Hans en Nienke: 20 november 2018: Dinosaurs and monkeys

Leaving Potosi we started on what we knew was going to be a very long day of driving to get to the heart of the Torotoro National Park. As soon as you leave a city here, the illegal dumping alongside the road becomes visible again. It's a shame but this is what the locals do - ruin their own fantastic landscapes..modern living eh

We had figured out before that not many people in the rural area have washing machines and crossing this bridge confirmed this. It looked like they were having great fun; Saturday is washing day while the kids are swimming and playing!

Driving almost to Cochabamba but staying on the rural roads; this is life in Bolivia, houses built out of mud bricks - people walking and minding their flocks of sheep or goats - small stalls with food (not for us..).

In lots of communities you find these signs advertising what the current president Morales has done for a community (often only a few families, this 142 family one is medium size). Most projects are for clean drinking water or new houses. Both important. We don't like that he apparently has a very big ego but the projects seem very positive. Just like the new highway that is being constructed into the Park.

After some hard driving by Hans and one truck encounter where Hans 'won' and the truck had to back up down the hill - we finally arrived just after dark at our cabanas. The next day we thought a half day trip was enough so we went up to the Ciudad de Istas with a guide.

Ciudad (city) is an appropriate name as you can see on the photos - cathedral like caves, very beautiful.

Hoppa!

And yes, they are very high.

Our lunch spot with beautiful views over the valleys - while our guide was taking his siesta nap in the shade.

Little wooden ladders to get back up again, reminded me of Czechoslovakia hiking 30 years ago. Gosh that means I'm old but I still got up this ladder!

Amazing views over the whole valley with my driving hero posing. Since we had our own car we drove to the Ciudad. Easy as when the guide proposes this - until you understand that you have to drive this narrow 1 car road right next to the abyss into nothingness to get there. On the way back I managed to control my nerves enough to film out of the window.

Of course we got home safe - that's the only way you can think about these roads; 'why would a truck go past at the same moment as us'?
And yes, my chat with the guide (who is sitting in the front) is about how many of his cows he eats per year - well done for your Spanish! - at least one a year he says with his family (they dry the meat). Reading books the rest of the afternoon with this view - could be worse right?

Lots of lighting at night, very special. A bit worrying as it is over the mountains, where the jungle is, our next destination!

The second day of course we wanted to do the El Vergel walk, past dinosaur prints to a very steep canyon to go have a swim at a waterfall. So we picked up our guide again and he firstly showed us these impressive prints right outside the village. Pretty amazing right?

Walking towards the mirador of the canyon we walked through this layered river landscape where there are quite a few springs that together with rain and wind formed this landscape.

And we found more dinosaur footprints en route - good fun to sit next to them to just show the size of these prints. From the largest dinosaurs, the plant eating ones.

The impressive 350 m. deep canyon from the mirador. This is where the guide told us that that particular swimming spot was all the way down in the canyon. OK.... so we started out on a beautifully built stone stairway to the bottom. Really amazing, bit steep down at times but do-able.

We were extremely hot when we arrived and wow this waterfall looked so beautiful with all the green colours around it. Chucked our bags in the shade to change to our togs and wow that water felt so good! Very cold but so lovely to be able to cool off - only 3 others there so a little bit of paradise.

After the swim is when we had to climb up the stairway to heaven again - but to me it felt like the stairway to h...ll really. Because of the altitude my lungs are doing overtime as it is and in combination with another Bolivian stomach upset it was really hard getting that 350 m. back up. Just so annoying if you see all these 25-somethings get up in half the time :-(

Once we left the Torotoro Park via Cochabamba (very busy) we wanted to get as far as we could towards La Paz airport to make sure that we would be in time for our flight to the jungle the next day. Wow, the road from Cochabamba towards the alti plano (where you are at 4000 m. altitude, but it's flat!) - was something else again. Another Bolivian driving adventure. The only way to get up to the mountains (to 4600 m. altitude) behind the many, many very slow trucks was to overtake all the time, totally ignoring double yellow lines and corners. Pfew - Hans did it again! For our bed for the night we saw on google we would pass through some small (mud brick desert) towns but once we got there it was really not much and no sign of hostals or anything. We asked locals in two places and only in the third town one of them explained that in Bolivia they use the word Alojamiento (lodgings) and not hotel, hostal or hospedaje :-) :-) What we did see looked a bit doggy so we decided to drive to the only 'hotel' that google maps could find and since it was dark that's where we stayed. Room was fine and this was Hans his well deserved dinner. Hands down eaten in the most abundantly decorated dining room we've been in so far.

The next day we had way too much time so took it easy getting into La Paz - this is the highway into El Alto. La Paz city is built down in a valley - up on the alti plano El Alto used to be the outskirts of La Paz but has now grown into a city that is even bigger than La Paz itself with over one million people. As everywhere in Bolivia; chaos rules. Best thing is to just slow down, go with the flow and hope nothing or nobody bumps into your car.

We found secure parking on the airport and with some hours to kill we enjoyed nice coffee and wifi while we could.
Hans took this photo flying to Rurrenabaque, the jungle town that is the starting point for exploring the Madidi National Park. This is the Huayna Potosi, a 6088 m. high mountain close to La Paz.

It was weird to land in the tropics, hot and humid after all our months in the desert on high altitude. Here you are just above sea level. Just crazy in the same country only 200 km out of La Paz (3700 m.). After an evening roaming the streets (where you surprisingly could buy nearly anything imaginable) and enjoying the warmth we started with a three hour boat ride in the pouring rain to the lodge.

Beautifully green, it's not called the rain forest for nothing that became clear right away! We spotted these capybara, XL guinea pigs, along the way. They had just crossed the fast flowing river and are fantastic swimmers, including the little ones.

After lunch we went for a 4 hour walk through the jungle close to the lodge, trying to spot animals.
Spiders, of course as expected, some are pretty big but not too scary. We did spot lots of capuchin monkeys as well.

In the last half hour the two Dutchies (that were also part of our little group of four for the first two days) heard the cry of this little Howler monkey. It sat abandoned on the root of a tree, looking very cold and sad. In the first instance our guide just told us this is nature (and he's right of course), his mum has died or the dominant male has thrown him out of the group. And he was going to walk on... But hey, with four convincing Dutchies who knew about an animal shelter in Rurrenabaque he did give in and agreed that he seemed in good condition and that he probably only had been there since the morning. Flies has already laid eggs on his filthy tail that would normally be cleaned by his mum, but no worms had come out yet so yes, he could possibly be rescued. He placed him on his hand where it held on tight and fell asleep during the remainder of our walk. At the lodge the cook immediately took him under her wing and told us that she was helping a baby monkey at home too. During the night she fed him every three hours and the next day he looked content. The day after he was taken to the animal shelter where he will be returned to the jungle after 6 months. We convinced the staff to name him Tjalling - after the Dutchie that heard him call out. Had to spell it for them.

I was really impressed by these little guys you see walking here in a straight line as little green dots. The leaf cutter ants; they climb up very high trees to take back to the nest a bit of green leaf. On the leaf they grow a fungus that they eat. So very clever, we saw whole three lane highways of them going back and forth between trees and their very large ants nests.

Just by coincidence we spotted the land turtle that lives here too as it sat in the middle of the path. They are sometimes the pray of jaguars who literally chew through the shell. We've seen some examples of unfortunate victims.

Walking down a lake where we saw lots of Serere birds we spotted this little cayman, waiting for us to go piranha fishing.

After one day of rain, one day or good weather something was bound to go wrong on the third day and yes, after two sunny pictures from the boat up to lake Santa Rosa it started pouring.... Much to our surprise we saw many storks alongside the river.

Somehow the canoe that was supposed to be at Lake Santa Rosa for the piranha fishing wasn't there (go figure, it's Bolivia) so we made do with fishing from the jetty in the pouring rain for quite some time, until it started to dry out a bit. And yes, the piranha's did bite but only our guide caught a few.

After eating our lunch next to the abandoned houses of a French couple that managed to buy a lot of ha. of land before it was declared a national park, we roamed around in the abandoned banana (see flowers) and coffee plantations before being chased of by swarms of bees.

After all the rain there was still a bit of a sunset at the lodge overlooking the river.

This tarantula was out each night above the door of the comedor (dining room), keeping watch over her nest and catching that nights dinner.

On our last morning we did our 4th walk with our guide to this lookout point over the river.

During the walks we have seen monkeys on every walk but this day was special as we got to watch a large group of spider monkeys play and jump for quite some time. Usually they move fast as soon as they spot humans but with the three of us they didn't notice us so we could watch them drop down, make enormous jumps swinging from tree to tree using their tail as a fifth leg/arm.

We also spotted this little green guy - so yes,we saw one snake but walking in Aussie is a lot scarier.
After a 2 hour boat ride back we were back on dry land and flew back to La Paz where we entered the city the safest way possible using the toll motorway which worked like a charm at 7.30 at night.