When we arrived back at Andoriña we all hit the showers like only fully-grown men should. Then I reached out to make contact with Julia and Siobhan from Melbourne(ish) who`d just spent two months (!) in Paraguay - I actually didn`t know there was anything there... they joined us for dinner and wine at excellent but pricey Latina Cafe. The next day they decided to join us for our forthcoming trip to Noel Kempff Mercado National Park north of Santa Cruz some way - yay! But first was a sentimental farewell with the Frenchman - some great times and some very exciting moments, my friend, que vaya muuuy biennn! () x
Then was a shared taxi to Santa Cruz with Bert and the girls. The atmosphere was very hazy and the road was on/off bitumen which made a 2 hour journey 3. Santa Cruz reminded me a lot of Cairns - hot, muggy, wide flat streets, tropical trees and a healthy appetite for 4wds and capitalism in general. We checked in to Residencial Bolivar, our inner city hostel complete with cute duckling and toucan - now thats a trippy animal! In-house steak and salad was a great relief as was ice-cream at Bits & Cream (of La Paz fame) and we caught up with Kasper who intended to join us for the adventure too - during our frequently funny email exchanges Kasper informed me of a new word in English: "changements" - meaning simply changes to the arrangements. It makes sense, and I will endeavour to use it.
The next few days involved obtaining some stuff, like most of our food, a tent for the Melbenites, a telescopic baton for Bert (I was a bit jealous too) and anti-insect headnets for us all. That Friday was a state holiday celebrating all things with guns and military and plice and shit - I loved it. Also present in the street parade were these young folk sporting an interesting slogan on their apparel. Do they seriously not know what that word means? Or are they just uber-cool¿ However because I got the usual hair-based snickers from the New Kids On The Block I don`t think that Santa Cruz is the progressive capital of the world somehow. We ate lots of salad.
In the bus station waiting for the bus to almost leave without us despite the entire staff knowing we were there we saw a family of Memnites, who looked like they`d just stepped out of `Deliverance`. Very interesting. Women employees of the bus companies called out their advertised destinations like pitch-perfect choir-girls with irresistable sensuality. We journeyed in the cool night air - a perfect temperature, very nice to arrive in San Ignacio de Velasco, something of a town somewhere in the middle of nowhere seemingly. There we found a hotel, checked in and I drank my morning milky mocha Monster madness. The cute but rubbished town itself did have great salteñas, an impressive Jesuit-style church and a very nice plaza. A little down the way was a swimable lake too, highly necessary in the oppressive heat.
We sought out our second Belgian team member Chris (Kaspar had randomed upon him in Santa Cruz - nice work K!)and his family who were staying a little more upmarket than us and prepared to prepare ourselves for the Mercado, by going to the mercado. `UnBoliviable` was said many times that day - mostly during the seemingly endless search for the actual bus company that went to La Florida - to describe our various issues would just bring more issues of negativity to this blog , which it really doesn`t need.
The next morning on TV was a Formula 1 race, and as so Chris made aware to us his interest and we held a brief discussion on the drivers, the conditions, the history - after dramatic pause of about 2 seconds, Kaspar stated `Me, I like ice- hockey`. Chris and Kaspar helped to load the cargo on top of our school bus before we departed for our 8-12 hour ride to La FLorida, the packed bus slowly dropping people off to make it a bumpy but bearable ride.
We travelled through tropical forest and savannah on a hot and smoke-hazy day - as the sun dropped it became a bright orange but watchable ball in the sky. We passed by many large haciendas including some obviously very rich people. My knees and I weren`t too comfortable and my shitty Ipood headphones didn`t cut out the blaring exhaust noise enough. The forest was in places cut and burnt but to my surprise we encountered very little incidental rubbish, unlike much of South America. Our final 3 hours of travel was through rainforest on a terrible road - in small La Florida even at 7pm it was still very hot but the amiable greetings and community spirit soon put us at ease in our basic accomodation. We relaxed, drank a few, ate something and washed a little bit.
At the next morning`s breakfast we were approached by a lady to begin arrangements for entering the park. We had to take two guides because we were 6, and decided on hiring transport both in and out of the park. These two were Herman and Guido, the latter being one we`d read negative reports on the Net about - we tried to arrange a different guide but it was impossible. So, that being that we were ready - we loaded the ute, jammed into the car including a mysterious extra man just to make things more comfortable and off we went.
To use the words of Kaspar in signing off...
`So far, til tomorrow`.
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