Revenge of the Killer Sardines (updated) (Rurrenabaque)

Member Name: opinionated

Product:	Rurrenabaque
Date:	31/03/01 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing adventure

Disadvantages: Not quite a luxury holiday

It's understandable really if you put yourself in their shoes. For decades their buddies have been hauled out of the water flapping and gasping only to have their heads chopped off and be shoved in a can with half a dozen close family members. So it makes sense that when they see a bit of human flesh swimming in their waters they would want to give it a good bite.

Still, it seems rather unreasonable that when you go swimming in alligator and piranha infested waters you should find yourself set upon by sardines!

Actually there's a another reason why the sardines are so keen to exact revenge. There's a strange tourist ritual which involves starting off with a perfectly good portion of chicken and ending up with two mangy fish. The ritual starts with a sort of sacrifice. Tourists put hunks of succulent chicken onto hooks which are far too large to hook the tiny (7-8cm) piranhas and sardines. A feeding frenzy ensues.

Once approximately three quarters of the chicken has been offered to whatever deity looks after the river the tourists realize that the fish will never impale themselves on the hooks and start flicking the line back into the boat at regular intervals. Those fish which have engaged the food in a death grip find themselves being flicked back into the boat. This continues until the chicken has gone.

Then the ritual becomes rather disturbing. Mother, brother and cousin sardines are cut up, stuck on the hook and fed back to their family. This sadistic process continues until the tourists have no remaining chicken or sardines to thread their hooks with. In the meantime, however, the guide has gone to the effort of catching a couple of undersized bony catfish to be served up for the evening meal. And the sardines have started hatching a plan for revenge.

So I guess you're asking what were we doing swimming in Alligator and piranha infested waters? Well, let's go back a bit first. Rurrenbach
e is the jumping off point for most tourist jungle adventures in Bolivia. Some years ago an Israeli got himself lost in the jungle near Rurrenbache for 23 days. He was eventually saved by a local whom the
Israeli rewarded with incredible wealth in the form of hoards of tourists lured by the book he wrote - "back to Tuichi".

There are two ways to get from the Bolivian mountain-capital La Paz to tropical Rurrenbache. About $US50 will fly you there in comfort and safety. The more adventurous use local transport, pedal power or their hiking boots to descend 1800 vertical metres in less than 80 km to reach Coroico. This takes a knuckle-whitening four hours, a bone-juddering seven hours or a knee-jarring three to four days depending on your choice of transport. The road is affectionately known as ‘Death Road’ and is the only road I know of where the bus stops to be blessed before beginning its descent.

From Coroico the only option is bus. I was told the trip from Coroico to Rurrenbache would take 12 hours. I was told the trip from Coroico to Rurrenbache would take 12 hours. Sensibly adding three hours to this I came up with a fairly accurate estimate of 15 hours. Well it would have been accurate...

The disturbing premonition didn't start when the bus was two hours late - that seemed fairly par for the course. It wasn't the landslide we stopped for that brought it on either. It was the way the driver and his cronies took the opportunity of the landslide to jump under the bus with screeds of bicycle inner tube.

By 2.am we had ground to a halt in the middle of nowhere. When we were still there by 9.am the intrepid adventurers among us decided to hitch a lift with a truck (it's not really hitching as you pay). We found ourselves reasonably comfortable in the open air sitting on sacks of salt slowly crawling slowly up the road.

It took an hour for the bus to overtake us!

For
tunately the driver was more civic minded than the passengers who were really enjoying the joke and wanted to enjoy it even more by leaving us on the truck to amble along at it's own special pace. We arrived at Rurrenbache after 26 hours but with enough time for me to book a pampas tour for the following morning.

The pampas tour explores the relatively small rivers winding through the open grassy lowlands, where most of the wildlife is to be found. From the relative comfort of a motor-powered wooden canoe we surveyed riverbanks lined with toothy alligators. They soon became mundane.

The first time we saw a capybara (something like a cross between a guinea pig and a wombat, about the size of a small pig) we were so busy pointing it out to each other we missed getting a photo. The second time we all took hurried snaps. The 26th time we’d stopped bothering. By the third day we had also given up photographing turtles, alligators, vultures, and monkeys and set our minds to getting a perfect picture of a white heron. White herons have a tendency to fly off at awkward moments so we ended our films with a barrage of photos of white tail feathers.

So having seen so many alligators why did we decide to go swimming? You're probably assuming that we were in an area where there were now 'gators to be found. Actually no, Pedro the "tame" alligator (probably known among his peers as the human trainer as he had trained the local guides to bring him food) was less than seven metres away.

The guides claim Pedro was vegetarian seemed to be undermined by his enthusiasm for the chicken we fed him. Then there was Antonia. One and a half metres of dozing claws and teeth on the other bank. The guides told us not to worry as she was sleeping and after all how dangerous can a 'gator with a name be?

So had we lost our minds? Did we want to get our moneys worth on our insurance policies? Were we trying to exp
ort 500 year old Amazonian wood with ourselves nicely encased inside it?

You've got to realise though, it was really hot.

And I foolishly had volunteered to sit on the back of the truck along the dusty dirt road which was particularly dry and had particularly fine dust - get the idea. I was merrily laughing at Sean who was sitting beside me and was completely yellow from the dust quietly assuming I couldn't be as bad since he wasn't laughing at me. All of a sudden he burst out laughing.

It seems he had caught a glimpse of me through a clear spot in his glasses. I suspect my relative lack of popularity with the sardines was because they couldn't find me through the grime. So what's a couple of crocs when you're that dirty?

But seriously, it was all alright because we were protected by the pink dolphins (I wasn't on anything - honestly!) We had a few reservations but the guide led the way and Antonia did look sleepy. It was only a few days later however that I found out how Pedro could co-exist with the dolphins. It seems that dolphins need one and a half metres of water so by sticking to the shallows Pedro could avoid being rammed and keep an ear out for food bearing guides.

The sardines, unlike the piranhas were not hunted to extinction in the dolphin zones as they didn't attack the dolphins. It seems dolphins have never developed a predilection for tinning sardines and piling them on supermarket shelves.

Day two was the day of the great anaconda hunt. For some reason it made sense to go traipsing through knee deep mud looking for a dangerous snake. We didn't find a constrictor but I did get to wear a metre and a half cobra scarf. I had envisaged the guide continuing to hold the cobra's head for the duration of the fashion shoot but he merrily plonked it in my hand. The cobra didn't seem to enjoy it's brief modelling career and made a quick get awa
y once it was released.

In the end the mud seemed to be more dangerous than the snake. I got stuck in the mud and only narrowly managed to get my camera off from around my neck and hand it to another girl, Alison, before I lost my balance and my left breast was immersed in primeval gloop. By the time I had regained my composure Alison had sunk into the mud so far that we had to dig her out.

It wasn’t easy leaving the pampas. It’s not that I was devastated to leave it, but that so much of it came back with me to Rurrenbache. When I washed my clothes eight troughs of water turned completely black before I gave up, arbitrarily declaring them clean and serviceable for my venture into the jungle the following day

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