La Paz - Las Pampas (and back again)

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Sorry haven't updated for a while but here we go...........

After a good night's sleep and a lot of cheese dreams in our grotty little hostel we were ready to start our journey to Rurrenabaque, where we would begin our tour of Las Pampas. Despite panicking in a taxi for half an hour while on hour way to the bus stop (there was a huge protest on so the main road was blocked off) we didn't miss our bus and set off in good time. The trip down down down from La Paz to the wetlands was pretty terrifying as the road consisted of a dirt track on the side of a cliff barely wide enough for one bus, let alone a lorry and a bus crossing paths! It finally darkened thank goodness and after a quick food stop we all drifted off to sleep.

We arrived in Rurrenabaque before 6am and waited at the tour agency for our tour to begin at 9. We were off before we knew it and with a quick pitstop on the way out to fix our punctured tire, Adrian the taxi driver did us proud on the ghastly road to Yacuma National Park. From there we got a boat with our guide Rosauro, a very friendly and knowlegeable Bolivian born Peruvian-Japanese-Brazilian! On the 2 hour trip to the lodge by boat we were already able to see Las Pampas at it's best, spotting pink river dolphins, squirrel monkeys, turtles, a black howler monkey's tail, birds of paradise and many other species of birds. The area is very similar to the Pantanal in Brazil that we visited at the end of February, however, we saw the Pantanal in the dry season, where as Las Pampas are currently in the wet season. Our lodge was literally a wooden house on stilts with some beds in it and we were introduced to Federico and Peter, the lodge's caiman, as soon as we arrived . That night we watched the sunset from a little bar along the river and then went in search of caiman before returning for a fantastic dinner cooked by Irma the chef.The following morning we got up to watch the sunrise from a point along the river about half an hour from the lodge, returning for a quick breakfast before going in search of snakes. We were unsuccessful in the first place we went to as there were other groups being noisy, but we moved on to another spot to look, where we found a few vertebrae of several small snakes. There were other groups around but ol' Rosauro was clearly in the know so we followed him and before long he'd spotted an anaconda under a tree trunk! It was around 1.5m long and though we didn't see the whole thing out of the water at once it was very impressive (Rosauro didn't agree with man-handling any of the animals just for the benefit of the tourists, which all of us were quick pleased about as we heard stories of guides mistreating them). That afternoon we went swimming with pink river dolphins and also spotted capuchin monkeys, red howler monkeys and many other animals, mainly a huge amount of birds. After another fantastic dinner we crawled into our comfy beds, but it started raining at about midnight and got unbearably cold! We dragged ourselves out of bed the following morning all feeling very tired and went pirhana fishing, though the only one to catch anything was Rosauro and it was too small so we threw it back! It was all good fun though and we were all glad that the rain came on the day we were leaving rather than the main day! WAfter an early lunch we travelled up the river where Adrian met us to take us back to Rurrenabaque.

We checked into a little hostel for the night and ended up going to the Monkey Bar, a rather trendy cocktail bar and what can only be described as a gringo magnet, where we had some delightful cocktails which certainly went to the head! The following morning we began the awful journey back to La Paz, though fortunately the awful road was done in the night so we didn't have to look out the window! That Sunday consisted of a lazy day in La Paz before a pretty massive night out involving far too many rum and cokes! The following day was very mellow as we prepared to move on to the next spot.

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