Pampalicious soup

Of course the "soup" refers to the rather dark brown river that we spent most of our tour on. The river can be described as deep and fast flowing interspersed with crocodiles, capibaras, piranhas and us, silly tourists swimming in all that. 

In order to get to our boat, we had to take a bone rattling, stomach churning 3 hour jeep ride. I stayed awake by counting how long our driver's eyes would close for, he made it to 2 seconds and almost a slap on the head. 

Cruizing on the boat

 The pampas tour is very different from what we experienced and did in the jungle. For one, in the pampas we barely did any walking. The tour is conducted from a boat where our guide would stop to point at a bird or a rodent. The banks of the river were lined with crocodiles, their eyes constantly fixed on us. Another major difference is the sheer volume of people. The pampas is the major attraction because of the wildlife. Each tour company has its own camp which can quite easily house 50 people. Our 1st day simply involved seating in the boat. At night, a large number of the tourists from surrounding cottages and tours were taken to a jungle bar. That’s right, a place specifically built so that we could all have something to drink, watch the sunset and have a magical time...It felt really artificial and out of place. The coolest thing about that day was the boat ride back. It was completely dark, as the boat prowled ahead, we scanned the water with our headlights for any signs of glowing eyes. Our boat soon stumbled upon a patch of little jumping fish that splashed and touched everyone on the boat. 

Searching for the pescly Anacondas

The second day we woke up to Peter laying on his stomach, with his mouth wide open revealing a toothless hollow. For a crocodile he's pretty old and comes to the camp to be fed by the people. While watching him, we were joined by monkeys. Actually lots of monkeys that howled and pooped all over the place. The morning event was Anaconda hunting. Not sure who came up with this tour, but it sounded pretty dodgy. The basic premise is that one wades through the chest high grass, pushing it aside carefully so as not to step on the anaconda underneath, relaxing in the sun. 

Peter

The expectation is that when you do find one, you put your hand up and call the guide. Unfortunately non of the excitement of catching an anaconda came our way, they were just too timid. Our entertainment did come from an English girl who thought it was a great idea to grab a 7 foot stick, walk over to a 6 foot Caymen and poke it in the face. What would you do if someone poked you in the nose with a stick? The Caymen exploded, while hissing she ran for us with her short stubby legs. Everyone bolted to get out of its way. Luckily no one was hurt, except Abby who turned and ran straight into a pole :) 

Swimming!

Afterwards we swam with the dolphins or we tried to swim with them. The pink dolphins are found in the Amazon and in the pampas, protecting innocent fishies and tourists. Our guide found a suitable place and told us to jump in, into the darkest water I have ever seen. But we did, and all the dolphins promptly fled. They kept their distance but we knew that they were protecting us from the piranhas and crocodiles that infested that water. That evening instead of going back to the same bar, we were taken to a different bar, much further into the pampas. It was located on a wide plane, with an amazing view of the sunset and a really good soccer field. As the sun steadily dipped and the palm trees swayed in the breeze we had ourselves a fairly intense soccer match which lasted for far too long. It was one the most beautiful sunsets that I barely got to enjoy, but the entire experience was outstanding.

Dont get bit

The last day involved fishing for piranhas, and while we didnt catch allot, the ones that we did catch we fed to the crocodile hanging out by one of the boats. He was chilling in the water, waiting for somebody to step close enough so that he could taste them. It was a pretty relaxing day, where in the afternoon we made our way back to Rurrenabaque on the same jeep... 

Post Pampas 

This time around we stayed at Residencial Jislena, a really nice family ran hostel. It was the same price as our last hostel but it had better views, hammocks and an amazing breakfast. It included a choice of pancakes or a pizza shaped omelet with enough veggies to fill you up for the day. They also had a banana vine hanging nearby and anyone could help themselves to as many as they wanted. That night we made a massive feast with all of our new friends. 

They were hanging out everywhere!

The following day we left for La Paz. This section could easily be the length of an essay that would put even the most avid readers to sleep. However to give a quick summary. 

On our last day of the tour it started to rain. It pretty much rained the entire day and we knew that if it didnt let up than we would be in a spot of bother. Unlike some travelers, we left Rurrenabaque without any issues. Four hours into our journey, the bus stopped, turned off its engines and waited. What had happened is that there was a massive line of vehicles in front of us who had probably been waiting for a few hours. A massive landslide had blocked the road ahead. We went to investigate. A number of people were diligently working on the problem. The basic premise behind their strategy was to ram a truck through the mud, reverse it (or tow it out), fill the tracks with stone and ram it again. Well around 530pm, the truck was well and truly stuck in the mud, so everyone left the poor guy there and went back to their busses to spend the night. 

This IS the relief effort

 The following morning we woke up to an even more entertaining scene. Apparently the night before an excavator had come to the site. The guy driving the excavator only works until 10pm. So when the time came, he simply got up and left, locking the tractor in the middle of the road. He dug half way through the landslide...Next morning he rocked up at 1230 in the afternoon, about 4 hours after his shift was meant to start...He simply got in his excavator, started it up and in half an hour cleared everything. Because of this kid (he was pretty young) a congestion of about 100 vehicles had occurred forcing people to miss out on who knows what. Anyway, we said our hoorahs and were off, only to be stopped 30 minutes later due to another landslide. We were convinced that Rurrenabaque did not want us to leave and that with the rest of the Bolivians on the bus we would slowly go mad, run away into the jungle and live a much simpler life style. But alas, two hours later we were on our way back. One thing to note is that no one was ready for any of this. People had no food, so when we finally started moving and a lady with empanadas got on the bus, she was practically swarmed by the people. The next little town didnt fare any better with everyone buying anything edible. The highlight of the bus trip was the really cheap mangos, at 1 boliviano (20 cents) for 5 mangos, it’s the cheapest fruit Ive ever eaten! In all it took us 41 hours to get back to La Paz.