Welcome to the Jungle! We got fun n' games!

Hey there lovely people!

This past weekend I spent 2 days in a place called Villa Tunari/ Chapare (I'm not sure which name means what but they refer to the same place). It was in the Amazon! I had a wonderful time and I took some pretty sweet pictures I want to share with you.

Saturday:

I met my airport friend Clara at 8:00 am midway between where we live. The plan was that we were going to meet up with some friends of hers and catch a bus to Villa Tunari. We'd get there around noon and from there we'd find a place to stay and see about booking a rafting excursion. What actually ended up happening was that Clara's friends were still asleep when we walked into their hostel. After they packed we grabbed breakfast and grabbed a cab to the intersection where people pick up buses to Villa Tunari. The breakfast was this fried dough with cheese on the inside and sugar on the outside. They gave us our warm drinks in a plastic bag- there was arroz con leche (rice milk), this drink called apí which is purple, made out of corn and in my opinion gross, and this other corn drink I forgot what it was called. I tried the green corn drink and stopped after a few sips. When we got to the intersection we could either go on a bus for 10 Bs or a van for 20 Bs. Both rides left when they were full of passengers, and that would take however long it took to fill the buses. I desperately wanted to take the van, which also would be an hour and a half faster. The weird thing about traveling with people is that everyone has their own definition of cheap. In my mind less than $3.00 for a 4 hour ride in a mini van was well worth it, but to others getting the best deal possible is what's the best option. I was with Clara and two other girls, one from Perth, Australia, and the other from Hampshire, England. The pound is even better than the dollar so for her it was even cheaper but she was the one who seemed to have the biggest problem with it. Eventually though we all decided to take the van, and we left almost right away.

As we got closer to the jungle it got warmer and more beautiful by the minute. Our 4 hour drive was the shortest of my travels so far and yet this direction (north east I think) saw the most drastic changes in scenery.

I'd made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies the previous night and brought some along to share with the girls. They were a hit! Once we got to Villa Tunari we grabbed lunch. In the jungle a fish called surubí is very popular and abundant. I ordered a plate to share with Clara and we all shared some fruit juice and sat in the sun. Our fish came with rice, plátano, and fried yuca which is kind of a poor man's potato. I quickly put on tons of sunscreen and bug repellant. The air was humid (a huge change) and it was about mid 80's. A big group of European tourists ambled over to our restaurant and ate there as well. Since we didn't finish eating until around 3 o'clock, we decided we'd buy rafting tickets for the next day. We didn't know where the rafting companies were but it was a ridiculously small town so we just walked the one main road and found this:

This was outside of the rafting office, it is a dirty chick wandering around looking for food:

No one was there and a woman outside selling mandarins told us we had to call the phone number painted on the wall. We moved on to find another company and a motorcycle drove up with a man and a woman on it. They stopped in front of us and asked if we were looking for rafting. After asking some questions we learned it would be 150 Bs for one hour of rafting. To drive to the spot and back it would take another 2 hours. While that's only $21.00 (and less in pounds), our group found it much too high, and the English girl began trying to bargain. Her spanish wasn't that great and to be honest she was beginning to look like the stereotypical American tourist: speaking loud and slow broken spanish, rude, and completely put off that he wouldn't lower the (fixed) price. I held my tongue because I know that everyone has different budgets and although this girl didn't appear poor, she very well could be working on a limited amount of money. I did agree though that one hour seemed somewhat short, but then again I didn't know how long normal rafting trips are. We found out the next day that in the rainy season the rafting trip is still one hour, but you go twice as fast so you cover more ground. Anyway, we ended up deciding to talk about it together later and we set out to find the hotel we'd read about in our Lonely Planet books. We walked up to a cab and asked how much it would be to take us to that hotel. He said it would be 20 Bs, or 5 Bs each. I'd like to point out that 5 Bs is less than $1.00. The English girl told us that it shouldn't be that much, so I asked him to lower it a bit. He said he wouldn't lower it and that any cab driver would tell us 20 Bs to go to that hotel. So, I said, how far is it? He told us it would take 15 minutes. I wanted to hop in but she wasn't having it so I kept my mouth shut and asked a second cab driver. As I was asking him how much it would be, the first cab driver got out and walked past us- telling the man I was talking to exactly what he'd told us. I don't know if he was going to tell us 20 Bs before the man interrupted, but now he definitely was going to, and that's exactly what he did.

So we started walking along the road in the direction of the hotel in the scorching sun. I agree that in Bolivia almost every vendor raises the price for foreigners. When you ask how much something is, you can see them thinking about it for a moment before they tell you a price. You can almost always haggle a bit and get them to lower the price easily. And also, Bolivians on average have much less money than any tourist, whether they are from Brazil or Chicago. So it makes sense that they would charge a Bolivian less money. I know in Cuba there are two prices on everything, the tourist price and the Cuban price. While raising the price for Gringos may be unfair and a tad presumptuous, it is something I can live with. Especially given that I can usually get them to lower it. This particular type of thing didn't seem like that sort of situation though. We were in a town about 4 blocks long where tons of tourists come through to stay at 1 of 2 hotels near the water, and everyone needs a cab to get there. I'm sure that the rate to the gringo hotels are quite fixed.

On our walk we ran into this bridge with no real footpath and we started talking about that scene in Stand By Me where they get stuck on railroad tracks and have to book it to the other side.

Anyway on our walk we stopped by the monkey park! We didn't go in but we walked up to the entrance and I met an Argentinean with pretty good english selling bracelets. I bought one from him and he tied it on my wrist and then asked if I wanted to be able to take it on and off. When I said no, he tied the ends in a knot and burned them closed. I like that I don't have strings hanging down now, but it'll be a sad day when I need to cut it when I have to take it off to dress up or something. Not that it was expensive by any means ($3.00), it's just cute. The English girl and the Aussie had a few questions for the volunteer coordinators, so we walked down to an office of sorts to talk to them. The English man we talked to was in his late 20's, had no shirt on, filthy dreadlocks and a matted beard, and had tied his shorts up with a string. From inside the office I could hear monkeys screeching! The park also cares for several large cats. We soon left the office and continued walking. After maybe 20 minutes, Clara and I decided together to hail a cab and that man also told us 20 Bs. We all got in and all paid 5 Bs once we'd reached our hotel.

We walked in to ask how much it would be for a room for 4 people for one night. Jorge, the man at the front desk, said it would be 90 Bs per person (somewhere around $12.50). The price included breakfast and free access to las pozas, which are the natural pools in the river right below the hotel. As I'm sure you've guessed already, English girl was not pleased with the price and his unwillingness to haggle. We asked how much a room with 2 beds would be, hoping we could share. He showed us a 2 bed room and there were two twin beds that are smaller than our twin beds in the U.S. We'd only pay 10 Bs less per person, and we wouldn't get a free breakfast since he'd lowered the price from 90. We looked at a 4 person room and it looked lovely. 45 minutes later, after we'd looked at the menu to see if the food was decent (eye roll), and to see what the breakfast included, we agreed to stay. While we discussed whether or not we'd stay, Clara offered that maybe we could just stay at the hotel Sunday and check out the pools and not go rafting. It would save money. While we didn't decide on rafting at that point, I knew it was quickly being crossed out of our list of activities. It didn't bother me too much that we probably weren't rafting because I can always do that anywhere else, and the hotel grounds were so beautiful that I wouldn't mind spending Sunday afternoon there. Since it was a tad too early to eat again, we checked out the hotel pool and Clara and I relaxed in the hammock room above the main building. Cloth hammocks are infinitely better than most of the hammocks I've been in at home. The stiff ones that don't curve around you ain't got nothin' on these; I'm so glad I purchased one last weekend. We ate dinner (again I had surubí) and had bananas con chocolate for dessert. After dinner we played a card game called shithead which both the Brit and the Aussie knew, it was very fun and I hope I can remember once I get back. Maybe I'll write down the rules in my journal..hm. Oh, before we tucked in for the night, Jorge asked us if we wanted him to call the rafting company for us. He did, and a man representing the company drove out to our hotel to discuss it with us! Jorge had been sure that the time in the water was closer to 3 hours, but this man confirmed our first belief that it was only an hour. We thanked him for coming all the way to our hotel but apologized, saying we only had one more afternoon and a 3 hour trip where only 1 of that is in the water, just wasn't enough.

Oh I had left my camera in the hammock and a nice American woman found it and returned it. Other than us the only other people at the hotel were 3 Americans and a group of about 6 Bolivians around our age. The Bolivian group quickly became "the laughers" to us because all day and night all we could hear was their laughter.

Sleep was magnificent that first night, and for the first time in weeks I slept in shorts and a tank top.

Sunday:

The breakfast picture speaks for itself:

We spent the afternoon exploring and ventured down to the river to check out the pools. (Not rafting after all). The walk down there showed me how much I truly was in the Amazon:

The little green bits down there are pieces of leaves that are all being carried by ants. I know it's not in motion so it's hard to see exactly how many of them there really are, but I could barely step anywhere on our walk without stepping on a (HUGE) ant carrying a leaf in a line. They came from every direction all in a row. There is a video of the ants at the bottom of this post, enjoy- and maybe play Ants Marching by Dave Matthews if you have it at hand.

HUGE ORANGE BEETLE! There were tons of beetles up by the hotel that were ginormous. For some reason them being in their natural habitats combined with them being large enough to be a small rodent made them less scary. This was not the case with the spiders unfortunately.

The picture below is of a walking tree. A walking tree literally grows new "legs" that plant themselves into the soil and very slowly move along the forest floor. When we got closer we could see several new legs still a few feet from the ground. The limbs have little hooks on them, my only guess is that the hooks help them to plant themselves into the earth.

This is the little lagoon we walked in. I won't say swim because we didn't swim, the water was freezing but the air was so hot.

On the rocks in the water were HUGE spiders. I've never seen these types of spiders before. They were very large, black, and incredibly fast. Traversing the rocks was hard enough, let alone having to watch out for these spiders constantly. We sat on the rocks for awhile and eventually got in the water, which was teeming with tadpoles that seemed to have no fear of us at all. Eventually I decided it was time for me to eat again and Clara and I made our way back up to the hotel. Again I ate the surubí (this time with lemon sauce) and it was wonderful yet again. My total bill when we checked out was 224 Bs(~$32.00). (All of our meals were added onto the bill as a tab like a normal hotel). Not bad eh?!

I've been writing this post on and off all afternoon, I've just finished watching Coco Before Chanel, which I bought here today for less than a dollar. The guy told me it had english subtitles but in fact its options were either dutch or spanish, so I watched it with spanish subtitles and I actually understood most of it! Woohoo!!

Hasta mañana!

Hillary

The Ants Go Marching One by One, Hurrah! Hurrah!