Las Pampas de Santa Rosa
Viernes 23 de noviembre – martes 27 de noviembre.
On Friday, it rained most of the day. Guillaume and I get ready for the next adventure: a trip into las Pampas. Pampas means ‘prairie’ in Spanish, and much of this area is grassland, much like the Everglades. Like the everglades, it is wet grassland, or marsh. There are many rivers running through it as well. Pampas make up a significant part of the Amazon basin in Bolivia. East of Rurrenabaque is a large area of Pampas, some of it in the Santa Rosa Pampas Reserve.
That evening we have supper with two French sisters, Ayette and Sylvie, who have just come back from a tour of the Pampas. Ayette complains a lot about a lot of little things while Sylvie is a lot more positive. I do not see how one can go wrong in the Pampas. Sure enough, it turns out to be a pretty wonderful experience (except for the mosquitoes).
The next morning we meet at the Tour Operator (Fleche Tours – the operator started by the guy who rescued the Israeli 30 years earlier) at 8:30, after breakfast at the French bakery. Our group consists of Guillaume, Sandra (an elementary school teacher from France, 30), Pa (a 20ish student from Korea who has just spent 9 months on a farm in Australia, and who managed to learn extremely little English, and who knows even less Spanish), and Joél (an Italian massage therapist who is visiting his girlfriend who has a job in La Paz). The guide is Taz, who has a macho attitude and whose beautiful French girlfriend, Fanny, is working for the agency. In spite of his attitude, Taz turns out to be an excellent guide. There is a lot of French spoken, a lot of Spanish, and then there is Pa, who we speak to in English but who does not really seem that interested and I am not sure what he is doing there.
We drive for two hours through marshlands to get to the town of Santa Rosa, where we have lunch and then to a launch point on the Rio Yacumo, where we will start our trip, by long narrow dugout canoe with motor. After waiting a while for Taz to appear, we pile into the boat and head slowly up river. All along the river are Yacarè caimans: we see hundreds of them. They are beautifully coloured with vertical stripes on head and tail. The females are pale gray while the males are almost black. Mostly they are lying on the banks, but some are swimming. Mostly, like the other wildlife they ignore our boat. The Yacarè caimans grow up to 3 m (10 ft) and we see quite a few of that size. There are also black caimans, which appear to be much less common. We only see 5-10 over three days, the largest of which is probably about 3.5 m, although these caimans grow up to 4 m (13 ft). They look very healthy except for a few injuries. I see one that has lost the last 30 cm or more of its tail, fairly recently as the stump is pink.
Yacarè caiman in camouflage
3.5 m Black Caiman scared by our boat
As well as the caimans, we see many river turtles of two species. There are many beautiful birds. The most common are hoatzins, aka stinky birds (so-called because they vomit up their food to re-chew it), which have head feathers which look like a yellow Mohawk haircut, blue around the eyes and on the cheeks, and yellow tipped tails. Their alarm call sounds like heavy breathing. There are also lots of herons (cucuy, white, tiger, night) as well as snowy egrets, black vultures, Amazonian carcaras, Amazonian kingfishers, doves, eagles, turkeys, screamers. We also see lots of capybaras (world’s largest rodent: not unlike beavers but twice the weight and not as aquatic although they do swim well), almost always in family groups. They are grazing on riverside vegetation, wallowing in the water, or sleeping on the bank. We also see squirrel monkeys, and red and black howler monkeys.
River Turtles
We arrive at our camp around 4, and it is pretty basic. There is a separate kitchen/dining room building as well as several long dorms, divided into individual rooms with 2 sets of bunk beds in each. On a porch, there is a line of hammocks, which is a nice place to hang out when the mosquitoes are not too bad. It is situated on the river as well as are the 8 or 9 other tour camps. There is running water: water is pumped with a portable gas pump up into a raised water tank, giving gravity feed water (toilets, sinks and (cold) showers. Taz tells me that the tour operators are in fierce competition and things keep getting fancier. Ten years ago, tourists paddled their boats, and shared cooking duties over a fire and slept in tents. I would have much preferred that, but it looks like I am in the minority.
That evening we go out by boat to a soccer field where we meet with all the other groups currently out for a game of soccer. I intended to play, but seeing as how I have only played 4 or 5 times in my life, the caliber of play is too high for me to be able to enjoy it. Instead, Sandra and I talk. She tells me how she started her trip with a friend who got sick and then went home. How she, in northern Colombia, tripped on a beach and ended up with an open fracture of her toe. How she had to hobble several km for help and how it stopped her trip for several weeks. We get on the subject of accidents and she talks about a childhood car accident where she was pinned under the car and still has some back issues from that; her dad’s injuries were serious enough that it changed his whole life. It struck me that we all have events in our lives that suddenly change everything.
Guillaume plays soccer but without shoes as his shoes are falling apart. He immediately sprains a toe, it turns black and blue, and for the rest of the time we spend together (another 4 days or so), he is limping around trying to keep weight off the toe. As the game finishes, we see a large number of frogs coming up from the river and also see some giant cane toads. We travel back slowly in the dark, using our flashlights to search for caimans. I had heard of flashlighting alligators before but am amazed at how effective it is: the eyes stand out like beacons of light, and there are lots. It rains all night.
In the morning, we travel a short way to a large shallow marsh in the middle of a larger grassy area to search for anacondas. The water is about 30 cm deep and there are a few caimans, frogs, a few wading birds, some large turkeys, two freshwater crabs, a large sphingid caterpillar, and one baby garter snake, found by Fanny. This marsh is private land as is much of the pampas: owned by large cattle ranchers, who got the land when the government was selling it cheaply. Apparently there is a Turkish family who currently owns approx. 100 farms with about 1500 head of cattle in each. The tour operators pay a fee to them for the privilege of walking through their fields and marshes.
I suspect that the limited amount of life we see in this marsh may have a lot to do with the large number of cattle grazing here. Other groups do find anacondas, two and three days before, but not us. We continue for a couple of hours hiking through the pampas: along creeks and rivers it is heavily wooded. Otherwise it is pretty open grassland. The highlights are a dead capybara and a dead eel. Not a lot of other wildlife is seen, other than a significant number of mosquitoes. This is the beginning of the rainy season and mosquito numbers are climbing.
After lunch, we see squirrel monkeys and brown capuchins running over the roofs of the buildings. One of the squirrels runs into the dining room and steals a bottle of ketchup. A little later we hear the distant territorial call of a red howler monkey.
At 3 PM, we leave to go out on the river again to go to fishing for pirañas. On the way, we spot Jaciru storks and roseate spoonbills (both huge ungainly and beautifully coloured wading birds). We use small pieces of fish on small hooks, fishing from our boat, tied up to shore. While others throw their bait out into the middle, I get more bites just dropping my bait over the side of the boat and jigging just below the surface. The pirañas bite almost instantly. The problem is that they are small pirañas and they take small bites and our hooks are too big. We set the hook hard when they bite, but I figure I only am hooking one out of ten that bite. We end up with 7 pirañas of five different species plus some smaller fish and a small catfish. We have to quit early because it starts raining hard.
That evening I play euchre with the others. The noises of the pampas are all around us: loud, insistent, and somehow comforting. Sandra and I talk about teaching, and she tells me that she envies the Canadian standards. It is true that when I went through a year of teacher training a few years back I was pleasantly surprised to by where we are at in our practice.
The third morning, we go out early around 5, shortly before it gets light. We have to wait a bit as the others are not as keen as I am. Last comes Pa. We motor slowly down the river and listen to the morning symphony of noises: birds, frogs, cicadas, monkeys. It is very beautiful.
When we come back, I sleep for an hour before breakfast. Afterward, we motor along the river until we encounter one of five families of pink dolphins which lives in this stretch of river. We have encountered families before, usually in the wider deeper stretches of the river. Adults are about 1.8 m long, and while they are pink as adults they are gray as juveniles, up until the age of 8. This time there are 2 adults and 5 juveniles swimming here. The fish scatter when the dolphins appear, and the caimans will kill caimans if they come close so we do see one caiman make a hasty retreat onto shore. According to Taz, for this reason, it is safe to swim when dolphins are near. Sandra, Pa and I take him up on this and go for a swim. The current is much stronger than I thought, and except near the bank a leisurely stroke only lets me stay in one place. The young dolphins are playing: jumping and splashing. So I begin to splash the water hard. A youngster surfaces within 50 cm of me and splashes me hard in the face and another swims by, so that his/her body touches mine in passing.
Pink River Dolphin
Taz has told me about the Yacarè caiman male, Gustavo, that hangs out at the camp much of the time. I have seen it repeatedly and have noticed that it will open its mouth when you get close. It is about 2.75 m long (9 ft), blind, missing a front foot, its rough-looking face tells you it is obviously old, and has relatively few teeth. Taz says it has been around the camp for the 14 years he has been her. I have seen him call to it, the caiman comes, and he will feed it or caress its head. On arrival at the camp, I ask him for a fish from the boat to feed it. I want to caress it. I talk to it and it comes closer. I bring the fish to its nose and suddenly it opens its mouth and turns its head sideways and I jump back. However, this is how it takes food. I drop the fish in its mouth. Then I slowly carefully pass my hand over top of its head, knowing that it would be hard to bite me even if it wanted to, which I doubt it does. I reach down and caress it between the eyes and it closes its unseeing eyes like a dog would. It feels really good. I talk to it and back off and then I caress it again.
Shortly thereafter it is time to go, and I am sad to leave. Guillaume and I spend the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and playing pool in a bar, where we also exchange books. Then all of us, including Taz and Fanny (except for Pa who had already left town) meet for supper. Taz is really negative about some of the changes that have happened with tours (becoming fancier to please whining tourists), the misuse of park fees, the rigidity of rules about hunting in the area (as the only means of keeping poaching to a minimum), etc. Other people I have talked to who know as much are less pessimistic.
The next morning, Sandra is off to La Paz, while Joel and Guillaume are both waiting for buses until tomorrow and I am heading back into the Amazon. It is very hot and there are cicadas everywhere. The three of us go to a restaurant to have some fresh juice. It takes a long time and after a while, we see the daughter of the restaurant owner go out and bring back the fruit to make our fruit juice. Meanwhile we eat a bag of camaruru’s that I have purchased on the street. They ask me if I used to be in the military. When I ask why they think that, it is because I am always ready to go, am well organized and have good posture. It is kind of amusing but I take it as a compliment. I will miss all of them. In Spanish, I tell Joel that I will keep in touch. However, I choose the wrong word and it comes out that I will give him my girlfriends.
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