Days of rain and some crocs

The whole week before I rode the most dangerous road in the world, people had been spreading rumours about an English guy who had fallen over the edge to his death. I didn`t take any notice, went with the same company and ended up shivering on a mountain 5000m above sea level, the surroundings wrapped in a mantle of fog. The first hour of the descent was not dangerous, though I did worry about catching hypothermia as the wind whistled through my clothes. The hail and rain was so intense at points that you had to squint into the grey beyond, occasionally closing your eyes. This first stretch was on paved tarmac, but it soon deteriorated into a steep, downhill dirt track, effectively a ledge cut into a vertical hillside, giving you incredibly views down into the valley below, but causing me to apply the brakes sharply at every turn as we approached the edge. I had expected to be so scared by the road that I would ride like a timorous beasty, and kick myself later, or feel bootganged into riding as fast as everyone else. The surprise was that I have never felt more secure on a bike, and for much of the time, it felt as if we were cycling on any other steep downhill road, maybe because the thick cloud hid the vertiginous drops from view. The vegetation here is a lush, semi-tropical green. Everything was saturated in water, and cascades of water dropped hundreds of metres from cliffs above. We stopped for lunch on a wide outcrop of rock at the head of which stood an Israeli monument. It commemorates the Israeli who died close to this spot. Him and his mate decided to make a video while riding the bikes (Sound a bit like tig on bikes, Alex?) and he strayed over the edge.

I spent that night in the small, mountainous town of Coroico before taking a bus to Rurrenebaque for the Pampas tour. The rain never let up, flooding the towns narrow streets and turning the alleys into a mud bath that I traversed in flip-flops, only to find that I had left my flip flop behind. All the people in my group for the Pampas tour were great, two bubbling, quirky Canadians complementing a funny Englishman and his uninformed Chinese girlfriend. Two Israeli girls made up the group. The other group that stayed in the same accomodation as us contained an interesting German family. The father loved to harrass animals with large sticks, wore socks with his sandals and had a squint. At dinner time, his wife would launch forth in her harsh, grating German accent, demanding that we give her the leftovers from our table and later complaining that the weed nowadays isn´t as good as in her day (presumably in the heavanly sixties). It is difficult to pinpoint what was exactly wrong with the daughter, but she had a vacant look, like an immolated cow.

Getting to the Pampas was an adventure in itself. The 4x4 lurched around in the thick mud, bringing out Schumacher-like driving from our chofer, and at one point several lorries had to be pulled out of the mud by a caterpillar. The Pampas here are a wide connection of waterways, divided by reeds and wetlands, which eventually drain into the mighty amazon. The three hour boat ride to our lodge on the first day gave us ample opportunity to marvel at the wildlife. Cranes and herons stood motionless on branches with their long beaks upturned, while the sound of the boat´s engine would disturb a resting stork which would swoop up into the air and beat its wings in undulating flight, its legs straight out behind it. We rounded bends to find caimans and capbybaras, a kind of overgrown hamster that is entirely vegetarian, while we were treated to the flight of the kingfisher, that would fall from a branch and flit its way along the surface of the water. The tiny, yellow squirrel monkeys provided some entertainment, but it was astounding to find two caimans waiting for us when we pulled up at the ranch (sitting at the front of the boat, it was always my job to tie up the boat). At first sight, it looked fiersome, long thick body rippling with prehistoric scales, its whole body motionless, ready for the strike...except that it was about as tame as a dog. Our guide, Reinaldo, went as far as to stroke its snout, and the following day we found it lolling around under the veranda, its mouth full of unfinished rice and pasta. When I suggested to the other guide that this animal was no longer wild, he looked riled and gave me the evil eye, which I returned. How is a caiman supposed to scrape rice from its mouth if it doesnt have a tongue. On the first night, we went looking for caimans in the dark. We found what we thought was a frog, but the silent peace of the night made up for any disappointment. There was no electricity in the cabins and I struggled to find my way with the dim light from my dying phone. Eventually, though, I settled down to the sound of cicadas and beguiled my soul with sleep.

On the second morning, we failed to find an anaconda in the cold, wet conditions (as cold blooded animals, snakes like to bathe in the sun) but the highlight of the day was fishing for pirahnas.We primed our hooks with small pieces of meat and launched them into the water where they were attacked by swarms of pirahnas that pushed the meat this way and that as they hit it like missiles. The problem was that they only ever nibbled the meat, making it nigh impossible to hook them; the best that I could do was a tiny, pubescent pirahna that was no bigger than a salmon par. We were all upstaged by one of the Israeli girls who looked like she had been pirahna fishing before. On the last day, we went swimming with dolphins, or rather, in the vecinity of dolphins, because the animals just wouldn´t play ball. I was the first to strip off and plunge into the warm water after a dolphin that had curved above the water´s surface just moments before. I kept swimming through the water that kept changing in temperature from pleasantly warm to freezingly cold, but the dolphin never resurfaced. I ended up being hauled back into the boat like a beached fish, only to see a whole family of the long nosed pink dolphins rise out of the water again. This time four of us jumped in, banged our palms against the boat to attract them and generally made a racket. We never saw another dolphin. Swimming in crocodile and pirahna infested waters just for that...a sacrifice too far.