Ooo! I think that it is quite a good idea to split up my posts. That way I can integrate people's comments into the continuing story. The top comment generator from the last post was the boat (repeated above). Yes, it does look low to the water. Consider this, however, none of the people or our rucksacks have been loaded yet! This certainly occurred to me as we loaded up. Below is Ivan our guide and Silvia our cook. Silvia did an amazing job. Packed onto the boat is all of the food for tourists and staff; bottled water for all of us; water for cooking and cleaning dishes; dishes, cups and eating utensils; and all of her cooking equipment.
When we first got on board, we noticed that all of our sacks and equipment was covered with blue plastic. We were also given some blue plastic. Below is the guy behind be (from Australia). We were right at the front, facing Ivan and Silvia.
The use of the plastic wasn't really evident until we hit the rapids. Being in the front, Robert and I got splashed. Ah! the secret purpose of the blue plastic was revealed!
Below is Peta, out river pilot. Peta's job was to stand on the front deck during shallow bits and rapids and use hand signals to indicate to Capitane Juan (in the back of the boat) which direction to turn. For this and for the fact that he bears an uncanny resemblance to Charles Bronson (not very clear in this photo), Peta was the clear winner of our 'Bolivian hard guy of the year' award. The photo is a bit fuzzy because the camera lens was covered by water spray.
As we got past the rapids (not very large and they were quickly passed), we passed some gold mining operations on the shore (again, camera lens a bit wet).
After only a couple of hours, our boat pulls up at a sandy bank. This is where we will spend the night.
The crew off load the boat and set up our tents. Silvia sets up her kitchen/dining area and starts cooking. Having someone else set up the tent and cook is a bit of a luxury for us. The tents were supplied by the tour group, as were the sleeping mats.
Then we sat down for a meal of spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, and juice. Breakfast the next morning, seen below, consisted of coffee (instant), bread and fruit. The rest of day two will be in the next post.
7 comments:
Everyone seems to be relaxed in the boat. I counted 11 people including the photographer and that amounts to a heavy load not to mention all the supplies and camping gears. I see why they need to use a long boat to distribute the weight.
I was wondering what lurks in those murky waters? I also noticed that no one is wearing any life jackets. Everyone is wearing white for breakfast. Was that a requirement or just coincidence? Thanks, I am enjoying your trip from the safety of my home. Mamoo
Curious Llama, I had some difficulty loading some of the images. They came in the blog post as broken links, but then I tried to load them in their own web page and after about three tries, they loaded. You may want to consider cutting the raw images from your camera down to half or a quarter of the full size for posting on the blog. Ack makes a shrunken copy now because she was having loading issues with them earlier on. Just a thought.
Do they fish in that river? Or is there a danger of catching something you might not want to catch?
Came back this morning and the photos all load fine, and load much faster. Blogger must have been busy last night.
- web
I had no problems loading the images. As a matter of fact I even looked at them on the full screen and noticed that Silvia had nice manicured nails.
Mamoo
I had no problems loading the pictures this morning.
I couldn't open blogger or cbc yesterday afternoon though. The internet in general(in Ottawa at least) was painfully slow from noon until about 3:00PM. I suspected the NHL trade deadline was the culprit in my case.
Eagerly awaiting part three and the wild animal attack. :)
scb
Wild animal attack!?!?
YOu may want to reduce your images anyway because blogger only gives you so much storage space. I have no idea what happens when you exceed the limit.
This is very interesting. I always wondered what you were doing out there during your adventures while I was back here wrestling with the garden and children.
These are normal jpeg photos. Part of the reason why they look a bit blurry is because they are blown up (I chose the 'large size' option for better visability. I guess I will find out what happens when I hit the storage limit. Question for 'WEB': do you know any way of storing these entries in case I do hit blog memory overload? Note to Mamoo: I had quite forgotten Silvia's nails. We noticed them ourselves, particularly since they matched the colour of her sneakers. Tune in for part 4 for more of the Amazing Silvia.
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