Monday, October 09, 2006

Termite bites and snake poo






The morning after the 'death road' i took the bus to Rurrenbaque in the jungle- the bus took 14 hours along dirt roads, and if i had found the bike ride wearing on my nerves the bus ride was even worse. The road was narrow and winding and looking out of the window it was actually impossible to see the road below only the cliff edge and the rocky river beneath; but the worst bit (much much worse than the threat of impending death) was just how uncomfortable the seats were! I arrived in Rurrenbaque at 6am, tired, slightly dazed and in desparate need of somewhere just to lie down- making myself easy prey for the persuasive hostel owners. The hostel room i finally found myself could actually be a shed! (but it'll do and it only costs a pound a night and i even get hot water for that too.)
The reason for coming was to go into the jungle or pampas as its more correctly called. (for those interested the pampas is flat marshy lands that stretch up to Venezuela but has few trees, making spotting animals much easier); so after a day chilling out i found a tour agency and booked my tour for the following day. i turned up the following day finding my group consisted of austrailians, new zealanders, a canadian and 2 israelis- great we can all talk English. Everyone was very friendly and most had just returned from a proper jungle tour and weren't in the least scared of what we may encounter on this next tour. (unlike me who was terrified).
We all piled into the jeep, I had to share the one front seat with our guide and the long bumpy ride to the river began, 3 hours later we unfolded our limbs and virtually fell out on the river bank and found our next mode of transport- a long narrow dug out canoe. We jumped in, clutching our rucksacks and supplies and our adventure began.
Immediately after turning the corner there was wildlife everywhere- aligators, huge huge birds, capabara's (huge, huge guinea pig type creatures) and a bit further down the river, pink dolphins! It was amazing, we spent another 3 hours working our way towards the camp (on stilts to keep the aligators at bay!) and i was totally overwhelmed by the abundance of animals that we saw. That evening we went to a neighbouring camp to borrow some wellies and on the way our crazy guide decided to catch an aligator (what a mentalist!), we found them by looking for the reflections of their eyes in our torchlight.
The following morning we went snake hunting, not before our guide showed us what he called the 'fire' tree. Looking for a volunteer he grabbed my arm and tapped the tree bark- literally thousands of ants appeared, he plucked one from the bark and then squished it into my arm, until the 'fire' ant bite me. Ha Ha, very funny for the rest of the group i'm sure.
After several hours of tramping through muddy marsh land (my wellies had a hole in the bottom) our guide spotted 2 massive cobras getting jiggy in a nearby pond. He was off, Steve Irwin-esque, silently moving toward them then suddenly he made a grab for one and after much jumping and flailing of the snake, he subdued it and brought it over to us- it was giant- about 2.5 metres long! and guess what, i even dared to hold it! It seems however that the snake was much more scared than me and promptly raleased its bowels the moment anyone picked it up and let me tell you snake poo is very smelly indeed.
Whilst we were busy looking at (or terrifying- which ever way you look at it) the cobra, another guide had gone off alone and now seemed to be returning carrying an equally enormous anaconda, again we all had a 'turn' holding it and again we were all covered in snake poo, the hot sun baking it dry almost instantly. We soon, had had enough and wanted to head back to camp for a well deserved lunch- the walk back was just as interesting as finding the snakes, we passed a birds nest had seemed to contain birds that were about as big as me, many exotic plants and finally another cobra (i think now our guide was just showing off at how excellent he is at catching snakes!!).
After lunch, armed with miles of fishing line and about half a kilo (-a lb for those older readers!) of raw monkey meat (!) we headed back out on to the river to catch pirihana fish. Not being an expert fisherman i hadn't expected to be any good, and the technique seems a bit hit and miss ("just pull hard when you feel a bite and flick them out of the water") but today i was in luck- i caught six, the most of any of our group (yeees!). After sufficient fishing we headed to a location for watching the sunset (a shed in a field selling beer with a football pitch- what more could you ask for?), we then set about educating the guides in the rules of touch rugby; this became rather more physical then it should and very sweaty in the tropical heat but lots of fun. Then back to camp to eat our catch- pirihanas are very tasty but a little lacking of meat (i think i ate about 5!)
The next day, our last we got up early to watch dawn. Floating down the river watching the animals wake up was lovely but it was too cloudy to actually see the sunrise so we witness the grey sky lighten slightly- then back to bed for an hour before breakfast; afterwhich we went in search of river dolphins but the grey clouds hadn't cleared and soon the skies opened, we got soaked and decided to head back to camp and dry off.
After the rain stopped and we had packed up camp we began our leisurely return down the river- we found the dolphins and most of us jumped in to have a swim. The brown water filled with unseen pirihanas and banks lined with evil looking aligators didn't make for the most relaxing swim but we were told the dolphins would protect us and as we all returned safely i can only assume its true.
After the 3 hour river return we all had to get back into the jeep for the long journey home. If i had thought this would be a good oportunity to get a nap i was severely wrong... the bumpy mud road made for very numb bums very quickly. The lack of windscreen wipers and fluid meant that periodically the driver had to drive by leaning out of the side window and used all the available bottled water to squirt out of the window in an attempt to clean the front (a manouvere which he managed without slowing down). A couple of hours into the journey he stopped for petrol and in our rush to find the bathroom we failed to notice that the driver didn't in fact fill up with petrol (they had run out!!); unfortunately the driver failed to notice a dog lying beneath our car so pulling out of the station was a noisy sticky process (i was nearly sick). As we had no petrol predictably we ran out of petrol before reaching the town but we didn't need to wait long before another passing truck gave us some (syphoned into an empty water bottle used originally to clean the windscreen), these 2 litres managed to get us to the next petrol station and we gor back without further incidence.
I'm learning the moral of the story is perhaps not to economize so heavily when purchasing a tour!

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