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Published: August 7th 2007
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Most people associate the Amazon with Brazil, but a good 60% or so of Bolivia is in the Amazon basin. A trip to the jungle was at the top of Ben´s list (he, secretly fancying himself a bit of a tarzan - grrr).
The overnight bus to La Paz was interesting of itself. At some ungodly hour, the bus stopped and a whole bunch of locals proceeded to jump on with their blankets and luggage. Ben had a sack of quinoa in his ear and was whacked over the back of the head by a baby. The other Bolivians on the bus were having none of this and a shouting match ensued, resulting in everyone retreating off again. A number stacked themselves up in the drivers compartment for the rest of the journey. (This was probably a good thing as it kept the driver awake).
From La Paz, we took a flight to Rurrenabaque, a small town on the banks of the Beni river, a tributory of the amazon.
Rurre has a tiny grass airstrip (complete with dudes walking along its edges grazing their animals). If it rains, you don´t fly, so we were delayed by a day.
We were bumped off onto an Aero Militar plane, complete with parachutes and a rather alarming smell of avgas. The plane had a slightly off-balance shudder and it strained to take off in the thin air of La Paz. In fact, we hardly ascended at all, and once we had cleared the Cordillera Real, we started dropping down to Rurre.
We spent four days at a lodge run by a Tacana community called San Miguel de Bala. Our guide, Juan, was quite the jungle expert and we were treated to lessons on how to set traps, and introduced to the plants and their medicinal uses. Every 5 paces, he would stop and listen to some sound or other that we could not make out. ¨Oh, that´s a group of lion monkeys - there are about 15 headed this way¨. Sure enough, along they would come.
Ben´s tarzan dreams were shattered when Juan told us to basically not touch any trees. They might have spines, poison, poisonous spines or poisonous insects. He also told us to tuck our socks into our pants. The fashion crime was much less painful than the bite of a thumb size ant.
We
were introduced to the pregnant tree (so-called because of its bulge near the base), the walking tree (that sticks out new roots if it wants to move towards more sunlight), and the suicide tree (a nasty beast with spines that guarantee hideous infection and often lead to death). Juan also showed us a vine that, if rubbed on the skin, can make someone fancy you. Ben stuffed a bunch of leaves in his pocket when he thought I wasn´t looking.
Surprisingly, there wasn´t much in the way of creepy crawlies. There was a bit of a cold snap passing through the area, so most of the bugs were not about. We did see a rather sleepy tarantula. Ben leapt into the air and squealed like a girl.
We also spent some time in the Madidi national park. This is an enormous and ecologically diverse area. Recently, a whole new species of monkey was discovered. Unfortunately, there are only 17 rangers for almost 2 million hectares of park, so they struggle to deal with the illegal hunting and logging that goes on. The poor rangers only get paid about once every 3 months, so you could imagine it wouldn´t
Waaaa!
One furry tarantula. There is a 50 centavo coin near the end of the stick. Yes, he is missing a leg. be hard to convince them to turn a blind eye to a raft of amazonian hardwood floating down the river and out to the masses for production. Some of it even makes its way to New Zealand.
The local tourist guides can be a bit evil too. We turned up to a site under a cliff, hoping to see some Macaws. They had all flown away. You would too if someone dropped rocks, logs and even sticks of dynamite down onto your house (all this so the tourists can take a pretty picture).
We did a few jungle missions - one up to a lovely swimming hole and another down a random canyon, slippery and narrow and full of bats. I had the unfortunate experience of going into the water up to my thighs, the boys having kindly removed the foothold that had kept their gumboots dry.
The rest of the time we spent hanging out in the community - they were quite happy to let us gringos pound their rice and crush the sugar cane. They cracked up laughing when Ben got a blister after about 5 minutes. A ridiculous amount of time was also spent
Walking tree
Heading towards the right. sampling the local food and then lying in the hammocks recovering from the effort.
I had a disaster and left my only book behind in Rurre. I now have no book to swap. : (
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