Bolivia: Las Pompas

Welcome to Las Pompas, where mornings are met by the howling mating cries of jungle monkeys and afternoons are spent searching for anacondas.  It sounds like a movie, but no, its just Bolivia.  After finishing morning breakfast of fresh fruit, eggs, pancakes, and hot of the fryer doughnuts, we were ready to put on some tall rain boots and go anaconda hunting. 

Our group leader was a native Bolivian whose first language is Quechua (indigenous language of Bolivia).  He told us stories about being bit by an anaconda and what you need to do in case you’re bit (a good thing to tell your group when you’re sitting against a tree that has a sleeping anaconda in one of the open parts of the branch).  Anyways, I think it’s an important thing to know, so I will share.  In the case of an anaconda bite, you need to kill the snake, cut up the flesh and place it on the wound.  When the flesh turns black (from the poison) you need to replace it with a new piece of fresh flesh, and continue this process until the flesh of the anaconda against your wound turns red from your blood, indicating that the poison is gone.  You must also remember to STAY CALM (bueno suerte).  Good lesson for the day.

We trenched through some water that came up to a little below my knee, which had alligators and supposedly anacondas in it but we didn’t see any there.  On dry land there was an anaconda family sleeping in the grass and we gathered around it (with reassurance from our guide) and took some close pictures of them.  They were definitely not anything like the movie “Anaconda”, but I was told the ones that live in the Amazon River grow much larger than these ones. 

Later in the day we went piranha fishing with a little block of wood and spool of string with a hook on the end.  I didn’t get to catch a piranha like a few other people, but I did get some other kind of fish then quickly had my guide throw it back in the water.  All in all, it was a successful, non fish killing experience.

Our boat later stopped at an open field to watch the sunset and I got to play some sand volleyball with a few Dutch and Spanish people.  It was like a taste of home in the middle of Bolivia.  On the way back to camp, we used a flash light to look for the gleaming eyes of the alligators.  It was crazy to see how many sparkling alligator eyes were staring at me in the dark of the night. 

The following day we woke up at 5:30 am to watch the sun rise, which unfortunately was not visible due to the clouds.  We brought the tour to an end by a quick “swim with dolphins” as it said in the advertisement, but the dolphins forgot to show up.  Instead we just swam quickly in the alligator infested waters with a bunch of other tourists.  We then headed back to Rurrenabaque by another 3 hour boat ride and 3 hour bumpy jeep ride. 

            We had successfully completed the first half of the trip.  More importantly I had managed to be inches away from some of the deadliest creatures in the world, and didn’t trip or drop something.  I walked away with my head held high (well actually I was mostly with my head to the ground worried about where I was walking) ready to conquer the next adventure, the Amazon Jungle.