Trinidad to Santa Cruz and Amboro National Park

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8th November 2005

We left Rurrenabaque and again the airline (Amazonas) had delayed the plane. After discussions with a few other people it turns out that the airline cancel flights themselves and wait for the last flight to fill up so our lost day in the airport and in Rurrenabaque was just for their gain which if they had told us we could have planed something else instead of wasting 2 days.

Anyway thats the moan over and done with, we flew to Trinidad which is a bit off the Gringo trail hoping to catch a boat trip up the Rio Mamore one of the highlights of the region (according to Lonley Planet) where untouched rainforest have an abundance of wildlife. When we got there we headed straight for the travel agents that run this trip to find the boat that used to run the trip in their front yard totally stripped down and being renovated as an ornament. However they had an alternative that was about ten times more expensive, so we decided to head off and look for another agency that runs canoe trips up the same river only to find it had been shut down. We continued to look for more tour operators but each one of them had either moved or shut up shop for good. It became apparent that Trinidad had tried it´s hand at tourism but probably due to fierce competion from Rurrenabaque which already had the facilities in place plus Trinidad being much less accesible from La Paz than Rurre, tourism didn´t take off as they had hoped, so after much walking around we decided to book a flight (not on Amazonas) to Santa Cruz where we are hoping to get a trip into Noel Kempff and Amboro National Parks.

During our short stay in Trinidad we did spot something that on our travels we have taken a four hour bus diversion in Venezuela only to find they were not there and spent hours searching tree tops in the jungle only to see something that resembled a fury branch - a sloth. We were walking in the busy Plaza in Trinidad which is constantly orbited by busy traffic when Sue spotted some weird looking creature (which I thought was a chicken with it´s head stuck down the drain) crawling along the ground, on a second take we found it was a sloth, the plaza has about five of them that wander around according to a rather friendly local policeman. The locals just ignore them as they are about as common to them as pigeons are to us. This one though may have been a little hard to ignore for one moped rider as it had took refuge under his bike and as they don't particulary move very often might have been there for a while. We also had the best steak I've ever had here it cost about four quid for both of us and was a whole fillet which must have been about 1.5kg in weight. It was so good we went back the next night!

10th November 2005, Santa Cruz

We took an early flight from Trinidad to Santa Cruz on a rather cool little jet plane. It looked like the type you would have as a private jet. It had about 20 leather comfy seats all of which were window seats and a wooden veneer interior, and it was on time!

Santa Cruz is a large modern city with a tropical climate - hot and humid. Until as recently as ten years ago the city was surrounded by dense forest but that has since been cut down and replaced with vast stretches of farm land and cattle ranches. The department of Santa Cruz is now the agricultural capital of Bolivia. The city also has wealth from its oil and natural gas reserves.

We looked around the budget places but none of them had private bathrooms and were not really that cheap therefore we booked into a rather nice place which was a treat at $25 for the room for the night. Although it had cable TV, air con, hot water, a fridge and our own little lounge with comfy chairs, and breakfast was included too. We did not get upto too much on our first day in Santa Cruz other than trying to sort out a tour to Noel Kempff national park and check out the plaza which was rather grand with marble seats and bouil in chess tables in marble.

That evening there was a big South American Cup football game between Boca Juniors and International. But since I couldnt drink due to me having tablets for the fungal infection (Hongos) I have behind all my finger nails I didnt fancy a night sat in the pub watching footie without a beer. Therefore thanks to our treat of a room we put some beers in the fridge for Andy and we settled in for a night with Andy watching the footie and me chilling reading a travel guide. Just like being back at home!

We spent the next day still trying to organise the tour to Noel Kempff. We have to wait for a group to form as you need a private charter plane which is expensive so we need other people to share with. We were told that there was a group forming to go to the Park at the weekend so we had to see if they would accept us to go with them. We spent the rest of the day visiting the Noel Kempff Natural History museum with was basically a load of stuffed animals and birds and lots of insects and butterflies pined to boards. In the evening we went to the cinema to watch the Legend of Zorro as it was in English with Spanish subtitles and gorged on popcorn as it was only 60p for an extra large bucket!

12th November 2005 - Buena Vista

As we had to wait a few days to find out if we were on a tour to Noel Kempff we decided to go to a little town called Buena Vista about 100km Northwest from the town of Santa Cruz. The town is at the gateway to the Amboro National Park. The town also had a Jesuit mission which was founded in 1694 and therefore this little town has a rather grand church. We spent our first day checking out what there was to do and most of the tours were three days and two nights and with us waiting to hear about Noel Kempff which was going to be expensive we decided to find things to entertain ourselves!

The next day we took the Lonely Planet Guides recomended one hour walk from town to the local swimming hole at El Cairo. Two hours later after a walk though farmland scenecery which then turned into dense jungle we arrived at a bend in the road from where we could see the river. We went to the edge fo the river and Andy went for a swim. There was a local family swimming a little further up the river and the four children swam over to try and chat to us and to tell us that they had a BBQ going and that their father invited us to share some with them. So not wanting to be rude we went up the river and joined them. The river was beautiful a wide shallow river at the moment as there is not too much rain with sandy banks surrounded by jungle.

After a cool off in the river and the BBQ we headed back up into the town and on the way back passed the local football "stadium" and there was what seemed to be a football competition on with at least 4 different teams. As it was only 7p to get in to watch them and there were lots of shady trees around to sit under we went in to watch for a while. They could have done with giving the grass a good mow before the game though! One group of supporters at the other side of the field to us kept getting a bit excited and fireing bullets into the air (I doubt they would have been blanks around here!)

That evening we went out for some food and found that all the restaurants were closed with it being a sunday other than one place where you could have chicken, chips and rice, or chicken chips and rice and was playing some really bad 80's fighting movie. So we had chicken chips and rice and a coca cola each and it came to less than a pound for the both of us.

In Bolivia they seem to just love 80's pop music and Karaoke. Two nights in a row we walked down a back street in Buena Vista and there were these two men sat outside a house with a Karaoke system set up just singing away rather loudly. Bizarre.

The next day we decided to go to a private Refugio about 3km from Buena Vista. A family bought a piece of forest bordering on Amboro National Park to keep it as a private reserve. However to try and bring a little income in to make it self sufficient they have built a small 'resort' which comprises of about five bungalows and restaurant type area and a swimming pool. We got a bargain of $20 for the both of us and the bungalow we got was great. That afternoon after a swim in the pool we decided to take a guided walk into the grounds of the refugio. However it seems they havent had many visitors wanting the guided walks recently and as such the path markers had been hiden by fallen trees and we found ourselves lost in dense forest and completely disorientated. After a while we eventually found a red marker and our way back to the bungalows. Therefore we decided not to go on the longer walk which we had planned for tommorrow!

The next day instead of the walk we went on the Canopy ride. This was a 600m four stage cable (death slide) ride. The ride was about 25m from the ground and went throught he canopy of the forest. It was great, although I think andy would have liked a little more speed! Again it looked like there hadnt been many visitors recently and the instructor went down first with a machette and cleared any overgrown branches. At the end of the ride we abseiled down to the forest floor. That evening we discovered that Andy and I both had some more little "friends", we had about ten ticks between us!

It did seem odd that this place with so much to offer was so empty as Andy and I were the only visitors.

16th November 2005 - Buena Vista to Santa Cruz

We had a lazy morning hanging around our cabin at the refugio. The weather was cooler and overcast and therefore the mosquitos were out in force. Whilest havinbg breakfast I got about fifteen bites (on my bum again!) and Andy got about twenty on his back through our clothes so we thought it best not to be outside too much.

I looked out of the bedroom window of our cabin and there was a bird of prey of somesort right in front of the window eating its catch, we could also see some amazing catapillars each about 15cm long. So we decided to coat ourselves in insect repelent and go out for a last wander around the refugio.

That afternoon we returned to Buena Vista and got a shared taxi to Santa Cruz. We were halfway between Buena Vista and Montero when the traffic came to a standstill and there was a line of lorries parked on the road. This was our first experience of a road block in Bolivia. We were quite lucky as the taxi drove as far upto the blockade as he could and a local lady in the taxi with us told us to follow her. We got out of the taxi and walked around the road block, which seemed to be a load of students having a picnic in the middle of the road. At the otherside fo the blockade we got into another shared taxi and went to the town of Montero and then changed into yet another shared taxi to Santa Cruz. It seems that the blocks were designed to cause problems to commercial traffic as there must have been a good two hundred lorries stuck by the road block but taxi and moto traffic got around the blockades as we did.

Once in Santa Cruz we wnet to the tour company and found out that the group of twelve people are nolonger going to Noel Kempff park as there is not enough rain at the moment for the falls to look impressive and we have to wait another day to see if another group of two people are going to go with us. Unfortunately the next day didnt bring good news on the Noel kempff trip and instead of going to the National Park the next day we were going to Sucre and moving on. We had already spent too much time waiting to get a group together and we couldnt afford anymore time. Especially as we realised we got our next flight date wrong and we are flying four days earlier than we thought from Buenos Aires, we therefore needed to get moving out of Bolivia.

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Photos

Local Football
Not quite the Bocca Jnrs game I was hoping to catch but with passionate fans who set of gun shots during the match.

At the top
over looking Amboro National Park

Road Block
Our 1st experiance of a road block, which we just walked striaght across

A Sloth
About to go for a ride on his moped!

The best steak ever!!
and all for 2 quid per person, I love Bolivia!!!

Comments

[ronna]

nail fungus and ticks
boy oh boy - the more i read the more i realise i'm a city dweller through and through. but.... nonetheless every detail sounds like such an adventure - better luck with your trips and flights, take care luv r.