Bolivia (Part Three)

Rurrenbaque

We arrived in Rurrenbaque after one of the most terrifying journeys of our life. We thought it was a bit of a tight squeeze riding our bikes down the World’s Most Dangerous Road – picture us on a bus! Especially one that REVERSED every time another bus headed in our direction! It was petrifying. But we made it in one piece and had to face the tough decision of picking a tour guide for our Amazon Pampas tour. It was tricky – every second store advertises ‘PAMPAS TOUR! ADVENTURE! LIONS TIGERS BEARS OH MY!’ so we based our decision on two things. 1) who gave us the best deal and 2) who flirted with us the most. The winner was Johnny, of Amazonico Tours. He told us (in hushed tones) that normally the tour cost 720 bolivianos, but he was going to give it to us for (shhh) 600! He pleaded with us to keep it quiet, he begged us not to tell the others how cheap we’d got it… But as soon as we got in the van, we found out EVERYONE had received Johnny’s ‘special’ price.

Pampa’s Tour Day #1

Our tour group consisted of Hayley, Nikola and myself, our English pal Jeni, a Welsh couple on their honeymoon, Lisa and Toby, and a small Israeli with an amusing accent named Eyal. We could never quite remember his name so he instead became Akmal, which he didn’t like because apparently Akmal is an Arab name and since he was from Israel… Still, the name stuck. We stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch of soup, rice and egg. Mmmmm we were spoiled, weren’t we? Anyway this place was like a zoo! First there was a litter of the sweetest little Labrador puppies that all had skin infections, but were still extremely lovable. Then we stumbled upon a cross-breed of a porcupine and a pig – it was definitely bovine, but it was covered in hundreds of little spikes. It also thought it was a dog and rolled on its back to receive a tummy scratch. Cute! THEN Nikola spotted a massive black chimpanzee dangling from the rafters above the kitchen, swooping down every five seconds to cheekily steal an olive. This caused mass excitement/ hysteria, especially when we noticed (forgive me for being crude) that he had a penne pasta noodle for a bumhole! I know that sounds odd but you know how most anal passages tend to be on the inside? This monkey’s was on the outside. And it really did look like a leftover from an Italian dinner. Anyway, we were all gagging because Pasta-Ass was sitting on the kitchen top from which our lunch had just been cooked, when he decided to come and check us out. Bounding towards us and causing me to smack my head on a bit of dangling meat in my haste to get away, he soon got caught up in a scuffle with the dog. Then he lay next to the porky-pig (get it?) and tried to have a cuddle. All the while there were birds of prey circling us and Blue Macaws pecking at our feet. We knew we needed to leave this crazy place. We all piled back into the jeep except Akmal, who came walking out 10 minutes later, grinning ear to ear, with the monkey in his arms! Lunatic.

An hour and a half later, we arrived at the boat docks where we were thrilled beyond belief to spot our first pink river dolphins. We only saw a fin here, a flash of pink there, but it was still so exciting. We were introduced to our tour guide Bizma, who quickly became known as Bizzle, Bizzy-Shizz, Bizmiester etc. We got into our little boat and made the two-hour journey to our camp. On the way, Bizzle pointed out all the wildlife and told us fun facts about the Pampas. It was so hot, such a change from La Paz. We saw turtles, about a hundred different species of birds and we were absolutely besieged with a group of yellow-armed monkeys. They were so cute, but I couldn’t appreciate them sitting on my head or lap because Biz had pulled out a box full of bananas. Now, for those who don’t know, I have a very special condition – I’m absolutely petrified of bananas. As a teen, I refused to apply for a job at Woolworths because I knew I’d have to scan through bananas at the checkout. If someone eats one within 10 yards of me, I fret that they will ask me to take the peel to the bin. In short, bananas are the undoing of me. So while I ADORED the monkeys, I still screamed like a banshee when they climbed all over me because it meant Biz had just placed a piece of banana on my hat. It got very embarrassing. People tend to regard my phobia as a joke or an overreaction and this time was no different. Biz continued to put bits of disgusting, mushy crap all over me until I ended up using my hysterical ‘I’M NOT FUCKING JOKING, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME OR I’LL PUNCH YOU IN THE MOUTH!’ scream that makes me everyone a little awkward.

We arrived at camp and saw to our astonishment a massive black alligator sitting calmly on the shore outside our dining hall! Biz got angry at us because we all jumped out of the boat to take photos of the beast instead of helping him bring in the food crates. We got set up in our dorm, complete with inch-thick mosquito nets. The mozzies in the Pampas were RIDICULOUS! They became the main topic of conversation for the three days we were there, along with insect repellent, the pros and cons of using Deet (apparently it causes cancer) and how many bites we each had received that day. Poor Akmal was COVERED in mosquito bites. They loved him! At night, he’d shout from his bed, in his funny little cannot-pronounce-the-letter-H-accent, “Bah! I ‘ate zee mos-kee-toes! I ‘ATE ZEM!”
“You ATE the mosquitoes, Akmal?” we’d all ask him, sounding shocked.
“No, no, no! I ‘ATE zem! ‘Ate!”
“Yes, we know, you’re eating them. How do they taste?”
Mean! But luckily Akmal was a good sport. He muttered darkly that God was going to burn all our countries and everyone was friends again. Anyway, Hayley, Nikola and I all used the cancerous Deet so we were pretty well protected except for the bits that were exposed – our necks, hands, ankles and, thanks to that unavoidable task of going to the toilet, our bottoms. We all prayed we wouldn’t meet the man of our dreams once we were back in La Paz… how would we explain our pizza asses? We had a snack of cordial and popcorn before we set off to watch the sunset at a riverside bar. It was beautiful as we sipped our beers and watched the pinks and purples of the sky slowly fade. It finally got dark and we wanted to leave because Biz had promised us we would go crocodile hunting. However Biz was relaxing in a hammock with his friends and didn’t want to leave so we gave him the washing-machine treatment. It still didn’t work, causing Jeni to sigh, “aww Bizzle doesn’t give a shizzle”. Hah! Finally, after we were pretty much kicked out of the bar for being rowdy and causing damage to the hammocks, we went hunting for crocs! The mosquitoes were out in full and everyone was jealous of the mosquito net I had over my head, although they pretended I looked stupid. We all had torches and our job was to spy red eyes in the water. Suddenly, Biz threw himself bodily across the boat and snatched something out of the water… it was a baby alligator! We named him Chester and we all had a hold of him. I think it’s illegal to manhandle the wildlife but it was such an amazing experience holding a wild alligator!

Pampas Tour Day #2
We woke up at 7.30 the next morning and got dressed to go piranha fishing. It was a tricky business – we had to thread bits of meat (unpleasant) on our lines then dangle it tantalisingly into the water. I got my line caught in about 10 trees and Biz got angry at me again. We tried heaps of different spots of the river but didn’t get any action for hours. Finally Biz caught one! It was red and weird looking. Nikola posed with one for a photo and then tried to give it a drink of water before the rest of us had a hold but it wriggled out of her hands and swam away. We thought that was enough fishing and it started to rain so we headed back to camp for a siesta on the hammocks. We read our books with an alligator that had a missing foot (Biz told us he came out second in a fight, poor love) sitting five feet away from us. Biz kept approaching him and stroking him on the nose. Loco! Akmal entertained us by putting on Jeni’s pink raincoat and pretending to be one of the local dolphins when Biz suggested we go swimming with the real things! Yes please! We were a little concerned because the dolphins shared the river with alligators, piranhas and all other sorts of nightmarish stuff, but Biz assured us dolphins are the tough guys of the river and the other animals don’t go anywhere near them. OH MY GOD! It was actually the most amazing experience of my life. We all jumped out of our boat and waited nervously in the murky water then suddenly there were fins breaking the surface all around us. We all got to touch them – sometimes they swam underneath us and we would accidently kick them as we tread water and they would pay us back by flicking us with their tails. We got empty water bottles and the dolphins would poke at them curiously. It was a-maz-ing! Especially for Hayley – swimming with dolphins has been her dream ever since she was little, but she never wanted to go the SeaWorld route. To swim with them in the wild was just incredible. We went back to the camp absolutely GLOWING.

After dinner, on his suggestion, Hayley and I had story telling time with Akmal.
“You first,” he urged Hayley.
“Umm ok… today I swam with dolphins and it was the most amazing moment of my life.”
Then it was my turn.
“Errr… I am in love with Bolivia.”
“Ok, now my turn,” Akmal said excitedly, before lowering his voice and looking us seriously in the eyes. “When I was twenty-one years old, my name was Kamal Mohammad Shereef and I was a Muslim spy for the Israeli army.”
He went on to tell us how he spent his three-year army service, which all Israelis have to do after they leave school, planting bugs in the enemies houses, growing a beard and learning the Koran. He even recited a passage for us! It was actually really beautiful. Then he sang us the Israel national anthem before heading off to bed. Hayley and I went to sleep that night feeling our lives were extremely dull in comparison.

Pampas Tour Day #3
The next morning we were supposed to wake up early to see the sunrise, but it was raining so we had a sleep in instead. We wanted to go swimming with the dolphins again, but Biz (who we were steadily growing to hate due to his bad moods, B.O and sleazy behaviour) insisted we go snake hunting. Didn’t matter that they hadn’t seen an anything for eight weeks! We grudgingly put on our mis-matched and oversized gumboots, smothered ourselves in Deet and went to an island which should be named Denge Fever Land. The mosquitoes SWARMED! After that we got taken (against our will) to a tall-grassed area where Akmal, Tobi and Lisa went trudging through thigh-high mud looking for anacondas while the rest of us sulked in the boat. We didn’t give a shit about these non-existent snakes, we wanted DOLPHYS! They didn’t find anything, as we knew they wouldn’t, and then Biz got angry at us (again… were we paying him for this?) because we didn’t get out and help turn around the boat. Our logic was we hadn’t wanted to go there, it wasn’t OUR idea to be stuck in a bog so why should we help? But then, Tobi yelled at us.
“Aren’t we a group? I thought we were a team, but you guys are just sitting there doing fuck all!”
It was extremely embarrassing and we all sat in an ashamed silence on the way home. We had to beg Biz to take us to see the dolphins again. He only allowed it after we had apologised to him and Lisa and Tobi for not helping with the boat. Unfortunately the dolphins weren’t feeling to playful this time and we only saw a fin from far away. I blame Biz. He hated us so he made the dolphins hate us too. We left feeling quite down-hearted. In the jeep back to Rurrenbaque, we saw Casawarras, which looked like giant guinea pigs. They were so cute! We also saw a brown lump in a tree that Biz told us was a sloth but could’ve just been a bunch of coconuts. Biz then spent the entire car journey back ignoring us. At first we thought he had headphones on because we’d ask him questions and he just wouldn’t answer but then we figured out, no, he DIDN’T have headphones on, he was just ignoring us. What a grumpy A-hole! When we got back to town, we asked him to be in a group photo with us, but he said no and just stomped off. I really wanted to give him a bad report, which I had been threatening him with the whole trip, but unfortunately they didn’t make us fill in a satisfaction report. Damn! I love nothing better than a good complaint.

We had one more night in Rurrenbaque before getting the death-trap of a bus back to La Paz the next day. It was on this bus that The Most Traumatic Event of My Life occurred. I watched out the window as a man came hurrying towards the bus with the baby cow in his arms.
“Oh god,” I said to Nikola. “There is a cow coming on the bus!”
We already had a box full of puppies, a baby monkey and several fully-grown dogs. Sure, why not a cow? But then, to my horror, I saw the bus driver open the LUGGAGE COMPARTMENT AND PUT THE BABY COW IN THERE!!!! Flinging open the window, I shouted “NO! THAT’S ANIMAL ABUSE!” They ignored me and I spent the next two hours in hysterical tears, wincing every time our bus went over a pothole. It was boiling hot, that luggage compartment was full of unsecured, heavy objects and there would be absolutely no air down there. I have never been more furious in my life. I’m aware that South America is a poor continent, and cruelty to animals doesn’t really rate when compared to some of the hardships the people have to live through. But come on. A cow, a living, breathing baby cow, in a LUGGAGE COMPARTMENT!? There was enough room on the bus.