| May 2, 2006 - All day 4WD jeep ride
| The passed weekend when I was just hanging out in La Paz with Carmin and Dan and the others, I was spending some time setting up both my trip down the Death Road and my next move after that, a trip to the Bolivian jungle and grasslands (pampas), in a place called Rurrenabaque. Well, it seems like I always end up here in La Paz at the most intersting times. Remember the deal back in December with the elections and the road blockades? Let me explain by first telling you what my plans were, again mostly copied from an email I wrote at the time.
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Since Carnaval ended the only thing left on my trip that I felt was really lacking was a trip to the jungle. Because how could I spend 8 months in South America and not see the Amazon? So the plan was to do that here in Bolivia, where there is still a large chunk of the Amazon basin and jungle and even wet grassland plains excellent for wildlife viewing known as the Pampas. There is a typical tour out of La Paz that many people do. Typically, you fly to a town called Rurrenabaque, which is the main entry point for the Bolivian jungle. From there you can organize any type of tour that you want, but the typical one which I am doing is 2 days in the jungle, which is more for the scenery and vegetation, and 3 days in the Pampas, to view animals. Inculded in the Pampas section is a swim with the unique pink dolphins that live in the rivers there, pirannha fishing, getting annihilated by mosquitos, and other crazy activities. So that was what I had in mind.
First problem, I could not take any flights. The company that flies there every single day normally had a problem when it hit a large bird and won`t have flights for about a week. The other company is the military company, TAM, which only flies on Mondays and I needed to start my tour Wednesday just to keep everything on schedule. No problem, I`ll have to deal with it and take the horrible 18 hour journey on Bolivian buses and dirt roads (disregarding the death stats of the last entry). To be in Rurrenabaque on Wednesday I need to take a bus on Tuesday. Second problem, no bus companies are running on Tuesday. Try to follow this one: Monday is Labor Day (May Day) which is a major holiday here and has a different connotation than ours, as it is celebrated with protests and demonstrations of everything and anything you can think of. Its a national holiday, so no transportation on Monday. Now, because this is Bolivia this means that the companies still won`t be operating on Tuesday. So I still cannot get to the jungle. Hm.
But I got it worked out, finally. There is a tour company that is offering a 4WD jeep ride down to Rurrenabaque on Tuesday specifically for those people that need to get there on Wednesday. So I will be spending more money than a bus, and only slightly less than a flight, but I will get there and still be able to do it all. And in fact I finish my tour on a Sunday night so I may be able to take advantage of the Monday flights and not take the public bus back, a hassle worth avoiding, assuming there are flights and/or buses that day. Like when I had to deal with the road blockades in December to get to the Salt Flats, there is a way now as well to deal with all this. And it can be worse.
Carmin had to get to Lima for his flight home on Tuesday, so chose to take a 25 hour bus ride on Monday, and just cut it close. Well, no buses. After freaking out for a second, part of which included the "maybe I'll just stay here" option, he gets a ticket from a tour company offering a private minibus 2 hours to the border, and then a Peruvian company takes him the rest of the way. Or it could be even worse for Brian, as I explained in an earlier entry as well. This past weekend in La Paz was the final reunion goodbye for most of us, and he was supposed to be here. He crossed into Bolivia through the Brazilian border, and has been stuck in the dirty nothing of a Bolivian border town for 4 days now. Apparently the companies in that part of the country started the protests early, the entire bus terminal is blocked off, major roads leading out have blockades, and they are threatening to bomb any airplanes that try to land there. He has a flight home in 2 weeks. I`ll keep you posted.
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So that is how I ended up once again bouncing down the Death Road, this time in a jeep, with Jo and Will from England, and Meital, Kris, Martin, and Ariana from Germany. We did the whole stretch of treachorous road with many an exciting turn but no major setbacks. After that we took a few stops along the way for food and rest, and after about 15 hours finally got in to Rurrenabaque shortly after nightfall. |
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