I survived the notoriously bad 18 hour bus trip (I got lucky, several people days before me were delayed an extra 10 hours due to road slides and muddy roads) and arrived at 7:00 AM in the morning. The road from La Paz was very poor, the Death Road lives!
I immediately booked a three day tour into the Pampas, and after a quick breakfast I set out on a three hour 4wd ride to the town of Santa Rosa, where we set off up the Yacuma river in a motorized canoe until we arrived at our camp. Very basic wooden accommodation overlooking the river, surprisingly the mosquitoes weren't too bad.
We spied a lot of native birds, turtles and caimans on the trip up river to the camp. That night we again took to the river in search for more caimans, it was quite surreal to see a pairs of luminescent eyes dotted along the river.
The next day we motored to a large field in search of an anaconda. Our group eventually found a small (approx 1.5-2m specimen) which was quickly surrounded by all of the other groups and passed around so people could pose for photos, it felt like a circus. Not cool....
That afternoon a brief rainstorm hit, I sat out on the observation deck in my raincoat listening to music as the rain fell. After an hour or so the rain cleared up and we set out on the canoes for a spot of Piranha fishing. Although the rivers seemed very healthy (plenty of bait fish, birds and animals) I only caught one small fish. It didn't help that the fish were tiny and our hooks were huge, but a poor tradesman blames his tools.
The final morning we set off in search of some dolphins that we had recently spied in the river. None were found, but we anchored for a brief swim. Very refreshing after the heat and humidity of the previous days, and thankfully the nearby caimans kept their distance.
We returned to Rurrenabaque in the afternoon, nice to have a shower and sleep in a decent bed.
While the tour wasn't awful, it was definitely not the highlight many people had described to me. I have been spoilt by my few trips to Darwin, whereas the Pampas definitely felt like a second-rate cousin.
More photos here
