Pampas

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"Go on, Dahna, the more you fear, the worse it will be," came the voice of our guide as he read the mixed feelings showing across my face. I do not really know what grounding that theory has. It was a new found fairybook style dream of mine to swim with pink river dolphins. However, the murky brown opaque water that hid alligators and piranhas, were NOT part of my fairybook style dream. Just twenty meters away we had seen a 4 meter alligator baking in the sun with his jaws wide open. Our guide told us that the caymen, this particular type of alligator, did not attack people. I could not help being a little skeptical. Surely they did they need jaws that sharp if all they ate was fish.

"Look, they are waiting for you to play with them," he said, as one jumped out of the murk and head butted the floating ball. That was all it took for my impulsive nature to peel off my clothes and dive in. I came out un eaten and still the same colour I was when I dove in, but my life will never be the same again. Wow. I think there were about five of them swimming and jumping up around me and passing the around though it is difficult to say, because you can not see anything below the surface of the brown paint like water. I would go from feeling like Alice in Wonderland, in total heady awe, to being shit scared in seconds. One cheeky dolphin nibbled my foot and I now understand the expression of jumping out of your skin. Jono had a swim too, but the dophins had me in their trance and I was alone in the water with them for a long time, while the other guys patiently waited for me in the boat, eventually the guide had to call me back in. There were monkeys to go and see.

I have since found out that these dolphins are potentially threatened, along with a lot of other animals, by proposed gold mines that have a habit of polluting the rivers in Bolivia, where there is very little to no environmental protection. The dolphins evolved to live in fresh water, but whether they can evolve to live in Cyanide is another story.

We chose to go with one of the more expensive companies called Bala Tours, but it was worth the extra money. They had a policy of not handling the wildlife and they had an ecolodge run by solar power and they did not dump rubbish or pump waste water straight back into the river, as I have heard other cheaper lodges do. They also have environmentally friendly motors on their boats which were low emission and quite. We saw plenty of other wildlife in addition to the dolphins, including monkeys, alligators, birds, butterflies, lizards. I am still not exactly sure what our park entrance fees go towards protecting, because there did not seem to be much park, except a few meters on either side of the river. I think most of the pampas is actually farm land. Our guide said that 50 meters on either side of the river was meant to be parkland, and protected, but there there were some places where the land had been slashed and burnt right up to a few meters from the river. We did not get to see any anacondas, despite a three hour walk looking for them, but I would prefer it that way to having a trapped one exhibited infront of us. Maybe all the other groups have killed them and scared them away already by trapping them and passing them around. Our guide confirmed that the snakes are highly sensitive to sunscreen and insect repellent, and will more most often die within weeks of being passed around a group of tourists. It was good to have supported two companies that promote respect for the wilderness, rather than destruction for economic gain.

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