Welcome to the Jungle

So after we got back from the Pampas (the flatlands, see the two posts below for details on that), we had a night in Rurrenabarque and then headed out at 9am on the back of a motorcycle to the nearby river where we got on another, bigger boat that headed a different direction and took us into the jungle of the Bolivian Amazon basin.

The ride was fairly non-descript, except for beautiful scenery (including colorful macaw parrots that live in holes that the dig into the sides of the hills that line the river), until we reached a low part of the river where everyone had to jump out of the boat into rushing current and actually PUSH the boat upstream by hand...wasn´t expecting that. So the rest of the ride to camp was very wet. We arrived on shore after about 3 hours and then carried all of our stuff to the camp that was about 15 minutes walk from the river in the middle of the jungle.

Whereas the Pampas was all about seeing animals, this was mostly about seeing crazy jungle plants. It rained very hard a lot of the time so there was a cool dripping sound almost the entire time we were there. On our first hike around the area our guide showed us all kinds of cool things. At one point he stopped and chopped off this vine that he then tipped into our mouths...the best water that I have ever tasted flowed out into our mouths...nature`s water bottle. Another plant he grabbed and mashed up in his hands and after a while a blood-red juice came out and he painted our faces with it...natures face paint. At another spot a gigantic tree had a huge vine hanging down from it that we took turns swining on like tarzan...natures playground. Another huge tree he showed us apparently is filled with a sap that is toxic, the natives used to gather the sap and then would go ¨fishing¨ by just throwing the sap into the water and gathering the dead fish that would float to the top...nature´s version of dynamite fishing. Another tree bled this white sap that is a very effective glue which natives would use to bind wounds...nature´s bandaid. You get the idea. It was cool stuff, just not as amazing as the wildlife of the Pampas tour...UNTIL

UNTIL, we did a night hike. We walked around for about an hour with 3 other people. Two of whom were the most whiny, complaining people ever and all they did was bitch. We had a great guide who had a great sense of humor, he didnt speak any English, but was always making jokes in Spanish about how he didn´t know where he was and how we were going to die. Anyway, after an hour he was like ¨lets drop the crybabies off and I will show you something crazy.¨ So we left the whining couple at camp and set off on another trail. After about 5 minutes we got to a tree where lived the largest F-ING spider I have ever seen in my life and will ever see...this was out of Harry Potter 2...freaking huge. It was hiding in the roots of the tree, then the guide put a bug in front of it and it came all the way out...pounced all the way out was more like it. This thing was like a small football...a taranchula, but not the brown kind. This one was jet black and had 10 legs instead of 8. These things dont make webs because they are fast enough to just hunt their prey straight up, and their prey includes BIRDS. Needless to say, I was pooping and peeing in my pants at the same time. Although I think this actually helped my arachnaphobia because every other spider I will ever see just looks so tiny in comparison. It made the whole trip to the jungle worthwhile just to see this thing.

This trip was much shorter, just two days and one night so it was over before it began but it was worth it. The flight back to La Paz in the tiny 10 person plane was great until the last 15 minutes when mountain winds hit our plane at full force and we were thrown around the sky like a toy...I have never felt turbulance like that and the guy in front of us lost his cookies. Laura almost did but we made it down ok and after a few shaky minutes were back to normal. Between the Pampas and the jungle though, it was an incredibly memorable adventure.

Aligators, Pirhanas, and Pink Dolphins, Oh My!

So I just hopped on the internet to follow the Cal game against Oregon...bad idea...verrrry bad idea...so instead I will try to cheer myself up by telling you how awesome our trip to the Bolivian Amazon was.

I got really sick right before we left, with another fever of over 100 degrees. It was a miserable day and a half but luckily I was better by the time we left for the airport in La Paz at 7am. We got on the smallest plane that I have ever ridden in (we were in the vcry back and I felt like I could reach forward and mess around with the controls in the cockpit, it was that small)...very scary but amazingly beautiful views of snow-capped mountains that surrounded our plane. Then things got totally covered in fog and clouds and we decended into the `airport` in Rurrenabarque, which is really just a tiny stretch of mud and grass in the middle of the jungle that looks more or less like Jurassic Park. Suddenly we went from around 14,000 feet in La Paz, with chilly air and wind, to a steamy, hot jungle.

We then took at 2.5 hour jeep through the pooring rain on unpaved roads (the jeep in front of us spun out of control and got stranded on the side of the road, luckily we had a better driver) and finally made it to a river where we packed all of our stuff onto a little boat with 7 people and we were off down the river...this is where things got crazy.

This river was litterally teaming with huge aligators...we freaked out at the first one but soon realized that we would be seeing one literally every 5 to 10 feet. Most of them were in the water so you could only see their two creepy eyes staring at you, and many of them could slowly submerge themselves as we approached which was totally disconcerting. The other thing was that our guide was not afraid to get us within a pubic hair of these huge beasts. Literally he would steer the boat right up to them so that, if we had wanted to, we could have reached out and touched their pearly white teeth. Of course, we were discourged from putting our hands outside of the boat by stories about the aligators attack of choice which is called the `death roll`where the aligator clamps onto your hand or arm with its powerful jaws and then starts madly rolling its body so that after 3 rolls, your arm rips off your body...yikes...this was a pretty effective way of getting us to follow the hands in the boat rule.

In addition to the omnipresent aligators, the river was also full of all kinds of exotic looking birds. All of them were constantly diving down for fish and flipping wiggling fish into their long beaks which was pretty cool to watch. Then there were monkeys, the first of which immediately jumped onto the boat next to us and jumped from seat to seat...fish constantly jumping out of the water...and cute turles clinging to logs all over the place. Add in this animal called the Copibara, which is a HUGE (I mean huge) flat-nosed cousin of the rat and you get an idea of how chock full of amazing wildlife this river was.

The cherry on top though was the fact that PINK DOLPHINS also inhabit this river. No joke. I have no idea how they got there but they are there and there are lots of them. They pop up all the time and make a sound like a person who has been under water for too long and is gasping for air...such a human sound, it was very weird and amazing. The crazy thing is that the dolphins are able to thrive because they can see well under the water (aligators can´t) so they can kick the crap out of aligators with their noses. On the last day we were able to swim with the dolphins because they protect humans from aligators, pirhanas, and the other nasty things that live in the river. Swimming around in a river while you can make eye contact with a hungry looking aligator about 25 feet from your face, all the while knowing that you are being protected by pink dolphins, is a unique feeling, I assure you.

We stayed on the river for 2 nights at the camp site which had great food and hammocks with views of the river (and its own nearby aligators that we fed our leftovers to every morning...nothing like seeing an aligator stalk and then savagely attack with snapping jaws a piece of toast with jelly on it). The first morning we went on a 3 hour hike through waist high grasslands filled with crazy looking cows, horses, bees, wasps, birds, etc. All the while we were hunting for an Anaconda (yeah, the giant snake)...of course it was Laura that found one...she´ll tell you about that experience in another post. It was as big as me though and heavy as hell (we got to hold it by the tail).

We also did two different night rides in the boat down the river. Imagine pitch dark on all sides, expect the hundreds of fireflies that light up the tree line above you. Then, on all sides of us, through the overhanging vines and branches of the trees, you can see eyes of the lurking aligators. So many eyes. And we had red headlights so all the eyes are the brilliant, dark red. It was straight out of a disneyland ride, except it was real. At on point we passed an aligator nest filled with at least 25 newborn aligators and there were about 80 red eyes all gleaming out at us from the darkness...one of the coolest and also scariest things I have ever seen.

The whole time we had great company with people that we had actually met several days before in Copacabana, and also two guys from southern Germany who were really nice. Conversations at night got a little weird becuase everyone had mosquito nets over their beds so you couldnt see anyone else...we called these beds CEP´s (consequence eliminating pods) becuase you could say anything without anyone seeing you, so things ot a little weird needless to say. Anyway, great food and beers served both nights in front of a beautiful sunset made this one of the highlights of our trip for sure. Laura is going to put some pictures up so you can maybe get an idea of what this looked like.

Now we are in Sucre after an overnight bus that smelled like poop the entire time (from a combination of a USED diaper that somebody left on the leg rest of my seat and a live baby that was pooping its pants the whole time I´m sure)...but this is a beautiful city filled with white-washed buildings and red tile roofs, that used to be the capital. Tomorrow we head out to the largest market in Bolvia, then Monday we are signed up for a bike ride that ends at a nearby park that is the largest park in the world with preserved dinosaur footprints (cool?), then we are headed to the Potosi silver mines on Tuesday which is apparently a ghastly but amazing site to behold because the conditions are so awful. Finally, we will do a 3 day tour of the Uyuni Salt Flats which are the largest salt flats in South America...featuring a hotel made of salt (dont know how they do that) and colorful lagoon with flamingos. Then a day or two in La Paz and then we are home! So hopefully we are going out with a bang these next few days. Both of us are excited to get home and get our lives up and running, but its sad that our trip has gone by so fast. Hope everyone is doing well and, at least for those of you in Cali, we will see you soon!

I am the heir of Slytherin

Mike is right, I AM psychic, or the last heir of Slytherin. We just got back from a week in the pampas (flatlands) and jungle, which Mike is going to write about in great detail, but I get dibs on the anaconda day for reasons which will soon be obvious.

After waking up in our little CEPs (see Mike´s post), we had a delicious breakfast of pancakes and UFOs (unidentified fried objects) and set off to hike to the treeline where the anacondas apparently live. The anaconda-spotting rate is down to only 30% right now because it´s dry season, but I was optimistic and told Mike not to worry because I had had a vivid dream that I found the anaconda. Arrogant, I know. But dream Laura was already aware of my secret snake-whispering powers....

So after hours hiking we met up with another disillusioned tour group who had had no success in finding an anaconda. This Kiwi guy from the other group suggested we all split up to wade through the grass looking for the anacondas so that we cover more ground, because up until that point we were just tagging behind the guides. I told him I was not about to stumble through tall grass on my own with the largest species of snake looming down below, and that I was sticking to the trail.

And then it happened. Dream Laura took over and unleashed my Parcel Tongue abilities (Mike has finally gotten me to make Harry Potter references). With the Kiwi guy still walking next to me, I said "If I were a snake..... I would be..... right......" and I walked over to the tall grass, parted it, and said "HERE" only to find the anaconda sitting right before me!!!! The Kiwi guy and everyone around immediately thought I was a witch, but it didn´t matter because we got to hold the anaconda!

It was only 5 years old so it was smaller than I had imagined, especially after seeing the movie ANACONDA. But it was still about as long as myself, and it was creepy as hell holding it in the wild. I felt like the Crocodile Hunter, god rest his soul. Anyways, I know anyone readings this (which undoubtedly is only my mom, mike´s mom, and catherine) thinks I´m embellishing the facts for story-telling´s sake, but ask Mike or anyone who was there... it happened just as I explained it (except for the part when I said I speak Parcel Tongue).

This was the unedited account of my dream and real-life experience that brought me to the conclusion that I am the true heir of Slytherin. Watch out, Harry Potter.