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!!!)