Pampas is in Bolivia

Well it seems you can’t escape the festivities anywhere in Bolivia. When we arrived in Rurrenabaque we were puzzled about the food- and beer tents in the plaza and all the bands playing live music around them. It was the same kind of crazy party vibe we had just left in San Ignacio: lots of people drinking beer and eating grilled meat, 10 different bands playing almost next to each other so that you could here at least 4 of them simultaneously, and some men rambling about drunk out of their minds. Well here we saw one new phenomenon: small girls ran around drinking beer from adults’ glasses. When we were sitting and enjoying a beer with Jim and Gen, two small girls came up to us and handed a cover of a porn dvd to us, I guess as a distraction?, and quickly took sips from our beer glasses. Well, you see something new every day...

So what was this party all about? And who are these Jim and Gen characters? Well as it happened, it was the Independence Day of Bolivia the next day. And of course the party has to start a head of time so that you have time to get into party mode. The next day they had long parades with lots of school children parading in nice costumes and playing with trumpets and drums. And as our hotel was almost next to the plaza we got to listen to the parades and bands all days and nights long .

Well you already heard about how we got to San Borja, a town between San Ignacio and Rurrenabaque... But how did we continue our journey? Well after a few hours of sleep in San Borja in a criminally expensive room considering the small amount of time we spent there, we woke up and were glad it wasn’t raining. Because ahead of us we had a 6 hour bus trip along a dirt road again. This time it was in a minivan where locals got to choose the seats first and after that it was the gringos’ turn. As it happened, there were two other gringos apart from us going to Rurrenabaque, and it turned out to be a pleasant journey apart from all the bumping in a car that probably hasn’t seen a suspender in its life. Jim and Gen live in Sydney, Australia, at Tamarama beach, our favourite in Sydney! So you can imagine we had a lot to talk about. What are the chances? Well, the world is small.

After celebrating the independence and enjoying the much more diverse food than in Ignacio, we went on a 3 day tour to the pampas around the Rio Yacuma River a couple of hours away from Rurrenabaque. We spent a lot of the time cruising along the river and spotting all kinds of animals, like capyvaras, caimans, pink river dolphins, turtles, monkeys and lots of birds. We also did some piranha fishing with small chunks of meet and the boys actually managed to catch quite a few of them. In the evening the fish was served with dinner.

One day we did a 4 hour hike in search for an anaconda. Anacondas are really hard to find, but our guide actually managed to spot one that was hiding in a hollow tree. We saw a few glimpses of it lying there scared for us to take it. We also learned something new about the anaconda, everyone can judge themselves whether they think it is true or not: if the pray is too big for the snake to strangle from the outside, it goes in through the butt hole and strangles the prey’s intestines from the inside.

Pink river dolphin

Looking for anacondas

Hiding anaconda