Down the River without a Paddle: The Final Chapter

On day three, the final day of the boat trip, we woke to a breakfast of coffee and and cheese empanadas. To make an empanada you take some bread dough and make it flat like a mini pizza. Then you fill it with something (usually cheese), fold the dough over and fry it in oil. When freshly made, these are lovely. Thanks to Silvia, ours were.

We then head down river for a couple of hours. Our destination is the edge of a newly formed national park. A national park in Bolivia is a different kettle of piranhas from a Canadian national park. The setting up of a national park is fraught with conflict. On the one hand, the government wants pacify the tree huggers by setting up parks, on the other hand, they have to deal with locals who make use of this land. So, strangely enough, mining is still allowed in the national park as long as it is just small scale mining. Also, it is permitted to fell trees near established settlements so that locals can have fields for crops for their own consumption. The proviso here is that you can only cut down secondary forest, not primary forest. Primary forest is where you have long established big trees. A secondary forest is regrowth after a fire or previous felling of trees. So, our boat lands at the border of the park and Ivan explains how national parks in Bolivia work.

Just before we make landfall, we pass a small mining community. They are living in tents made out of blue plastic. Ivan explains to us that in recent months, trees have been cut down by locals to make fields.

The locals are paid by our tour group to maintain a jungle trail for tourists. However, they didn't bother to make a trail through all of this destruction. We had to climb over trees and brush to get to the edge of the secondary forest to the start of the path in the primary forest.

On the way, we passed this tree.

Some of you may remember a similar looking tree from my last entry with Robert standing in front of it. This tree, if anything, was bigger. All the tourists agreed that this looked pretty 'primary forest' even though it was in a secondary forest area. We asked Ivan about this. He sighed. He said that he thought that cutting down such trees was clearly illegal and bad. However, the parks were very underfunded with regards to rangers. So, who would ever come and catch these people? We then enter the primary forest and followed our 'trail'.


We stopped in the middle of this. Ivan said: 'look at the lianas'. Have you ever seen any of the Tarzan movies? This is the type of vine he swings on. Essentially, these are aerial roots that come down from the top of particular trees to plant themselves to the ground, but haven't made it yet. They are like a very thick, trunk like rope. Ivan encouraged us to have a go. You need strong hand to do the Tarzan thing. Most of us were crap, but this guy (French) managed to hand on long enough for us to get photos.

Now for my favorite tree. For those of you who liked the 'cone' tree, brace yourselves for 'the tree that walks'.
We arrive at this tree. Ivan says: 'Who thinks that trees can walk?'. I have read the Lord of the Rings (thanks to Robert for buying me the books, taking me to the movies and giving me the DVD set). I remember the Ents. So I say: 'Yes, I believe that trees can walk'. Everyone else, including Robert, looks at me as if I have taken leave of my senses and says 'no'. Ivan smiles and says: 'Nicole is right. These trees do walk'. I was quite shocked to be right. How can trees walk without the digital effects guys?.

Below is yet another photo of the same tree. It is a shame that the jungle is so enclosed that I can't show you a proper photo of this tree from head to foot. The middle bit, looks like any normal tree trunk (normal in an Amazonian sense). The bottom, however, is like we see in the photo above and below. The bottom is a group of trunk/root like things that look like teepee poles. So, you have the teepee root stuff happening and then the main trunk is above this. If you look closely at the base of each 'teepee' pole, you will see a similar structure repeated (like a fractal). According to Ivan, locals say that these trees do move over time. If soil conditions are more favorable on one half of the tree, more roots will plant themselves there. The non-viable roots die off. Similar things happen with events like lightening strikes, animals chewing the bark, etc. So, over the course of a year, a tree could move a few inches. Would you or I notice? Probably not! Would a local notice? Yes. Speaking of animals, Ivan did point out that if you were travelling in the jungle, you needed to take a note of where these trees are. If you are ever attacked by wild boars, you could always run back to this tree and tuck yourself in the root/trunk structure. He then took us to a place where he thought that there might be wild boars.

In the photo above, you can see Ivan's machete (big serious sword like knife). One of the things that impressed me about Ivan was that he announced even before we got off the boat on day three that he thought that trees should be untouched and that if anyone asked him to cut into a tree for whatever reason, he would refuse (unless for medicinal purposes). All very eco sound, however, I did point out to him that the previous day, our local guide cut off one the cones from 'the cone tree' because one of our group had asked: 'what does it taste like'? Ah! He didn't know that this was happening.
Here is Ivan yet again, in front of a big tree. You might be thinking: 'OK! It's a big tree! So what! Well this is a curare tree. Curare is a very very lethal poison that Amazonian natives use to hunt. They tip their arrow heads with a solution made from the sap of this tree. So even if an arrow wounds and animal, it will die. Having grown up reading Agatha Christie and being a big CSI fan, I thought: 'curare! cool!'.

At the end of the jungle tour, we get back into the boat. This is a shot of the 'tree that walks'. You can't really see the root structure here, but the tree that we are talking about is the palm like tree. There is more than one and they do have a prehistoric look. To be honest, looking at these trees, I did feel like I was in a 'lost world' (interestingly enough, the 'Lost World' book was based on a different part of Bolivia that is now a 'national park'.


We are now back in the boat. We were told that 'after the rapids' that Silvia was going to cook us rice and fried chicken. She was cooking this on the boat, as we went down river. Even though my Spanish is excellent, I was thinking: 'that can't be right! Silvia can't be cooking lunch ON the boat as we go down river'? This indeed was the case. Ivan announced that after the rapids that Silvia would start cooking on board. Added to our feast was a catfish that Peta had caught in the morning. Silvia was in the back of the boat for cooking. Were were in the front. Plates of food were passed up and people were told who the intended consumer was. We all got plates with a bit of rice, some fried chicken and a bit of Peta's catfish (strange texture and quite earthy tasting). After we had been served, she cooked up for the crew. Peta (standing at the front of the boat directing us through rapids and shoals) was served last. What was passed up from the back was an enormous plate of rice, some small bits of chicken and fried in batter fish fins (and tail). Robert and I sat amazed as this disappeared into Peta. As we handed back his empty plate, you could see the faces of the tourists who handed the full plate up to us and Peta: 'my god, he actually ate all of it'. Again, for eating battered fish fins and thinking that this was a good meal, Peta is still our 'hard man of Bolivia' winner for 2007.

After lunch, the boat pulls up at a place where Ivan says we can swim. Like you, we were all thinking piranahs, rayfish (a new concern) an other beasties. Ivan said: 'don't worry, this is a nice stream with a waterfall'. So, the boat arrives and Peta, parks us up.

We all get out and go to a swimming pool which is literally a bit of river with crystal clear water that comes over a small waterfall, ends up in a pool of rocks and then ends up in the river you are now all familiar with. Ivan told us that we could swim here. We were all told about this when we booked the trip, so we all had packed bathing suits.

My hair is tied back and I am amongst bikini clad French and Australian girls and my feet are floating to the surface in my Corsican sandals (yet another tale), but yes this is me loving being clean for the first time in three days. This place really was beautiful. While we had our 30 min of play in the water, Peta was fishing (yet again). I dried off, put on boat clothes and arrived back at the boat well before the others. As I was getting into the boat, I noticed that Peta had caught a ray fish. It was on his line for 10 seconds and then unhooked itself and set of on its way. So no photo. I mentioned to Ivan that Peta had caught a rayfish. He was very upset as this was against park rules. Given that Peta was doing this while we were all swimming, I don't think that what he did was for tourist photos. Peta lives in the Amazon. Like Silvia, he loves fish and fishing and simply wanted to see what he could get (for Silvia to prepare) while we were swimming. In case you were wondering, I did ask about piranahs. I was told that they were very tasty, but boney. In any case, there are now protected so no tourist should get them on their plate.

As we travel down river, the sides get a bit steeper and the river narrows .

Here is a good photo of Robert. This is much better than the dynamite photo in a previous post. Note the hat. This is aTilley hat. This is a famous Canadian brand of hat. I have one which Robert's mother bought me as a present. I wore during this trip, but you never see this because I was taking all the photos.

As we were exiting the park, we were required to pull in and pay our park fee (i.e this is the end of the park we first visited in the morning). This hadn't been included in the tour price. However, we had been informed of that before the trip and so gathered up enough money to allow us to pass out of the park. Before pulling into the Ranger Station, we were issued our 'life jackets'. These were prehistoric artefacts, like things I had seen on WWI films. As strange as this was, we all put on our 'life jackets' and pulled into the Ranger station. After we were around the next bend of the river, we handed the life jackets back. This could potentially seem shocking, but to be honest, what would happen if the boat sunk? Would a life jacket have saved any of us? Most of us would have made our way to the shore (where the real adventure would have begun).

In the next boat at the Ranger station (parked next to us and paying up) was this guy. I clearly thought: 'strange man'. Everyone else in our boat looked at this almost theatrical version of what the ultimate tourist would look like. I was the only one who actually brought out their camera and shot a photo of this creature. Why only me? I was the only one who had brought extra batteries for my digital camera ( I sucked back two batteries a day for three days, so imagine the ph0tos I haven't posted).

A couple of hour later, the sun started to set as we reached Rurrenabaque (this place merits its own post). After this, it was too dark for good photos. Enjoy this view of the sun setting on part of the Bolivian Amazonian river system that feeds into the Amazon.