Advertisement
A long awaiting trip this one, to a jungle lodge for the weekend. Living with the animals, being at one with nature, getting into the jungle groove - all these are on the agenda. We have paid a small fortune for a couple of nights at this place called El Chalalan Ecolodge, which is supposed to be the most ecofriendly jungle experience going, the money we are told goes to help the local community which have built and run the place. All very sustainable and worthy.
You know, we don’t go into these things unprepared, and we did our research and found that (perhaps not surprisingly) the jungle is full of nasty things which bite a lot. SO we went next door to our friendly pharmacy and talked to her about potential precautions. When I say talked - as you can imagine it was the typical mixture of broken Spanish, mimes, gestures and so on. The recommendation was a shedload of insect repellent and a vitamin B injection.
Now, we knew that apparently Vit B is great for keeping mosquitos away as they don’t like the smell. And as you may know, Vit B is a major constituent of
Claire on river boat
Claires interest in the jungle is overwhelmingthat time-honoured and soldier-covering breakfast condiment for generations - Marmite. So a couple of days before leaving we went along to get this wonder cure which will stop us getting any bites in the jungle. Back to the pharmacy, the lady pharmacist gets out the phial of
vit b - and guess what? - its brown. Not only brown but it is in fact marmite in a sterilized container, and a lot of it too!
None too reassured, we make sure the needles etc are straight out of packets and flip a metaphorical coin to see who gets it first. Claire. 'This way' chirps the pharmacist and leads Claire to the back room, ushering the children out to play in the street on the way. I wait anxiously thinking it might perhaps have been more honourable to go first - well I did offer. First I hear the surprise as Claire is told that’s its not for the arm but the buttock. Then a slow agonized howl comes from the back room which seems to go on for ever. Finally Claire reappears clutching her behind and wearing a pained expression. Clearly not as easy as we expected. My turn…
Jungle trails
In our search for wildlife we carelessly cross piranha and anaconda infested waters on flimsy bridges made by ancient indigenous amazonian tribes... Ha! I think - this can’t be that hard, and off I trot to the 'treatment' room, almost tripping over the toys, dirty dinner plates and bed (yes bed) in this small room that lies behind the counter. I bare my parts and look away, determined not to make a noise - I am a bloke after all!
The pharmacist smiles, a bit too smugly for my liking, and quietly comments that this might hurt a bit. The needle must be four inches long, minimum, and takes an age to sink into my gluteus maximus. Except that she hasn’t gone for the fattest part but up near my hip. I can feel the marmite being pumped into my body, it takes what seems like forever and hurts like no other injection ever has. But I am a man and no sound comes from my mouth - I bear the pain.
Finally its over and I walk back out to the front. And this is when the problems start - my head swims, everything goes blurry and then I cant see or stand properly. Not feeling quite so clever I let the girls sit me down, get me
Capybara
A big rat really, but Claire seems attached to them water and smelling salts and watch over me while I feel progressively awful for the next five minutes - what a man! We are then told its harder for men than women to take in injection there - I wonder
why!? The pharmacist waves us away with a smile. The whole thing only cost 70p for us both, potion, needles, expert medical attention, the lot - you gotta love Bolivia!
After a while we (well I actually) hobble out of the pharmacy and back to our flat, wondering if this will be worth it. For the rest of the evening we wee marmite. Now I haven’t got much maximus on my gluteus, and I wonder if the needle went straight through me and into my bladder, causing this alarming after effect, but as Claire is doing the same we assume its normal. We are armed and ready to go to the jungle. As an added precaution, I have made marmite sandwiches for us both, enough to last about three days, just in case the injection wasn’t strong enough (ha!). If we come across mosquitoes that like marmite - we are in trouble!
After a whole day at La
Yellow squirrel monkey
...from a long way away in a moving boat. David Bailey - who´s he? Paz airport, we were finally told that there would be no planes today, and that we should come back tomorrow. Were there going to be planes then? No idea, it depended on the meteorology and whether there was enough sunshine to dry out the (grass) runway in Rurre so planes could land!
We consider the alternatives. The only one is a 16 hours bus ride which goes via Coroico and guess where - the most dangerous road in the world!
Now I am fairly keen to do this road again, but in a large coach, at night, going downhill - no thanks. Not that the option is really considered - Claires opinions on this are a lot stronger…
So we were stuck with a night in La Paz, not our favourite place if you remember earlier instalments, and added to this there were severe blockades between the airport in El Alto, and the city itself where all the hotels are. The issue of the blockades is a thorny one. In short, the president Carlos Mesa has agreed to a law regarding the exploitation and division of revenue from the ample supply of hydrocarbons in Bolivia. The ´people´ and
by this you can read the people of El Alto itself in La Paz and campesinos - mainly agrarian subsistence and very poor - throughout Bolivia, don’t agree with this. Of course the more cynical amongst us will wonder how much they actually understand and are being pushed by the more active elements in the political arena. Anyway, they show their displeasure by blockading the main routes in and out of the main cities so that bus and lorry traffic is really disrupted. They also have demonstrations to which the authorities usually respond by sending police with tear gas and rubber bullets. This has been a pretty common occurrence over the past few weeks, especially in La Paz and Cochabamba.
We have teamed up with a guy called Phil and his family. This is their third day of waiting for a plane to Rurre and they are understandably ´annoyed´. We need to stick together to improve our chances of the airline being able to contact us to let us know if there is a plane the next day. Phil knows a good hostel in La Paz and better a good taxi driver who knows the way through the blockades
Leafcutter ants
Pitch your tent in the path of these little beggars and they will cut it up and take it away within an hour! from the airport to the city. Yesterday in their efforts to get back to the airport the taxi they were in had to stop at the blockades and they walked over a mile (at altitude don’t forget!) with all their luggage over fences and cross-country, and he doesn’t want to do it again!
Sure enough the driver knows a safe way and we get to the hostel via some fantastic views of the bowl in which La Paz sits. The hostel is a bit crummy and we angst over whether we should move on or need to stick with Phil and co. We stay. I wander into the cafeteria and the football is on - Champions League, Liverpool vs AC Milan. Now I'm no expert on football and certainly not an avid follower, but any international gets me going and this is now exception. As I sit down with a beer Liverpool are 3-0 down, a depressing statistic which makes we wonder if its worth staying around. But within the next ten minutes they amazingly equalize, and I realize that it must be me bringing them luck, so I stick around for the rest. A great game, although I
refrain from engaging my fellow travelers in football talk, given that I haven’t got a clue who any of the players are - even though I do have a passing awareness of how the offside rule works.
That evening we go to see the new Star Wars - episode 3. Thankfully its in English with subtitles. Watching films with subtitles is an interesting experience. When we first got here I would watch the film and ignore the titles, but now I find myself watching the titles to get some new Spanish vocab out or just try and follow it. I have even watched films late at night in hotel rooms with the sound down (as Claire is asleep) and followed the action that way. But tonight I want English - it is Star Wars after all! And it doesn’t disappoint, rolling nicely at the end to dovetail with episode 4 (the very first film), although a bit overlong perhaps. I can see Claire is riveted though-out by the way her jaw hangs open as she slumps in the chair.
Bolivian cinemas (well this one) are like ours back in the 80's, all concrete and vinyl seats. When you buy
tickets you have to state the seat you want from a map that has a rolled up piece of paper stuck in a hole for each of the 300 or so seats. Handwritten on this is the seat number and date - automation is clearly not arrived yet! They do this for every showing, every day. And they have an interlude - great - but no ice-cream sellers that come along - boo - so you are just sat there waiting for it to start again.
Next morning after a great breakfast we head back to the airport not knowing whether we'll be in the jungle by lunchtime or back in La Paz tonight after a day staring at the check-in desk again. The airline did phone the hotel last night and say we were ´confirmed´ onto a flight at lunchtime, but when I asked whether the planes would be flying, I was told that, as usual, it depended on the meteorology, i.e. whether it rained. Three hours later we are on a plane, a small 12-seater, leaving the runway for Rurre. Expectation is high and so are our spirits as we watch the snow covered mountains edging the
River boat driver
The ´maestros'; these two usually communicated via meaningful scowls from one end of the boat to the other. Altiplano pass underneath and turn into forest covered hills and then plains as we head in to the Amazon basin. Rurre is at the very edge of the basin, and the first foothills of the Andes surround it. The airfield comes into view - a grass strip and not very long - but at least its dry. The 'terminal´ matches - a poor looking shed. As we are carted away to town, I fervently hope that we aren’t stuck here for a day on the way back - still, we´re in the jungle…and you tell, after the cool of La Paz its suddenly very hot and humid, and we need to take off some layers
Our hotel has twelve or so rooms arranged around the courtyard and a lovely garden with hammocks for relaxing. Seems ok we get a bathroom but no matrimonial bed - this is a constant problem in all South America, double means two beds, you need to be specific and we often forget or they aren’t available. We check in and go for a walk around town to check out the potential nightlife and feeding options. According to the LP the only place in town is a bar called rather appropriately the Moskito Bar. We walk around town, which doesn’t take long as it consists of about five streets. Most of the shops are geared toward provisioning jungle visits, although not really for tourists. They sell a lot of secondhand clothes, some of which look suspiciously as though they used to belong to gringos, buckets, wellies, and of course mosquito repellent, lots of it. We´re relieved to note that they sell the same brand as we have brought, an Argentinean brew called ´Off!´. We have already plastered several layers of this on ourselves in the plane, at the airport, on the way to the hotel, and at the hotel - we are determined not to get bitten.
We light a mosquito coil, another layer of repellent, and spray the room with the local equivalent of Raid; Baygone, (this stuff is so strong it would kill a heavyweight wrestler if left in a closed room with it), and head to the entertainment. A steady night out at the moskito bar and pizza place next-door - both rather good even though all the gringos go there - and its back to bed. Or so we think. When we get close to the hotel we can hear music. The noise gets louder as we approach and we discover the source. There is a - get this - Naval base next door to the hotel and they are having a party. Now I know I never finished my geography degree (deciding that I didn’t want to be a teacher and thought engineering might be more sexy - and now look!) but even I know that Bolivia is a landlocked country and has no coastline, so why do they need a navy? And even if they do need one - why put it in the jungle?
Anyway, in our room we can hear the party, as if its in our room, very loud. Hoping that it´ll finish soon we go to bed and put pillows over our head to try and sleep. No luck. We can only lie there and listen to Bolivian 'cumbia' - a type of music allegedly related to salsa but considerably more vile, for hours. Sleep doesn’t come until around 4am. Then the local church bells start and wake us again - we are ready to kill something.
Not surprisingly the next morning we are tired and have a minor hangover, therefore slight grumpy, but eager to get into the jungle real. We apply mosquito repellent, a couple of layers for good measure. At breakfast a lot of very weary looking travelers collect and share moans about the night before, it seems no one got any sleep, even the hotel owner.
We stumble down to the river and the boat collects us for the five hour trip upstream to the lodge. Its in the middle of Madidi National Park, a 2 million hectare (19000 km2) area which is apparently one of the most biologically diverse environments on the planet - we are in awe of this statistic but not sure what it really means…
The river journey is fun, relaxed and just watching the world go by. Only one or two other boats passed us in the whole time. The river is not wide but is muddy, a light brown colour and flowing fast. Everywhere there are fallen trees and drift wood on the side, in the middle and in front. Added to this are many shingle areas. All this conspires to make it quite difficult to navigate, and the boats are very shallow draft with the motor prop ion a long shaft so it can go in and out of the water quickly. The boatman are very capable, one in front looking out for submerged wood, shallow bits to ground yourself on, and whatever else, giving signals back to his comrade on the motor, and occasionally having to punt us along.
Along the river banks you can see the constructive/destructive effect of the river. One side is virgin forest right to the edge, mature trees falling into the river as the water washes away their footings. The other side is shallow shingle beaches which are rapidly being taken over by new growth of smaller trees and bushes. Plant succession in action for those in the know, but fascinating to see. You can also see tributaries, but many are dry and more than one metre above the present level of the river. This is the middle of the dry season and its easy to see how much higher and more destructive the river can become when it rains a lot. For four hours there are no signs of any settlements or other people.
Suddenly we stop at (another) beach. This is it, but we need to walk for half an hour (with our packs) into the jungle to reach the lodge. We put on an extra large dose of repellent and long sleeves etc to keep the insects off. The walk is ok though, a decent trail which is even ´paved´ with river stones in some parts. The mosquitos move in but seem to be put off by the…Off; or maybe its that we are now sweating marmite!
The path opens into a clearing and we are here. The lodge has a large communal hut and then several dorms in the main area, and then three honeymoon cabins by themselves in their own bit of jungle - we are destined for one of these. The Spanish for honeymoon is ´miel y luna´, which is literally ´honey and moon´ - not very imaginative for a continent that’s supposed to be supremely romantic.
Check the website; www.chalalan.com
Our cabin is a wooden hut on stilts (I can easily imagine why). It has two rooms; one has the bed, which is completely encased in a mosquito net. The other is the bathroom which looks nice and promises showers. There is no glass in the windows, only mosquito net. The roof, which is a thatch, is covered in mosquito net, so is any other potential gap to the outside world. We get the message and put on a layer of repellent.
The itinerary says that we have a packed two days of walking trails through the jungle, wading piranha infested streams and hunting (opps, wrong word) looking for the immense variety of flora and fauna. But our guide seems more intent on having a kip and tells us we´ll go out later. We are secretly glad of the rest after last might but wonder if this is the right way to start.
Over the next day and a half we go out into the jungle two or three times, day and night, land and lake, see some wildlife but not all that we would have liked. Lots of monkeys, birds, spiders and ants. Oh - and mosquitos, the marmite seems to hold them of though. The promises of showers don’t materialize and we live life in the dirt, not cleaning the repellent off by showering seems to help as well.
The ants are enormous, the biggest are Army Ants almost the size of your little finger, and mostly with evil intent. You can´t leave your shoes lying around as nasty red biting ones get in their and hang on for dear life.
The spiders are enormous, they build webs at about head height along the trails so unless you watch very carefully where you are going (which is always sensible anyway of course) you get one full in the face. We let the guide go in front.
The trees are enormous, well some of them, some grow spikes out of their trunks to stop things climbing up them. There are 'walking palms', which grow new roots in the direction of light, then let the ones at the back die off so that over time they actually move toward the light.
There are enormous rats called Capybaras. Claire says they are not rats and they have some really cute ones in Blackpool Zoo - apparently! They are dangerous too if they don’t like you, but otherwise pretty boring, only interesting because you don’t find them anywhere else (except Blackpool it seems). And also there are wild pigs which go around in packs like delinquent teenagers, the guide tells tales of them chasing people who climb trees to try and get away only to have their legs chewed off if they don’t move fast enough.
The mosquitos aren’t enormous, just a pain in the bum.
The whole jungle is geared around defense and attack, everything wants to eat or live off everything else while trying to protect itself from all the other things that are tying to make a meal of it. Plants or animals, it doesn’t matter, they are all in it. The intensity of life is amazing, you can really feel the energy of life and see the cycle of life and death all around. Quite inspiring. Claire hates it.
With no electricity its lights out pretty early, and each night we go to bed spraying the room and climbing under the net wondering how many holes are in it. Inside the cabin its so dark you cannot see your nose, absolutely nothing, nada. Outside, being a hundred miles from the nearest light bulb, the star display is fantastic, better than I've seen before. You just cant appreciate how full the heavens really are when you live in London, I half expect to see the USS-Enterprise sailing across the sky.
We leave Chalalan a little disappointed that we didn’t see more of the wildlife (but it isn’t there for our entertainment after all), me wanting to do more and really get into the jungle vibe, and Claire never wanting to go near the place again. The river journey back is much shorter being downriver, and the plane back to La Paz actually comes as expected, much to our surprise. We get back to Cochbamba without any problems to have a welcome shower and remove 28 layers of mosquito repellent. Total bite count; Claire 5, Simon 2 - result.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.18s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 19; qc: 93; dbt: 0.0984s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
lisa hawkins
non-member comment
jungle
awesome. looks quite scary .