Pink river dolphins and anacondas — Santa Rosa, Bolivia
We left the hostel a little later than planned, and then breakfast took a lot longer than expected, which made us very late by the time we turned up at the tour office. There were four people waiting for Carolina, Kamil and us… an English couple from Kent and a couple of ladies from New Zealand. They were all very friendly and once the bags were badly covered and tied to the roof, we set off on another dusty and bumpy road for three hours.
We hit Santa Rosa around midday and had lunch, which wasn't amazing but was better than a kick in the nuts. After the food, we drove down to the river and waited for our boat to arrive. When the boat pulled in, they unloaded the last group, loaded us on and set off a few seconds later … no mucking around here!
We hadn’t been going long when we started to spot various birds, loads of caiman and a few capybaras along the shore line. After about an hour, we spotted our first pink river dolphins … well, when I say spotted, I mean glimpsed because they popped up for air and disappeared quicker than they had come.
We arrived late at the accommodation set up, due to the amount of things we had seen along the way. Of course someone had to take photographic evidence for National Geographic, recording every species from every angle … no names mentioned, but I’m married to her!
The accommodation was basic … a bed with a mozzie net, a hammock area for lounging and cold river showers … this was home for the next few days!
Dinner was plentiful and much better than lunch thankfully. We went for a night boat ride afterwards to see the caimans’ eyes and some rather large fire flies. In the darkness the caimans’ eyes glow red under the spotlights … and the eyes were everywhere along the river bank!
Come 9pm, the power was turned off in the camp and I called it a night. Don played cards by candlelight for a while but wasn’t far behind. During the night we could hear rodents running around the roof space, and every now and again a bat would sweep through to collect some insects for dinner.
We were up early the next morning and, after a variety of deep fried breads with sugary toppings, we set off on a three hour walk to find snakes. The first forty five minutes of the walk was across the pampas area, which is a shadeless, grassy area. At this time of year the land is dry, but come the rainy season it’s a metre or so under water. Then we reached the forested area, which was a mozzie apartment block … everyone got bitten instantly as soon as we walked in!
We searched through the first few lily filled ponds with no luck. We then continued on to a larger area of water, wading slowly through the ponds in our wellies, half hoping to find an anaconda … and half not! One of the Kiwi girls found our first and, as it happened, last anaconda. He was hiding in the lilies and didn’t want to come out, so the photos are a bit hit and miss.
We then had to spend another forty five minutes walking back through the pampas area in the glaring, hot sun. By the time we got back, everyone was a sweaty mess and hit the showers before having lunch and relaxing for a couple of hours.
Later that afternoon we got back in the boat in search of the dolphins … along with (what felt like) a few hundred other gringos from the various tour companies. The whole thing turned into a circus and the dolphins were very subdued and unwilling to play. Our guide (Juan Carlos) gave up after a while and said we would return the following morning. In the meantime, we went searching for sloths but unfortunately without any success.
We caught the sunset at the local party zone, where all the boats gather in the same spot at the same time, to kick a ball around and sink a few beers. It wasn’t as bad as it seems, then we went back to the camp for dinner and bed.
The next morning, after another fried filled brekkie, we got back in the boat and went in search of the dolphins again … this time with much more success. We were the only boat there, and had around a dozen of them playing around and splashing us occasionally. Unfortunately they are very hard to spot in the murky, brown water until they come to the surface, but they were gone again before we could say cheese! They chased the boat a bit when we moved on and were dancing in front of the boat showing off, but never enough so we could take a good photo of them … and believe me, Don tried!
Once we had had our fill of dolphins, we went piranha fishing. I think someone did catch a piranha, but mostly we caught very small cat fish, which made very funny squealing sounds when we tried to unhook them and throw them back.
After that we popped back to camp for lunch and to collect our stuff, then got back into the boat to return to Santa Rosa, where our bumpy lift back to town was waiting … we were going back to Rurrenabaque!
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