Since last time, like always, a lot has happened in the last month. I will start with the embarrasing yet tragic story of breaking my little finger, which happened the evening before leaving to rurrenabaque. At the birthday party of lena - one of the volunteers, along with paul, a really cool german volunteer form another organisation vamos juntos, we were knocking on the door for lukas, generally being a bit silly, when I knocked a little too enthusiastically and managed to slam my little finger against the door. This was followed by a considerable amount of pain in my little pinky and I saw that the knuckle was now a few centimetres lower than it should be. I went to hospital arco iris (hospital run by the foundation) and they took a few impressive X - rays and gave me a temporary cast, and said it should be OK for a week and that they would treat it when I got back - after a week in the rainforest that cast was pretty grim!
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| Jungle Trek |
We set off rearing to go on what was to be an 18 hour coach ride, however, this also proved to be exciting as for a good 12 hours of this journey I was sitting next to the window looking out at the shear drop that was about 30 cm away form where I sat. This was even more exhilarating when we met oncoming traffic on the windy, in many places one vehicle wide, dirt track that clings to the edge of the mountains, and the driver had to reverse back to a passing place. So after a few stops - also from police drug patrols - along our journey through the jungas we arrived at our destination in the Amazon Basin. We then went on a 2 hour boat ride with others who joined our tour group - two french guys and some funny Ozzies, to the jungle lodge - it's crazy how vast the jungle is and then even more crazy to think how much of it gets cut down every year.... The temperature was also sweltering, and we went on our first jungle trek with our Guide, who was a cross between a mini Rambo and Tarzan and probably wrestles jaguars on a regular basis. He knew soo much about every plant, animal, insect.. and after teking for 2 hours still found our way back to the camp. However, this is not always the case as he explained to us that one guide lost a goup of girls for 3 or 4 days until they were found! On these trips, and also a night trip we saw monkeys, wild pigs, lots of spiders - tarantulas , parrots, and soo many different types of amazing plants.
After 2 nights there we returned to rurrenabaque and set off on our next tip to the Pampas - like marshlands. This time we crammed into a landrover for a few hours and then another boat journey for an hour or soo. However, we were not ready for the swarms of mosquitoes that attacked us constantly - i've never had soo many bites in my life, but we saw hundreds of caimans (small crocodiles that aren't actually that small!), massive guinea pig things, lots of fruity birds, turtles and soo much more widlife.. We spent another 2 nights there, one day we went anaconda hunting (no anacondas were hurt in these outings) and found a 'small' to metre long baby - apparantly they can grow to 11m and eat whole cows - i'm not sure how much the guide was exaggerating this but I was kind of scared about getting back into our relatively cow sized boat after hearing this. On the other day we went piranha fishing - and even with a broken hand I managed to catch the most! - well, i caught two, which we then ate for supper - that really is sustainable tourism! :s And also some of the others went swimming with these pink rive dolphins - well we occasionally saw one pop up. We spent the last two days chilling in rurenabaque, one day israeli holiday paradise resort - i havn't got a clue why there are soo many israelis in the middle of the bolivian jungle?! And then returned with TAM airlines - Transporte Aero Militar, the return flight took a whole 30 mins to cover what we did in our bus in 18. The holiday was really good, with lots of laughs and amazing experiences! But hey, i hope you're enjoying the cold english winter - although it doesn't feel anything like the christmas season here. Take Care Tim :)
Oh Yeah today is Christmas!! Feliz Navidad!!!!!!!!
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| A slightly unnerved Su with an Anaconda |
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