Advertisement
Published: February 9th 2011
The Black Market in La Paz
Everything you wanted to buy, knockoff clothes, electronics, shoes, backpacks... but I´ll tell you I kept both hands on my daypack at all times!Well we had a day to fool around in La Paz before our flight to Rurrenabaque, so Amy elected to go for a hike and returned with a sprained ankle and a big grin. It was apparently a very challenging hike, but she rocked it. I spent the day wandering around the Black Market, browsing llama fetuses in the witches market, buying some gifts, exchanging books and generally exploring the City. I also had an incredible steak for lunch!
The next morning we jumped on our flight down into the Amazon basin. We heard that the Bolivian Amazon is the most untouched part of the entire jungle, so we figured we would have a great time. We dropped off our gear at a hostel, and went out in the intense humidity to track down one of the tour operators we had read about. We found this one great tour operator called Madidi Travel (highly, highly recommended!). They own a piece of the jungle and preserve it as a wildlife refuge and they built one small lodge and a few cabins on a lake. The background story is absolutely incredible about the park just outside the reserve. It is a long
one, but worth listening to me tell it sometime when I get back.
Anyways, we arranged to go out to the reserve the next day. Madidi National Park has a number of different forest types, we chose to visit the jungle, but there are also Pampas tours which go through an area kind of like grassland/rivers. They are the most popular, but a lot of the tour operators that run tours there promise tourists they will see animals, but obviously animals do their own thing and do not necessarily show up. So to make sure their guests are happy they bait the animals and trap them or keep snakes in bags to show tourists. Also a lot of the boats that travel through here hurt the pink river dolphins and many of them are missing fins and flippers as a result. The bottom line is we were very happy to pick the operator we did and have such an amazing time in the jungle whiel minimizing the impact on the animals.
We saw several different species of monkeys, birds, lizards, snakes (Amy saw a large boa constrictor one morning!), we went on hikes and saw cocoa trees, papaya
Sign to Vancouver in Rurrenabaque
I do not think the km´s are quite right. Any comments? trees, banana trees and all kinds of other amazing plants. We also saw leaf cutter ants, tarantulas (I avoided looking whenever the guide found one), we saw huge crickets, cicadas, we went fishing for piranas and caught some along with some catfish and even a freshwater stingray. There were caiman in the lake right outside the lodge and while we did not see any close up, when you went down there at night and shone your light on the lake you could see tons of their beady little eyes popping up above the water.
It was incredible and everything we wanted and hoped for. What we could have hoped for less of was the mosquitos. Being the rainy season we saw all kinds of things that are not around during the dry season, but as a result we were absolutely accosted by mosquitos. Now I do not say this lightly, I think it far surpasses anything we have anywhere in Canada (and yes, that includes Manitoba). You had to keep moving so that the cloud of mosquitos following you would stay behind, if not they caught up and would bite you through shirts, jackets, pants, one girl wore jeans
and they even got through those. Bug spray was almost useless because it was so hot under all the clothes with the intense humidity that it all just sweated off. Needless to say we went out on the lake a lot because the wind kept them away out there!
Needless to say it was an amazing few days in the jungle and all nations (Canada, Scotland, England, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Bolivia...) were present for the bottles of wine, night hikes, beers, scrabble matches and poker. We had all locally grown food, either from the jungle or from neighbouring communities along the river. I even ate beets and they were awesome! One of the amazing volunteers who works with Madidi Travel was up there cooking for the vegetarians (yay Laura!) and is from the Sunshine Coast, small world. It was a great time. We then jumped on the boat for a two hour ride back up the river to Rurrenabaque where we all showered and then Laura, Amy and I went for a wonderful dinner and then had beers in the hammock until late. This morning Amy and I jumped on our plane back to La Paz, sayign goodbye
Bull riding
The festival we saw the start of in Copacabana was on its last day when we arrived in Rurre. On the last day people ride bulls in a big ring, as people get more and more drunk they taunt the bulls while other people ride them, and they leave the bull in the ring after the guy falls off so other people can try and jump on. Interesting piece of Bolivian culture to say the least. to one of the best parts of this trip so far (in my opinion). We arrived in La Paz to book our bus down to Uyuni and our tour of the Salt Lakes down there where we will be for the next 3 or 4 days.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.223s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.1519s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
rich
non-member comment
Rurrenabaque to Vancouver
The distance on the sign seems to be fairly close! Of course this is as the bird flies... I used a ruler on my screen and Google Maps, so my accuracy may not be that good, but it seemed to be within 300km. It looks like an amazing time! I'd love to hear all about it!