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'Infested', to me, always seemed a certainty to be an exagerration when describing waters home to crocodiles. Rats can infest a sewer or lice a head of hair, but how can something as large as a crocodile truly infest something? I thought- surely each crocodile- in my child's knowledge of zoology ranking alongside a lion or a tiger- needs a similarly large area? . That was until I visited the Pampas here in Bolivia. We took a three day tour which mostly revolves around going up and down the river spotting wildlife. Spotting implies some sort of difficulty, which there wasn't. Every 50m will be about 3 or 4 crocodiles (or alligators I never know them apart) basking in the sun and they really do look like logs. That was something I also used to think- that anything that actually thought they looked like logs basically deserved to be eaten, but they really do, or at least logs strongly resemble them, it must be said up close it's usually pretty obvious.
Crocodiles were not the only thing, we saw capybara (like metre-long guinea-pigs), endless turtles, loads of birds, including these evil pheasant things, hawks, parrots and best of all, monkeys,
which came onto the boat looking for food. This was awesome, their tiny hands and huge tails wrapping themselves around the seats for balance. We did go for a walk looking for anacondas in an unswampishly dry swamp but it must have been a bad day for them as we found four dead ones and not so much as a hiss of anything living.
After three days in the Pampas wetlands I went on a two day tour of the jungle in which, though I saw less, I learned more and felt a little more ecologically responsible. On the Pampas the lodges are all prefixed with 'eco' but this does nothing to counter the fact that guides, though not ours, routinely feed, pick up and play with animals for the benefit of tourists, which not only disturbs them, but in the case of reptiles can kill them due to the DEET in our insect repellant. The guide in the jungle, having studied biology at University was extremely knowledgable and, not even in my eco-guiltiest state of mind can I think of anything we did, bar the lodge's very existence (a tiny effect in the scale of Madidi National Park),
that would have been harmful.
The most beautiful part was visiting a cliff where scarlet macaws nest. It is possible though not permitted to climb it but we kept a respectful distance and just observed. They were beautiful, so colourful and very often flying, wings almost touching, in their mating pairs, a partnership which lasts all of their long lives. We saw mainly tiny things, like ants and spiders and little snakes, though it is these miniature creatures you have to worry about- you'd be practically privileged to be eaten by a jaguar. The only mammals we saw were a stampeding herd of about 30 pigs, at about 5 metres distance- quite a sight I can assure you. The ants are genuinely terrifying- the bull ant is about as long as the head of a teaspoon and nicknamed the '24 hours ant' as that is the length of time you will be in agony from its bite.
The jungle is incredible. It's evolution gone totally mad, our own forests seem cruelly deprived of investment in light, water and heat in comparison. In this rich environment every avenue has been fully explored, every idea heard. Trees with thorns; parasitic
trees; plants which grow high up and gather leaves to make their own compost; blood red roots which are less visible to colour blind termites. Every tree has a type of bee to pollinate it, some trees harbour insects which clear the ground around and refrain from eating it in exchange for shelter. Huge plants, tiny ones, everything in between. Having such a knowledgable guide (Eric from Mashaquipe tours if anyone's visiting) really brought it to life, in all it's glory.
Prior to Rurrenabaque (the base town for these trips) I'd mainly been in La Paz, which was fun. I'd expected to pretty much be mugged on arrival- according to the guidebooks it's akin to having your passport stamped at a border- but this did not happen and I've been fine. I attempted to climb Huayna Potosi, the world's easiest (though by no means easy) 6000m mountain- this ill-conceived point-proving exercise ended 500m from the summit with both me and my partner nauseous and barely able to breathe. Other than that it's all been roses.
In La Paz many of the women wear the local costume of a 'cholita'. This lends these burly madres a strange, near schoolgirlish
look, with their chequed aprons and plairs, though I doubt the billowing velvety skirts and knitted cardigans would be much of a hit in the playground back home. It's is nice to see a distinct clothing culture so alive and well in the face of fashion globalisation- in Asia virtually everyone wears Western clothes, albeit in an idiosyncratic adaptation of Western fashion. Perhaps 500 years of contact, most of it not too much to the good, with Europeans has dimmed the glamour of European clothing styles. In any case, there is a point to this description. A week or so ago i went to see the cholita wrestling- imagine WWF without the homo-eroticism and with more silliness. There were men (in lycra) as well as stocky middle-aged women, performing obviously staged fights in what probably resembled a pantomime in some kind of David Bowie- Monty Python collaboration. Needless to say it was extremely funny, with many cholitas' petticoats a-flying and slightly disturbing flashes of leopard-print knickers. The crowd threw peel and plastic bottles at the baddies (who, of course, after initially thrashing their opponents, promptly and improbably lost) and cheered the goodies, usually a relatively (and I mean relatively) pretty
cholita. My favourite fight was a doubles game between a cholita, a man dressed as a skeleton, 'the Bolivian Ninja' (who looked like an Egyptian Mummy) and a man clothed entirely in red spandex. You don't get that in Guildford.
We flew to Rurre in a tiny plane that felt like the fifties- it had propellors, 20 seats and we could see the pilots with all their dials and controls, but I'll be using back which is meant to be masochistic even compared to other bus rides (18 hours, 17 of them unsealed roads) but it's a tenth of the price and I didn't book a flight early enough so that's that. I think travellers like these things, it gives us something to whinge about and bond over.
Skiing's off unfortunately, but this does give me an extra week to play with I suppose. I'm still heading for Chile and hopefully the beach in Arica, I've found I miss the sea- I've done mountains for a while, time for some ocean again I feel. Quite a lot of success on the photo front this time so I do hope you enjoy them.
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Jane Doar
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You seem to be having a wonderful time Fergus and your blog always brings a smile to my somewhat jaded end of term face!