April, 2005
April 19 - 22, 2005
This is an incredible park, almost the size of Ecuador, and an incredible way to exoperience the Amazon.
To get here, we flew on this old Bolivian Air Force plane, and then took a dug out canoe 5 hours up river from Rurrenabaque. This, plus a half hour hike in got us to the Chalalan Lodge. The Lodge is particularily cool because it is completely run by the indiginous community of San Jose, which lives in the Park. Rather than kick out indiginous people that have lived on the land for generations, the Bolivian governemnt created a national park with integrated management in several areas. The people who have traditionally lived on this land are allowed to stay, while other people are not allowed to come in and exploit resources. The indiginous inhabitants continue to use resources for homes, food, and necessary goods - however only for their own consumption. They cannot sell the wood or animals for a profit. As a substitute, the lodge, and other tourism, provide alternative sources of income for the community. The locals act as guides, educate people about the environemnt, and are the sole profiteers from such eco tourism. It a great model.
On the hike in we saw all sorts of crazy stuff including lots of Howler monkeys, we love Howlers. We also saw Scarlet Macaws, which as we have mentioned before are beautiful rainbow colored birds who mate for life and never leave each others' sides. If one dies, the other one dies quickly thereafter.
We spent the next 4 days hiking around the jungle checking out wildlife and sweating like crazy. We saw a poisonous lance head snake, a tree boa, a rainbow boa, all sorts of frogs, these things that looked like Rodents of Unusual Sizes from the Princess Bride, and all sorts of other life you can't imagine, and we can't remember how to pronounce.
In the evenings, just before sunset, we would take a canoe out onto the lagoon, paddle around and check out all of the monkeys playing in the trees. In addition to Howlers, and Capuccin monkeys, we saw a species of bright banana yellow Squirell Monkey (totally different than those in Costa Rica, and Nicaragua), which would fly around the trees play fighting with each other. These are maybe the cutest creatures we have ever seen, even though one tried to pee on us . . . he missed. These rides were so peaceful as the sun went down, and Mike seemed to fall asleep every time we went out.
Every night when we went to sleep, we could hear the sounds of the jungle all around our little wooden cabins. We also got a few nights of heavy rains which made for such a soothing bedtime soundtrack, especially in the morning when the rain meant sleeping in. Ahh, sleeping in. Plus, they had these great big mosquito nets, which didn't make you feel like you were in a cave, and saved us from all sorts of interesting insects which as far as we can tell didn't do any damage to us.
The trip ended great as well, as the ride back was only 3 hours, and with the current so we got to go pretty fast. Perfect napping conditions.
