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Published: April 24th 2009
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Hola!
We have just arrived back from almost a week in the pampas and jungle of Northern Bolivia. We flew to the tiny town of Rurrenabaque last week in a tiny 20 seater plane and enroute met 4 cool English chicks. One of them was in major struggle town due to the tinyness of the plane which was understandable as we flew low and close to some pretty big mountains and had to land in a green grass field.
We booked a Pampas Tour on the Yakuma River with our new friends to begin the following day. Stace and I had our hearts set on cruising on the Amazon River but of course hadn´t researched anything so were suprised to hear the Amazon River was hundreds of miles away! But we were technically in the Amazon Basin so we were content with that and the fact that we had some entertaining, hillarious new friends to hang out with. The 6 of us girls squashed into a 7 seater jeep with a fellow timid Japanese girl together with our guide and a driver and there began another of the worst roads in the world for the next 4 hours. On
Hunting Anaconda
My foot, the swamp and where is the hidden anaconda? the way back 3 days later we dubbed it "Calle de Diablo" (Road of the Devil)!
A long boat was waiting for us and was to become our only means of transportation for the next 3 days as our guide ¨Loco Luis¨(Crazy Luis) showed us the hidden treasures and wild animals of the pampas (sort of equivalent to wetlands I guess). We saw lots of different types of monkeys (some peeked out from the bushes, some came onto the boat, some swung from the trees), alligators (a pet one lived at our camp which was kinda scary when you had to visit the loo in the dark), turtles, toucans, falcons, eagles, herons, comorants, birds of paradise, giant swimming guinea pig things and we swam with pink river dolphins (and yes even I went in the water - just once - and I shat myself so much that I tried to get back in the boat and caught my boardies on the edge so was I hanging by the end of my swimmers in mid air for a while).
We went on an anaconda hunt and literally had to trek through knee high swamp water and tall grass that went way past our heads whilst looking for them. You think we were scared? You have to be kidding. We were absolutely pooping in our (very muddy) pants! We lasted about half an hour before the mosquitos drove us to craziness and the spiders crawled on us and the realisation of where we were and what we were doing hit us so we headed back to the boat but with no path anywhere to be seen it took us a long time, a lot of whining and a little hysteria before we made it (our guide left us for dead and came back slightly disappointed in las chicas!). His favourtie saying the whole time was "Vamos Chicas" (Let´s Go Girls) cos we were always "fannying about" as the English girls would say.
We saw 2 amazing sunsets whilst we were in the pampas and one breathtaking sunrise. We got up pretty close to a big black caiman crocodile (3mtrs - so not quite as big as our salties back home but still very impressive and very scary as our guide fed it a chicken head). We also went piranha fishing but las chicas didn´t catch anything. Loco Luis did though and showed us it´s super sharp teeth. We would have had the chance to eat them if we´d caught any!
When we left the pampas we were literally covered from head to toe in mosquito bites (even in places you wouldn´t expect!), we hadn´t showered for days, we stank of manky river water, were completely covered in dust and we had to pee behind the jeep on the Calle de Diablo with our bums in the air for everyone´s viewing pleasure (or displeasure) but we were pretty happy with everything we saw...I was, of course, just slightly disappointed I didn´t find my big anaconda. Next time....
A cold shower that night was heaven on a stick and we celebrated with caprihinas (my new favourite drink: rum and lots of lime).
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