Journal
Saturday,Sep 29 2007, 01:36:35 PMMadidi and San Xavier
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In the Swamp and...
(98 photos)
Thursday, September 06, 2007 San Xavier
The last few months have seen quite a bit of travel but very little in the way of posting pictures and journal entries. At the end of July and the beginning of August I was lucky enough to go to the Amazonian town of Rurrenabaque, which is the jumping off point for swamp tours and rain forest tours in the National Park Madidi. Parque Madidi has been featured twice in National Geographic magazine and along with Peru’s Parque Manu is considered to be the best preserved park in South America. Madidi is such a rich center of animal life that it is said to contain over 50% of new world mammals including Tapirs, Jaguars, spotted Andean bears, toucans, parrots, and thousands of other birds. There are really only two ways to get to Rurrenabaque. One is to ride an old school bus anywhere from 18-24 hours from La Paz down the world’s most dangerous road which I biked down last year. The other and option I chose was to fly into Rurrenabaque which takes about 45 minutes from La Paz or an hour from Trinidad which is closer to Santa Cruz. Now the planes that you go on to Rurrenabaque would possibly not even meet the English definition of a puddle jumper. Boarding in Trinidad consisted of a lady shouting, get on the plane, find an open seat and make sure you use both of the seat belts, shoulder straps included. So after choosing one of 11 available seats, mine being right behind the captain and co-pilot to keep an eye on them, we got ready to go. The flight actually went well and the views of the endless swamps and jungle in the morning were incredible. When we got to Rurre about and hour later and were landing my fellow volunteer Jenny remarked that she felt like we were landing in Jurassic Park which was right on the money. The landing strip in Rurre is a dirt strip that stretches out from the jungle and is capped on the other end by 600 foot mountain foothill. It was truly incredible and definitely one of the most beautiful surroundings for an “airport” that I have ever seen. So after we touched down at the airport and waited for our bags to be thrown off onto the runway we hopped in our tour company’s land cruiser and made our way the 2 hours to the beginnings of the swamp. We spent 4 days in the swamp and saw everything from pink Amazonian river dolphins, monkeys, caimans, alligators, and capybaras which are the world’s largest rodent. Our camp was basic along the river and completely full of mosquitoes. I have never seen as many mosquitoes in my life, and it was the dry season. Apparently during the wet season there are so many mosquitoes that the screen doors and windows of the cabins are black. So after 4 days of cruising up and down the river in our small boat, and wading through waist high water in the swamp searching for anacondas it was back to the town of Rurrenabaque for a shower, good meal, and a nights sleep before headed off for the jungle part of the tour in Parque Madidi. The Madidi part of the tour was amazing and while we didn’t see many animals, seeing trees that were over 1500 years old, and watching different types of macaws fly by was awesome. The sad part about all of this is that the local people are constantly being under pressure to sell the trees and immigrants from other parts of the country are constantly encroaching on the fringes of the park and subsequently engage in slash and burn agriculture. Unfortunately the future of Parque Madidi is anything but secure and one can only hope that the positive impact of tourism and outside dollars can preserve one of the last unspoiled areas of South American forest. So after Madidi it was back to Rurre and then back to Santa Cruz before going in the completely opposite direction to Argentina for a few days. I had a few days vacation left and a free place to stay in Salta, which is about 17 hours bus ride from Santa Cruz, so off I was again. Salta was nice and once again the contrasts between Bolivia and the rest of the world were apparent in all sorts of ways. Taxi’s with meters, police officers doing something other than looking for bribes or getting drunk, dogs on leashes and all sorts of things like that highlight the fact that Bolivia still has a long way to go. So after taking advantage of the great restaurants and wine in Argentina it was back to Santa Cruz before headed to my close of service conference for a week in Cochabamba. So here I am back in San Xavier and things are going great! We just finished our second workshop that we organized that had all of the tour guides from the entire Jesuit Mission Circuit involved. I think the guides are starting to realize the potential for tourism and the basic fact that if they fail to organize themselves as a solid network they will not be able to capitalize on the tourists that come to the different towns. In July we had over 1200 tourists come by to tour the Mission. To end this entry I want to relay something I heard yesterday. So during conversation yesterday someone brings up a recent scandal that happened in town. Apparently during the last major soccer match between the two main teams in San Xavier a fight broke out. Someone decided to call the Police station who dispatched two of their officers to come and “investigate”. Well it turns out the police were not exactly the best people to call because they were both hammered upon arrival to the field. It also turns out that the officer who was driving was so drunk that he crashed the police truck into a car that was parked watching the game. It turns out the car was owned by the mayor’s office and had been driven there personally by the mayor. Needless to say it was not a good career move for either officer who were subsequently shipped off back to wherever he came from.