So we are writing from Uyuni, and this will be brief because internet is $ here and the keyboard is sticking.
We arrived in Potosi super early, I dont know I guess yesterday, and we promptly slept while the sun was attempting to warm the worlds highest city. After rousing ourselves we had a tasty chifa meal and decided to sign up for a mine tour for that afternoon.
There is not a whole lot going on in Potosi, aside from some nice architecture and cute streets... and the main draw in the huge mountain looming over the city which has since the 1500´s been mined for silver and other minerals. The mines are still very much in use and it is possible to go on tours of the mines. The tour stops off at the miners market where you buy coca leaves and refrescos as gifts to the miners. You can also buy dynamite, to either give to the miners or for your group to blow up. We bought some.
You then get all geared up and down the mines you go. This is no pansy tour, you are in the mines, in some places you can stand, in others you have to crouch. There are many levels and you have to climb down on ladders that seem to disapear into an abyss of blackness below.
It seems like Bolivia has been so far a huge mental game, whether debating to go to the bathroom in the night in the jungle to anaconda hunting in the pampas, and this was no different. You and a head lamp and a long tunnel, which in all likelihood would have been shut down in Canada.
For a little bit of drama we had a Brazilian in our group who had come from sea level but two days ago, and the mere act of walking made him gasp for air... hearing him gasping behind you only heightened the experience. (To note the guide told him he should rest and wait for us but he refused). We watched from a few feet away as the miners used electric and hydrolic hammers to drill holes for dynamite. We looked at dynamite ready to go, and we sat another level up and many meters over and felt the huge shock waves and noise as the blasts went off.
The tour isnt all fun and games and the gifts for the miners are taken seriously and expected. Miners work for 8 plus hours in the deep mines, for a minimal salary. Top people who have worked close to 8 years only get just over 200 USD per month. We saw young people, one only 19 years old working there, they work there because it is more money than shining shoes. We also stopped by the statue of a devil, which every week the miners give coca leaves, cigarettes and other things in return for their safety. Once a year they also sacrifice a llama.
Then once outside we blew up our stick of dynamite at a safe distance.
Now after a long story that shall be explained in the next blog we are in Uyuni. A long day of changed plans and no transport... and they continue here with the bank....
We may be off bloggin for another week.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
Selva: The Case of the Machete and the Mogli Man
So a night back in Rurre meant a cold shower, good meal and a night trip to the WC that resulted in a surprise encounter with a trantula in our bedroom.... and then the next morning we were boating down the Rio Beni towards the Amazon jungle.
Our plan was simple, we were to camp in different campsites for three nights, hack our way through the jungle and hopefully learn a little bit along the way. In fact you learn a lot. It seems like everything in the jungle has a use, whether good for you, medicinal, or to kill you: the plants, the animals, the insects are all to be respected.
Our guide Juan Carlos, had grown up in the jungle since he was very little, killing pumas and hunting when most kids in Canada are watching cartoons. With only a machete he can hunt and survive in the jungle, however we had a cook, so there was no hunting required.
We spent the time walking and bushwaking through the jungle learning which trees smell like garlic, which can induce an abortion, which can make your love interest fall crazy in love with you, which can be added to arrows to kill people and which vines, when cut are full of water...
Hundreds of butterflies flit by, creating clouds of colourful movement; in exotic colours, and vibrant hues, some the size of your hand. Always lots of sand flies and moths at night to put a little jingle in your step.
The jungle is less of a flashy scene than the pampas and animal sightings are less common because the jungle is so dense and huge. The being said we saw wild pigs, maccaws, tucans, all sorts of birds, and we saw the tracks of many, many animals. The jungle is more the realm of the imagination, it is never, ever silent, not in the middle of the night, not in the middle of the day. At night you hear wild pigs that sound like giant animals crashing around seemingly next to you, bugs are everywhere and even the tinest ant bite can cause searing pain that feels like your skin is on fire. Birds call throughout the day, yet you have to look hard to see them; animals move around silently and not so silently. In the morning, walking along the river, you see how not alone you really are, puma tracks only 100m from your tents criss-cross the river along with wild tapiers, ocelots, pigs, deers and so on.
The more time in the jungle the more you see.. and the options are endless you can go for 1 to infinite days: building rafts, using bamboo and palm leaves to make shelters, exploring and letting your mind and body return to the wild. Respect is key, here you really feel like you are not at the top of the foodchain, where everything from jaguars to trees to insects can either kill you or cause you serious harm... Definitely a lesson in respect.
We came out with a huge amount of respect, a little bit more knowledge and a hell of a lot of ant and insect bites and a few rashes to boot.
Our plan was simple, we were to camp in different campsites for three nights, hack our way through the jungle and hopefully learn a little bit along the way. In fact you learn a lot. It seems like everything in the jungle has a use, whether good for you, medicinal, or to kill you: the plants, the animals, the insects are all to be respected.
Our guide Juan Carlos, had grown up in the jungle since he was very little, killing pumas and hunting when most kids in Canada are watching cartoons. With only a machete he can hunt and survive in the jungle, however we had a cook, so there was no hunting required.
We spent the time walking and bushwaking through the jungle learning which trees smell like garlic, which can induce an abortion, which can make your love interest fall crazy in love with you, which can be added to arrows to kill people and which vines, when cut are full of water...
Hundreds of butterflies flit by, creating clouds of colourful movement; in exotic colours, and vibrant hues, some the size of your hand. Always lots of sand flies and moths at night to put a little jingle in your step.
The jungle is less of a flashy scene than the pampas and animal sightings are less common because the jungle is so dense and huge. The being said we saw wild pigs, maccaws, tucans, all sorts of birds, and we saw the tracks of many, many animals. The jungle is more the realm of the imagination, it is never, ever silent, not in the middle of the night, not in the middle of the day. At night you hear wild pigs that sound like giant animals crashing around seemingly next to you, bugs are everywhere and even the tinest ant bite can cause searing pain that feels like your skin is on fire. Birds call throughout the day, yet you have to look hard to see them; animals move around silently and not so silently. In the morning, walking along the river, you see how not alone you really are, puma tracks only 100m from your tents criss-cross the river along with wild tapiers, ocelots, pigs, deers and so on.
The more time in the jungle the more you see.. and the options are endless you can go for 1 to infinite days: building rafts, using bamboo and palm leaves to make shelters, exploring and letting your mind and body return to the wild. Respect is key, here you really feel like you are not at the top of the foodchain, where everything from jaguars to trees to insects can either kill you or cause you serious harm... Definitely a lesson in respect.
We came out with a huge amount of respect, a little bit more knowledge and a hell of a lot of ant and insect bites and a few rashes to boot.
Pampas: Its all about the Free T'Shirt
So the first part of the pampas was an extremely bumpy and dusty experience, probably the most dusty of our drives to date in SA. We spent 4 hours driving to Santa Rosa where we would take a dugout motorized canoe down the pampas. 6 of us plus two guides, a cook and the driver crammed into a 4x4 which slammed and bumped over potholes, and constantly weaved across lanes to the flatest sections of the road. Justine seemed to have the luck of the draw and got so covered in dust we were able to write ¨Clean Me¨on her t'shirt. You will have to take our word for this because someone erased all of their pampas pictures on their camera and we don´t have that photo anymore. (BY ACCIDENT!!! And he apologized a lot)
We stopped for lunch at a tourist restaurant which gave us a taste of the gringo´ised spectacle to come. This restaurant had animals that it was keeping because they were ¨sick or injured¨but were clearly there for tourist show. They had a wild pig, a tucan, parrot and a few other exotic animals mingling with tourists feet for show... Really neat to see a tucan up close, but hard to see animals being kept like this merely for gringo interest.
After that we were soon packing up our canoe in the searing heat and on our way down the pampas. The pampas is like a wetland area, with small rivers moving through mostly flooded grassland and some forest area along the rivers. The major draw of the pampas is the fact that it is still teeming with life, despite the amazing number of tourists that visit it.
What did we see.... what didn´t we see? Well, we didn´t see any Capaberas (although we missed them twice by about a minute), the worlds largest rodent, kind of resembling a beaver sized guinea pig. We saw wild tucans, capuchino monkeys, howler monkeys (just like from Survivor folks, early morning wakeups and all), birds of all shapes and sizes, turtles, aligators, caymans, tarantulas, a cobra, a Yopi snake, anacondas, piranhas, and yes, pink FRESHWATER dolphins.
The tour itself is extremely structured and tailored to people who are less of the bushwhacking type. There were lots of moments where the only conversation would be about who had the most Mozzie (mosquito) bites or if the food was good or not. But these appear to be the key issues for gringos on the tour (The mosquitos were there, that was a fact, but bad??, no I would say most places in Canada have it worse).
We spent one night searching for aligator eyes in the dark, which turned out to be really easy because every 100m or so of the river there seems to be an aligator or cayman. Of course, our guide caught a young one, and although it was for show he was actually quite knowledgeable about the aligator in question.
Time was spent bushwacking and slogging through thigh deep swamp in search of an anaconda. Somewhere between the fact that you are looking for something that is probably under the water you are trudging through, the fact that this water also contains man eating caymans and piranhas and add in that we have all seen way too many Hollywood movies.... from this perspective it seems like a crazy thing to do.
You could also swim with the Pink dolphins, which we opted not to do.. once again same water ...although our guide assured us that the dolphins take care of their young ones and don´t let aligators or snakes into the water near them... But you just can´t stop the imagination, and the water right now is rising and thus has a lot of sediment, and is so black that you can´t even see your hand a few inches from the surface. Besides the dolphins are more swimming away from the tourists than with them.
Early mornings for us were noisy with 6am wakeups from howler monkeys in nearby trees, their screaming sounds like a stormy wind stereotypical to horror movies, the kind that snows people in their houses in the movies for a week. Days were noisy with people complaining about mozzies and lack of cold beer.
The combination of bug spray and sweat leave you feeling completely and utterly dirty. Shower water is straight from the black river, and the toilets only flushed sometimes. Caution must be used at all times; on the way to the W-C Justine came close to stepping on a Yopi snake, one of the more dangerous snakes of the pampas.
If you can ignore the gringos complaining and just sit back and enjoy the non-silence of the bugs, animals and otherwise mysterous noises of the pampas, while watching the black river with its never ending supply of plants floating by, there is something wonderfully exotic and spectacular about the planned and enacted events.
We stopped for lunch at a tourist restaurant which gave us a taste of the gringo´ised spectacle to come. This restaurant had animals that it was keeping because they were ¨sick or injured¨but were clearly there for tourist show. They had a wild pig, a tucan, parrot and a few other exotic animals mingling with tourists feet for show... Really neat to see a tucan up close, but hard to see animals being kept like this merely for gringo interest.
After that we were soon packing up our canoe in the searing heat and on our way down the pampas. The pampas is like a wetland area, with small rivers moving through mostly flooded grassland and some forest area along the rivers. The major draw of the pampas is the fact that it is still teeming with life, despite the amazing number of tourists that visit it.
What did we see.... what didn´t we see? Well, we didn´t see any Capaberas (although we missed them twice by about a minute), the worlds largest rodent, kind of resembling a beaver sized guinea pig. We saw wild tucans, capuchino monkeys, howler monkeys (just like from Survivor folks, early morning wakeups and all), birds of all shapes and sizes, turtles, aligators, caymans, tarantulas, a cobra, a Yopi snake, anacondas, piranhas, and yes, pink FRESHWATER dolphins.
The tour itself is extremely structured and tailored to people who are less of the bushwhacking type. There were lots of moments where the only conversation would be about who had the most Mozzie (mosquito) bites or if the food was good or not. But these appear to be the key issues for gringos on the tour (The mosquitos were there, that was a fact, but bad??, no I would say most places in Canada have it worse).
We spent one night searching for aligator eyes in the dark, which turned out to be really easy because every 100m or so of the river there seems to be an aligator or cayman. Of course, our guide caught a young one, and although it was for show he was actually quite knowledgeable about the aligator in question.
Time was spent bushwacking and slogging through thigh deep swamp in search of an anaconda. Somewhere between the fact that you are looking for something that is probably under the water you are trudging through, the fact that this water also contains man eating caymans and piranhas and add in that we have all seen way too many Hollywood movies.... from this perspective it seems like a crazy thing to do.
You could also swim with the Pink dolphins, which we opted not to do.. once again same water ...although our guide assured us that the dolphins take care of their young ones and don´t let aligators or snakes into the water near them... But you just can´t stop the imagination, and the water right now is rising and thus has a lot of sediment, and is so black that you can´t even see your hand a few inches from the surface. Besides the dolphins are more swimming away from the tourists than with them.
Early mornings for us were noisy with 6am wakeups from howler monkeys in nearby trees, their screaming sounds like a stormy wind stereotypical to horror movies, the kind that snows people in their houses in the movies for a week. Days were noisy with people complaining about mozzies and lack of cold beer.
The combination of bug spray and sweat leave you feeling completely and utterly dirty. Shower water is straight from the black river, and the toilets only flushed sometimes. Caution must be used at all times; on the way to the W-C Justine came close to stepping on a Yopi snake, one of the more dangerous snakes of the pampas.
If you can ignore the gringos complaining and just sit back and enjoy the non-silence of the bugs, animals and otherwise mysterous noises of the pampas, while watching the black river with its never ending supply of plants floating by, there is something wonderfully exotic and spectacular about the planned and enacted events.
Rurrenabaque: Tranquillo Como 15 Kilo
So a rainy day in LaPaz led to some fears that our military flight with TAM might be a no-go to Rurre, but skies cleared and the flight went off without a hitch. The flight takes off from the TAM military base airport near El Alto (one of the highest airports in the world) and barely skirts over the Cordillera Real, with its dry puma and massive glaciers dizzyingly close below, and just as soon as there were glaciers, the mountains dive down into the blackness of the jungle, stretching into infinity beyond. Thick, black forest, puncutured only by mountains, fully carpeted in foliage and massive brown rivers threading their way to the Atlantic.
From close to 4,000m to 105m above sea level in 45minutes, we also went from around 18 degrees to about 40 or so with close to 98% humidity; the sweat is instantaneous and relentless.
Bags were found and we were soon in a pickup truck bumping the few kilometers to Rurre. The jungle and pampas tours are the bread and butter of Rurre tourism and we were soon found ourselves being courted by agencies hoping we might go with them. We checked into a nearby hotel with lush courtyards of hybiscous trees and palms and wandered the town, which didn´t take long.
We opted to spend one more day in Rurre before deciding on a tour agency. Tour agencies in SA have a tendency to tell you what you want to hear, and so it is worthwhile to do a bit of research and talk to people. The pampas tours can be touristy, so we wanted to make sure our lodge would be farther away from the crowds and the Sun-Set Bar (a bar on the pampas where those who got in over their heads can drown their sorrows with cold beer and pop... and out here, anything cold is heavenly).
Met up with an American named Matt, and we decided to go on the 3 day pampas with Amazonico Tours and the 4 day jungle tour with Flecha Tours.
The rest of our time was spent trying to remain as calm as possible (any extra movements result in more sweat than necessary). Life is hot and sticky here, but the town is really laid back with river stone roads and more motorcycles than cars. Jungle starts pretty much just outside the town and fully blankets rolling mountains, stretching into the nearby National Park Madidi.
A great place to take it easy. Muy tranquillo.
From close to 4,000m to 105m above sea level in 45minutes, we also went from around 18 degrees to about 40 or so with close to 98% humidity; the sweat is instantaneous and relentless.
Bags were found and we were soon in a pickup truck bumping the few kilometers to Rurre. The jungle and pampas tours are the bread and butter of Rurre tourism and we were soon found ourselves being courted by agencies hoping we might go with them. We checked into a nearby hotel with lush courtyards of hybiscous trees and palms and wandered the town, which didn´t take long.
We opted to spend one more day in Rurre before deciding on a tour agency. Tour agencies in SA have a tendency to tell you what you want to hear, and so it is worthwhile to do a bit of research and talk to people. The pampas tours can be touristy, so we wanted to make sure our lodge would be farther away from the crowds and the Sun-Set Bar (a bar on the pampas where those who got in over their heads can drown their sorrows with cold beer and pop... and out here, anything cold is heavenly).
Met up with an American named Matt, and we decided to go on the 3 day pampas with Amazonico Tours and the 4 day jungle tour with Flecha Tours.
The rest of our time was spent trying to remain as calm as possible (any extra movements result in more sweat than necessary). Life is hot and sticky here, but the town is really laid back with river stone roads and more motorcycles than cars. Jungle starts pretty much just outside the town and fully blankets rolling mountains, stretching into the nearby National Park Madidi.
A great place to take it easy. Muy tranquillo.
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