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Pantanal

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I don’t know about you but when I go to any sort of expo or fair I always put my name in for the raffles, there’s always the chance I might actually win. Just before we left on this little adventure (also known as our trip around the world) we won a trip to Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest freshwater wetlands. So from the very beginning of this trip without a travel plan, we planned to go to Brazil and the Pantanal come hell or high water. After that Bolvian/Brazillian border crossing
and three long bus trips on unpaved roads, phew it felt like both had come. We were definitely looking forward to staying at a nice lodge with good food and have a few days off our budget, but getting there was a stressful rush and we ended up having to skip some places along the way that we would have liked to visit. Just gives us another reason to return to Brazil!

Some guidebooks say dry season is the best time to go to the Pantanal because the animals are all clustered around what water there is, while others say the wet season is the best time because the animals are all clustered on what dry land there is. Go figure. At almost 10 times the size of the Florida Everglades, we were hoping to see more than just a few animals. Fortunately, we saw tons of animals (and for the record its dry season!) from capybara’s and caimans to birds of every species you can imagine. It was undoubtedly great wildlife viewing, but unfortunately we’d seen many of the same species on our pampas tour in Bolivia.Frankly its hard to get excited about the 1000th caiman sighting, even if they are really cool, really scary creatures. Our guide, a retired heavily accented Italian, peppered his bird and animal sightings (which were always very, very exciting to him even if we couldn’t see the creature) with mamma mia!!, leaving us wondering what the actual animal names were- is that a little blue heron or a little mamma mia blue heron? Depends who you ask I guess.

And then of course there was the piranha fishing. Unlike our attempt in Bolivia , we were wildly successful at piranha fishing in the Pantanal. Dropping his line into the water, Danny caught one in what seemed like seconds while my line sat quiet. Disappointed in my fishing prowess (after all I’ve definitely done way more camping and fishing than Danny) I resolved to shaking my pole in the water as violently as possible to imitate an animal in distress. Of course this prompted a “mamma mia” from the guide who scolded me for “over doing it.” Right, like I ever do anything in excess. 🙂 Two seconds later I got my first piranha of the day. Score!

Unfortunately it was my last to make it successfully into the bucket. I caught two more, but neither actually stayed on the line long enough for a picture, so you’ll have to just trust me on this one. 🙂 My second catch, thrashed around in the water a good bit as I fought to pull him in. Back and forth we went until it broke my line. This of course, prompted a “mamma mia!” and when my line was restrung and baited I quickly attempted again. Waiting for what seemed like forever, I tried my now patented shaking technique, which yielded no results. Again and again, with no results. With everyone else pulling in piranha’s by the bucket load (or so it seemed on my quiet end), I prayed for the another one. And it came, and again broke my line. Must have been the biggest piranha in the lake 🙂

What happened to our catch you might ask? Well, the first evening at the lodge we watched sunset from the dock and couldn’t believe the dozens of caimans lurking nearby in the water. Completely unafraid of us, they almost seemed interested in us. After piranha fishing we found out way. To guarantee animal viewings a lot of lodges feed the wild animals, ensuring that their clients get good pictures. As you can imagine this has a significant impact on the animals behavior towards humans and within the local eco-system. I was floored when the pirnha’s we caught were fed to the caiman’s from the sandy beach in front of the lodge with about a dozen people standing around. Talk about an unhealthy practice for the ecosystem and an unsafe practice for the guests! Just what I want, a dozen caimans who associate humans with food, anyone up for a night hike along the river? 🙂

We’re late, for a very important date

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Once we finished up with the Salt Flats, it was time to get a move on. The rest of Bolivia is a bit of a blur as all we really did was move, move, move. We’d won a trip to a lodge in the Pantanal of Brazil and we now had a very finite amount of time to get there. Our guidebook warns that transportation in Bolivia can be unpredictable at times and to make matters worse, we had no idea how long it would take us to travel east through Bolivia to Brazil. Some accounts put the final leg as 17 hours while others put it at 3 days.

Generally when we travel we do so without a time frame or any need to be in any one place at any specific date. When we started the trip we had nothing booked, not a single airline ticket. When we do stray from this method it is often very stressful for us as we have to cut things out and generally end up spending more money on lodging and transportation.

Leaving the Salt Flats we learned that the overnight bus we had planned to take to Sucre did not exist and we’d have to take a 9 hour bus the following day…oh fun. I’m not sure which was worse, this bus or the one we took to the Amazon a week prior. Although this road wasn’t so twisty and turny, it was still dirt and early in the journey a rock of some kind took out most of the windshield…oh fun. Add to that the several [very smelly] indigenous people who throughout the day decided that my body could be used as a seat, (this was done to no one else on the bus so I can only assume this was their way of harassing the gringo) and we were just happy to arrive in Sucre alive and without any new friends trailing us to a hotel.

In Sucre we visited the dino prints which we believed was the main attraction of Sucre. The prints are left over from the Cretacious period and were found in the nearby cement quarry. To be honest, we could have lived without the trip but we did fall in love with the city on our brief stay there. Sucre is the “white” city of bolivia (all the buildings are white) and used to the country’s capital. While there we felt as though we’d crossed some border into another city as the streets were clean and filled with people just enjoying town. It is also a great (and cheap) place to study Spanish and if we ever find ourselves in need of a Spanish school again we will likely give Sucre as shot because the city itself was so livable.

But we were on a time schedule to get to Brazil so we had to press on. Luckily we had some company for the ride to Santa Cruz, a group of 6 South Africans we’d met on our Salt Flats tour who took the opportunity to give us loads of advice for our upcoming journey to their country.  We parted ways with them, I got myself a haircut, and we then boarded another bus to the border with Brazil. Looking to get our passports stamped in town we went from one immigration office to another before asking a police officer for help. The first officer told us there had to be people there, we said their weren’t, so he actually tried to send us to another office that was closed. Thanks @sshole. Another officer called a few numbers and confirmed but guaranteed us that when we got to the border the office there would be open.

So we went to the border, got there much easier than we expected (one overnight bus, rather than 3 days worth of buses) but found immigration to be closed. Luckily a couple of Brazilians we’d met took us under our wing and the taxi we’d hired to take us to Brazil knew to took us to the immigration officer’s home to get us our stamps…only in Bolivia…

Doritos Bags, Coke Bottles and a Pringles Can…

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Can’t say it was actually my first time “diving” into a Dorito’s bag, but it was the first time I didn’t come out with artificial cheese smeared on my fingers. Lining up the camera angle, Danny yelled to me to diving head first… it was certainly going to be a long day. There’s one reason and one reason only we came to the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, the pictures. A huge flat expanse of salt (surprisingly called the salt flats), in fact the largest in the world, the Salar is probably one of the only places in the world that you can stand on top of a coke bottle without crushing it. And that’s because you’re not actually standing on it. The great expanse of whiteness makes it difficult for the viewer to perceive depth, giving the photographer a great opportunity to do some pretty crazy things. Or a husband and wife to do some pretty crazy things… like eat each other or stand on the other’s head.

If that wasn’t enough, altiplano of Bolivia, including the Salar has incredibly clear weather, which means… incredible star gazing. Unlike neighboring Chile, Bolivia has yet to cash in on the potential for international astronomic researchers, so no telescopes for viewing, but plenty of open sky. In fact, the flatness, whiteness and openness of the Salar is so perfect that according to our guide satellites use it to calibrate their instruments.

Actually Bolivia is really big into not cashing in on what they have. Besides salt, the Salar also holds more than half the worlds reserve of lithium, thats a whole lot of batteries, but the government won’t open lithium mining up to foreign corporations. The only mining is done by hand. Locals pay a fee to a cooperative in order to gather, refine and sell the salt. The lithium in other words, stays behind. And not to pour salt on an open wound (had to work that into the post somehow), but the salt would provide great profits for the impoverished locals except that they can’t export it because they have no sea access and their neighbors have their own salt. Ouch, talk about a cut that stings.

Unfortunately the coolest part of the tour, the Salar was only one day. The other two days were spent jumping in and out of our jeep to look at crazy high altitude flamingos (and you thought they were tropical birds), volcanic lakes (green, red and white) and early morning unstable geysers.  The flamingos were out of place enough, but add to that some strange fossilized algae caves, a pre-incan cemetery with mummies, rusted out trains and galloping llamas and vicuñas, and well it was a very surreal experience.

Arriving in Uyuni we happened upon two other English speaking, married couples. Let me repeat that again, because this is truly rare- two other English speaking married couples! This has NEVER happened to us in 6 months of travel. We’re a rare breed out here, so of course we joined forces. Put 4 brits, 2 yanks, three married couples together with a collective 4 years of travel stories and 6 bottles of wine and well you can imagine the hilarity that ensued.

Death Road… no really.

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Scared to death I pulled on my breaks praying I wouldn’t go over the edge. Sometimes activities live up to their reputations. Billed as the “death road”, the world-famous La Paz to Coroico mountain bike ride is a spectacular and thrilling downhill ride on a dangerous, old, gravel road. Popular on the backpacker circuit, we had heard about the ride as far away as Nicaragua and were practically salivating to get to Bolivia for it.

Suiting up in moto-cross gear, we felt invincible, especially when we saw that the other tour groups were only in reflective vests. I’m not going to lie, the gear was cool. We zipped down the asphalt, where riders have been clocked at over 80 km/h, hugging the curves and pedaling hard on the straight aways. Loving the adrenaline rush of the speed, I was still a little nervous and pretty liberal on the brake. I have no idea how fast I was actually going, but trust me, I was on the verge of out of control.

With so many riders out on the road I expected to see many more crashes. After all, its not called death road for nothing. Twice along the road we saw memorial plaques to riders involved in fatal accidents, one only a few years ago. Fortunately or unfortunately, whatever your opinion may be, I saw only one person skid out the entire 5 hour ride, and he jumped right back up and onto his bike. Nothing like last year’s tour de france crash.

The gravel section was incredible. Only about one lane wide, the old gravel road was in terrible shape. Besides the steep downhill grade, the road was marked with potholes and big rocks. Vibrating and shaking because of the rocky surface, we navigated the serpentine turns white knuckled. Literally riding on the edge, it was the perfect balance of fear and excitement. I loved every minute of it.

The stories we had heard and the scars we had seen seem to be urban legends for the road, while not exactly the safest, was certainly not a death sentence. In fact, it seems that most of the people who crash or go over the side are experienced mountain bikers trying to do tricks, while the rest of the people are just trying to make it down in one piece.

Five hours of downhill riding from 4800m to about 1200m and we were still in one piece. Pulling into Coroico for a celebratory beer, buffet and swim, I wanted to do it again. 🙂


Pro DownHill Operator Review

Sunset Tours (Rurrenabanque, Bolivia)

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We recently used Sunset Tours for our trip to the Pampas in the Bolivian Amazon. We booked our trip upon our arrival in Rurrenabanque, Bolivia without any hassle at all. Before booking we searched around town and interviewed several other tours. We found the people at sunset to offer a similar trip as much lower prices (although we later heard of others paying the same that we paid at other locations). The biggest positive to booking with sunset was the flexibility they showed us when Jillian was ill on what was supposed to be our first day, allowing us to push our trip back without any problems or fees.

Most importantly though was that everything was as described and we had a great time. The food was all surprisingly excellent given our location far from civiliazation and the lodging was quite comfortable as well. We also felt good about supporting local labor and owners in a new business venture.

The only problems we had were with our transportation. On the first day the car broke down several times and on the final day it was late to pick us up. Additionally, we were told the guide would have an intermediate level of Spanish and while we were OK with the fact that this was not the case, several other non-Spanish speakers were quite disappointed.

Overall we had a great time on our trip to the Pampas, the food was good, the guide was great, and the memories will be forever.

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