It´s a Jungle Out There
I went to the Bolivia jungle area northeast of La Paz with high hopes. I was going to visit Madidi National Park which National Geographic proclaimed as the most bio-diverse place on earth. I had read the horror stories about the twenty hour bus ride from La Paz to Rurrenabaque and decided to fly for about $60 each way. That was the best choice I made over a few days period. The flight from El Alto above La Paz went through the Cordillera Real section of the Andes and actually flew between, not above, two peaks that are about 6000 meters high. If someone is afraid of flying and took a small airplane on this route, they would not make it. All of us seemed to love it. It was a clear day and looking at the glaciers, peaks and green and blue lakes on the sides of the mountains was an amazing albeit short experience. We soon made it to the other side of the Andes which drop quickly down to rainforest at only a few hundred meters in altitude. The rainforest was cloud-enshrouded until we approached Rurrenabaque. We were skimming across the tops of the trees and all I was thinking about is that there better be a runway… soon. Getting off the plane was a shock since I have been at high altitude for weeks where it is dry and cool and we were immediately hit with scorching, humid air. Welcome to the tropics.
I had two three-day tours lined up. The first taking me into the pampas area which is actually outside of Madidi and the second going into the Madidi NP rainforest. I have a few things to write about based on the last ten days so I’ll keep this blog entry just to the tour experience and make a couple of separate blogs about related topics. I found Rurrenabaque to be a boring town whose only existence is to house tourists, take tourists to the park areas and provide food and drink. On the Beni River there is activity such as water taxis to ferry people across the river and into the park as well as some commerce. It reminded me of a couple of places in the Congo except the Congo has no tourism. And, of course, the locals here are dark brown indigenous folks whereas the Congo is purely black natives. I believe Rurrenabaque’s only purpose before the tourism boom of the 90s after Madidi was created was to support logging operations – food, drink and prostitution. So now the loggers have been replaced by tourists and prostitutes by tourism touts of which the prostitutes would be more respectable. The day after landing, nine of us were crammed into a Toyota Land Cruiser (once again) and driven three hours further out into the middle of nowhere before we were loaded into simple half-dugout, half-plank-hull canoe (the local style) powered by a Yamaha (once again) engine. I would like to rant and rave about just how crappy this boat is, but I will save the ranting for later. Needless to say, the boat only contained wood planks to sit on whereas the similar concept in the Congo had comfortable (for the first few hours) lawn chairs. We rode for three hours upstream until we reached our cozy campsite.
I knew something was wrong with the trip because of two things. First, I had paid for an English guide and Bismark knew no English. I could have just gone for the Spanish guide, but an English one was offered in La Paz and I really wanted to learn about the area. More importantly, though, we pulled up to the side of the river to watch some monkeys and Bismark whipped out bananas and started to feed them. This is totally unacceptable to me. No wild animals should be fed. The monkeys, tiny yellow type, climbed onto his arms and were all over us screeching for the bananas – a food I doubt they would ever get in the wild. One of the tourists said of the feeding, “happy monkeys, happy tourists”. I say, “soon to be no monkeys and then no tourists, too”. I witnessed over the next few days these same kinds of monkeys near the river and screeching whenever a boat approached. Apparently, most of the tour companies breech this simple rule of eco-tourism. “Eco-tourism” is a plain joke in Rurrenabaque area as I was learning quickly. Bismark pointed out a few animals and birds on the way and I was just hoping the monkey incident was the last. By the way, I took Fluvial Tours, but I am not so sure any of the other tour companies are any better.
The campsite was a dump. I was learning why the tours were so cheap ($15-30 per person per day). Its one redeeming value is that it sat on a beautiful sweeping curve of the river from which wildlife could easily be viewed and heard. Because there was so much rain this year, the pampas is still underwater and water was everywhere in the campsite. The buildings are raised on stilts and there are raised walkways in between. I had heard about the mosquito problem and it’s quite obvious why it is a problem when the campsite is on top of a swamp. Sure enough, the problem was as bad as I have ever seen it. I take it very seriously wearing long clothes treated with premethrin as well as using DEET. Other people take it less seriously and they certainly paid for it with huge welts and hopefully no disease. You get what you pay for and this was a prime example with mediocre food although it was filling enough, mediocre guide and mediocre facilities. We would spend the next two days exploring the pampas flood plains and river before returning to Rurrenabaque.
The highlight of the pampas is the wildlife. I saw a lot of animals including snakes, monkeys, birds, gators, and pink dolphins. We were often on the boat and our guide just drove fast and for the most part never allowed us to just enjoy the wildlife. I thought we should just go up the river, cut the engine and drift downstream letting it all play out for us. But he had an agenda of racing us around from one activity to the next. The only one that was good was a swim with the pink dolphins and that was really good. The worst one was hiking through the swamp in water up to our waist looking for anacondas. As soon as we got there it was obvious that this would be almost impossible. We hiked through it for over two hours seeing nothing (while back on the river it was a non-stop show). We hiked to an island and on the way back the guides (a few groups were there) all disappeared running off into the swamp ahead of us. They truly disappeared and we were left to figure out how to get out of the swamp on our own and get through the jungle to the river. I was furious because a guide never leaves behind their group. We could not find a trail and attempted to cut through the jungle until it became too thick and we were getting all messed up by the plants. Finally, the guides appeared as if no big deal that a few dozen people were lost in swamp and forest. I’ll save the rant for later. When we were getting in the boat they suddenly pulled out an anaconda. I am convinced they keep one handy. They handed it around and I was amazed about how all of the Israelis (another story) had to have it over their shoulders. I was appalled that a supposedly wild animal would be handled like this and it was clearly distressed.
What I really disliked about our twenty-three year old guide is that he thought it was cute to be flying up the river in our rickety boat and cut the corners or go into the swamp so that we would get hit by the low-lying trees branches. Real funny and painful. He made all kinds of stupid maneuvers and mind you that we had no lifejackets. Of course, this is Bolivia… another rant for later. We even had a woman from South Korea that can’t swim! Let’s see… alligator, caiman, poisonous snake and piranha-infested waters, driving like a jackass with no shore and nothing to keep you afloat if needed. Bolivia… possibly the most ignorant country in the world! Our campsite had three resident gators. Bismark coaxed one of them to the door of the dining room and proceeded to feed it rice and other leftovers from lunch. Ugggh! We were lounging in the hammocks one afternoon watching the river when all of a sudden one of the gators tried to get something. None of us hung out near the water after witnessing that burst of speed. It will only be a matter of time before someone has a run-in with a gator at this property.
I almost skipped the rainforest tour based on this experience, but I had been with some good people and I figured the next tour would be the same as far as that goes. Plus, I was here to be in the jungle even if the pampas has more wildlife. The next morning we woke up to clouds. Five of us loaded onto a canoe in Rurrenabaque for a two hour trip up the Beni and then a tributary into Madidi. As soon as we were loaded, the rain started. Sure, the boat had a small roof, but we soon learned it did nothing to keep us dry. Three hours later after a sometimes harrowing voyage and mostly horizontal rainfall we unloaded. It was pouring and we walked to the campsite which was in the forest. The trail was a mess and Jen almost fell into a stream just catching herself at the last moment, Tom’s bag of supplies for the company exploded sending cabbage and grapefruit everywhere and I managed to step into mud in one of the streams that halted my progress. I was stuck and it took quite an effort to get out. So we arrive soaked and covered in mud. Another group at the campsite which was leaving that day just stared at this sorry looking group from under a roof.
I mentioned that my previous “English-speaking” guide spoke no English. The company gave me a refund for that and they promised one for the jungle. Before leaving Rurrenabaque I was greeted by this very strange man who said he was my translator for the trip. Huh? I did not want someone translating what a guide said. By time we reached the campsite everyone was laughing that I paid money for an English-speaking guide and we now have this extra person who is so weird with us as a translator. His name is Daniel and Belinda from Australia soon named him Manuel from John Cleese’s brief show called Fawlty Tours. I nearly fell over laughing at that one. We soon learned that Manuel is either very stupid or fried on drugs… or more likely, both. While we were eating and waiting for the dorm area to clear out, he peed off the deck instead of using the bathroom. While talking about something he said “did I hear someone say marijuana”. “No, you did not, Manuel”. I mean Daniel. Manuel could barely speak Spanish let alone English. When asked to spell a Spanish word that we were having difficulty with due to the guide’s pronunciation, he told us that he can’t spell. He barely knows Spanish, but he was there to translate into English??? We soon started to ignore him and went with pure Spanish. In the end, Manuel was the best part of the trip because we were always laughing about something he would do or say. For instance, he wore converse sneakers with no tread left and tied around his ankles. He carried a machete and he continuously fell because of the lack of tread plus he is a klutz. Given that he was carrying the machete we made sure he was far behind or far ahead anytime we sensed he could fall. Manuel is one of the biggest characters I have ever met unfortunately not in a good sense. I wanted everyone to pay me for my foresight in bringing an entertainer along for the trip.
It poured that first day. We did a hike and it was only good because our guide was extremely knowledgeable about the forest. We learned all kinds of things about plants and insects. There were no animals out because of the rain. The trail was very muddy and we were once again soaked and muddy by time we got back. That night was very cold and the rain did not let up. We were given one blanket each and all of us froze through the night. We woke up to more rain. We told the company that we would go back on that day’s boat rather than stay until the following day as planned. We did a final hike and the rain did stop, but it was still pretty miserable. The more miserable we felt in the wet and cold, the more we laughed at Manuel. We did get to see a dead monkey skeleton presumably killed by an eagle, but that was not the kind of highlight of the jungle that I was expecting. Finally, some birds started to come out and we saw some brief glimpses of scarlet macaws flying overhead.
The boat ride back to town was much faster due to the river being so high. We finally made a couple of good sightings seeing a capybaras which is the world’s largest rodent hanging out by the river. We also found a couple of dozen vultures eating a deer which had fallen off a 100 meter high cliff. When we got back to town, got our rooms and showered, we immediately took our wet and muddy clothes to the laundry. We drank wine to celebrate being off a miserable tour and back in a dry place.
The last day there I did a zipline tour where you fly through the jungle canopy on a harness attached to cables strung between tree platforms. I’m not a fan of heights and the hike up the mountain to the first platform was nerve-wracking. All of us were nervous so that made it better. We had two great guides and I soon learned that we had good equipment and safety was their main concern. I had to wonder if I was still in Bolivia! The first couple of rides were scary and I found it hard to look down when flying or even standing on the platforms. But by the third ride it became very fun. There are nine sections to the ride and by the ninth one I was disappointed that it was over. Flying through the jungle canopy was an unbelievable experience. Overall, Rurrenabaque and its tours are really horrible and I was very disappointed that my trip to Madidi was not one to match up with Galapagos or Africa. Manu NP in Peru is coming up and I am really hoping that the services, guides, weather and wildlife will be right on there so I can leave South America feeling like I really had an Amazon experience not to be forgotten. In the meantime, I am trying to forget about the Bolivian adventures.
Tags: bolivia, south america, Travel
vagabondrick
Hello Rick !
My name is Erik. I live in Copenhagen, Denmark.
I have a Google Alert
( http://www.google.com/alerts )
on Rurrenabaque. Your blog popped up, and I read about your visit in Rurre/Rurrenabaque and your experiences from tours into the pampas and the Madidi National Park.
I know about the little village San Miguel del Bala (near Rurre), and I am helping the villagers to promote their eco-lodge and tourism.
I have read your blog entries “It’s a Jungle Out There” and “Bolivia.. Being All it Can Be” with great interest. I am sorry to hear about your two bad tours from Rurre, and I am sad to hear about your overall impression of Bolivia.
You write: “I am trying to forget about the Bolivian adventures”. But I hope you will read my comment anyway.
Yes, the quality of tours from Rurre can be bad, very bad. There are many tour companies, tour operators and travel agencies with a wide range of tours and prices. And of course you can find really good quality. Quality and price are connected. But first of all you have to spend time on investigation.
A traveller Michelle did so. You can read her story on http://www.sanmigueldelbala.com/Michelle.html
She visited the San Miguel del Bala Community Eco-Lodge and the Madidi National Park with a guide from San Miguel del Bala Eco-Tourism:
“What an amazing time I had!”.
“I felt really sad as we were heading back to Rurrenabaque.. it had been such a wonderful experience out here! I really felt like I had been a priveledged visitor to another world, home of things that are greater than ourselves.. loved it!”
It is more difficult to oppose your attitude to Bolivia and the Bolivians. You live in USA, I live in Europe. In our free part of the world, we are free to have opinions and to express them. I hope we all can listen to each other, and accept disagreement.
I wish you a pleasant travel.
Best regards, Erik