Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Home again
So I'm home after four months travelling. The trip was quite satisfying and it was kinda fun writing a blog too. This is propably the last post, but who knows, maybe I'll take this blog up again if I decide to do another trip in the future. Thank you.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Welcome to the djungle
Rurrenabaque, after 19 hours in a cramped bus rolling over one of the most dangerous mountain roads in Bolivia. At least I sat on the right side, towards the mountain, and didn´t have to see the sometimes dizzying drop off the edge of the road. Once there I was met by the pleasant hot humidity of the Bolivian lowlands. Rurre is a dusty but homey small town with the river Beni flowing lazily past one of its sides. On the other side is another, even smaller town.
The norm is to do a three day tour of the pampas or the jungle. For that reason I had some trouble finding people willing to join me for a six day trip. After three days looking I had given up and decided to go alone, when the night before my trek a Israeli girl named Tslil found me and said she wanted to go for seven days. So off we went, with two guides and one chef, a regular imperial expedition it felt to me, since there were more staff than tourists.
First by riverboat to the agency´s camp by the river, where we stayed overnight. The next day we headed out in the riverboat again but only to unload our stuff an hour later and walk into the jungle. We saw some brown monkeys and smelly wild boars, along with lots of large trees of different species. The walking tree can move up to one meter a year, I was told, by means of sprouting new support branches/roots downwards towards where the sun shines. After half a days walking it was dark and we camped in the jungle. Our guides cut trees into long poles and put up the tarp and mosquito nets. We slept on the ground covered with another tarp. In the night it rained hard so Tslil and the guides got soaked, I was luckily a little higher up.
The next days went in the same fashion, we camped by the river and in the djungle, saw lots of wild boars, some yellow monkeys, a deer. Unfortunately we didn´t see the tapir but could hear it rummaging in the bushes. The rare jaguar we neither heard nor saw. Something we did have a lot of was bugs. One morning my backpack was covered in ants, the next day by the river we had hundreds of wasps buzzing around. The ever present mosquitoes and sand flies made our foreign legs look like we had the measels.
All in all the jungle was a great experience. We rarely walked any paths so it really felt like going through wilderness and not just a tourist route. The trees were huge and there was wines everywhere. Our chef cooking on the fire also made the trek feel more spontaneus. We had lots of fried stuff: Rice, cooking bananas, fish, cassava... Actually most of our food was deep fried, but I didn't mind. Tslil did complained a little about having greasy fried fish and rice for breakfast. The fish we ate our guide Alside had cought the night before using a hooked line with small bait fish. The fish was quite large and looked like a bottom feeder, but tasted surprisingly good, I'm guessing it was catfish.
The second last day the guides built a raft out of balsa wood and long slices of tree bark. On the very buoyant raft we lazily floated down the river back to our camp, taking dips now and then in the warm but dirty river water.
After coming back to Rurre I stayed a few days just to enjoy the calmness of the town, going to the pool some days and hanging out with Tslil and her friends in a beautiful Israeli hostel by the river. Tonight i went back to La Paz. It was raining in the night so I was worried about the condition of the road, but the trip went fine. Now I'm staying my last few days in La Paz, until my flight goes out of Bolivia and South America. I'm already missing it.
The norm is to do a three day tour of the pampas or the jungle. For that reason I had some trouble finding people willing to join me for a six day trip. After three days looking I had given up and decided to go alone, when the night before my trek a Israeli girl named Tslil found me and said she wanted to go for seven days. So off we went, with two guides and one chef, a regular imperial expedition it felt to me, since there were more staff than tourists.
First by riverboat to the agency´s camp by the river, where we stayed overnight. The next day we headed out in the riverboat again but only to unload our stuff an hour later and walk into the jungle. We saw some brown monkeys and smelly wild boars, along with lots of large trees of different species. The walking tree can move up to one meter a year, I was told, by means of sprouting new support branches/roots downwards towards where the sun shines. After half a days walking it was dark and we camped in the jungle. Our guides cut trees into long poles and put up the tarp and mosquito nets. We slept on the ground covered with another tarp. In the night it rained hard so Tslil and the guides got soaked, I was luckily a little higher up.
The next days went in the same fashion, we camped by the river and in the djungle, saw lots of wild boars, some yellow monkeys, a deer. Unfortunately we didn´t see the tapir but could hear it rummaging in the bushes. The rare jaguar we neither heard nor saw. Something we did have a lot of was bugs. One morning my backpack was covered in ants, the next day by the river we had hundreds of wasps buzzing around. The ever present mosquitoes and sand flies made our foreign legs look like we had the measels.
All in all the jungle was a great experience. We rarely walked any paths so it really felt like going through wilderness and not just a tourist route. The trees were huge and there was wines everywhere. Our chef cooking on the fire also made the trek feel more spontaneus. We had lots of fried stuff: Rice, cooking bananas, fish, cassava... Actually most of our food was deep fried, but I didn't mind. Tslil did complained a little about having greasy fried fish and rice for breakfast. The fish we ate our guide Alside had cought the night before using a hooked line with small bait fish. The fish was quite large and looked like a bottom feeder, but tasted surprisingly good, I'm guessing it was catfish.
The second last day the guides built a raft out of balsa wood and long slices of tree bark. On the very buoyant raft we lazily floated down the river back to our camp, taking dips now and then in the warm but dirty river water.
After coming back to Rurre I stayed a few days just to enjoy the calmness of the town, going to the pool some days and hanging out with Tslil and her friends in a beautiful Israeli hostel by the river. Tonight i went back to La Paz. It was raining in the night so I was worried about the condition of the road, but the trip went fine. Now I'm staying my last few days in La Paz, until my flight goes out of Bolivia and South America. I'm already missing it.
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