Pampas, Rurrenabaque
After a couple of days of relaxation in Rurrenabaque, and a chance to get practical things like laundry done, we headed off on another three days tour out of the tourist hub. Three hours from Rurrenabaque is the small town of Santa Rosa close to the start of the river tour on the Rio Yacuma. Over the three days, most of the time was spent cruising along the river with an astonishingly high density of wildlife. Numerous alligators and caimans could be seen on almost every exposed river bank, as well as many capybaras, three different monkey species, and many, many different bird species. The most amazing sighting though were river dolphins, that appeared to be numerous in number, and on every boat trip we encountered them. One of the activites was a morning walk in the pampas wetland next to the river in search of anaconda. We were unsuccessful, but were not disappointed by this. The level of guiding on the trip was definitely questionable compared to Serere, and from what we have heard, nearly all the pampas tour companies have a similar approach. It is the norm to find and handle the wildlife. Our guide caught a young alligator at night, guests are encouraged to swim with the dolphins, and we spent a morning piranha fishing with no catch and release philosophy. We have heard that the anaconda population of the area is considerably reduced from previous years due to the handling. After the second night sunset stop at one of the camps, it was obvious that our guide had also taken the opportunity to consume beer, and he managed to crash into another boat at some speed on the way back to our camp !
After a couple of days of relaxation in Rurrenabaque, and a chance to get practical things like laundry done, we headed off on another three days tour out of the tourist hub. Three hours from Rurrenabaque is the small town of Santa Rosa close to the start of the river tour on the Rio Yacuma. Over the three days, most of the time was spent cruising along the river with an astonishingly high density of wildlife. Numerous alligators and caimans could be seen on almost every exposed river bank, as well as many capybaras, three different monkey species, and many, many different bird species. The most amazing sighting though were river dolphins, that appeared to be numerous in number, and on every boat trip we encountered them. One of the activites was a morning walk in the pampas wetland next to the river in search of anaconda. We were unsuccessful, but were not disappointed by this. The level of guiding on the trip was definitely questionable compared to Serere, and from what we have heard, nearly all the pampas tour companies have a similar approach. It is the norm to find and handle the wildlife. Our guide caught a young alligator at night, guests are encouraged to swim with the dolphins, and we spent a morning piranha fishing with no catch and release philosophy. We have heard that the anaconda population of the area is considerably reduced from previous years due to the handling. After the second night sunset stop at one of the camps, it was obvious that our guide had also taken the opportunity to consume beer, and he managed to crash into another boat at some speed on the way back to our camp !