Last week, my co-intern/partner in crime Annie and her awesome parents invited me to go to Villa Tunari in Bolivia's portion of the Amazon with them for a few days. We had an awesome trip, chalk full of amazon-esque adventures in addition to my overall happiness to spend time with a family that resembles my own!
We left from Cochabamba Tuesday morning on a large bus headed to Chapare, which is about 4.5 hours via bus (and not that many KM, but everything moves slow in Bolivia). Annie and I watched episodes of friends on her tiny ipod nano and ate enough peanuts to make at least 3 jars of peanut butter.
Our hotel was a few KMs from Villa Tunari and was pretty much the cutest thing ever. Each room is a little cottage, in the middle of the forrest, a ten minute walk from the river. The hotel even had an open-air hammock lounge above the restaurant. The first afternoon, we went down to the river and exclaimed over the size of the ants that were marching down the path as well, carrying leaves to, presumably, build some sort of missile or military base considering how much material they had.
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| Ant inspections |
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| Just LOOK at how big they are! |
We got down to the river in search of the Pozas (hot springs) advertised at the hotel, but soon came to realize that "hot springs" and "river" are pretty much the same thing as far as the local Amazon-dwellers go. We went down the river a bit until we found a deep enough part to swim and Annie rapidly transformed into olympic swimmer mode while I doggy paddled with the fishes.
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| A nice swimming hole |
On the first night we ate at the restaurant at the hotel, which had delicious chicken and played cards with the parents. I officially learned Gin-Rumy (no idea how to spell that) which is exciting. After dinner, Annie and I took a taxi into town hoping to meet some locals and get more information about the TIPNIS dispute, but alas, Villa Tunari is pretty dead at 9:30pm on a Tuesday.
The second day we went to Parque Carrasco, a giant national park with all sorts of endangered flora and fauna. We took a really sketch tram across the river and got a tour of the rain forests, including but not limited to: butterflies, coca plantations (not sure if the one we saw was actually legal), and penis shaped trees.
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| Make-shift tram across the river |
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| Literally a penis tree |
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| The coca harvest |
We didn't have any signal on our Bolivian phones in the park so we couldn't call for a cab back to the city once our tour was done. Strangely, Bolivia is not really equipped to handle tourists, so they dont have things like shuttle buses or pre-organized tours of the big national parks in the Amazon. It seems like the country could so easily capitalize on tourism since they have such beautiful places... but apparently the amount of cocaine production near the amazon is pretty dangerous and it keeps tourists out. We ended up walking pretty far on the main road until we found a bus stop for locals. A taxi came by and we piled a ton of people in a station wagon and got back to Villa Tunari without a problem!
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| Kickin' it in the back of the wagon |
On the third day, we went to a different national park. There were monkeys in this one and we were warned not to bring any valuables on our hike since the monkeys are known to steal things. Sure enough, about 15 minutes into the hike, we came across a monkey who promptly climbed on Annie's shoulders. After lounging for awhile, he jumped off and ran towards Annie's mom, snatching her water bottle before she could even grab for it. He hid up in a tree for awhile playing with the bottle, getting frustrated when he couldn't get it to pour into his mouth. After he got bored with the bottle he came back to us, climbing back on Annie. Then came the deadly mistake. I turned away from Annie, and my iPhone in my back pocket became visible to the monkey. He lunged for it and got his little monkey hands on the phone, but luckily I reached back and grabbed it as well. Annie used her super human strength to pull the monkey off me and I ran away. The monkey then followed us at a stalker-esque distance for the next 15 minutes.
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| The little thief with the water bottle |
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| View from the top of the park |
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