June 17 - Day 3 began with an early morning boat ride to a giant field where we watched the blood red sun rise over the horizon. It reminded me of the time when my friends and I woke our dates up (Stephanie) at 4 in the morning to watch the sunrise over the Tetons; even though we didn’t make it in time and the sun came over the mountains as we watch from the van window.
Later in the day we met one of Victor’s good friends, a caymán name Peter. Supposedly feeding any animal in the pampas is forbidden; however, Victor, and I am sure all the other guides do it as well, feed certain animals to make the tour better. Victor has fed this caymán so many times that he can go to Peter’s territory, tap on the water and Peter will come right up to his hand looking for food. When he called Peter for the first time we had no idea of Victor’s feeding routines, so we were quite impressed at the friendliness of such a fierce looking creature. Later we played around with Peter a bit as we feed him meat that was intended for fishing piranhas.
After lunch, our stay at the pampas ended. We loaded up our gear and headed back down the Yacuma River headed for Santa Rosa. The ride was quite relaxing as we saw all the animals we had seen on the way into camp. Our journey doubled in length because halfway down the river our boat broke down. Apparently someone had played a joke on us and poured water in the gas tank. Luckily the boat carrying 500 one-liter empty beer bottles back to civilization passed us and we tied the two boats together. We couldn’t go too fast but we made steady progress. Just before we got to Santa Rosa our rescue boat died as well, not too surprising considering all of their engines appear to be from the 1970’s. For the last couple hundred yards our guide used a long stick he had found and brought us to the little town gondola style. How’s that for dedication to customer service?
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