race one day a week we have our off day to do whatever we want. We can go for an adventure or just lay in bed
all day if we wanted…but I always go for an adventure.
In Ecuador we
spent our off days at rivers and waterfalls.
In Peru we would hike in the mountains, go surfing, or go to the mall or
movie theater.
We found out
about white water rafting in the jungle about 3 hours away so we decided to go
for it. The other day I got on the
computer and did all the research for our day away in the Jungle. I found us transportation to there, a nice
hostel, information on rafting and the monkey park, and some other stuff to do
there if we still had time. After getting back from the mountains I
unpacked my bag and repacked it for the jungle.
Sam, Jamie, Steven and I left the guest house and headed into town
Friday afternoon to get a Cerubi to take us to Villa Tunari in the Bolivian
jungle. We paid our 25Bs (about $3.50),
packed into the Cerubi, a 7 passenger van driven by a kamikaze Bolivian, and
headed to the jungle. The drive took us
east through a mountain pass then straight down into the jungle, about 8,500
feet below.
About half way
through the drive it started pouring.
And if the drive wasn’t dangerous enough the windows fogged up and about
every 5 minutes our driver would wipe the window down with a rag so he could
see. Eventually we just stopped looking
out the windows. Every time there was lightening
we could see how close we were to plummeting off the edge of the mountain.
We got to Villa
Tunari around 8 Friday night and it was still pouring down rain. We asked where Hostel Mirador was but no one
at the bus stop had heard of it. We
called the number and it was the number for some hostel back in Cochabamba. So there we were all hungry, wet, and
starting to wonder why we voluntarily went back to the jungle. Finally we called our rafting guide hoping he
would know somewhere for us to eat dinner and a place to sleep. We found a hostel right next to where we
would go rafting, ate dinner, then went to sleep.
The next morning
we met our rafting guide at his house and set out to tackle to rapids of Rio
Espiritu Santo. It was a blast! After
lunch we went down the road to Parque Machia.
It is a wild animal park that takes in exotic animals from the local
markets, rehabilitates them, and lets the back into the wild. The park is known for all the wild monkeys
everywhere. The park is in the middle of
the jungle with just a trail surrounded by all types of animals. After a few minutes in we come around a
corner to a giant Andean black bear sitting near a bench. At first we froze hoping the bear didn’t see
us. Then we saw he was tied to a tree
with a few trainers around him.
We make it to
the highest point in the park and we saw our first monkey swinging from the
trees. Thinking that it was probably the
only monkey we would see, we watched it for a little bit then kept
walking. A few minutes down the trail we
were surrounded by dozens of monkeys. The
forest was alive. Branches were shaking,
fruit and seeds were falling down on us, and they were all jumping from tree to
tree. We stopped and watched them for a
while, freezing any time one would come near us. Our contact, Steve, told us about how his
daughter was attacked by a monkey last time they were there and had to get
rabies shots, we didn’t want to take any chances. Each time we would walk further down the
trail a few would come running towards us.
After a while most of the monkeys disappeared so we continued
walking. At one point we were walking
and this monkey kept coming towards us, we froze and he walked right up to
us. I looked down and he was just
staring at me, then he grabbed onto my leg and started to climb up my leg. I
moved my leg then he ran away.
We finished up
at the monkey park, headed back into town, packed into a Cerubi, and headed
home thinking about how great our day was but also how much we are glad to be
out of the jungle.
Bolivia Rafting from Glenn Pickens on Vimeo.
