IN THE AMAZON, SHOES ARE LIFE OR DEATH
Bolivia has rather relaxed visa requirements. To get in, I had to present no detailed itinerary or promise to name my first child after their president. I simply rocked up with a valid passport, a return ticket, and enough money to pay for my visa. The result was that I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do. The main purpose of my trip was to visit Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt pan in the world. A tour of the pan takes three days. I would be in Bolivia for two weeks. So I figured I might as well pop into the Amazon.
After consulting various guidebooks on potential gateways, I settled on Madidi National Park. There are two ways to get there from La Paz. Option A involves a harrowing 20-hour bus ride to Rurrenabaque, a small town north of La Paz. This involves driving down “Death Road”, parts of which remain untarred. The road is so narrow that only one car can pass at a time. Googling “Death Road” reveals a YouTube video of a bus plummeting over the edge. The screams of onlookers in the video will haunt you for weeks after.
Option B involves a 30-minute plane ride from La Paz to Rurrenabaque, during which travellers are treated to views of snowcapped mountains and dense forest canopies.
I chose Option A. Because I’m cheap. Twenty nerve-wracking hours later, I was in Rurrenbaque and looking for a Madidi tour.
There are two types of tours available here: “Pampas” and “Jungle”. The Pampas is on the edge of the jungle and most of the tour is spent cruising down the intricate network of rivers. Because the vegetation is less dense on the outskirts, travellers see more animals. This is why I picked “Pampas”.
In my three days on the outskirts of the Amazon, I marvelled at our guide’s ability to SEDIQA KHATIEB navigate the tributaries without getting lost. I was awoken by the howls of an unidentified primate, had a tiny monkey traipse over my head, saw a sloth and a capybara (the world’s largest rodent), and ate overpriced M&Ms.
On day two, I was having breakfast when I was told we should head to the storeroom to find a pair of gumboots, which I’d need on our search for anacondas. Anacondas are large snakes and many movies have been made about them. The general plot of these movies involves the snakes swallowing humans, whole.
Selecting the correct boots involved tipping the boots upside down and shaking them to ensure they were free of scorpions or spiders, a task I undertook with diligence.
At this point, it still hadn’t dawned on me that we would not be searching for these creatures from the comfort of our motorised canoe. Rather, we would disembark and follow our guide through water so muddy it was difficult to see what was underfoot.
Our guide, a stunning man with high cheekbones, would slash at the undergrowth with a machete. This was not a strategy I appreciated. The last thing I wanted to do was anger an anaconda that may be in our path.
Our group of seven went in single file, silent, occasionally stumbling over a tree root. Cold, muddy water sloshed into my boots and I tried not to think about leeches, piranhas or the snake we had seen earlier, slithering on the water.
After slashing at the trees for an hour, our guide finally gave up. We’d come at the wrong time of the year for anacondas, he said.
I, for one, was relieved.
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