I’ve just completed death Road, the worlds most dangerous road and I’m now waiting for the bus that will take me to Guanay where we’ll be catching a raft for our next adventure, 5 nights and 6 days on the Kaka and Beni Rivers that flow downstream to Rurrenabaque, a remote town on the very edge on the Amazon Rainforests.
I’ve been instructed to wait by the road outside Sena Verde, an animal rescue and wildlife sanctuary in the small town of Coroico the town unto which the the Death Road was built. It’s 1.45pm so skipping the complimentary lunch and walk through the facility I grab my souvenir T-Shirt and farewell the group.
2 hours later and I’m still waiting, the tour group I was with has left and I’m really getting worried. Where is Elena and the bloody bus? I go back into the wildlife centre and one of the guides from the company I booked my Death Road ride with us still there. He call the office but with such a remote location the signal drops out. He walks up to the road to try to get a better signal while I wait. Returning he assures me that I’m not forgotten and someone is on their way.
I decide to use the showers provided as I’m still all hot and stinky from the downhill ride earlier in the day. It’s at this moment that there’s a pounding on the door saying a taxi is waiting for me. Taxi? Did someone forget me? I had no idea and since they made me wait for almost 3 hours they can wait for me to finish my shower.
Returning to the road I discover a van with a female driver and her partner. The taxi light was in the back and they were hurrying me along into the van they seemed to be in one hell of a hurry, I couldn’t understand why as the trip from where we were to our destination was a 5 hour journey.
The road twisted and snaked along a river bank. It was narrow and perilous. Several times we’d round a bend only to meet a truck and have to back up.
We rounded a turn into a small town where a large local bus had pulled up. There were several tourist milling around and one was Elena, what on earth is going on?
It turns our the bus to Guanay is a local bus and it was late getting out of LaPaz by 3 hours. The bus driver has been waiting for me for half and hour with local passengers urging him to leave me behind.
Thankfully one of our group speaks Spanish and has pleaded with the driver to wait for me and he headed her requests. We’re quickly loaded onto the bus and with the locals settling down we’re suddenly on our way. None of our group really know what’s going on but it seems that the private bus isn’t that as all. The bus is the local 40 seater and it’s packed. There’s hardly enough room for our legs let alone our bags and we have to endure this for the next 5 hours into the night. I try to get comfortable but it’s hopeless. I twist and turn almost as much as the bus along this narrow road that’s following the valley. The roads here are frightening and I wonder how we’re ever going to make each bend as we negotiate trucks cars and motorbikes. Several times we’ve backed up and had to give way to oncoming traffic along the sections were a bicycle would be considered a wide load.
Darkness descends over the valley and we delve deeper into the jungle. Several small villages pass by and I just wished that it would be our stop. There’s still an hour to go and my legs and back are aching with beings shoehorned into such a confining space. I’m fed up, pissed off and just want to jump off the bus.
In the dead of night we finally arrive into Guanay, our guide Ruben (pronounced Zubin) turns upon a small motorcycle. Apparently there’s no transfer van to our hostel so Ruben guides us on the motorbike as we walk through the town square toward a hostel aptly named “Ritzy”. Nothing could be further from the truth. With it almost nonexistent curtains and Sponge Bob sheets this place was as basic as it comes. Communal toilets and showers with the luxury of pressure but the absence of hot water only added to the mood. All I wanted now was to get a decent nights sleep.
What I ask for is not granted as somebody keeps knocking on a door to one of the rooms in the middle of the night, this place seems to have no security and the person is persistent. Dawn can’t come soon enough.
We’re meeting at 7.30am for a quick briefing before breakfast by the river. Ruben has built the raft this morning and it’s on the river ready to go. Our packs are wrapped in plastic bags and then placed in sacks. The final checks are done and we board the raft made of old car inner tubes and long branches lashed together with rope. There are no life jackets; to do this journey you need to be a confident swimmer.
Ah the Amazon, all the media around the world is trying to protect it and I too am all for conservation, however no more than 100m into the journey and we see a local family rolling a set of used care tyres down a rocky embankment into the river. I’m totally shocked as are the others aboard the raft. Ruben and David (our rear rudder man) yell out to the culprits but their ears are mute as the family continues to ensure the rubber reaches the river. I’m perplexed, here we are trying to save the Eco system and the locals are too uneducated to care for what they have.
As we float downstream for the day we notice that the river is littered with little villages and they too are contributing to the environmental catastrophe that the lack of education brings. Whole villages set their refuse down embankments to the river.
Ruben jokes in Spanish about the name of the river as it’s called the Kaka, it some languages it translates to “shit river” and given what’s being thrown in I don’t need to understand Spanish to comprehend the joke. They say in every joke hides a little of the truth and I’m just devastated to see what’s happening here.
We can talk about the logging, but without the rivers and vital clean water supplies the whole Eco system falls down. Sad to say it’s not just the lack of education it’s also greed of corporations from the USA. For mile after mile along the riverbanks we see huge mountains of rocks. There seems to be a gold rush going on here,from small prospectors to large operations all searching for that tiny nugget. The rocks are scooped up, placed in a washing device that removes all the sediment and washes it back into the river. This sediment causes the river to run muddy and cloudy, depleting fish stocks and with all the noise created has caused all the wildlife to leave the area. It will take decades for nature to repair the damage.
Ruben informs us that the cooperations allow the Bolivian people to work for them, however they cannot claim more than 22kg every 10 days which may sound like and exorbitant amount, however the gold is of very poor quality which leads to the next question, if it’s poor quality why are the cooperations extracting it in the first place?
Our guide is at a crossroads in his life. He informs us that there’s not too much money being paid to him from the tour company and is considering to go back to work the mines. Everything seems to be for money. One side, he’s showing the Eco tourism that Bolivia desperately needs yet his mind is clouded with earning more money. When all is said and done, you can’t eat gold. And in extracting gold at the rate that is currently happening the rivers future looks grim.
I float on down the river just shaking my head as there is very little I can’t do but watch the destruction in front of me. I could write of the beauty, but I’m not about writing the glossy tourist brochure, I’ve come and seen this and this is what I see today. Hopefully tomorrow is better.
Stopping at a small village we take onboard supplies as this will be our last place for bottled water for the next 200km as we raft from the Kaka River and then onto the Beni River. It’s hot and although the river is muddy I’m still in for a swim. The current is swift and Elena and I just float along by the raft. We try to take something good from this journey. We’re with good company, a Belgian couple (Jan and Karen), a couple from France (Gianco and Stephanie) and a young British girl (Rebecca). We’re all in the water and enjoying what we can of the day.
Ruben and David discuss a possible camp site as it’s getting dark. We find a sand beach immediate downstream from a huge mountain of rocks left behind by some cooperation who’s search for gold has moved across the river and is in full operation.
Setting up camp on the sandbank in the dark for the first night tests us all. None of us know the exact way to set up the tents and we struggle to complete the task. We’re offered sleeping backs but failed to grab a sleeping mattress as we weren’t aware that we had them. Tonight we’ll be sleeping directly on the sand. With Ruben and David quickly serving up a meal it wasn’t long before a small fire was built, however we opted to just turn in for the night in the hope that tomorrow would come soon. I just wish the gold company downstream would finish working as the dumping of rocks into the river echoed up the river for hours on end. Eventually, exhausted I must have fallen asleep. Elena heard them until the early hours of the morning. I guess greed never stops for shareholders wanting a dividend on their investment.
Day two dishes up a warm morning and it’s not long before we’re stripped down to shorts and back in to water just to keep cool. The light sunburn form yesterday on a patch on my leg that missed the sunscreen is letting me not forget to cover up well today. Our goal is to make camp tonight where the two rivers meet. It’s a fair way off and with the current of the river in our favour it’s looking good.
The current crossing the Beni is strong and with the one extra homemade oar we pitch in rowing across the river. It’s a rocky shoreline that greats us and Rubin and David make a quick makeshift cooking area that’s covered with a tarp as lighting dances across the sky and into the mountains in the distance. It will rain tonight and preparations to secure the tents is more focused as the winds may also pick up.
As soon as dinner is over there’s a pitter pat of rain and it signals us all to seek refuge into our tents for the night. As the night darkens so to does the mood of nature and the lightning and thunder increases. Tonight will rain all night and into the small hours of the morning.
Rising early seems to be my thing, Ruben and David are up preparing breakfast as we want to make an early start. The sky is gloomy and the clouds hang low into the tree line. The air is humid and sticky and I’m struggling with the tropical atmosphere.
Ruben’s caught a couple of huge catfish. One he’s slaughtered and it’s still breathing, the other is in shallow water waiting for it’s fate to be determined. The meat will be used for dinner tonight. With breakfast dealt with and camp now packed onto the raft we make a break wile the weather is in our favour. I ask Ruben if we need to kill the second catfish and with him saying we don’t need it I push it back into the river. Ruben takes a large rock and finally puts the other catfish out of it’s misery.
It’s not long before the rain catches up with us on the river and we discover our love of the cheapest items we’ve purchased in Bolivia, little blue plastic ponchos that for the rest of the journey would be referred to by everyone as “our condoms”.
The rain has really set in and our stop for lunch is now a race against time as the river is rising fast. To pass the time while Rubin and David prepare lunch we place a stick in to sand at the waters edge and challenge each other to get a rock as close as we can. The stick is a good 2 feet out of the water and within 20 minutes it’s totally submerged. The river is also filling with debris, a major concern as our raft will puncture easily.
As if this isn’t enough, Stephanie is coming down with a severe chest infection and the rain and wind is now impacting on her. She’s curled up in a ball and is refusing to eat as she succumbs to the weather. We need to get her medical help but we are 100’s of miles from the nearest hospital and we haven’t seen a boat for a long while.
We clamber back on board and now battle with rapids and driftwood gathering around the raft. I didn’t sign on for this, all the brochures showed a calm river and people drifting peacefully down a tropical rainforest river. What we had now was a fight against time, daylight, shelter and sickness.
Rubin knew of an unused military hut that we might be able to shelter in for the night. Finding it was easy, finding it empty was not. It seems that one military guy and his friends were also seeking shelter, but with Ruben’s negotiation they agreed to share the hut for one night.
We all squeezed in and somehow managed to fit. Thankfully the new iron on the roof gave us the shelter we so desperately needed for the night. It certainly helped that Karen spoke fluent Spanish and put the guys at ease with light hearted conversation and explaining our situation. They were surprised that we were on the river given the current weather and were constantly going down the track to check the boat and raft as the water continued to rise.
Dawn faced us with no reprieve from the rain although it was now reduced to drizzle which dampened our moods. The river had receded slightly and the decision was made to press on toward a park ranger station before a large canyon for our next night. The driftwood had subsided but the rain picked up once again. We spent the morning huddled under a tarp only inches above the water. Stephanie was bad, and with us walking around a banana plantation to relieve our aching bodies from sitting too long, Stephanie struggled to keep up. I too was in discomfort, however mine was due to the vast amounts of paw paw and bananas consumed in the days prior. Now my stomach was churning it all out at once. Poor Rebecca was feeling the same and she too was becoming ill. Our little group was falling like a deck of cards.
After lunch we take a short walk into the forest looking for pigs in the vain attempt to catch one for dinner, the whole exercise proves pointless and there are no animals to be seen apart form a couple of monkeys seeking shelter high in the treetops. Stephanie can’t cope with any more and Rubin makes the decision to stop the next boat we come in contact with and get her the medical help she needs in Rurrenabaque. Fortune smiles on us as a boat arrives within 20 minutes of making the decision and Stephanie goes to Rurrenabaque as we continue rafting.
The mood on the raft is now a case of “we just want to make it to the next sleeping place”, we’re wet, cold, hungry and tired. The day has been long and we’re all feeling it. We all are wondering what the contingency plan was should something go wrong. It seemed that the whole trip was loosely stitched together and right now the fabric was starting to fray.
The sight of the canyon looming ahead was signal enough to grab the paddles and start for shore, each of us wanted to get there faster than we could row and with us forming our now well drilled chain line, it wasn’t long before all our bags were up to the shelter and camp was set up.
Rebecca wasn’t eating as her stomach was now causing her to rush to the toilet and she looked pale. She just needed to hang in one more night. 24 hours from now we’ll be in our hostel. We needed a distraction so after we bought out the music and someone grabbed a deck of cards, “Cheat” was now the game for the evening. The Ranger ran the generator to give us light, but by 10pm we were all truly ready for bed.
Once again I’m up before anyone including Rubin and David. I just want to get packed up and back on the raft. I want this trip to be over. I’ve had fun , we all have, but given we’ve lost one to sickness, another is not looking good and the rain hasn’t stopped for the last 3 days its now or never through the narrow gorge that separates us from Rurrenabaque.
Rubin makes toast and fried banana’s for breakfast, there are also plenty of paw paw’s and oranges. The coffee’s strong and with two cups down I make for the tent to start taking it apart for the last time. Our packs are starting to smell as they succumb to the dampness of the plastic bags that have protected them for the journey.
It’s the last leg, we just have to make it through the gorge and beyond the mountain ahead of us and we’ll be there. Rubin assures Rebecca that there’s only one more hour to go.
True to his word we round the bend to see the construction work of the newly commissioned river crossing bridge. We are finally back to civilisation.
it’s now our task to untie all the ropes in the raft and help Rubin and David in their final task. Rubin says he still owes us one lunch as we have arrived early. David has to race off as he now needs to catch a bus all the way back to Guanay.
It’s a quick lunch and then we discover the Lunar Lounge where we spend the afternoon playing Chinese checkers over beers and cocktails before a round of pizzas and pool.
Fond farewells to great travelling buddies, we survived…. We are still ALIVE!
