6-19
Caught a bus up to the airport in El Alto to catch a plane to Rurrenabaque. The flight ended up being delayed for 4 hours because the president of Iran was arriving. They shut down the whole airport and did a big production where they rolled out the red carpet and had a band playing when he arrived. There was of course lots of military and military police there. I also got to see the Bolivian president as he was waiting at the airport when Ahmadinejad arrived.
It was a tiny little plane with an open cockpit. It bounced around an awful lot as we flew right over the Andes and you could see that the pilots were working hard with the steering. We flew right past Huayna Potosi which I had climbed which was very cool. The flight was less than 40 minutes and we were soon descending through the clouds to a tiny runway. There were no buildings are anything at the runway, just a bus waiting to pick the 12 or so passengers up.
I walked around Rurrenabaque trying to pick out my tours for the pampas and jungle. I visited Madidi travel owned by Rosa Marie Ruiz, a top conservationist. She was the one mainly responsible for the establishment of Madidi National Park. But since the government took over the national park, it has gone terribly downhill. There is lots of illegal logging and even the rangers poach animals which sets a bad example for the rest of the people. Back in 2000, she had initially blocked a proposal for a dam, but there is now a new government in Bolivia who is highly influenced by Brazil. Brazil plans to build over 300 new dams in the Amazon, so of course Bolivia wants to do the same again. It is really quite tragic. She says it is so sad that she can hardly go back there. She has now set up a private resereve called Serere in the Madidi/Amazon Mosaic. It was originally a trashed and dumpy area, but with lots of reforestation and other things they now have a very healthy forest. One jaguar in the area is often a sign of a healthy forest, and she said they have at least 4 in the area. It was really cool sitting there talking to a famous conservationist. And she was excited I was headed to UFlorida to pursue zoology and conservation. And the experience was added to by the fact that during the whole conversation she had a baby spider monkey cuddling up around her neck. Spider monkeys are highly endangered bc their meet tastes good and this one was orphaned when a poacher killed its mother. After the discussion, she convinced me when I was going to do the jungle tour to go to Serere reserve instead of the corrupt and highly degraded Madidi national park. Even though the tours to Serere are much more expensive than the traditional tour I felt it would be a much better experience and also my money would be put to good use for conservation.
It is really sad about the Madidi National Park bc it was one of the most biodiverse national park's in the world since it stretched from the high peaks at 19,000 feet in the Andes down through cloud forest and into the Amazon Rainforest. Unfortunately, I think this is a common thing among national parks in developing countries. Even more developed countries like Chile have NP's under threat to mining and other things.
Rosa Marie led an expedition into the Madidi rainforest for national geographic several years ago, and it was the cover story for March 2000 in Nat Geo.
If you are interested in reading the Nat Geo article (one of the most interesting in the journal kept by the photographer of just all the nasty bugs and such that he encountered in the jungle) or learning more about Serere and the Madidi Mosaic and Rosa Marie's conservation, check out this website http://www.ecobolivia.org/en/home.php
6-20
Joined a Pampas tour. There were 8 of us and a guide Tas. Tas had grown up in the jungle his first 7 years of life in the most traditional way (i.e. living off the forest and not wearing clothes.). We were an interesting group. Sandra and Mayra from the Canary Islands of Spain, Li and engineering student going to Georgia Tech from Korea, Susan a naturalist and dive instructor from Milwaukee, Nigel and Karen living in Hong Kong but from New Zealand and England, and Clay a student from Humboldt State unversity from LA. He has parents from Bolivia and Mexico and he is in La Paz visiting his Bolivian grandparents. First we drove for 3 hours to Santa Rosa on a very muddy road with lots of stuck trucks. We then drove on to the Yacuma river and the pampas. The pampas are basically a huge flooded grassland area with trees just lining the bank of the river.
We took a long boat ride to get to our cool river camp. Along the way we saw lots of green turtles resting on floating logs, squirrel monkeys, pink river dolphins, black caimans, alligators, and lots of birds. During the boat ride, a group in front of us saw a jaguar along the river, but when we got there, we just heard the splashing of it running away. In the evening we took the boat out to a good spot to see the sunset, and we ended up playing a game of volleyball there. At night we took a boat ride looking for caiman eyes. We saw some baby caimans as well. As would become a theme in my entire stay in the Amazon basin, there were tons and tons of mosquitos due to more rain than normal for this time of year. And they were hungry guys, willing to bite through even two layers of clothing (I got bit on my but many times). Some people ended up with several hundred bites by the end of the pampas tour.
6-21 Happy Incan New Year!
Today we went further up the river. We saw Capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and 2 types of howler monkeys. We saw 5 three-toed sloths just chilling up in the trees We saw some blue and gold mccaws, lots of turtles, lots of dolphins, and several caimans. In the afternoon we went swimming with the river dolphins. It was fun bc they would swim around you and playfully bite you. The nice thing about swimming with the dolphins is that although there are pirahnas, caimains, alligators, and anacondas in the river, if there are dolphins nearby, you know none of the other dangerous animals are around. The water was amazingly warm, and it was just fun splashing around with the dolphins. I have always wanted to swim with dolphins, and I was so excited to jump in with them, that unfortunately I forgot to take off my sunglasses and lost them. This is the 3rd time I have lost sunglasses to quick water entries. One on the mekong river with Conrad and Whitney when someone lost something overboard on our party boat and I jumped in after it and one time in Utah on our rafting trip at the end when we were packing our stuff up and blaring the Michael Jackson free willy song and I jumped into the river pretending to be free willy.
We also went anaconda searching in the grass with no luck. Just plenty of mosquito bites. In the later afternoon we took siestas in the hammocks by the river before going pirahna fishing. I had luck catching 2 pirahnas, but most people just got mosquitos that were made worse by an afternoon rain shower.
6-22
It rained like the dickens overnight. Crazy rain! In the morning it stopped raining long enough for us to do a short bird watching tour. Then it started pouring again, so we decided to do more dolphin swimming since we were already wet. It continued to just pour and pour and we had fun mud wrestling and then showering and shampooing in the heavy rain. After that we had the 2 hour boat ride back to the land cruiser. Most people wore their rain jackets which was useless with how heavy the rain was. I just war my swimsuit.
The ride back to rurrenabaque was wild and fun since the road was deep mud and flooding in places. We passed tons of stuck trucks and stuck buses (you may ask why this budget traveler chose the more expensive flights to and fron La Paz and Rurrenebaque, well partly bc of safety as although the buses no longer use the death road, they still use a nasty road that often has buses fall off the cliff. Also bc it is a cramped and crappy bus and it supposedly takes 20 hours though most people who took it said they took 30 hours and some had taken 48 hours. If you had been on one of these stuck buses you were looking at at least 48 hours. Plus they dont have toilets and rarely make toilet stops so kids and babies just pee in the aisles. Li had his backpack peed on by a kid. They say that everyone who takes the bus to Rurrenabaque always flies back, it is that bad). At some points the road was too bad that there is no way we could have made it through so the driver chose to just plow through jungle, making our own path. Our group had really bonded and we had tons of fun together so we were really having a ball cheering and yelling as the land cruiser slipped and slid and nearly got stuck, passing other stuck cars. We passed bulldozers just trying to push trucks out of mud, trucks that were stuck way above their wheels, but even some of the bulldozers were stuck. I dont know how we made it out. But there was lots of cheering and we made it through the hardest part. Nearly immediately after this adrenaline rushing part, the driver suddently skidded to a stop and sprinted out of the car. We of course piled out quickly too and saw him holing a large anaconda that he had caught that was trying to cross the road. We all took turns holding it before we let it go back into the grass.
The road and all the stuck cars and bulldozers actually reminded me a lot of the road to pegasus and the transition with all the stuck vans and the challengers pulling us out.
When we got back to Rurrenabaque we all hung out before sad goodbyes at night as everyone was going off in different directions.
Caught a bus up to the airport in El Alto to catch a plane to Rurrenabaque. The flight ended up being delayed for 4 hours because the president of Iran was arriving. They shut down the whole airport and did a big production where they rolled out the red carpet and had a band playing when he arrived. There was of course lots of military and military police there. I also got to see the Bolivian president as he was waiting at the airport when Ahmadinejad arrived.
It was a tiny little plane with an open cockpit. It bounced around an awful lot as we flew right over the Andes and you could see that the pilots were working hard with the steering. We flew right past Huayna Potosi which I had climbed which was very cool. The flight was less than 40 minutes and we were soon descending through the clouds to a tiny runway. There were no buildings are anything at the runway, just a bus waiting to pick the 12 or so passengers up.
I walked around Rurrenabaque trying to pick out my tours for the pampas and jungle. I visited Madidi travel owned by Rosa Marie Ruiz, a top conservationist. She was the one mainly responsible for the establishment of Madidi National Park. But since the government took over the national park, it has gone terribly downhill. There is lots of illegal logging and even the rangers poach animals which sets a bad example for the rest of the people. Back in 2000, she had initially blocked a proposal for a dam, but there is now a new government in Bolivia who is highly influenced by Brazil. Brazil plans to build over 300 new dams in the Amazon, so of course Bolivia wants to do the same again. It is really quite tragic. She says it is so sad that she can hardly go back there. She has now set up a private resereve called Serere in the Madidi/Amazon Mosaic. It was originally a trashed and dumpy area, but with lots of reforestation and other things they now have a very healthy forest. One jaguar in the area is often a sign of a healthy forest, and she said they have at least 4 in the area. It was really cool sitting there talking to a famous conservationist. And she was excited I was headed to UFlorida to pursue zoology and conservation. And the experience was added to by the fact that during the whole conversation she had a baby spider monkey cuddling up around her neck. Spider monkeys are highly endangered bc their meet tastes good and this one was orphaned when a poacher killed its mother. After the discussion, she convinced me when I was going to do the jungle tour to go to Serere reserve instead of the corrupt and highly degraded Madidi national park. Even though the tours to Serere are much more expensive than the traditional tour I felt it would be a much better experience and also my money would be put to good use for conservation.
It is really sad about the Madidi National Park bc it was one of the most biodiverse national park's in the world since it stretched from the high peaks at 19,000 feet in the Andes down through cloud forest and into the Amazon Rainforest. Unfortunately, I think this is a common thing among national parks in developing countries. Even more developed countries like Chile have NP's under threat to mining and other things.
Rosa Marie led an expedition into the Madidi rainforest for national geographic several years ago, and it was the cover story for March 2000 in Nat Geo.
If you are interested in reading the Nat Geo article (one of the most interesting in the journal kept by the photographer of just all the nasty bugs and such that he encountered in the jungle) or learning more about Serere and the Madidi Mosaic and Rosa Marie's conservation, check out this website http://www.ecobolivia.org/en/home.php
6-20
Joined a Pampas tour. There were 8 of us and a guide Tas. Tas had grown up in the jungle his first 7 years of life in the most traditional way (i.e. living off the forest and not wearing clothes.). We were an interesting group. Sandra and Mayra from the Canary Islands of Spain, Li and engineering student going to Georgia Tech from Korea, Susan a naturalist and dive instructor from Milwaukee, Nigel and Karen living in Hong Kong but from New Zealand and England, and Clay a student from Humboldt State unversity from LA. He has parents from Bolivia and Mexico and he is in La Paz visiting his Bolivian grandparents. First we drove for 3 hours to Santa Rosa on a very muddy road with lots of stuck trucks. We then drove on to the Yacuma river and the pampas. The pampas are basically a huge flooded grassland area with trees just lining the bank of the river.
We took a long boat ride to get to our cool river camp. Along the way we saw lots of green turtles resting on floating logs, squirrel monkeys, pink river dolphins, black caimans, alligators, and lots of birds. During the boat ride, a group in front of us saw a jaguar along the river, but when we got there, we just heard the splashing of it running away. In the evening we took the boat out to a good spot to see the sunset, and we ended up playing a game of volleyball there. At night we took a boat ride looking for caiman eyes. We saw some baby caimans as well. As would become a theme in my entire stay in the Amazon basin, there were tons and tons of mosquitos due to more rain than normal for this time of year. And they were hungry guys, willing to bite through even two layers of clothing (I got bit on my but many times). Some people ended up with several hundred bites by the end of the pampas tour.
6-21 Happy Incan New Year!
Today we went further up the river. We saw Capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, and 2 types of howler monkeys. We saw 5 three-toed sloths just chilling up in the trees We saw some blue and gold mccaws, lots of turtles, lots of dolphins, and several caimans. In the afternoon we went swimming with the river dolphins. It was fun bc they would swim around you and playfully bite you. The nice thing about swimming with the dolphins is that although there are pirahnas, caimains, alligators, and anacondas in the river, if there are dolphins nearby, you know none of the other dangerous animals are around. The water was amazingly warm, and it was just fun splashing around with the dolphins. I have always wanted to swim with dolphins, and I was so excited to jump in with them, that unfortunately I forgot to take off my sunglasses and lost them. This is the 3rd time I have lost sunglasses to quick water entries. One on the mekong river with Conrad and Whitney when someone lost something overboard on our party boat and I jumped in after it and one time in Utah on our rafting trip at the end when we were packing our stuff up and blaring the Michael Jackson free willy song and I jumped into the river pretending to be free willy.
We also went anaconda searching in the grass with no luck. Just plenty of mosquito bites. In the later afternoon we took siestas in the hammocks by the river before going pirahna fishing. I had luck catching 2 pirahnas, but most people just got mosquitos that were made worse by an afternoon rain shower.
6-22
It rained like the dickens overnight. Crazy rain! In the morning it stopped raining long enough for us to do a short bird watching tour. Then it started pouring again, so we decided to do more dolphin swimming since we were already wet. It continued to just pour and pour and we had fun mud wrestling and then showering and shampooing in the heavy rain. After that we had the 2 hour boat ride back to the land cruiser. Most people wore their rain jackets which was useless with how heavy the rain was. I just war my swimsuit.
The ride back to rurrenabaque was wild and fun since the road was deep mud and flooding in places. We passed tons of stuck trucks and stuck buses (you may ask why this budget traveler chose the more expensive flights to and fron La Paz and Rurrenebaque, well partly bc of safety as although the buses no longer use the death road, they still use a nasty road that often has buses fall off the cliff. Also bc it is a cramped and crappy bus and it supposedly takes 20 hours though most people who took it said they took 30 hours and some had taken 48 hours. If you had been on one of these stuck buses you were looking at at least 48 hours. Plus they dont have toilets and rarely make toilet stops so kids and babies just pee in the aisles. Li had his backpack peed on by a kid. They say that everyone who takes the bus to Rurrenabaque always flies back, it is that bad). At some points the road was too bad that there is no way we could have made it through so the driver chose to just plow through jungle, making our own path. Our group had really bonded and we had tons of fun together so we were really having a ball cheering and yelling as the land cruiser slipped and slid and nearly got stuck, passing other stuck cars. We passed bulldozers just trying to push trucks out of mud, trucks that were stuck way above their wheels, but even some of the bulldozers were stuck. I dont know how we made it out. But there was lots of cheering and we made it through the hardest part. Nearly immediately after this adrenaline rushing part, the driver suddently skidded to a stop and sprinted out of the car. We of course piled out quickly too and saw him holing a large anaconda that he had caught that was trying to cross the road. We all took turns holding it before we let it go back into the grass.
The road and all the stuck cars and bulldozers actually reminded me a lot of the road to pegasus and the transition with all the stuck vans and the challengers pulling us out.
When we got back to Rurrenabaque we all hung out before sad goodbyes at night as everyone was going off in different directions.
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