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| Rurrerebarque |
The small plane ride only lasted half an hour or so and we arrive on a grassy runway with a little bit of warmth. We catch the 'airport' bus into town, a beaten up peace of crap which was good fun. Rurrenbareque is built on the Benni river which is one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River. Wilson was due to arrive later in the day so we investigate our options for a pampus tour while waiting for him. We ran into a couple we met in the line at the airport during the 'plane debarcle' and arranged to have dinner with them. We go to a few "reputable" tour operators, here reputable means not catching the animals (we heard numerous reports of photo opportunities holding anacondas). We get very similar explanations all amounting to similar itineraries, we decide to go with the midrange option that sounds like they go to a few slightly different places.
Later on we met up with Jules and Mandy and Wilson turns up with a harem of girls, that we end up ditching for dinner. Hew gets 'fantasy chicken' (Pollo de la fantasia) - deep fried apples, crumbed chicken and a pile of chips...fantasy? mmm no....but tasty. We had an interesting encounter during dinner, we were at a nice outdoor place with a gang of dogs hanging out for food. Most of the dogs are quite advanced in Latin America, they know when to run away from the locals, know to cross roads at traffic lights with human like street sense, and can desruct the contents of a rubbish bin with ease and poise....this one dog however seems to have a bit of a problem with drinking water...he walks past the table, opens it's mouth makes a barking sound and has a bit of a vomit, all without lowering its head or breaking stride...it was hilarious...arrhk
Pampus Tour
We meet at the agency at 8:40am, after hew drops off an emergency laundry run. Wilson heads next door to a small shop to buy some water and comes back with a $3.50 bottle of Vodka (and later picks up a radioactive looking mixer, tampico)...A two and a half hour drive in a 4wd followed, through some very dusty and bumpy roads (will elaborate on the dust later...)
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| Wilson with Tampico in hand |
We will spend the majority of the next three days exploring the shores of the Yacuma river in a small but very comfortable boat (with small, fold out chairs - back support - awesome!!)
We are in a cold snap at the moment so the first day or so are FREEZING in the boat....we are wearing all the warm clothes we have and are still cold....On the first afternoon we spot caimans, pink river dolphins, some tourtises and heaps of birds including the very retarded but brightly coloured Serere's - who are clearly too big and uncoordinated to be flying in the small spaces they are trying to and making a huge amount of noise...After dinner...vodka and some cards and off to bed....
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| The Yacuma River |
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| Serere's - stupid, uncoordinated birds...so noisy! |
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| fishing |
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| Stalking |
Day two, we take lunch as we will be out the whole day...we spend a couple of hours crusing the river spotting heaps of caiman (with the sun out finally!), heaps of capybara's (the worlds biggest rodent) and more and more birds - mainly different species of herron/egrets.
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| Capybara, the worlds biggest rodent |
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| more carybara's.. |
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| Hummingbird-esq |
We jump out of the boat and go for a walk...the two girls have gumboots, but Wilson and Hew miss out....We trudge through some very thick 'pampas grass' for a while, our guide Marcel says "wow this looks different to last time i was here" - at this point we are all a little unsure about where we are heading as it looks like no one has been here for years.....We ask Marcel when the last time he was here - 6 years ago....the confidence didn't grow....Its getting really hot in the grass up to our chests, Marcel hacking through it with a massive Machete, and we eventually arrive at the Lake, where we had set out to go, to search for Anacondas. Marcel just wanders out into the shallows of the lake dominated with deep mud - the girls head in too and the boys are left behind without the necessary gumboots. They wander off for what they think is going to be a small hunt, near the start they find a 'false cobra' - it was getting pretty agro and the guide then decides to try and pick it up and take it back to show the boys - no luck...he tries to pin it down with his stick under the water, then, not knowing where the snake went, dives his arms into the water and gropes around for the snake in meter deep water.....no luck, later he tells us the snake isnt tooooo poisonous, only five hours of extreme pain.
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| Marcel digging for cobra |
They continue for ages in mud nearly as deep as the tops of their gumboots, and an hour or so later they make it back to the boys... who look cranky..Steph only fell in once and was left with a rather potent smelling right hand....we head back to where the boat is and have some lunch..
After lunch some more animal spotting and some Piranha fishing. It was easy, with some succulent steak for bait they bite as soon as you 'cast' (well dropped your line in the water). We kept a couple of the bigger ones to try with dinner. Quite tasty, but not much meat.
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| Piranha |
We head back to camp slowly, spotting some massive Jabaroo's (think stalk) some Toucans, Monkeys - including a rare white howler monkey and plenty of Caiman and Capybaras.
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| Jabaroos...those nests are freakin huge |
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| The Toucans aren't very co-operative, they fly away as soon as we got near them, Steph just got this one |
We have an early dinner and go 'eye' spotting on the river - caimans everywhere.....Marcel thinks it is funny to play 'dodgem cars' with caiman - bumping into them until they submerge or splash us angrily....
The last day we head out to find a family of 30 or so monkeys and swim with some pink dolphins...It is nice and hot today, which will help entice us with the swimming....We motor along and find the Squirrel Monkeys, we pull up right next to the tree they are in and they all rush over to the back of the boat where the guide is - hmmm - seems like they usually get fed, Marcel doesnt though which is good... we saw a boat feeding them on the way back.
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| squirrel monkey |
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| A normal brown howler monkey |
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| the rare white howler |
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| This is the best Pink Dolphin shot we could get |
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Turtle stacks, apparently the big one protects the group
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After some more animal spotting we pull up at a small mud bank at a bend, where the river widens....hmmmm....can see lots of Caiman, then after a little while the pink dolphins start breaching....Apparently the dolphins are the top of the chain here and the caimans an pirhanas stay away whenever they are around...still unnerving swimming in a river where you can see 6m Ciaman hanging out on the bank of the river, and clearly a heap more in the river...the bottom of the river is really sinky mud, and the water is pretty brisk. Fish nibble our toes as we are trying to get in...the swimming with the dolphins wasn't too successful, we couldn't really get that close to them. But was fun anyway.
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| It was a little freaky having the Caimans so close on the banks (well, the ones we can see) |
We head back, have some lunch and pile into the 4wd to head back to Rurre. As we said before the road is VERY, VERY dusty....and we have a different driver this time, and he doesn't seem to like slowing down even when he can't see a thing through a thick dust cloud...anyway...we have the leftover vodka to help speed up the car trip, and calm the nerves a little.... Not long into the trip home we pass a couple of cars, dust everywhere... The driver is hammering it and we pass a couple of trucks in a row and go through a HUGE dust cloud - our driver doesn't slow down at all, and all of a sudden from inside the dust could we see a blue TOYOTA sign right in front of our faces for what seemed like forever then....
SMASH!!!!!!!
We are all thrown into the seats in front of us.... lucky we had seat belts on...we had hit an old Toyota ute/truck at about 60km an hour, we are all OK though...Steph has a bit of a sore neck, but the car is
TOTALED...
We had hit the car hard enough that our guide couldn't get out the passenger door and 3 or 4 of them spent 5 minutes trying to open the hood of our car...and the ute we ran into had its back window smashed from the impact which shifted the whole tray forwards....A little while later a replacement car comes and picks us up...we were a little shaken up but all in good humour! (Thanks Tampico and $3.50 vodka)
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| Our driver in the grey shirt looks a little unhappy. The victim in the brown shirt, note bits of engine which had come loose all over the ground in front of the car, and I'm pretty sure red stuff leaking out is a bad sign! |
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| We missed the good photos as everyone was a little mad at first. Took 4 of them to pull the front of the car back into place (well sort of back into place) |
The rest of the ride home was smooth (er), with a slower driver....
We head out for a farewell dinner for Wilson and to celebrate surviving a Bolivian car crash.....We call it a night early as we were heading into the jungle for 4 days the next morning.....BYE WILSON!
