amazon to the jetty to meet the jeep which would take us back to Rurrenabaque and to civilisation. We were tired but happy, and looking forward to an evening in the pub, and in comfortable beds. In short, everything was right with the world.
Until Adele needed 1 Bolivian for the loo. And that´s when we realised we´d lost the wallet.
It was one
Alligator
Where´s the bloody dolphin when you need it! of those moments when you find yourself thinking that you must be dreaming and it´s all a joke and it´ll turn up at any minute and we´ll all have a laugh about it. But the more we looked - the more we turned our bags out on the jetty and pored through our dirty smalls and people gathered around us - the more we didn´t find it. Without it, we were royally rooted, because it contained our cash card - and without that, we had no way out of Rurrenabaque.
I won´t bore you with the exact details of what happened next, because there was too much panicking, apprehension and bad language involved, and my Dad doesn´t like the latter. But it involved bidding farewell to our group, and our transport back to Rurre; bribing our guide and a mystery interloping drunk - who effortlessly scooped the Biggest **** We´ve Met So Far trophy - to take us back into the jungle; a three-hour boat trip to our camp, where we at least found the wallet tangled up in our mosquito net; an hour´s hike from the jetty to the nearest town; a night in a hostal there with
Capivara
Happy as a pig in the proverbial our guide, whose laughter grew louder and more disturbing by the hour; and the following morning at 5am, a three-hour trip in a minibus back to Rurre that for sheer discomfort would only be beaten by a donkey ride to hell.
For a brief period following this - well, about three days - we fell right out of love with Bolivia. The people are sullen, uncooperative and absolutely unapologetic about shafting you at any given opportunity; you find yourself thinking that they deserve their (admittedly fairly miserable) lot in life, which isn´t exactly the spirit in which you set out to go travelling. Having said that, a couple of days chilling out in Rurre and doing something called the Zip Line Canopy Tour this morning - where you rappel through the top of a rainforest along a series of cables in a harness - has helped to change our minds. Whoever described Bolivia as the Tibet of South America was about right: it´s gorgeous here, even if the Bolivians make it hard work.
Talking of which, it´s time for a special feature...
ARE YOU A SECRET BOLIVIAN?
Find out now with our easy-to-follow 10-step guide.
1.
If you are male, you are built like Wayne Rooney.
2. If you are female, you are built like Wayne Rooney.
3. Male or female, you´ll cheerfully expel any kind of bodily fluid in public.
4. You like nothing more than listening to a radio that´s not quite tuned-in, nice and loud
5. Your favourite brand of toilet paper is called ´Suave´ and you´re partial to a biscuit called a ´Bum Bum´.
6. When driving, you do your bit to ensure than no more than three seconds pass without somebody sounding their bloody horn.
7. You vigorously defend the continued cultivation of coca, calling it ´our last remaining link to the Inca gods´. (Another one for you, Mark...)
8. Your favourite restaurant dish is something called ´Sweater gives trout´ (oh all right, this was in Peru, but it was right by the border...).
9. In the spirit of entrepreneurship, you set yourself up in business selling exactly the same crap as the person with the market stall next to yours. And you look relieved when you don´t stock what people are looking for.
10. When working as a guide, you never tell anyone your name as a point of principle.
Piranha
Rob lands a six-inch whopper (Ideally, don´t tell them that you´re a guide - and try not to give too much away about the area you´re travelling in, either.)
More next time - with an ooh-ah Paul McGrath.
Adele and Rob x
Catchphrase of the week
No.6: "MONKEY!" - shouted as loudly as possible, Johnny Vegas-style, at any passing hairy primate.
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