Jesus. What a ride. 3 km of vertical descent, all on dirt roads. I don't remember much of the trip, except that this one baby stared at me, without blinking. Through dust clouds and bumps, the baby stared and never cried. It was the Überbaby. We also chewed lots of coca, plus this disgusting 'dulce de coca' as I called it, which had the benefit of numbing your entire mouth. Louis described the taste as 'pork left in the sun for a week'.

In Rurrenabaque, we put our things down in a cheap 30Bs hostel, which had warm water, and mosquito nets, and it was warm despite the overcast weather which cleared up later that day. We walked around that day looking for the right tour company. If I had seen it, we would have gone with Ayahuasca tours, which I think would have been a unique experience. I've always been interested in the 'drug' after reading the writings from William Burroughs to Allen Ginsburg on his search for the plant in the 60's. It means Aya - Spirit, Wasca - Vine, and is in the DMT family, like mushrooms... however, it is used as a medicine because the intense vomiting and involuntary diarrhea clears the body of jungle parasites, while throwing you into an intense hallucinogenic full day trip. So I don't know if I would have taken it myself, but it would have been great to meet real shamans, and to see them take it.

Instead we went to Fluvial Tours. It was not the season for tours, so they were really keen to take our money, and willing to make deals. The other one we went to, Jungle tours, had a very boring salesman, and the guy at Flecha Tours was asleep. The testimonials on the walls at Flecha were all in Hebrew, and the Fluvial testimonials were in various languages. As it turned out, the choice is really just about which nationality you get stuck with for 3 days. The camps are mostly the same, plus or minus a hammock. I am sure I picked the right group, as the alternatives turned out to be the Israelis or the Americans. So there was me, Louis and S¢ren, a Quebec girl, and 3 Germans.

That night we went to the Mosskito bar, and played pool.

Er, the bald eagle, Osama and el Che	Dust masks
The road was not entirely safe	The Überbaby
Banana sellers	Lorikeets, or parrots.
Rurrenabaque street	The river at sunset
The river, again.	Fun with lasers and long exposure
Prepared for the mosquitoes...	Louis' true form

We got in the jeep, a new one, but not as nice as the salt flat jeep, and drove to the Pampas. It took 3 hours, so we stopped for lunch at a restaurant, where they had a pet spider monkey, a boar, and a giant stork. The food was good, and we named the monkey "Jimmy" and everyone took turns holding it, voluntarily or not. The stork was really huge though.

The pterodactyl...	Jimmy, the black spider monkey
Jimmy making friends with Grisha	Boar

The driver left us at the Pampas river with no instructions, except that our boat driver's name was Domingo. We waited about 2 hours while all the other groups came and left.

We saw the first few animals sitting there. Some kind of cormorant, a crocodile, and two turtles going at it. (Er, not all of them at it, just the turtles). At the park reservation's entrance, we got a pamphlet with a bit of information about all the animals we might see. So since we had already named the Black Spider Monkey "Jimmy", I thought we could give human names to all the animals, and that would give us something to do. So we named the turtles "Fred", and said "Oh Fred, what are you doing to Fred?" and whoever saw a new animal first got to pick the name for it. We had some interesting and semi-appropriate names.

Turtles ("Fred")	Howler monkey ("")
Kingfisher	Crocodile ("")
Hoatzin ("")	A particularly menacing looking fly.
The world's largest rodent	The Capybara ("Ron")
A fish hawk	Some howlers
Capuchin monkey ("")	White heron

We got onto Domingo's boat, and travelled up the Yucuma river. I wrote a song, elicited by the pampas, played to the most typical blues riff possible. A's, E's and B's mostly. It was fairly tongue-in-cheek, because the pampas, though a glorious collection of animals, including hundreds or thousands of sunbathing crocs, and every type of exotic pterodactyl sized bird... was a river patrolled daily for 10 years, by dozens of gringos, mostly Israeli's, and you could see the malaise in the alligator eyes, maybe because the Israelis only talk hebrew excluding outsiders, or maybe the barrage of paparazzi photoshoots, or maybe just because the less eco-conservative tour guide didn't bring his daily chunk of meat.

We went to some big football field where all the tourists from all the camps met. We bought beers, and were the only people drinking. I predicted a storm, saying 'Storm's a comin, c'feel it in my gout' as I always say, plagiarising Gary Larson. And it stormed, very suddenly. We stayed there until it was dark, after all the other fools had gone home on their boats in the rain. As we slowly made our way back, a fish, a dogfish, jumped out of the water and smacked me in the face. I was going to throw it back but it flopped behind me to the Europeans, and none of them were going to touch it. The others just laughed as it suffocated to death, and so we ate it the next day.

It was amazingly beautiful at night, because of the fireflies. I have never seen so many in my life. With a little will'o'wisp of light every second, it was pretty magical, until the mosquitoes made us get off the hammocks and climb into our mosquito proof beds.

The pampas	Louis
Me	The boat
The campsite	The sunset
Nice cloud	The fashion police died of malaria
The sun setting	Like moths to the flame
Puddles in the pitch black night	Unfortunately the only pic I have of all the Germans
The dogfish I caught with my face	The spider in my bed's net

The next day, we looked for a 9 metre anaconda, but coundn't find it. They said it was because it was overcast. Fair enough. We swam with the dolphins. Well, Grisha, Louis, and I got in, anyway. The guide said that the crocodiles don't attack because the dolphins protect the humans with their agility and strong nose. I wasn't entirely convinced, and got out after a minute. Grisha, the German, swam in speedo underwear, and I think the crocs left him alone because they were afraid of him.

At night we went to some little clubhouse thing called Sunset bar, again with all the other tour groups. Nice sunset.

Domingo looking for anacondas	Us looking for the anaconda
Tree...	Field
Spider	The lone tree
Birds in the sky	Cute little bird
Bee	Cute little bizarre insect
Waiting for someone to find an anaconda	Lady bug
Fly	A dolphin I swam with
Sunset	Various skulls
Damsel fly...	Reflection

The last day, we woke up early to see the sunrise and we walk around a field.

We fished for pirahñas and they attacked the bait with such ferocity that I can't believe I got in the water the day before. I caught one by dipping the string in the water, and yanking one out of the water and into the boat. They were generally too small to get their mouth around the hook.

When we got back to the camp, a crocodile had perched on the bank, next to the boat. We ate the pirahñas that we caught, and took funny photos, before returning on the river to the jeep. I slept the entire boat ride back, which was roughly 2 hours, and then slept for most of the jeep ride.

Spider	Spider web
The crocodile at camp	The sunrise
Croc...	Sunrise again
White heron on boat	Cute little bird
Lunch	"what?"
I look like a mutated orc	Anywayz

We came back to Rurrenabaque, and there were decisions to be made. Soren wanted to go chase Carole and meet her in Cusco. I also wanted to go see Machu Picchu. Louis wanted to go to the jungle. We went to play pool. Soren didn't really want to go by himself, especially because Carole has her sister and Sophie along, and it would be pretty damn awkward for him to rock up and try take Carole to the side. His purported purpose to see her again was that he didn't say good bye properly. She had a boyfriend of 5 years in France, so by all rational accounts, his excuse was a bit too emo. We chided him about what he really wanted. I was about to go with him to Peru, but then I suddenly changed my mind, and went and put a deposit down for the jungle the next day, and made sure that Soren could go too, if he wanted to.

Now that I was not going to confederate in his plot, Soren was slowly convinced that it would be a bad idea to go 'Cherchez la femme' by himself, and that it would all be alright. We drank a lot instead. It was happy hour. (Pardon my French).

It happened to be Dia del San Juan, ie. John, of beheaded baptist fame, who is the patron saint of partying, apparently, because the whole town was off the hook. Rurrenabaque probably has more motorcycles per capita than any place in the western world, (I believe China or India might win globally), but let's just say it is insane. I set my mind on riding a bike, and Soren was keen to come along for the ride.

I went to the motorcycle taxi-ing rank, where people pay to ride as a pillion passenger, and asked to rent a bike for half an hour. We waited 10 minutes until some bike owner agreed, and he asked if I could ride, so I said 'SSiiiiiii, por supuesto, yo conducè veinte mil kilometros este año!' the guy was suspicious, to be sure. But after a minute, he said ok. I agreed to pay him 30 Bs for 30 minutes, and he didn't ask to see my license, he didn't ask for a deposit, he didn't ask for ID, he didn't ask for anything. Just 'here you go, enjoy'. The guy was probably more drunk than me.

It took me a minute to get used to the bike, since it had this cool gear system where it goes from N-1-2-3-4-5-N-1-2-etc. in a never ending cycle. We drove around for 20 minutes, traversing every street in the city, and tried to climb the bike up to the mirador. That poor bike almost made it, but it was definitely starting to get dangerous, climbing at about 45 degrees on a footpath, so we turned around. The speedometer didn't work, but I probably pushed it to about 80 km/hr, which was all the 150cc wanted to do. I returned the bike, and the guy shot daggers from his eyes when I gave him a 10Bs tip, probably thinking it was guilt money for destroying his bike. It kind of was.

So next time, I know how I'm going to Peru. No Credit, No ID, Grand theft auto, baby.

Pool	Soren on the bike
Me on the bike	To infinity...and beyond!

If one goes to South America, it's sort of a sin not to visit the rainforest. Luckily, Bolivia has the Madidi National Park, whose Beni river is a tributary of the Amazon. Not only that, but it is the most conserved, biologically diverse land on the planet, making it, as far as we know, the most biologically diverse area, in the universe. These two hectares of land contain 10% of the world's bird species.

We started the trip in somewhat unpropitious, but apt circumstances. Man, it was raining like an idiot savant. (er, that would be an idiotic pun on rain man). But of course, this IS the rain forest. We got on the boat, and Soren, who did not have rain clothes. His general regret was palpable and amusing. But at least we had a roof on the boat. We felt sorry for the pampas tour people, stuck on roofless boats in the rain.

Amazingly, the river has altitude changes, and we had to get out of the boat to push. Most of the time though, there was just a guy in front, who used a long stick to push us along through the narrow shallows. This tour group consisted of a British couple on a 2 day tour, me and the Danes, and Grisha the German, who we met on the Pampas tour. Grisha started off a bit droll, swimming with the crocodiles in his speedo, but he turned out to be a pretty funny guy. The Brits were also nice, indeed.

Looking at the pamphlet	Rain
Us stalwart adventurers	The dude with the stick

We arrived at the camp, and had to carry the water and white gas about a kilometer. That was unpleasant, but we used a bamboo stick, and three of us carried it together.

The jungle trip was better than the pampas, in the same way that Rage Against the Machine is better than Hoobastank. Harder, less commercial, just better. We walked around for hours, and just when we couldn't be more lost, the base camp would show up behind the next tree. Apparently all the paths are loops, so you can't get lost, but unfortunately some trails are 20 day trails, so it might take a while. The reason why you find so many "Israliens" here is that twenty years ago, one got lost while doing a jungle tour, and was rescued after 15 days by a native. But I could easily see how it was possible. Whenever you lingered for a minute, to take a picture of an insect, or something, it became a small panic to find the group again. The paths are not easy to follow, and without a guide, you are puma fodder.

That first day was cool. We saw wild boars, which were hard to photograph, and some monkeys in the trees. Our guide, Mario, played a little trick on the poor Briton in the front. He stopped, looked around, then ducked under a spider web so that the poor guy would walk into it. The spider on it was pretty huge.

We stopped at some fruit tree of some sort, with innocuous apple looking things, and Mario explained that it was called the 'Manzana' (apple), and you could make a drink out of it, and also you could use it to dye clothes blue, or make tattoos. He showed us a tattoo he made by putting the manzana in a cut, back in 1992. We all took sticks and drew on our arms with the juicy pulp. I made two lines on my face, to look like a native. Two weeks later, I still had 'Selva' and 'Thug Life' indelibly woven into my epidermis. It started clear, then turned red, then dark blue.

That night, we walked around the jungle at night, looking for giant tarantulas. We only saw a baby, which is a shame. We went for a little walk to find nightlife, but that night only found bugs and caterpillars and spiders. We introduced the Brit (whose name I have forgot, sorry), to our two-word-story game, where you go in a circle telling a story two words at a time. We made up the most horrendous story...

Everyone in a tree...	A friendly spider
The boar was quick	Spider close up
Nitration...	Tall tree
Jungle	Can ya niggas understand this?
The camp	Soren and I
Baby Tarantula	Caterpillar at night
Ooh, smaller bugs running around underneath	Cool web
Me and the British guy	These were only one centimeter long

The next day, we walked like usual, and learned about the Viagra tree. Apparently you can make a tea from the bark, and it has the expected effects. Mario told us a story of these Israeli guys who went on the tour, and thought 'cool, the viagra tree! let's take some. So they chopped off some with their machette. The one guy that night came to Mario's room, and asked if he could please sleep in his room, cause his friend was climbing into his bed.

Mario also showed us some plant that cured stomach aches. I read an article in the newspaper on the bus asking whether natives should get profits for their knowledge that was imparted to the exploitative gringos who produce Amazonian pills by the zillions. I don't know. Probably not.

We saw fire ants, and one of them bit Grisha, who said it was very sore. We stopped at another plant, where Mario squeezed the green leaves, and poured the red juice into another leaf-cup, and we painted each others faces. This red leaf paint was not as permanent as the blue apple juice. Soren started to paint Grisha's face like Hitler, but he worked it out, and said 'please no', and Soren said it was just to see if he noticed. Instead, he painted the funniest 'Angry Mexican' face on Grisha. On the way back to camp, we found a herd of wild boars, and we chased them like gringos. I thought I'd be smart, and wait for the others to run ahead, so I could see one, but I was too smart, and the damn thing ran straight at me. I had to jump over it. When I told Mario later, he laughed for two minutes, like a little schoolboy. He called me over to tell it to all the tour guides and his wife, and cracked up again like I told it the first time. It wasn't that funny. Damn pumba nearly killed me.

The British folks left, and we went to try fish out the river. We had zero luck, and caught nothing. There were, however, the ugliest spiders in the world, scurrying through the rocks.

That night was awesome though. We asked if we could go on another night walk. I was all out of coca leaves, to which I had developed a bit of an addiction, so Mario showed us something cool. He brought a piece of bark, and his own coca leaves, and some baking soda. We chewed up the bark, then poured baking soda on it, and put it in the coca leaves, and chewed that. And it was awesome. It tasted so much better than the coca leaves by themselves.

and we were asked to try walk without light. I managed for a while, because i was wearing my jungle proof suit, but there were too many roots, and overhanging branches, and so we used the flashlights sparingly. Then suddenly, Mario whispers to turn them off, and says 'Puma!!!!!', and so we maintain silence, and he shines his light on it. It looks like a giant fucking puma. But then it comes out of the bushes, and its just a forest deer. It didn't pay attention to the flashlight. Mario says they are extremely rare, and one only see's them, like the puma, about 2 or 3 times a year. I asked him what it was called, and he said 'deer'. Oh.

We saw down in silence and without light, and listened. Mario said the sound was a ground monkey, which only travels at night. It was pitch black, and I thought, jesus, that poor nocturnal bastard.

Some new folks arrived, all from Israel, and we had supper with them. They were embarking on a 4 day jungle trek in the morning. The one paratrooper guy was terrified of spiders, and screamed like a girl. He said they taught him everything in the army. I asked him "Do you know Russel Katz?", who is an Israeli paratrooper from my school, but he thought I asked "Do you know how to wrestle cats?". No, they didn't teach him that.

I'm hunting wabbits	the interweb
Selva (Jungle)	baby shrooms
A spider with a maggot...	A nest of ants
Spiky tree...	Tropical
Puddles of Mud	ooh Butterfly
Soren, Louis, and the Angry mexican	My face paint
Oogedyboogedy	Caterpillar
Caterpillar that jumped on Louis	Nasty spider
Unsuccessful fishing	Suicide bug
Baby tarantula	Bob's story
The fire fly...	The table

The final day, we were happy to sit around and do nothing. The Israeli group left for their 4 day mission, which sounded like an incredible adventure, which I might be keen to do some day, but not any time soon. The paratrooper guy got their tour guide to tie up his bag, and said 'Come on', and the tour guide called to Mario, 'Que chora eso', which means 'What a bitch, this guy', and I laughed. Mario looked at me, and smiled, surprised that I knew the insult, and it was funny. I had been reading 'Puto el que lee' which is a book of Argentinian insults, injuries and improprieties. (the title is a meta-joke calling the person who reads the book a fag).

So that day, we just made jewelery from coconuts. Tiny little coconut rings, which we sawed, sanded, mudded, and ashed, in that order, to a shiny finish. It was pretty amazing.

We gave Mario a tip, which I forgot to say was from all of us. Then I slept on the boat ride home. We picked up some ladies on the side of the river, who wanted a lift. Pretty lucky for them.

Hornets	Butterfly
Fly	Shroom
Little shrooms...	Lions back in Rurrenabaque

We got back to Rurrenabaque. Grisha took us to a hostel that cost 15Bs, which made it the cheapest bed of my trip. That is seriously cheap.

We went to Mosskito bar, and drank a lot. We tried every cocktail on the menu. It was the day Michael Jackson died, which gave us more reason to drink heavily, and toast the king of pop. Louis, however, spent 200 Bs, on supper and about 10 cocktails and shots, and had no money left. Luckily for him, we were used to lending each other money, so he didn't starve.

The bus ride back to La Paz was 20 hours, ascending 3500m. We ate broasted chicken, which was the only option from the dozen or so 'Pollo Broaster' stores. There was no toilet, and there was about double the intended capacity of the bus. A cultural experience.

huuuge gecko.	Posing at Fluvial tours

La Paz was a nice city. I probably spent the most time there other than Buenos Aires. From Rurrenabaque I decided to spend one more day in La Paz, just to chill, maybe try spend my remaining Bolivianos. I bought a present for Aurora, but I was too big myself to fit any Bolivian clothing.

We looked for some 'Chulita wrestling', but it had moved. We saw a street parade instead, and went to check out the San Pedro prison. The guards did not want us there, and I said I thought it was a tourist site. They said 'Vaya', and we saw that a prison guard was selling cocaine to an inmate. When we didn't leave, a woman prison guard came out and yelled 'Vaya gringos!' I said I only wanted to understand why we had to leave. She said 'Entiendes mejor al otro lado del calle!', which meant 'You'll understand better on the other side of the street'. It was bizarre. Stupid pigs.

We went to a Middle Eastern restaurant, Al Amir, where we smoked Nargilla with Double Apple and Mint tobacco with some weed offerred from the other table. They played some guitar but it was so bad I asked to tune it for them. They thought I wanted to play it, so I gave it to Louis to do something impressive, which he did.

I finally caught some sort of stomach illness, which my furnace of a stomach couldn't incinerate. Probably from the multiple lomitos from the street vendors. That made the next few days of bus rides miserable.

Mighty Morphin	Power Rangers
Go purple ranger!	Wow
People	Multicoloured gruel
A band	Free for locals, 3 Bs for gringos
Good bye La Paz	On to Chile!