La lluvia viene...

Just a special touch of paradise

One day in Magdalena we hired a moped and drove an hour and a half east to the village of Bella Vista, having heard from almost everyone we met how beautiful a spot it was, and they were definitely right. The town is on the confluence of the Rio Blanco and the Rio San Martin and in the first half hour we arrived we had already seen a pod of pink river dolphins surfacing from the banks. On the drive up we spotted caiman in the shallow pools alongside the road and then on the way back a coati crossed the road right on front of us!! Wildlife!!!

Yep, that´s a dolphin. P.S. It´s REALLY hard to take photos of dolphins

We cruised along the river banks in the afternoon until we found a nice little beachy area where locals were washing their clothes and swimming. Although there are caiman and piranha in the river, the locals assured us it was perfectly safe to swim. Unlike the Australian crocodile, the South American caiman is not intent on ripping you limb from limb.

 

Right on the banks of the river we also found El Tucunare, a luxurious looking collection of thatched cabins set among beautiful gardens. It looked expensive but as we wallowed in the river and watched the dolphins swimming by we decided it might be worth splashing out…at around $40 a night it’s expensive by Bolivian standards but sooooo beautiful. The bathroom actually has a cold AND hot tap (ok, the hot tap doesn’t work, but the fact that it’s there is already a step in the right direction).

Hello gorgeous. All of that is ours.

It’s going to be tough to go back to straw mattresses and foul shared bathrooms after this little slice of heaven (woohoo!!!! TWO eighties lyrics quoted in one blog post!!!)

Magdalena (wasn´t she the whorey one???)

From Trinidad we caught a bus north to Magdalena, a cute little town on the banks of the Rio Itonamas, with streets of fine red dust that gets stirred up with every passing moped and gets into your ears, up your nose and finds cracks and crevasses you didn’t know you had. We arrived five days before the town’s annual fiesta (La Fiesta de Santa Maria Magdalena) to find everyone already in party mode- makeshift bars set up in empty pars and paddocks, enthusiastic bands playing blaringly loud music until 5am every night, and groups of musicians roving from place to place playing a repetitive repertoire of Bolivian hits.

It’s much hotter here than it was in Trinidad- we wait until late afternoon before heading down to the river to read, and escape before the mosquitos come out in force. Aside from that our days seem to be one, long grazing session. Coffee and cheesey empanadas for breakfast, maybe a salteña mid-morning, almuerzo of chicken/beef/pork, yucca and rice for lunch, and then a late afternoon pre-dinner snack of empanadas or delicious brazier-seared meat on a stick served up outside the market, finishing up with a slight variation of the chicken/beef/pork & rive combo for dinner. Pretty much every that passes our lips is fried, salty or oily (or a combination of the three) so don’t be surprised if we’re looking a little chubby in the pics!!!

By Saturday the town had filled up nicely and there were lots of people in the plaza Saturday morning to watch the procession, with locals dressed as campesinos, livestock and Indian chiefs with beautiful headdresses made of macaw feathers. The ‘Little Miss’ and ‘Miss Magdalena’ winners paraded proudly at the front of the groups of little girls and woman- we had gone to check out the start of the competition earlier in the week with some local guys. A packed stadium had watched the girls flounce up and down in their traditional dresses (no bikini contest here).

 

On the Sunday drinking started early- by 9am there were already people lurching from bar to bar or staggering around the plaza. Never ones to go against the flow we bought a few cans and watched a group of drunken men try to erect a pole for the rodeo later in the day.

Over lunch we met Martin, a guy from La Paz who was in the region filming a documentary about the remaining indigenous groups that still have their own language etc. We hung out with him for the rest of the day, drinking beers and chatting to other random pissheads.

The rodeo was the big event of the day- fairly brutal I have to say, though probably most of the contestants were well enough lubricated to avoid serious injury.

 

The evening post-rodeo is a bit of a blur, a vague memory of eating dinner, trying to get into a dance (but being too tightass to pay the BS$50 per person to get in) and drinking more beers with Martin and his cameraman Ivan.

The next morning we had to get up at the crack of dawn to be at the bus station at 6am. Ouch.

The Rum Diaries Part VII

Ron Pampeño signalled the end of the Bolivian rum experiment. It was so bad we didn’t even drink it (gave it to a group of young Bolivian guys staying across from us); considering that Martijn once forced his way through a bottle of Bundaberg, this should be a good indication of just how average Pampeño was.

Trinidad...but not Tobago

No, not that Trinidad. The other one- Trinidad, capital of the Beni Department of Bolivia. The day we arrived the city was completely at a standstill due to a civil strike in solidarity with the current indigenous protests against the government. Waiting for a room in a guesthouse, we spent the morning in the plaza watching the world go by. The highlight was seeing a guy carry a sloth down from his garden and put him in one of the trees in the plaza.

Today we rented a moped and set off south of the city to explore a little. A few km’s out of town we hit a toll booth with a copper who asked to see our driver’s license- I showed him the aussie one along with our passports.

Martijn is thinking of trading the Harley in

“This isn’t enough. You need an international drivers’ license”; he told me.

“Hmmm, I didn’t know, sorry. Where can we get one from?” I was aiming for a combination of ignorance and innocence.

“Back in your own country”

“Oh. Sooooo, what do we do now?” I asked.

“Now, you’re going to jail”, he replied, miming putting handcuffs on me, and then he cracked up at his joke.

He waved us off and we continued putt-putting along the highway towards Puerto Almacen, whose name as a port is perhaps a little undeserved…though bizarrely it was home to a tiny branch of the Bolivian navy!!

Yes, that´s the navy. Impressive for a country without a coastline.

We followed the road a little further until we came to a river where in lieu of a bridge there were a series of barges ferrying people, cars, buses and trucks across. Some were listing worryingly to one side but they all made it….or at least, all the ones we watched did.

As if being back in a hot & steamy climate wasn´t enough to keep us happy, there is also now a steady supply of fresh and tasty fish to eat!!! And I have to say it´s much more enjoyable drinking beer in 30 degree heat than it was at minus 5!!

After lunch we found a schmick place by Laguna Suarez where we stopped off and enjoyed nice chairs, a view unspoiled by steel/concrete/rubbish and inoffensive background music (as opposed to pumping Bolivian cheesey pop). Aesthetically pleasing, peaceful places are hard to come by in Bolivia so we are planning to head back there tomorrow : )

The Rum Diaries Part VI

Shit, it’s just occurred to me that I don’t know the Roman numerals for 50….let’s hope the Rum Diaries don’t come to that. Anyway, the latest chapter was our beloved Flor de Caña, Nicaragua’s contribution to the world of rum. I brought back a few bottles for Martijn in 2006 and apart from a drunken & misguided purchase at Der Raum one night (at a wallet-gauging $22 a shot) this was the first time either of us had drunk it since then! It went down nice and easy….I had my mine Nica style with lime and soda, delicious!

Bolivia: the good, the bad & the ugly

The Good

Los Bolivianos: Bolivians from the highlands come across as proud and aloof. They are happy to chat to you if you initiate conversation but there’s rarely the hard-sell or clamour to get your attention in the markets. I like that.

The Diminutive: Bolivian Spanish sounds particularly cute and cuddly due to their love of the diminutive. A boliviano becomes a bolivianito; pan, pancito; almuerzo almorcito. I also love that everyone is either mamita or papi!

Resourcefulness: as in many poorer countries, the throw-away mentality does not exist in Bolivia. Down the road from our hostel is a small shop where an old man sits all day repairing soccer balls. People make sandals out of old car tires. The kinds of televisions put out on the nature strip for hard rubbish in Australia are brought to the electrician here and lovingly repaired.

The Bad

Rubbish: fair enough, the country probably has bigger things to worry about but waste disposal needs some serious work. As if the city centre wasn’t bad enough, on the outskirts of every village and town is a huge unchecked pile of rubbish, unceremoniously dumped by the roadside. If you’re really unlucky you’ll find yourself in the middle of a toxic cloud of smoke as plastic bags and bottles are set alight.

Driving: where do I start? Drivers in Bolivia are spectacularly bad- they don’t signal, they run red lights (all the while honking furiously to alert oncoming vehicles with right of way to get the hell out of the way), they take corners at mind boggling speed with double the regulation amount of passengers on board, they even rival Australians for drink-driving culture.

Electric Showers: sort of for the tepid (at best) water they produce; mainly for the exposed wires and constant fear of electrocution.

The Ugly

The giant public urinal: nobody in Bolivia has any qualms about dropping their pants and pissing (or worse) in the street. And not just in some discreet side street, no, for a conservative country they aren’t shy about public urination. The result is that great swathes of the city stink like piss. Nasty.

Expectoration: it’s worrying when all public buses have stickers asking people not to spit. Would they otherwise just hock one up on the bus?? Probably. Listening to people hawk, hack and hock up parts of their lungs is one of my least favourite aspects of Bolivian life.