Amazon Basin, Bolivia: 26th Feb 10

This morning we did another 5 hour trek through the jungle, but in a different direction. We had to cross several roughly created wooden bridges straddling streams. We reached one, over a dry stream and both Tania and I were surprised that Alejandro walked over it so gingerly, almost as if he thought it was going to collapse under him. Hmmm. So I followed and as I was in the middle there was a huge cracking sound and the whole bridge collapsed under me.

Thankfully I managed to keep upright so didn’t hurt myself, and as mentioned the river bed was relatively dry, so I didn’t get a soaking – I was quite stunned though! And I had quite a job convincing Matt and Tania that the brown stain on my trousers was actually mud!




In the afternoon a troop of monkeys came to the camp again, so we spent some time watching them and then rowed across the lake and walked up to a couple of miradors (view points) set high on the hill.


The views were amazing, across the lake and the jungle to the mountains in the distance – it looked like we could see the whole national park, but Alejandro pointed out that we were only seeing a small fraction, the entire park is actually twice the size of Holland!




In the evening we had a ‘cultural’ experience. All of the Lodge’s staff came to the dining area and started playing music. Alejandro got out a huge pile of coca leaves and explained to us the tradition of chewing the leaves in Bolivia – the peasants do it to give them energy when they’re working in the fields. It’s from the coca leaves that cocaine is derived, hence they are illegal in most countries, but they aren’t addictive, and they don’t really give you a high. They are actually quite disgusting to chew, but I guess people get use to it!

The leaves were accompanied by cigarettes, which are also traditionally smoked prior to working in the fields, and the local tipple - a hot milk drink with cinnamon and alcohol, known as ‘Puma Milk’!

The ladies from the lodge encouraged us to dance, and we did something akin to the Hokey-Cokey with the kids joining in too – much fun!