After a few days of recovery (read: large amounts of internet and several cakes), it was on to the next bullet on our Bolivia checklist: the jungle. At the suggestion of about every traveler we´d met, in addition to the advice of one of my best friends back home, we decided to head to Rurrenabaque, a small jungle oasis located a few hundred kilometers roughly north of La Paz. While there were tours available to the town, we booked our own transportation - a 20-hour bus that supposedly left at 11am. In actuality, at 11am the packing of the bus was well underway, but nowhere near complete. We watched, fascinated, as several men continued to pack pieces of furniture, smaller vehicles, and enormous bags of potatoes, toys, and rice into, onto, and inside of the bus. It seemed impossible that the rickety auto would make it out of La Paz, much less to the jungle!
However, they eventually packed everything in to their satisfaction - which included pulling a giant tarp over everything stacked precariously on top of the bus, presumably to hold it all on - and we embarked. Unlike most (all?) of the buses in Ecuador and Peru, this bus had no TV. On a normal bus ride, this wouldn´t be a problem; Scott and I somehow always find things to talk about, we´re both expert bus sleepers, and there´s always Categories to play. On this bus, though, distraction was essential, but in short supply.
The average speed of the bus was probably 15 miles per hour.
The 15 mph average is not including the frequent, unexplained, 10-minute stops.
After the first two hours, the road turned to gravel, then to dust and small, inopportunely-placed pebbles.
It was hot.
And I had to pee.
We finally stopped after dark in a strange small town that appeared to be comprised entirely of restaurants advertising dinner menus for the bus passengers. We ate, got back on the bus, and continued on. The next day, after being thoroughly rocked by the rollicking bus all night and morning, we arrived in Rurrenabaque. Interestingly, in the days before we left La Paz, there had been large protests against a highway into the jungle, which the government was supposedly building for ¨development.¨ The last two or three hours before arriving in Rurrenabaque - or Rurre, as it is affectionately called by both its inhabitants and foreigners who can´t roll their R´s - we were fairly certain that our bus was traveling this very contentious road. Huge backhoes (or car smashers, as we like to call them) blocked our way as they cleared a 60-foot wide highway through the dry trees, stirring up dust so thick there was no way our driver could see through it (this didn´t stop him from ploughing ahead recklessly, though).
We arrived in Rurre eager to book a tour into the jungle, but it turned out we´d barely missed the tour departures that day, and we´d need to spend a night in town and leave the following day. We wasted several hours trying to find a cheap hostel (we finally found one along with a Swiss couple we´d been chatting with, but they only had one room available, so we ceded it to them), but finally succeeded with a centrally-located room, fully equipped with a TV and a patio full of hammocks. We then wasted the rest of the day visiting nearly all of the 30 or so tourist agencies in town, trying to decide if we wanted to take the pampas or the jungle tour. My vote was for pampas, a dry jungle where seeing wilk beasts was almost guaranteed, while Scott leaned towards the jungle, a more authentic camping-hiking experience, but with no guarantees about seeing any fauna. The tourist agencies offered essentially the exact same two trips, with slight variations in price and commitment to eco-tourism. We sat through ¨the pitch¨ so many times we could´ve recited it back to them verbatim, but each time I sneaked water from the ubiquitous coolers (it was hot!) and into my water bottle, so all was not for naught.
We also tried a local delicacy, thinking it looked awfully like a burrito. Instead, it was some kind of thick-walled, tubular body organ stuffed with rice and beef...not exactly appetizing, or sanitary.
We finally decided on a pampas tour with an ecologically-committed agency, and retired to our room with plans to pay in the morning. When morning came, however, and we asked locals where to find an ATM, they shook their heads sadly and informed us that, in this town where every new arrival is spending grandly to visit the jungle, there are no ATMs. Not a single one.
When we told this to the agent, she made some frantic phone calls, then told us she knew of a place we could do a cash advance. She then took us straight back to one of the agencies we´d spoken with the day before, where the cheery Dutch employee joked with us that we hadn´t picked her tour, then called us ¨motherfuckers¨ (I think she thought it was an endearing term, but we were quite shocked). Money in hand, some breads in our pockets, we were finally ready to go, and were loaded into a Jeep with two other tourists (a 55-year-old couple from Italy).
What followed was the dustiest three hours of my life, on a bumpy, sweltering road to the pampas. We stopped for lunch and met the rest of our tour group - two French girls, a Polish couple, and the aforementioned Italians (who caused constant havoc because they were devout vegans). We also met our guide, Roberto, an affable Bolivian with an astounding knowledge of birds.
With no further ado, the group donned hats, poured on sunscreen, crowded into a motorized canoe, and we were off! We spent the majority of the tour in this canoe, snapping photos left and right of the plentiful wildlife, and letting our oohs! and ahhs! get slightly less enthusiastic after the hundredth caiman sighting.
Animals we saw throughout the three-day tour:
-Caiman. We saw about 800 caiman overall, ranging from about 12 inches to 8 or 9 feet long, the most frightening of which was the Black Caiman, said to eat human babies, monkeys, and even other caiman (Roberto later contradicted himself by saying they were scavengers).
-Capybaras. My favorite of the animals we saw, these slow-moving mammals resemble pig-bears, and specialize in moving slowly, staring, and wallowing in mud. They also have a charming habit of sitting on their haunches and gazing into the distance - based on their commitment to meditation, there is no doubt in my mind that these are very spiritual beings.
-Monkeys: capuchin, squirrel, and howler. These lost their charm after a bit, largely because the boat erupted with squeals of delight whenever any of them appeared. Also, the Polish boy would inexplicably whistle obnoxiously at all wildlife, but the monkeys especially elicited this response from him.
-LOTS of birds, the coolest of which we deemed ¨The Bouncer¨ - a 3-foot-tall stork-like beast with hunched shoulders, knobby knees, and a no-nonsense, straight forward stance. I also had the luck to spot a pink egret, which no one else saw, but which was flamingo colored, enormous, and impossibly elegant.
-Cobra. We went on a seemingly ill-advised search for anacondas in the tall grass near the river, wearing faulty rubber boots as our only protection against anything that might be concealed beneath the four-foot-tall grasses. Roberto snagged a six or seven-foot long cobra, then held it while we all oohed and ahhed and our cameras clicked away. Then, without any warning, he released it, and we all stood, transfixed and terrified to breathe, as the snake slithered slowly away.
-Anaconda. After patiently waiting in the hot sun as Roberto and another guide scoured the grasses, their efforts were rewarded with the capture and ogling of a six-foot anaconda. The Polish kid put his face about six inches away from it in order to snap a truly impressive photo.
-Piranhas. All the tours advertised fishing for piranhas, and most also said we´d be eating the piranhas as a pre-dinner snack. However, Roberto sat us all down in the evening, and gave us a very solemn and apologetic speech on how we would not be eating the piranhas, because the pink dolphins who lived in the river needed 500 pounds each per day of piranha to survive (mistranslation?), and therefore it was irresponsible to deplete their food source. No one had any problem with this logical and compassionate explanation, but Roberto´s unceasing apologies made me think more aggressive tourists might demand to partake in this unsustainable practice. I tried to reassure him, encouraging him to convince other guides to do the same, and he explained that he and some other guides would be opening their own agency soon, which would feature truly sustainable ecotourism. Naturally, I was elated at this.
-Pink dolphins. We swam in the murky waters with these elusive beasts, which really are quite rosy-colored. However, we also swam with piranhas and caiman, and I´m fairly certain a piranha bit me in the armpit, prompting me to retire to the banks.
Upon return to the boat docking point (and in great anticipation for the dustiest-ever three-hour ride back to relative civilization), we had a very startling moment: as I disembarked from the boat, I glanced up, only to recognize the long dreadlocks and strikingly Tarzan-like features of one Dorf The Surfer, who initially told us about the dead man in Montañitas, Ecuador, and later cropped up striding along the Panamericana in Mancora, Peru. We had seen the same guy, completely randomly, in three separate countries - the Gringo Trail, it is my pleasure to report, is alive and well. Dorf, of course, not having realized how much he´d touched our lives, had no clue who we were, and smiled politely, nonchalantly dropped a few surfing terms, alluded to the parties in La Paz, and went on his merry way. We may yet see him again...
The Jeep trip back to Rurre was dustier than the initial trip had been. One of the French girls fell asleep with her face towards the open window, and when we finally got out, her face was caked in a layer of dust about a cm thick - except where her sunglasses had blocked the onslaught. She looked like she was a Claymation character.
Because our time in Bolivia was somewhat rushed (we had plans to meet our parents and go to Patagonia in early November), we booked tickets for a bus out of Rurre for that evening, at 10:30pm. First, though, we had to stop by the one bar in town and have a goodbye drink with our tour group, of whom we´d grown rather fond. Arriving back at the bus station at 10:10pm, the man who´d sold us our tickets informed us that the bus had already left, claiming he´d told us to be there at 10pm, and (in somewhat contradicting terms) that he´d held the bus for us for 25 minutes, and that it had only just pulled away. We were baffled, angry, and probably incoherent as we pointed out the departure time on our tickets, to which he shrugged and suggested we take a taxi to catch the bus at the next town. When we looked into this, however, the taxi driver looked us over once, then offered to take us for a price five times greater than what we´d paid for the bus in the first place. We were disgusted, and I was thoroughly sick of getting swindled.
I marched into the tiny bus office, and, in the oppressive jungle heat, informed him with the greatest authority I could muster that the ticket salesman would be giving us a full refund. He laughed caustically in my face. So, in a move I´d like to describe as resolute, but which is probably better described as childish, when he got up from the one seat in the office to make a transaction, I sat firmly down in his chair, and announced to the assorted baffled male employees that I would not be moving from that seat until they gave me my money back, and that I fully intended on sleeping in the plastic chair if my (entirely reasonable) demands were not met.
They gawked.
When this produced no results, and the salesman had even left the office, I was so frustrated and desperate to get back to La Paz that I turned beseechingly to a younger employee and simply asked him, ¨Que puedo hacer?¨ (¨What can I do?¨) Perhaps taking pity on me, and perhaps just wanting to get this volatile gringa out of his office (more likely), he refunded one of the two tickets, then suggested I might still be able to get on a bus headed to La Paz that night, as one of the other companies had a bus that was severely delayed.
30 minutes later, Scott and I were stashed at the back of a return bus watching lightning and trying not to feel the violent potholes transfering their vibrations directly to our buttocks. The road was so bumpy, in fact, that often we´d hit a pothole that would throw all 45 passengers out of their seats, which would´ve been comical had it not hurt so much...
The ride back was, if possible, worse than the ride out, and we slept almost not at all. the highlight was returning to the same city that featured only dinners a few nights before, and which featured only breakfasts now. Another highlight was an increasing chain of hundreds of cars and buses stopping for over an hour on the dusty, unpaved road, for absolutely no reason. Typical Bolivia.
We arrived back in La Paz exhausted, dusty, sweating, and starving. Wandering the streets back to our hostel (which featured toilets with no toilet paper and a receptionist who laughed mockingly when you requested some), we ran into the now-infamous Mole Kid Mike, the one who´d had his mole punched off in Cuenca, Ecuador. Unlike when we ran into him in Peru, he was delighted to see us. Just like in Peru, he was still cool, still had no mole, and had an attractive girl in tow. Oh, Gringo Trail.
 |
| Man using power lines to steady himself |
The average speed of the bus was probably 15 miles per hour.
The 15 mph average is not including the frequent, unexplained, 10-minute stops.
After the first two hours, the road turned to gravel, then to dust and small, inopportunely-placed pebbles.
It was hot.
And I had to pee.
We finally stopped after dark in a strange small town that appeared to be comprised entirely of restaurants advertising dinner menus for the bus passengers. We ate, got back on the bus, and continued on. The next day, after being thoroughly rocked by the rollicking bus all night and morning, we arrived in Rurrenabaque. Interestingly, in the days before we left La Paz, there had been large protests against a highway into the jungle, which the government was supposedly building for ¨development.¨ The last two or three hours before arriving in Rurrenabaque - or Rurre, as it is affectionately called by both its inhabitants and foreigners who can´t roll their R´s - we were fairly certain that our bus was traveling this very contentious road. Huge backhoes (or car smashers, as we like to call them) blocked our way as they cleared a 60-foot wide highway through the dry trees, stirring up dust so thick there was no way our driver could see through it (this didn´t stop him from ploughing ahead recklessly, though).
We arrived in Rurre eager to book a tour into the jungle, but it turned out we´d barely missed the tour departures that day, and we´d need to spend a night in town and leave the following day. We wasted several hours trying to find a cheap hostel (we finally found one along with a Swiss couple we´d been chatting with, but they only had one room available, so we ceded it to them), but finally succeeded with a centrally-located room, fully equipped with a TV and a patio full of hammocks. We then wasted the rest of the day visiting nearly all of the 30 or so tourist agencies in town, trying to decide if we wanted to take the pampas or the jungle tour. My vote was for pampas, a dry jungle where seeing wilk beasts was almost guaranteed, while Scott leaned towards the jungle, a more authentic camping-hiking experience, but with no guarantees about seeing any fauna. The tourist agencies offered essentially the exact same two trips, with slight variations in price and commitment to eco-tourism. We sat through ¨the pitch¨ so many times we could´ve recited it back to them verbatim, but each time I sneaked water from the ubiquitous coolers (it was hot!) and into my water bottle, so all was not for naught.
 |
| Intestine burrito...ugh |
We finally decided on a pampas tour with an ecologically-committed agency, and retired to our room with plans to pay in the morning. When morning came, however, and we asked locals where to find an ATM, they shook their heads sadly and informed us that, in this town where every new arrival is spending grandly to visit the jungle, there are no ATMs. Not a single one.
When we told this to the agent, she made some frantic phone calls, then told us she knew of a place we could do a cash advance. She then took us straight back to one of the agencies we´d spoken with the day before, where the cheery Dutch employee joked with us that we hadn´t picked her tour, then called us ¨motherfuckers¨ (I think she thought it was an endearing term, but we were quite shocked). Money in hand, some breads in our pockets, we were finally ready to go, and were loaded into a Jeep with two other tourists (a 55-year-old couple from Italy).
 |
| On the motorized canoe, heading into the jungle |
With no further ado, the group donned hats, poured on sunscreen, crowded into a motorized canoe, and we were off! We spent the majority of the tour in this canoe, snapping photos left and right of the plentiful wildlife, and letting our oohs! and ahhs! get slightly less enthusiastic after the hundredth caiman sighting.
Animals we saw throughout the three-day tour:
 |
| Capybara mudfest |
-Capybaras. My favorite of the animals we saw, these slow-moving mammals resemble pig-bears, and specialize in moving slowly, staring, and wallowing in mud. They also have a charming habit of sitting on their haunches and gazing into the distance - based on their commitment to meditation, there is no doubt in my mind that these are very spiritual beings.
-Monkeys: capuchin, squirrel, and howler. These lost their charm after a bit, largely because the boat erupted with squeals of delight whenever any of them appeared. Also, the Polish boy would inexplicably whistle obnoxiously at all wildlife, but the monkeys especially elicited this response from him.
 |
| Anaconda - for JP |
-Cobra. We went on a seemingly ill-advised search for anacondas in the tall grass near the river, wearing faulty rubber boots as our only protection against anything that might be concealed beneath the four-foot-tall grasses. Roberto snagged a six or seven-foot long cobra, then held it while we all oohed and ahhed and our cameras clicked away. Then, without any warning, he released it, and we all stood, transfixed and terrified to breathe, as the snake slithered slowly away.
-Anaconda. After patiently waiting in the hot sun as Roberto and another guide scoured the grasses, their efforts were rewarded with the capture and ogling of a six-foot anaconda. The Polish kid put his face about six inches away from it in order to snap a truly impressive photo.
 |
| Pirhanas we swam with |
-Pink dolphins. We swam in the murky waters with these elusive beasts, which really are quite rosy-colored. However, we also swam with piranhas and caiman, and I´m fairly certain a piranha bit me in the armpit, prompting me to retire to the banks.
 |
| Swimming with the pink dolphins...and pirhanas! |
 |
| Dirtface |
Because our time in Bolivia was somewhat rushed (we had plans to meet our parents and go to Patagonia in early November), we booked tickets for a bus out of Rurre for that evening, at 10:30pm. First, though, we had to stop by the one bar in town and have a goodbye drink with our tour group, of whom we´d grown rather fond. Arriving back at the bus station at 10:10pm, the man who´d sold us our tickets informed us that the bus had already left, claiming he´d told us to be there at 10pm, and (in somewhat contradicting terms) that he´d held the bus for us for 25 minutes, and that it had only just pulled away. We were baffled, angry, and probably incoherent as we pointed out the departure time on our tickets, to which he shrugged and suggested we take a taxi to catch the bus at the next town. When we looked into this, however, the taxi driver looked us over once, then offered to take us for a price five times greater than what we´d paid for the bus in the first place. We were disgusted, and I was thoroughly sick of getting swindled.
I marched into the tiny bus office, and, in the oppressive jungle heat, informed him with the greatest authority I could muster that the ticket salesman would be giving us a full refund. He laughed caustically in my face. So, in a move I´d like to describe as resolute, but which is probably better described as childish, when he got up from the one seat in the office to make a transaction, I sat firmly down in his chair, and announced to the assorted baffled male employees that I would not be moving from that seat until they gave me my money back, and that I fully intended on sleeping in the plastic chair if my (entirely reasonable) demands were not met.
They gawked.
When this produced no results, and the salesman had even left the office, I was so frustrated and desperate to get back to La Paz that I turned beseechingly to a younger employee and simply asked him, ¨Que puedo hacer?¨ (¨What can I do?¨) Perhaps taking pity on me, and perhaps just wanting to get this volatile gringa out of his office (more likely), he refunded one of the two tickets, then suggested I might still be able to get on a bus headed to La Paz that night, as one of the other companies had a bus that was severely delayed.
30 minutes later, Scott and I were stashed at the back of a return bus watching lightning and trying not to feel the violent potholes transfering their vibrations directly to our buttocks. The road was so bumpy, in fact, that often we´d hit a pothole that would throw all 45 passengers out of their seats, which would´ve been comical had it not hurt so much...
The ride back was, if possible, worse than the ride out, and we slept almost not at all. the highlight was returning to the same city that featured only dinners a few nights before, and which featured only breakfasts now. Another highlight was an increasing chain of hundreds of cars and buses stopping for over an hour on the dusty, unpaved road, for absolutely no reason. Typical Bolivia.
We arrived back in La Paz exhausted, dusty, sweating, and starving. Wandering the streets back to our hostel (which featured toilets with no toilet paper and a receptionist who laughed mockingly when you requested some), we ran into the now-infamous Mole Kid Mike, the one who´d had his mole punched off in Cuenca, Ecuador. Unlike when we ran into him in Peru, he was delighted to see us. Just like in Peru, he was still cool, still had no mole, and had an attractive girl in tow. Oh, Gringo Trail.
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