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Published: April 25th 2010
I travelled to La Paz on a night bus from Sucre and was astounded to discover that the pictures weren´t lying and it REALLY was a full cama (bed) seat. I didn´t sleep too well at first because of the altitude and windy roads, but in the end I had a good old kip. Actually getting on the bus was a bit of a palaver as unbeknownst to me, you needed a ticket to get on to the platform, and once I made it there, I discovered that I was supposed to leave my luggage at the ticket office upstairs. With five minutes to go until departure I raced up the stairs as fast as I could go with my rucksack, waited stroppily while a local pushed in front of me, deposited my bag, collected my luggage ticket, and ran down again, just before the bus left. I was not at all convinced that my bag was travelling with us, but it turned out it had made it in the end. A lovely girl called Jenny had helped me in my hour of fret and when we arrived in La Paz on the Saturday morning we went together to a nearby
hostel called Adventure Brew where my pals Robyn and Cam were staying.
In reception I bumped into a couple of girls from my hostel in Mendoza and a friend of theirs, who put me off doing what I had been planning on doing (mountain biking and boating from Sorata to Rurrenabaque) because he said you had to have a lot of mountain biking experience. (I´ve since read that you don´t - who knows?) Anyway, it was because of this that I decided to join Robyn and Cam and Jenny in flying to Rurre on the Monday and booking a Pampas tour for the Tuesday. (We booked with Indigena and it was really good; I would recommend it). All the tourist agencies and tourist shops are on two streets near San Francisco church and the Witches Market, where you can buy llama foetuses to bury under your door for good luck. Or something. Jenny and I wandered around for a while, looking for hats and long-sleeved white tops for the jungle (mosquitos don´t like white. I haven´t investigated why yet) and then visited the church of San Francisco. At the front of it is a large market and a man
there told us that the Spanish had built the church but had got local workers to do the job, so the plans were changed somewhat. You can see on the front a statue of St Francis surrounded by designs in the local style. You can see someone giving birth if you look closely. Inside, we asked if there was a guide and were told "No. Wait, yes, there is, but it´s in Spanish - is that OK?" Jenny and I were feeling fairly confident about our Spanish, and clearly so were the other two pairs of gringos waiting with us, so we said a bold "Yes". We were directed down a corridor to another room. When we met our guide, Jenny and I couldn´t look at each other for fear of cracking up at our prior confidence. The guide had some sort of muscular disorder which meant that some of the words he said were distorted out of all recognition. A lot of the sentences ended with "...diez y ocho. Diez y ocho." I never worked out what he was referring to. Of course it´s not impossible to understand someone who has this sort of condition - if you´re proficient
in the language being used. The two other pairs of gringos made excuses and left after some time but Jenny and I got the whole tour. Our guide was charming and it was a shame we couldn´t understand everything, but we got the gist.
The next day, we wanted to visit the museum about the Bolivia and Chile´s War of the Pacific but it was closed for renovation so we went to one of the other Calle Jaen museums. It contained a small amount about it the Pacific situation. Basically, without any coast, Bolivia is left in a crappy position. We followed an English-speaking tour guide around for a bit and she told us that there´s a chance there may be another war as Bolivia is wanting to charge Chile for use of a river which originates in Bolivia and is vital to Chile for irrigation. Bolivia can´t export anything: instead it has to sell its wares to Chile or Peru, and they get to have the lucrative export business. The upstairs of this museum was less informative - there were cases upon cases of paper maché models which I think were showing the history of La Paz but
La Paz & Pampas (11)
That´ll be St Francis on the right and the person giving birth on the left.I can´t be sure.
After lunch, Jenny, Cam, Robyn and I went to a football match. I know, I went to a football match. Whatever next, chickens with lips? It was organised by the hostel and we got Bolivar scarves as part of the deal. It was a match between them and another La Paz team, The Strongest (don´t ask me why they´ve got an English name). At first, when we got on the bus with some English idiots who were shouting footie chants, I was really hating it. Once the game began, though, I enjoyed it. In the stand next to ours were some drummers and trumpeters and they weren´t making a bad noise. Our team, Bolivar, were supposed to be really good but the other team scored first and it was a draw in the end.
The next morning, we ran around getting the last few things for our Pampas adventure and I also bought welly boots for some volunteering work I had decided to do near Rurre afterwards. We caught a tiny plane - I think it had 17 seats and you could see into the cockpit the entire time - for our 40 minute
journey to the jungle. The runway was literally a field and we got there just before it rained, thereby avoiding a detour to a different airport. The change in landscape was remarkable. La Paz is all high and mountainy and dry, whereas Rurre is low, humid, warm, and green. It does have hills but they´re covered with lush dark green foliage. The feel of the place is different too: La Paz is super busy and full of people and taxis rushing about, and Rurre is super laidback and the taxis are motorbikes. It felt like there should be a beach nearby and reminded me a bit of Thailand.
That evening, the four of us made use of our free cocktail voucher that we´d been given at the airport check-in and went to Moskitto bar. I think we were all a bit overexcited, as you might be able to tell from the photos. The cocktails were delicious, and it´s much easier to drink when you´re not at altitude. Plus it was happy hour until 9pm and we had to make use of that, didn´t we.
The next day we met Sarah and Peter (Salt Flats and Sucre buddies) at
the Indigena offices and piled into a jeep. I didn´t know what to expect from the trip and I really hoped it wasn´t a lot of jeep journey. It was so uncomfortable and the driver wasn´t nearly so good as our Salt Flats driver. However, after 3 hours, a natural toilet stop and some lunch, it was over. We loaded up our dug out boat and spent the next 3 hours wending up the river towards our lodgings. Our guide, Antonio, was incredibly quick-sighted and pointed out all the birds and animals of the pampas that he spotted along the way. We saw some birds that I´m pretty sure he said were called Stinky birds, some cormorants, hawks and eagles, some monkeys of capuchin, howler and squirrel varieties, something that he called a rat but was as a big as a dog, pink river dolphins and turtles. After unloading at the Indigena lodge, we set off again to the nearby Sunset bar to watch er...the sunset, and have a beer. As usual, I had the problem where I couldn´t stop it foaming. That evening, we went out in the boat again, in the dark, covered in insect repellent and wearing
our long-sleeved tops, hunting for alligators. Their eyes shine red in the light, and we saw plenty, including some baby ones.
The next day we went for an unsuccessful anaconda walk. We walked through marshes getting wet (most of the boots were leaky) and smelly and didn´t find any anacondas. I don´t think any of us were disappointed about this apart from Antonio. At one point, he was getting desperate and advised us all to spread out so that we were standing a metre or two apart and walk forward. And what would we have done had we seen an anaconda? Shortly after starting out, we were all in a bunch again. Robyn and Cam were fighting against everything they´d been taught in Australia about not walking through long grass looking for snakes, and the rest of us were just scared stiff! Poor Sarah had been bitten several times by some nasty wasps and was rather shaken, so I think we were glad to get back to the boat. After lunch, we had the much more pleasant activity of swimming with the river dolphins. We went to a place where the river was wide and jumped in. The water
was coke-coloured and kind of smelly. A couple of dolphins came to swim with us but most of them were deeper in the pampas. That evening, we went to the Dolphin bar to watch the sunset over the water and drink more beer. Sarah´s not a massive fan of beer so she bought a BOTTLE of rum for 35 Bolivianos - three pounds fifty! It was surprisingly smooth, so of course more was bought and a drinking game was played after supper. Just before we left the Dolphin place, we were shown a tarantula eating a cockroach. It didn´t seem to mind at all that there were 20 people looking at it, shinging torches on it and taking pictures, and it just carried on munching. I almost liked it.
The next morning, most of us got up early to go for a silent boat ride and listen to the dawn noises. The howler monkeys are most aptly named. Piranha fishing followed breakfast and it was indeed a very suitable activity for hungover heads. Antonio was the only one to catch any and he threw them back after showing them to us. Back at the ranch, a local alligator had
come up onto the shore by our lodge and was posing for pictures. He looked rather beaten up, but he was pretty cool. That was the end of our pampas tour and we headed back to Rurre. It was super hot on the way back in the boat and my legs got burnt. It looked like I was wearing red stockings.
The next day, Robyn, Cam, Peter, Sarah and Jen all left for La Paz, while I sorted myself out for my next adventure - volunteering in construction at an animal park - Jacj Cuisi - about an hour away.
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Jess
non-member comment
good times
you look like you're having such a ball! i'm so pleased for you!!! what a lush picture of the croc poking his head out of the water, maybe you've found a new career! x x x x x