Bum ticks: La Pampas

This little guy is from our hostel in Rurrenabaque but he is a tucan from La Pampas

We woke early on our last day in the jungle and were taken back to Rurrenabaque to be driven about three hours to La Pampas, a wetland. On the way Brandon spotted a tick on my arm and Avar picked it off when we got to land. we were in a group with a Brittish couple, who were very nice and made the whole trip a lot of fun.
You can sometimes see animals on the car trip to La Pamas, all we saw were rea, which look a lot like small emus. There is a 10minute boat trip upriver to the lodge. The Mashaquipe lodge is nicer here than in the jungle, only in that it has more facilities. It obviously sees more tourist traffic. There are dorm rooms with shared bathrooms and private rooms with private bathrooms. Unfortunately or us we were in a private room that was connected to a couple dorms (only a problem because the peoeple in them on night two were really inconsiderate). After lunch I found a tick on my but cheek. Unfortunately, putting alcohol on jungle ticks doesn´t work that well, so I introduced myself to our new guide by flashing him my bum for him to get the tick out.

Howler monkey

There were heaps of turtle

Spotted Cayman

Squirrel monkey

Anaconda

Capaburra

Howler monkey

We did a three hour boat ride upriver and saw howler monkeys, squirrle monkeys, cappuchin monkeys, black and speckled caymen (a lot) and many river birds. We were also lucky enough to stumble upon a two and a half metre anaconda making its way up the river bank, very rare apparently. We came back in the dark, watching the eye shine of the caymen. A lot of people have raved about this on the internet. I found it a bit meh. You already knew how many caymen were there because you saw them in the day so it wasn´t shocking or scary. The best part was when we turned off our torches are were zipping down the river in the dark.

Managed to get a photo of a dolphin face!

It was really hard to photograph them because you couldn´t tell when or where they were going to come up

Jamie, the English guy, convinced our guide we should go dolphin hunting on Friday morning instead of sludging through a swamp in search of anacondas (we had already seen one so we weren´t that excited about this when another group had seen none after three hours in the swamp). We also decided we would leave our sunrise watching day until Saturday. Sandro, our guide, was very honest about how unlikely it is to see dolphins in the dry season. No one tells you this, but the wet season is the best time for dolphin spotting and the dry season is the best time to see cayman. It turns our we were one lucky group, down river we stopped to look at a black howler monkey that was sitting on the bank and I just about leapt our of the boat as I yelled "dolphin". There were two juviniles hanging out in a bend of the river and we sat there and watched them for a little bit. Another group was with us and they stayed with those dolphins while our guide decided we would see if there were more downriver. There were. A pod of about 10, including one really big one and a small baby. It was very cool and we stayed there for ages. Sandro told us we were allowed to swim if we wanted, the dolphins would act to scare away the caymen. Unfortunately, us girls were not wearing swimmers. So the boys jumped in and Jamie promptly lost his fake wedding ring and got back in the boat. The dolphins didn´t really some too close to Brandon, about 5metres or so. On the way down river we also saw heaps of capyburras. We then had to rush back up river to get to lunch on time, the other group who had stayed with the two dolphins were pretty jealous. At this stage, another girl was joined to our group. This was a bit dodgey on Mashaquipe´s part I felt because if we hadn´t been so nice she wouldn´t have got to do everything she wanted to. We went back to find the dolphins after lunch, mainly for her, and then went pirana fishing. I figured out pretty early that the big piranas would be in the middle of the river, since Sandro at the back caught a couple big ones and the guys at the front near the bank were catching tiny ones. So I moved to the back and caught two decent sized ones reasonably quickly. I then swapped places with Brandon, who had caught about 6 really small ones, and he caught one too. We ate our piranas for dinner that night. They are very flavourless fish. On Sandro´s prompting, Jamie ate an eye as well...

Pirana fishing

Piranas for tea!

That night was so horribly hot and the univercity group that had arrived that afternoon were up stupidly late talking really loudly in the middle of all of the cabins. The ones in the room next to us also left their room like on until the generator cut out, and then came in with their torch pointed at the ceiling for 40minutes or more, lighting our room up beautifully. This is also the night Brandon almost made me wet myself. I had ear plugs in and he got out of bed. Sometime later, when I had forgotten her had gotten out of bed, I needed a drink of water and put my foot down beside the bed, and it was promptly touched by something that felt human. He´s lucky I´m not a screamer. He had decided to try sleeping on the tiles because he was too hot in bed. I joined him for a bit, because it was stinking hot. At that point I decided I was not getting up for sunrise.

All the others went and watched the sun rise over La Pampas and then we went anaconda hunting after breakfast. It was hot... So hot. And a lot of work to walk through sticky mud. The other group found a very small anaconda and we went and had a look at it. After a little more fruitless searching we left earlier than our guide had planned because we were over it. On the way back to the lodge we saw a dolphin again. After lunch, it was straight to the airport. We were there quite early and got to sit in their lovely waiting area, which is just some chairs in an outside covered area. The flight was uneventful and we were back in the coolness of La Paz in no time. Bye bye greasy layers of sunscreen and insect repellent.

Anaconda hunting

In total we did 3 days in the jungle and 3 days in La Pampas and I think this was the perfect amount of time for each. It was nice to mostly just sit in the boat in La Pampas after walking through the jungle in humidity. You definitely see a lot more animals in La Pampas, but we wanted to have the experience of walking through the jungle. Even though the boats in La Pampas are not covered, we didn´t get too hot because you are often moving so you get a breeze, but bring a hat. I am a little sad I didn´t get to walk in the jungle at night, because our night walk was a long the river we had star and moonlight even without our torches. Also, we chose not to take antimalarials, against the advice of the doctor we went to. He was a bit sketchy though, he wasn´t going to prescribe them and the prescribed them for the entire trip when he found out we would be here for over two months, even though we spent less than a week in the jungle. The guides also said that Malaria is only really a problem in the wet season, and it´s not a significant risk in that area. Something that should be discussed with a trusted doctor first though.

Spoonbill

Capuchin monkeys 

Jabarrus

Today we discovered half of La Paz is shut on Sunday and the other doesn´t open until midday. Useful. We went to go up the telerifico but the line was at least an hour long... After a lot of running around we eventually found an agency that could get us a full cama (bigger seats and less seats in the bus) overnight bus to Uyuni for tomorrow night. It does go via Potosi and is therefore 2-3 hours longer, and you get dinner and breakfast stops rather then meals on the bus. Personally, we think bus food is rank, so this suits us. It also means we do get to see a little of the country at we go through.
And now I have to waste another hour on this computer while my photos copy from the computer to a USB because this computer came off the ark and only has one USB slot and so I had to first spend and hour and a half copying them all to the computer first... yay... and we´re staying here mainly for the use of this computer...