Rurrenabaque, Pampas, and the dickhead

Lil friendly fella

Our plans at this point involved a lot of confusion. Nothing was even vaguely set in stone, except a single flight to Cuba, which everything then hinged around. We planned to hit Paraguay next, then move into the south of Brazil, which meant the area furthest away from the Amazon, a place we hadn’t actually been in all the neighbouring countries so far. It seemed like a good idea to fit it in here, whilst is was both close and cheaper.

After looking around a few travel agencies, we found one that had a reasonable price including one flight, and knowing how well we usually slept on buses didn’t fancy the idea of rocking up and immediately starting a tour. This way we’d have a leisurely 30 minute or so flight, check into a hostel for the night and be ready to go first thing.

The flight was uneventful, a tiny little sardine can of a plane (not as small as the one to Bergerac, it had jets!) and included a drink, something that we barely even get on long distance flights. The view out the window was slightly more terrifying than usual, as we had mountains which felt like they were almost touching the plane within sight, but we successfully avoided all these and turned up in the spit of land that constituted an ‘airport’. Literally a runway, a couple of little minibuses, and a 2 minute drive to a tin shack  (the ‘terminal’ I believe) where they chucked all the bags and we found our driver. We hopped into our taxi to the office to check in, and then were told that the hostel we booked may have a problem. Either way, we headed there, where we did indeed find out that there had been a landslide knocking out the water in the area, and as such this hostel was closed and our reservation had been moved to another one. No matter, although that one didn’t have water either..!

Bit close

Not exactly Heathrow

The next morning we headed to the office and, along with three days worth of supplies, we were bundled into a taxi for a two and a half hour or so drive. Eventually we turned up to our lunch location, where we would be pounced on by team of highly trained assault dachshunds, before the last 5 minute trip to the river. We’d been looking out for wildlife along the way, but apart from a huge swarm of buzzards around a dead capybara and a few birds, not a lot was going on.

Arrrrgghhhh!!!

The look of a trained killer

HELP IT'S LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO MY SOUL

After arriving at the river, we unloaded all the stuff and hung around for a good long while until everything was ready. Fortunately we had a little bit of entertainment, as some river dolphins were popping in and out the water trying to work out what was going on. We were summoned to the boat with the rest of our group.

Hard to photo these little buggers.

The group consisted of our guide, Alex, 6 humans, and one gigantasaurus-prick. Before we’d even pushed off from the banks of the river, I overheard ‘Tiene wifi in Amazon?’, which loosely translates to ‘I can’t function without Snapchat and Instagram, don’t you dare tell me you’ve not got internet connection in middle of nowhere’. People laughed a little, assuming he was joking, and we carried on our way. The guy had ‘Gemini’ tattooed on his tit. Tit.

Anyway, the rest of the journey consisted of boating down the river, sometimes down pathways as narrow as the boat itself causing us all to have to duck and swipe branches out of our faces. Every so often we’d spot a bird or a turtle or similar and pull up to see it, sometimes a bit closer than necessary causing the animals to disappear very soon after. On the whole though we saw a fair amount of things.

Turts

Burts

Pokemon

Turtle conga line

Bird that apparently hides in the water and, thanks to it's long neck, just repeatedly shouts 'I'M A SNAAAYKE'

Faces are a hindrance here

Eventually we arrived at the eco-lodge. Within seconds of pulling up again, we heard ‘Tiene wifi in Amazon?’… … … Fuck off. I think it’s fairly safe to say I’m pretty technologically obsessed and even I had found peace with the idea of no connection to the outside world for a few days. Anyway, here we found that a lot of our bags were soaked through despite the tarpaulin, most of Diana’s stuff was now fairly disgusting. We hung out all the stuff that had got a bit damp, and had a quick look around. Before we’d even stepped a few metres, people pointed out a caiman (similar to a crocodile), practically sleeping underneath our room. So that was good news, no risk of people breaking in from below, and as long as the rotten timbers suspending our room above the river held we would be perfectly safe. Yippee!

Our home. Slightly out of shot...

This lil pup.

Middle left of the picture you can see just how local these little fellas were...

We were invited to go to a room in the other corner of the area, where we’d been told there would be snacks and drinks, near the kitchen. On arrival we were pointed out that the one caiman we’d seen before was actually just a tiddler. Here we had Pepe, a caiman who must have been at least 3 metres long and half a meter wide. Captain Hook would not have been impressed. Even better was the fact it was chilling out just next to a ramp which gave access to the level we were on, but fortunately it didn’t seem too fussed about that. I had no idea how to defend myself from a caiman, but I figured we had a sacrificial dickhead we could throw to it should we need a headstart. More on that later…

Hey there lil fella!

Our next trip was to see the sunset in a nearby area. We were told to wear long sleeves, as mosquitoes were fairly prominent at night. Knobhead turned up in a full length white tracksuit. Who brings a white tracksuit to the Amazon? On the way there we kept an eye out for more animals. We spotted some capuchin monkeys, and pulled up to see them. ‘Tiene banana?’ must have been said a good 5 or 6 times, each time replied with a ‘no’. Kudos to the guy, he’d certainly got that one verb down, even if he did speak it with a perfect Mancunian accent in between spitting in the water. ‘But I want to feed to monkeys’. But go fuck yourself, this is not a zoo, these are not your pets. Dick.

Monkey chain!

Eventually we got to the point for sunset. A number of guys went off to play football in what must have been the most waterlogged pitch I’ve ever seen in my life. Every time the ball landed a metre tall splash followed and the ball stopped dead still. The sunset was actually quite nice, we hung back and chatted and played with the cats, who kept wandering off onto the pitch and making a nuisance of themselves.

Closest thing we found to a jaguar.

Then the sun finally set, and the land was dark. And bitey. Holy shit was it bitey. Within seconds of the light disappearing, my arm turned to porridge. My thumb swelled to double the size, and everyone was trying to get away to the safety of the moving boat as quickly as possible. It didn’t help, these things were everywhere, flying at twice the speed the boat could handle. The idea was the have a leisurely cruise back, using our torches to look for reflective eyes of caiman. However, after losing the first pint of blood to these bloodsucking bastards, I and everyone else voted to get back a bit quicker and come out again later when we were assured there were less around.

We had dinner, which considering the lack of resources in the area was really nice, and got ready to head out again, all of us scratching profusely (or trying not to but eager to). Dickhead proclaimed ‘They don’t seem to be biting me’. Well whoop-de-fucking-doo, even mosquitoes don’t fucking like you.

Our resident caiman snack

We hopped back on the boat, this time wrapped in as many layers as we could. The journey started off with us trying to spot caiman (unsure exactly how to react if we actually saw one…) and, after a while, ended with us just cutting the engine and looking into the sky. Wow. I had never seen stars like it, literally able to see so clearly with no light around that the band of the Milky Way was clearly apparent. We all just leaned back, forgetting the apex predators we were most likely sharing the water with, and relaxed just staring up at the sky.

‘Can anyone get a decent picture? My iPhone isn’t getting one’. Will you just fuck right off you utter prick? ‘No. You need a decent camera, a ridiculously long shutter length, perfect stillness. None of this is happening on a boat with an iPhone’. ‘Oh. Shame you can’t get a photo’. Shame you were allowed a passport, enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime events for a minute. He was still spitting in the water.

<<<ARTISTS REPRESENTATION OF WHAT WE SAW>>>

We headed back, dickhead upset he had only been able to produce entirely black photos and no decent selfies, and headed straight to bed absolutely shattered. Whilst the mosquito nets were pretty decent quality, unfortunately the room itself was full of holes and the room was absolutely swarmed. We got ready for bed (we couldn’t quite work out if the shower water was pumped directly from the swamp water or from rain for a while) and took shelter under the nets. I woke up in the middle of the night with my entire left hand twice the size of my right, and my fingers swollen to sausages from all of the bites. Initially my concern was with my ring finger, then I freaked out a little again because it’s SO dark there that even after having your eyes open for a few minutes, you’re still completely blinded. And I love carrots, they don’t help you know.

<<<ARTISTS REPRESENTATION OF WHAT I SAW>>>

Jonno Sausagehands

In the morning we compared notes on how we all slept. General consensus was ‘okay but wet’. With no ventilation, no way to cool down and a desire to keep sheltered from all the bites by using the sheets and thick mosquito nets, we all practically drowned in our own sweat. Add to that we are sleeping over a river, humidity couldn’t have been any higher. It wasn’t entirely comfortable.

We went to breakfast, consisting of coffee, pancakes, fruit and fried cheese empanadas. Coffee in this region is often served as ‘cafecito’, where coffee is brewed from grounds and you are given the highly concentrated liquid to mix with water, milk (or milk powder in this case) and sugar as required. I watched dickhead pour himself a full cup of the cafecito, and attempt to mix enough milk powder with it to turn it from the darkest shade of black into something that vaguely resembled coffee. As he proceeded to take a sip and almost immediately spit it out, my only regret was that it was a heinous waste of coffee, but whatever, it was worth it.

The morning activity was looking for anacondas. We put on thick wellies and set off. Again, a few animals spotted along the way before pulling up in an extremely obscure area where our guide said was a good place for spotting anacondas. Within moments, our guide spoke to another guide already there who pointed above where we’d pulled up in the boat, and sure enough a small snake was sitting there in a nest. We were quite fine with this, but then another guide pulled up and wanted to poke it with a stick. Dickhead was all over this, trying to get closer, practically ejaculating over the sight of a machete, the usual we’d come to expect from him by now. Our pleas of ‘Could you stop poking it with a stick?’ were going pretty unheeded.

You can just about make out the snakey shape...

Eventually we carried on deeper into the jungle, quite literally as the water was soon reaching a point where it filled our boots. Myself and another girl decided to hang back as she had seen an anaconda before in a previous trip anyway, and I wasn’t too fussed about seeing one and thought they were only going to be a few minutes. Dickhead also hung back, he didn’t want to get his clothes dirty and he knew they wouldn’t find one. Whilst me and the other girl stayed where everyone had left, he disappeared back into the jungle.

I don’t know exactly how long they’d been, but it was at least half an hour, and had I known it would be that long I’d have just gone. In that time, dickhead returned exactly twice. The first time, he said he’d caught the baby anaconda we’d seen by the boat, but it slipped an fell from his hands. Legend. Then he said he fed a spider a mosquito by flicking it off his arm onto a spider web. Badass. The second time he returned with a dead fish on a stick, that he’d supposedly speared himself. It wasn’t bleeding or anything, and looked a little decomposed, but I had no reason to doubt him and at this point he was literally a god in my eyes. God of dickheads.

Uhhhh... Tasty.

Anyway, no anacondas were found apart from the baby one this guy had almost managed to domesticate and train as his own. We returned back to the lodge for lunch, when dickhead decided to come into a whole new level.

Lunch was good. Chicken, rice, pasta, veg, salad, everything we could have wanted. We’d previously watched Pepe the Caiman being fed a leg of chicken, where the lady would wave it around a little and throw it into the water next to him. Now, dickhead was worried about his chances of winning a Darwin award on this trip, so far everything he’d done had been merely annoying or, at best at risk of a small injury. After rolling a joint, with weed it became apparently he’d got off our guide, he decided to up the ante and go around collecting everyone’s chicken bones, and then started throwing them into the water next to Pepe. So far, not the worst thing, bit of a dickhead (I presume he believed that caiman can live on chicken bones) but nothing too serious. Unfortunately at this point our guide spotted him doing it, and rather than reprimanding him, showed him how close he could get, and how you could get him to jump out the water to eat them. Another guide came out and literally got in the water with Pepe, literally to the same level, and attempted to boop it on the nose like a cat. Naturally, this began to piss off this particular top-of-the-food-chain predator.

Yup, that looks safe to play with. Just a little scaly murder puppy.

We protested that this was a fairly stupid thing to be doing, and the guides stop. Dickhead however had now seen what was possible. ‘I’m not scared, I’ve seen how it is with people now’. Argh... Dickhead... It’s a fucking caiman, not a slightly aggressive puppy. Sure enough, phone in one hand and chicken bones in the other, he began leaning in as close as he could, and stepping back just as it snapped for the food, trying to record a video for Snapchat. I wasn’t sure what I wanted at this point. On the one hand this prick needed to learn a lesson, the idea of him realising the hard way he shouldn’t mess around with dangerous animals was a good one. On the other hand, the result of that would be one fewer moron in the world, but they’d also probably kill the caiman, who was guilty of nothing more than being taunted by a moron from England. I decided the best option was just to leave and let fate decide. As I was going, dickhead picked up another piece of chicken from someone else’s table. This time it had meat left on it, but to ensure he was in maximum dickhead mode, he made sure to eat all that first before throwing it to the caiman. No point wasting good food huh?

At this point, Diana had disappeared. I later found out she’d been shouting at the guide for encouraging the dickhead to be a dickhead, and she spent a good while seething about it. Later the guide did come over to apologise, but was still sharing weed with him and not doing much different. Diana decided she wasn’t going to tip him, I was still on the fence as I figured I’d see if his behaviour changed.

First activity post-lunch was swimming with dolphins. We’d been told to make sure we had no sun cream or mosquito repellent on so as not to irritate them, so after a shower in dubious water we were back out on the boat again. We went around 10 minutes from the lodge to a wide area, and after a few minutes saw a few dolphins jumping out the water. After being assured that, where there are dolphins, there aren’t caiman or piranha, people started getting in the water one by one, first the other English couple, then Diana, then another lady from Hong Kong. I hung back for a minute with my camera, along with a Dutch lady who had said she didn’t really want to come in, and dickhead. He asked her why she didn’t want to go in, I presume to try and gather an excuse for why he didn’t. She said she wanted to get a good photo of them and her camera wasn’t waterproof. He asked me. I said I was taking photos of the group and would get in after. Then I asked him. ‘Insects’. Okay, I mean you were literally Bear Grylls this morning but sure. A few minutes later I jumped in with everyone else, and then 5 mins after that even the Dutch girl who had been pretty confident she wasn’t coming in followed. People would rather take their chances with the water based predators than that wanker.

The only photo I got that even vaguely indicates there were dolphins and it wasn't just a scuzzy swim.

The dolphins weren’t too bothered by us. They didn’t exactly shy away, but wouldn’t come over to us either, which was fine, they’re wild animals and it’s not a petting zoo. This however ended up being another excuse for the dickhead, that they didn’t even come over to you. Poorly trained wild dolphins if you ask me. I'm also convinced he had TB at this point, as he was still hawking up spit into the water.

We headed back to change and shower, before heading out to find sloths, which our guide seemed pretty convinced we’d find. Along several points, he said ‘Here could be some!’ which there inevitably wasn’t, but he still seemed positive. At one point we found another area with a dolphin in. ‘Shall I get in and swim with them now?’ asked the fucking moron. No. Sit down and shut up.

Feel free to go swim with this dolphin. Note - Seeing this approach the boat and our guide making no attempt to leave was a little disconcerting.

After a while though, and seeing some howler monkeys (which of course instigated ‘TIENENE BABABNABABANABANA!??!’ from our resident prick), our guide pointed at a huge tree with a small clearing in the leaves. ‘There!’, he said, and we all presumed he was on some strong jungle drugs. But, he reversed the boat a little and sure enough, a small grey furry thing was just sat there, staring out vacantly. Quite an impressive sight.

Old tree

Howler monkey. Holy shit these things sound scarier than they look 

Uhh... Comfy there?

‘Me phone batteries died, can I use your phone?’ came the insufferable warblings of a wanker. Addressing the lady from Hong Kong, who he hadn’t spoken a single word to before this point, he proceeded to take her only camera and take his own photos with it. Once done, he passed it back, saying ‘Send me them on Facebook okay?’. Thanks also works. We spent a good few minutes just watching the sloth, which in hindsight should be boring as hell, because as the name suggests, they don’t do a whole lot. It was quite cool when it just turned to face us though, raising a single arm before running out of all energy for the rest of the month.

Look closely and you'll see a little sloth face looking at you

Heeyyyoooo! 

We headed back to the sunset place from before, so the guide could collect his knife he’d left behind accidentally the night before. On the way, the guide passed dickhead an orange for some reason. He proceeded to peel it, then wash it shortly after, something I’ve never seen anyone do before because you know, they’re kinda pre-packaged. We had the choice of staying out for sunset, but none of us fancied being bitten to pieces again so we headed off, but not before dickhead took the ladies phone again to get sunset photos. ‘Remember which ones I took and send them to me ok?’. Euuuughghhhhh…

Lil Woody Woodpecker

Majestic

Flighty

Sun. Low sun. Sunset if you will.

That night we all settled into the hammocks and had a couple of beers. The guide, clearly stoned, was talking to us about the jungle, how it was his home and how important he thought it to teach the conservation of it to the kids. He seemed pretty genuine about it, but he did also seem pretty stoned,  so who knows. We headed to bed, I had a shower before hand thinking it’d keep me cooler for longer. It did, if 20 seconds constitutes “longer”.

We had the option to go see sunrise in the morning, or just head out for an activity after breakfast. Resounding answer with the quality of sleep we were getting was ‘after breakfast’, so we ate and headed out for piranha fishing, with the option to eat what we caught. Fortunately there were other lunch options, as between us with our fishing line and pieces of pork on a hook, we caught a grand total of zero piranhas. The guide managed to catch one when nobody was looking, so I’m not even sure if he did it legitimately, but it was absolutely tiny. That didn’t stop dickhead taking it for a selfie so he could claim he caught one though. Meanwhile, I was feeling more and more ill from either sitting in the sun or accidentally drinking swamp water, who knows, but I was definitely getting a little feverish. We gave up with the activity, which just ended up being ‘piranha feeding’ as they kept nicking the bait off the hooks, and headed back for lunch.

Deadly, it'll have your arm clean off in about 3 weeks.

Lunch involved chicken again, so our bestest buddy got to show off his trick to a whole new group of people. It also included our tiny piranha catch, which everyone who wanted to tried the tiniest amount and even dickhead concluded it wasn’t worth killing a piranha for.

Actually a waste of lemon too.

A new Northern girl had surfaced with the latest groups. I like Northerners, really I do, but I’m sorry, these two are seriously letting your side down.

Lady Dickhead: Whatcha doin in South America then?
Man Dickhead: Well I started in Brazil, did about 4 days there, now here, then going to Peru to try that hallucinogenic drug
LD: Oh, I was going to do that but it’s a bit shit really, it’s not all about getting high.
MD: Oh, whats it about then?
LD: It’s all about spirituality and apparently you shit yourself for 2 weeks and it’s not that good.

I left.

Our greeting to the main area

We gathered our bags and headed back to the main room, ready to leave. Diana had got there before me and recounted the rest of their conversation:

LD: I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get high in the jungle… Its easy to find drugs in the UK. I just don’t understand it. I hear some people here get high off the mosquito repellent.

The fuck guys… Anyway, we’re three days in now, and our patience particularly thin with this guy. We load the boat up, our guide asks for a selfie with him because, for some reason, he’s decided he’s the epitome of a ‘cool traveller’ I guess. The rest of us who actually wanted to experience something other than mind altering substances, but on a river surrounded by dangerous animals, were a little less impressed.

Dickhead had collected a number of bits of fruit from the breakfast table that day. All still covered in paper towels, but we all knew he didn’t fancy a mid-boating snack. He wanted to ask a monkey ‘QUIERE BABABANBANBANBANA?!?!?!!’, or at least he would have had he bothered to pick up a second verb by now.

Sure enough, we sail along and the other groups boat is lodged in a tree. Our guide went straight towards it, seeing they were feeding the monkeys. We’d already told our guide we weren’t comfortable with the boat being as close to the animals as he got with them, as on a few occasions we’d careered the boat straight into a bush with babies and their parents which quite clearly agitated them. Still, our dickhead wanted his experience with a monkey.

Diana snapped. I’ve not quite seen her do this before, but she lost it. Paraphrasing…

Diana: We don’t want to do this, lets go.
Dickhead: I do, this is the whole reason I’m here.
Me: Well it shouldn’t be, you shouldn’t come to places to mess up their habitat.
Dickhead: Fuck off, I’m giving a monkey a banana.
Girl in our group: Go to a zoo, that’s what they’re for, you shouldn’t come into the Amazon to do it.
Me: Seriously, none of us want to do this
Dickhead: Well you’re all gimps.
Me: Nice, what right do you have to do what you want?
Dickhead – walking to the front of the boat: Who are you to tell me what to do?

At this point, he started thrusting a banana at the monkeys, who looked and jumped away.

Dickhead to guide: They don’t seem to like bananas much do they?
Me: They don’t like you, they’re not pets.

Most of the boat to the guide: Vamos. Lets go.

I looked at the guide and he just looked back. ‘Vamos?’. Nothing. I shook my head, that’s the part that confirmed we wouldn’t be tipping him.

Dickhead went silent, grabbing a piece of papaya to give them, still covered in paper.

Diana: At least take the fucking paper off.
Dickhead: Its only paper, what does it matter.
Diana: They don’t eat paper…?

Eventually the moron got his photo with the monkey on the boat.

Dickhead: Doesn’t matter, I’ve got what I wanted now.
Diana: Pick up the paper and stuff you’ve left in the boat so it doesn’t fly into the water.

… Nothing.

Diana: Pick it up.

… Still nothing.

Diana got up, picked up the bits of fruit and paper, and proceeded to throw it in his face. He immediately grabbed her and attempted to push her off the side when she went to get back to her seat, so she pushed back. I took the role of trying to calm everyone down so Diana could get back to her seat.

Dickhead: Do you want me to spark out your boyfriend?
Me: Just shut the fuck up and look forward.
Dickhead: Do you want me to spark you out?!
Me: …

He turned around, throwing the last of the fruit at Diana.

Diana: Well now I’ve got what I wanted.

The rest of the boat journey was a bit quiet. The occasional camera shutter, but not much else. Some of you might read that and think it’s a bit silly, its just a banana to a monkey. However, firstly, there were no banana trees in this area, so this wasn’t a normal food for them. Mainly though, we’ve been to Asia where the monkeys are highly aggressive, in part due to tourists interactions with them. The monkeys here were quite happy going about their business, until we rammed a boat into their tree, causing them to lose their gripping and get scared. Next a monkey, sorry, dickhead, started thrusting a banana at them, trying to get a photo. Some of these monkeys had their young hanging onto them, and could easily identify this as a threat. There was just nothing about this behaviour that was needed, considering we could see the monkeys just fine from a distance, this was all about this particular hero getting his photo for Snapchat, so he could show all his other dickhead friends, which in turn will cause them to come and want to do the same thing, and in time mess up the experience for everyone when the monkeys come to expect rewards for photos. These animals are as wild as they come and are not there for our amusement, we should feel privileged we can witness them from a distance in their natural habitat whilst it still exists.

Either way, we got back to shore and he immediately tried to find the other group to complain to them about how unfair we’d been. They didn’t seem to be listening. Our guide showed us the way back to the car and then proceeded to hang around, clearly after a tip. Unfortunately for him, we were pretty much all on the same page about this, so after telling him we wouldn’t tip him and him apologising over and over again about it, he then proceeded to go to dickhead and act exactly the same, making us doubtful that apology meant anything. Good luck getting a tip out of that narcissistic prick.

The journey back was fine, even seeing a couple of capybaras along the way (huge guinea pig things), this time alive and not being picked to pieces by carrion birds. We got back to town, said our goodbyes to our new friends and ducked into a place for a drink and dinner before our night bus.

You've got something on.. Uh.. On your arse.

Better.

Unfortunately as time progressed towards getting the bus, my fever was feeling worse. We set off in what we thought was good time, only to find out that the ‘bus station’ was actually just the ticket offices. With only a couple of minutes to spare before our 6pm bus, we had to hop on the back of two motorcycle taxis with all our bags, and sped off on a 5 minute journey to the actual bus station. Here, I paid the driver, ran in, to find the bus wasn’t until half 6 fortunately. Feeling worse and worse as time progressed, we finally got on the bus. It was perhaps the worst bus we’d been on in all of South America, half fallen apart, dirty and the seats barely reclined at all. No toilet, there would just be a couple of stops in the middle of the night.

The worst part however was the road. Trying to sleep on a bus where the suspension is made of pogo sticks and jelly resting on a bed of bouncy castles, where the road is full of potholes, and just above my head was the razor sharp window catch, and being both red hot whilst simultaneously freezing cold due to fever, this was possibly the worst night of my life so far. By the time we arrived in La Paz, my vision was double and my temperature was off the charts in both directions, so we found a hostel near the station where I proceeded to pass out for most of the day. By the time our NEXT night bus came around, I was feeling a little more human, certainly more so than I had been, if not perfectly well.

All in all, an eventful few days…! Oh, and if you visit the Amazon, don't swim in the rivers. The water is 95% dickhead spit.