Part Dos - and finally, The Amazon Adventure

Here we go,

Deep in the darkest parts of the Amazon jungle lurks.....Pink Dolphins! who would have thought it eh!

What possible reason could they have for being pink. did god wake up one morning and look down from upon his cloud castle onto the sea and chuckle to himself "HoHoHo (he is father Christmas’s cousin you see...) you boring grey salt water things, of which i shall call Dolphins, do i have a surprise for you! And he promptly took a two of the fattest ones, who were busy playing catch with a turtle at the time, and moved them with a whisk of his great right index finger to the middle of the South American rainforest (in the water bit, he wasn’t that cruel), just as an experiment.

And here is a sample conversation from those unfortunate Dolphins;

Dolphin 1 (Bruno) - "ey over ere mate, on me nose"
Dolphin 2 (Steve) - "ere we go then, its commin over-er-er-er agrrrrrrr...."

(big clap of thunder or god-like noise)

Bruno - "Steve, you here?"
Steve - "Yeah, i feel a bit funny though, a bit queer even"
Bruno - "Your pink!"
Steve - "What!?"
Bruno - "Your pink, serious like!"
Steve - "What are you trying to imply..."
Bruno - "Nothing mate. serious like. Your pink!"
Steve - "Well so are you"
Bruno - "Am i? Jesus what happened!?"
Steve - "Maybe it was those prawns we had last night"
Bruno - "And where are we? i can see land on both sides"
Steve - "My mum always warned me about eating prawns"
Bruno - "Steve get serious and stop talking about bloody prawns"
Steve - "Sorry. So where are we then?"

and so carried on the conversation, much to gods amusement as Steve and Bruno were attacked by countless waves of Alligators, who then opened flesh wounds which attracted the piranha's...well I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

Well that was a digression and a half wasn't it!

Basically i went on a 55-minute flight to Rurrenabaque, over the Cordillera Real and the Amazon lowlands (once again magnificent scenery in Bolivia). Rurrenabaque is a small town with HUGE potential for tourism in the heart of the Bolivian jungle region, and i predict that if/when i go back in 10 years time, being Bolivia.. it will be exactly the same.

From there you can do a three day jungle trek and see big trees, big flowers, big spiders etc... or the Pampas tour (which is what i did, don’t like spiders, let alone big ones)

This tour made you, or me in this case, gasp and snap away with me camera at a caiman as soon as we got on the boat, and then another, and then another...and then another.......and then another...........and then another. there were millions of them. the only problem was i was bored with them after about five mins clicking away, but the Danish couple in front of me could not get enough, which, normally would not have been a problem (but Denmark beat England 4-1 whilst i was on this trip, so i am going to be mean to them for no other reason than that, even though they were a perfectly nice couple) except the boat driver kept slowing down every time someone’s camera came out or a finger was pointed outside the boat.

We eventually got to the camp which was a rather bare affair, but then what on earth did i expect, we were in the middle of the Amazon jungle! I tucked my things underneath the mozzy net and then we left for some night-time exploring.

But it was dark so i didn't see much.

Next day we were going hunting. Not just any old hunting either. Anaconda hunting!

I will admit the whole 'machoness' of 'hunting Anaconda' was dampened a bit by the fact i had a pair of clumpy Wellies on, and whilst trudging through near knee deep mud i nearly fell over a few times after getting stuck in the aforementioned mud. Then after much trudging i think the guides gave up on the hunt (maybe our trudging was too loud!?) and said to us to wait under a tree whilst they 'look elsewhere' - which i took as 'we have shed nearby where we keep an Anaconda just incase we don’t find one. These stupid gringos' wont recognize Cecil isn't a wild snake...' oh how cynical i have become!

Anywho, we saw the snake, which was rather big, and let it go again.

After trudging back to the hotel, i mean jungle lodge, we had a clean up and went Piranha fishing! yess!! i had been waiting ages to do this!!

And once again i was let down

I pretty much spent about two hours feeding bits of dead cow to piranhas. They would come up to my hook and instead of take a big chunk out of the meat and get stuck on me hook they just nibbled at it! How rude! I had come all the way over the other side of the world just to catch them and they didn’t have the decency to hook themselves onto the end of my fishing line!

Its not that i didn’t catch anything, i got a sardine but i didn’t have a tin to stuff it into so i had to toss it back. but that wasn't the worst, oh no! the Danish bloke caught some of the riverbank (garf snigger snigger, that'll teach him. 4-1 pha!)

But i did see some really cool animals and birds (some REALLY WIERD birds), to name a few...pink dolphins, monkeys, capybaras, turtles, hawks, ibises, screamers, herons, toucans, parrots and macaws. As well as a bird that i translated as being a 'snake-duck', fair enough. whatever floats its boat but i wish it would decide which!

Basically it was amazing to once again be somewhere David Attenborough had once, been near. Its not every day that i bump into man-eating fish. man-eating birds or man-eating spiders.

So thats about it.

Now i am back home in sunny sunny Letchworth garden city, and having South American withdrawal symptoms. but i start work soon so probably wont have much time to think about it too much.

Its been a pleasure writing for you all and thank you for all the positive feedback you have sent me, its been really nice to hear!


bye for now


Matt