An Emmerous Adventure

We didn´t actually fight, or even see any pirates, but i thought i´d try to get you hyped up for this next excellent episode.

I flew from La Paz to Rurre on a tiny little plane full of a massive tour group of Israelis who were all over 50 except for one guy who would have been about my age. He wore an inflatable pillow around his neck on and off the plane. Upon arriving in some airport not in Rurre, i had to get into Rurre. I ended up riding in the back of a station wagon which was an interesting and uncomfortable experience.

Got into Rurre, found a place to stay and signed up for a tour beginning the next morning.
Even though i thought (and was told) I was in a single room, another girl was put in there too. By happy chance, Hanne from Denmark was going on the same tour as me the next morning.

In the morning we ventured out in Rurre and found some Banana bread for breakfast at a stall run by a fanatical christian man with a sign saying ´the Davinci code is all lies´on his cart. It was the first banana bread i have seen in south america.

The tour began with a 3 hour ride over the worst road in the world (there are many of these in Bolivia) in a minibus ill-equipped for the task. We had a tour group of 9, 3 Danish, 3 Japanese, 2 Bolivians and me. There were also two other groups going with that company, one of 4 British people on their gap year travels and an Israeli group.
Eventually we arrived at the river…

We saw so many alligators it was crazy.

We also saw giant ugly rat guinea pigs

and monkeys which we fed with bananas

We were staying at the Sunset Bar where there were hammocks, beer and snacks in plentiful supply.
We didn´t really do anything for the rest of the day, just settled in, but i did learn an Israeli card game called Yanif!

The next day we got up in the morning and went looking for snakes. This seemed very counterintuitive to me and many others as it seems to make more sense to avoid snakes.

We walked though mud and water and swamp for hours, got stung by hornets, i lost my bracelet hat supposedly gave me travel luck that I got in Byron, but we did find an anaconda.

I was one of the first to hold the snake, but after just a little while of seeing everyone hold it, I started to feel very sorry for the snake and I think I wouldn´t choose to hold it if i had another chance.
We returned to camp for lunch then went out Piranah (?) fishing in the afternoon. I didn´t catch any which i was not unhappy about, and our group as a whole didn´t do that well.

But it was nice to just sit there on the river and chill out. I later spoke to Patrick and Owain who were on a tour at the same time, but a different one because they booked in La Paz, and they both caught a few, according to Patrick fishing is not about sitting and relaxing, but rather standing in the boat battling the fish with your wit and skill. Every now and again I saw them on the river or when they came to the bar to get beer.

That evening we ate the Piranahs for dinner along with other things. Myself and two of the Danish girls (not Hanne) chilled out with some of the Israelis around a campfire and the Bolivians revealed a bottle of rum they had bought so we had stiff Danish style rum and cokes. The Israelis tried to teach me some hebrew and one phrase in arabic. Unfortunatly, the one phrase they knew in Arabic and the one they tried to teach me was ´stop or i´ll shoot´. Basically I avoided talking politics for the entire time. There´s so many young Israelis travelling around in South America after the Army that there´s a joke that to travel in South America you need to know Spanish and Hebrew.

Also that night me went out looking at Alligator eyes that feflect the light from torches. Owain and Patrick later told me a story about their drunken guide who fell into the water with a beer and emerged seconds later with the beer still in his hand and an alligator in the other.

On the morning of out thrid and last day we went swimming with pink river dolphins (that weren´t actually pink but rather grey).

I didn´t because i´ve still got some scabs from by bike riding accident and i got nervous about the Piranahs smelling the blood and eating me, which was probably an unfouded fear, but better safe than eaten. But I chilled on the boat and it was fantastic. In the afternoon on the way back along the river to Rurre I almost fell asleep in the boat lying across one of the slates, it was amazing.

We had an equally uncomfortable bus ride back. We picked up a few passengers, including a woman and her two kids who had a bird that would sit on your finger and try to bite you.

Back in Rurre in got a bus ticket for the next day, chatted to some folks and headed to the Moskkito bar where everyone from the tour was as well as Owain and Patrick and their tour. There was lots of fun had, including some excellent and terrible cocktails, impressive card tricks by Patrick (that I have seen many times) and unimpressive ones by Owain and myself and some mind reading.

Took the bus back to La Paz the next day (15 hours of unsealed road but beautiful country). I made friends with a couple of little kids even though I couldn´t understand most of their Spanish. When they asked where I was from and I said Australia they had never heard of it.

So now I´m back in La Paz, attempting to get a visa for Brazil which is a whole other story that can come later.

Tags: pampas, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.