June 16 - Day 2 of the pampas consisted of going on a hunt for anacondas, boa constrictors, and cobras in the marsh land. With nothing but a pair of galoshes and Jayson’s knife to protect us we set off for a three hour trek through knee deep water and mud to find the snakes. I failed to mention one detail and that is that the way you find the snakes is by stepping on them (or disturbing them in their own habitat). You can imagine that my every step was fairly slow while Jayson was trudging through the marshland with lightening speed. Fortunately or unfortunately we did not happen upon any anacondas in this trip but we took some sweet pictures of the storks and other birds in the area.
In the afternoon we went on riverboat ride to find the pink water dolphins. According to Victor (our guide) if you find the pink fresh water dolphins then you can swim in the river without worry because the dolphins protect people from the alligator and piranhas. Whether Victor was being serious or not we accepted his advice and jumped into the alligator/piranha/anaconda river once we happened upon the pink river dolphins. However, I am not convinced that the dolphins were enjoying our company. When we were on one side of the river they swam to the other and when we swam to the other side to be by them again they tricked us and went right back to the other side. Either it was a funny joke between the dolphins or they don’t really like offering their protective assistance to humans.
After the swim with the dolphins we went piranha fishing and Jayson and I each had success in catching one piranha even if they were both pretty small. Our guide caught a piranha that was big enough to take back to camp and cook but between 8 people the meat didn’t go very far. That night we went on another little boat ride to a central area where a bunch of pampas tours had come together to play some soccer and watch the sunset. It was quite a melting pot of people from all over the world coming together to play in the universal sport of ‘futbol’.
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