Welcome to the Jungle

Not many people can say they were chased by a jaguar in the Bolivian jungle and lived to tell about it! Well...neither can I, and I don´t mean that I am dead.

I reckon that the jungle has three predominant and over-excessive features...the color green, every kind of stinging,biting, and generally obnoxious insect possible, and the ability to cause the human intruders to produce unnatural amounts of sweat. The first atribute is a lovely one, the last two can be done away with...remind me to have a world with God next time He designs a world (maybe He can put in an eight day week next time to iron out some of those nasty details).

In fact, there is another variable common to most jungle environments...extremely shitty transportation. I made a giant loop through Bolivia´s Amazon Basin from Santa Cruz to Trinidad and then to Rurrenabaque. S.C. to Trini was fine and in Trini I purchased a bus ticket to Rurre, the clerk assured me I would be in Rurre before 10pm that same day. The first shock came after only half an hour into the journey when we were forced to leave the mini-van and get in a boat, something the clerk failed to mention. Second shock was that the boat took three hours, namely because the entire country is under a few meters of water and there is no road. However, it was a lovely, if hot, boat journey. The rest of the road journey was not...I´ll just mention driving no faster than 35kmh beacause of the goliath sized ruts, four kilos of pulverized dirt entering the car every sixty seconds through inconceivable orphices, and the failure to meet the promised arrival time by fifteen hours (can´t say I was too surprised, though).

The destination was definately worth it. Rurrenabaque is a lovely little village situated on the Beni river (a tributrary of the Amazon) and surrounded by pristine jungle, including the Parque National Madidi...a massive chunk of jungle with some of the highest levels of plant and animal diversity in the world. I ended up spending three days in the national park mostly sweating, swatting bugs, scatching but also doing a bit of trekking. Besides the color green, we saw lots: different types of monkeys, massive herds(?)of wild pigs that make disturbing noises and release and intersting (read ´offensive´) smell from a gland on their back, tarantulas, turtles, macawas, other parrots, giant cities of ants that cut leaves in order to grow mushrooms, other ants with pincers so big you can stich up cuts by letting the ant bite you and then decapitating it while leaving the head and pincers in your silky skin, and, we almost saw a tapir and jungle turkey (we heard them as they ran away from us but didn´t quite catch a glimpse).



The first picture is of a tree that walks...yes, it walks to find sunlight

I´ve now ventured up to the highest capital city in the world, La Paz. It is completley different than I had imagined...and I think I love it. A few more stops in Bolivia are in store for me (Tiwanaku and Lake Titicaca) and then the call of Peru will ovetake me agianst my will and I will have to leave Bolivia.

Locisimo

I've come to a fantastic realization...I really like crazy people. Sounds kinda weird maybe, but a person who is missing a few marbles or has had the hamster slip off the wheel a little bit is often much more interesting to talk to, or simply watch, than a sane person. And, as R.M. Pirsig so wisely said, "When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he's insane, which is not to see him at all." So we must all look more closely!

I've just reached the Amazon Basin, or namely, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. I've spent most of the past two weeks in little villages situated in 'the elbow of the Andes'. In Samaipata I relaxed over Easter with some artisans, i.e., we sat in the plaza and drank cachaça, a potent Brazilian spirit made from sugar cane. There was a brilliantly crazy Austrian guy at my campground that was on almost every drug known to man…who needs TV when you watch him. I also, unfortunately, witnessed some of the sadder moments of the drug culture when one of the artisans, an Argentinean, who I had been hanging out with for a few days, had a night on the white powder and then sat up from 12 am to 12 pm licking the table clean. Needless to say, it was an utterly futile attempt. I guess the one word I thought of while watching him was ‘depravity’.

So, enough depravity I told my myself as I kicked on my shoes and shuttled down the road an hour to paradise, Ginger’s Paradise. Ginger’s is a 30 hectare farm in the mountainous jungle of the extreme eastern Andes. I reckon they are about 90% self-sufficient in what they grow and have absolutely amazing food. I’ve spent the past four days harvesting peanuts and yucca, tilling soil, constructing a water wheel, weeding a patch of hallucinogenic cactuses, and making delicious breads. Nobody there was really ‘crazy’ but there were a few on the way. The father of the family that owns the farm, Chris, is incredibly knowledgeable and also on the fringes of socially acceptable thinking. Chris, in conversation with a 62 year old Vietnam vet who showed up yesterday and claimed to have spoken to God last week when he took San Pedro (a cactus) was priceless. I might take a trip to the nut house for the afternoon just to converse with some more lunatics…its great.

So, now, back in the ‘sane’ world of a big city (read ‘boring’) I have decisions to make…which way to go. But, saying that, I think I already know…I’m gonna head into the jungle, to Trinidad. Hopefully the road isn’t washed out.

Ginger from Ginger's Paradise