June 15 - This morning we woke up and went to a little restaurant nearby for breakfast before beginning our journey to the pampas (or wetlands). I must admit I was a little bit disappointed when Jayson and I ordered the “Amercian Breakfast” which claimed to come with pancakes but the pancake turned out to be a thin crepe smothered in honey. For the past two ½ weeks all we have had for breakfast is tea and bread. So you can imagine that for someone who likes breakfast food as much as I do I was just slightly disappointed that I have yet to have enjoyed some “real American” breakfast food. We then met up with the tour agency and took a three hour jeep ride on the bounciest dirt road you can imagine to Santa Rosa where the pampas tour began. On our tour we met Matt from Ireland, his girlfried Katie from Scotland, another boyfriend/girlfriend couple from Australia, and two girls from Holland. Jayson and I had a real taste of what other college students around the world do for fun as we were highly entertained in our discussions during the few days we spent with them. We learned a great deal about the Irish conflict, life at Cambridge university, the best brands of rum, whiskey, liquor, vodka, etc. Most of them had been traveling for quite some time and still had a few months to go. Both Jayson and I decided that we would go absolutely crazy being on holiday for 7 months (even if it meant seeing the world in the process).
Our ride to the pampas took an eventful turn when our driver suddenly stopped, jumped out of the vehicle and yelled “anaconda”. Only seconds later he was running back towards us with a 2 meter anaconda dangling in his hand. We all jumped out of the jeep to take pictures of the snake and next thing I knew Jayson was holding onto the snake and doing a little dance up and down the road so as to not let the head of the snake get to close to his body. This was just the start to a very eventful day. When we finally arrived in the wetlands on the Yacuma river we boarded the boat with the rest of the group and took a three hour boat ride to the little hut where we are staying the night. Within only minutes of the boat ride we happened upon a crew of about 5 alligators (correctly termed caymen). I couldn’t understand why are tour guide didn’t let us stop very long to take pictures until only 30 yards down river we happened to see some more and then the whole three hours were spent seeing caymen on the banks of the river. We also so capybara (the world’s largest rodent). They are apparently sacred to Bolivians because usually they are pretty rare but the pampas has plenty and for my favorite part of the day we were able to see these squirrel monkeys and even feed them some bananas. They were quite vicious in their attempt to eat the bananas. By looking at the picture of my face it’s hard to tell if I was happy or scared of the monkeys but when it was all said and done I thought it was fun. The whole day was like a glorified trip to the zoo.
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