Sometime in the early 80's, four people were rafting down the Tuichi river in Bolivia. Their raft turned over and one of the people ( I don't know what happened to the others ) found himself lost in the jungle. He was in there for 18 days before a hunter from a remote community found him and took him to his village. They half fixed him up and then took him on a three day trip down river to Rurrenabarque, a small town on the Beni river. On the way they stopped at a traditional staging point for the villagers, Chalalan. This is a small lake that is spring fed, so is independent of the rivers and has clean water pumped into it constantly, there is one outlet which eventually reaches the river. This created a haven for wildlife and to the villages a great food source when travelling to Rurre. They stopped there for a couple of days , and while there the idea of a tourist camp took hold. I'll cut the story a bit short here. They got finance ( 1.5 mil) but only if they got help in setting everything up. The Bolivian gov stepped in and said that a foreigner wasn't going to own any part of it. It was eventually settles that the local community would have ownership.
This is where we roughed it.
It took them five years to build two buildings,m and when the agencies wanted more money to help the locals, the locals had a meeting and basically told them to stick it. So they finished the project on their own. They needed to get final inspections, but basically they finished they remaining 10 buildings in 6 months where it took 5 years to build two. Every single one of the 80 families in the community helped in this, and they were rewarded with part ownership. The breakdown is this, 50% own by the community ( now 120 families ), 49 % owned by the 80 families that built the place and 1 % owned by the church..... just because.
It is quite a small operation still, but needs to be, otherwise the animals would leave. That is the whole point of this place, to keep it forever if possible. So much pressure was put on the Bolivian gov that they created a national park around the place. You do get the feeling that they are passionate about the place, when they tell you that you must shower any insect repellent and sunscreen off before you go for a swim in the lake, so that it is not polluted. Now even the local don't hunt here, so i suppose that eventually the number of wildlife will increase.
The other very important thing they do out here, is to NOT interfere with the animals. The don't touch the at all, just observe. Some places catch anaconda and other animals, but they are getting harder to find for this exact reason, at Chalalan it will get easier. Unfortunately there are no anaconda here, and never has been but there are plenty of other animals to see.
8th apr. Our flight was leaving at 4.30pm. We got a call qt 11.30 asking us if we could be down there early due to bad weather in Rurrenabarque, could we be there at 12 for a 1pm flight. We had packed all our gear so this was no problem. Check in was good, and we got on the plane ready to leave at 1.15. Took off and then circled La Paz before landing again. The weather had closed in around Rurre, and we weren't going anywhere. We were told that the flight had been canned and to come back tomorrow. mmmmm great.
We rang the America Tours office and they said they would get back to us. So we went back into La Paz. Our bed had been given away,. so we went to another place where we had stayed. He was full as well, all he had was a room with one single bed in it and no key for the lock on the door. That was ok because we didn't get any sleep that night so why would you need to lock the door. America tours, did get back to us and said ' No problem we just shift the whole tour one day '.
Mountains just outside of La Paz.
9th. We went back to the airport, our flight was the 2pm one this time. Everything was great we got on the plane, went down the runway, and then suddenly powered down. At least yesterday we got airborne. They assured us that it was a minor problem and they would try to fix it as soon as they could. They were as good as their word on this and we finally took off for our 40 min flight at 4.30. It might only be 40 min by plane, but it is a 16 hour bus trip, and apparently not reliable ...... ?
A Chalalan rep met us at the airport, took us to the offices and made sure we settled into our hotel for the night. We had to be at the river for a 730 start the next morning, but don't worry I will come and get you.
10th. The boat trip was to take us 1.5 hour up the Beni river, the another 5 up the Tuichi. The wet had just finished so the river was flowing fast.
Skinny boat, 6.5 hours... brrrrrr.
I wasn't too keen on the boat, it was very long and very skinny, I suppose it needed to be this way because of the flow. We stopped at about 11 for a snack and a loo break, there weren't any actual loo's, so some of the group said they would wait, but you get the idea. There were 5 of us, one American and another two Australians. We got there at about 2pm, had lunch and a talk about the place and then took off on our first walk. Jo and I had our own guide and the other three had another. We walked around the edge of the lake, heard a tree fall through the forest, which we had to later walk around. The mossies were thick and the tree had stirred up loads of ants. A canoe had been taken to the edge of the lake for our return trip, we were covered in bite already and we'd only been there five minutes. On the way back in the canoe we saw a group of yellow squirrel monkeys coming down for their afternoon drink. We just floated on the lake watching them. We also saw some brown capuchino monkeys as well.
Yellow Squirrel Monkey.
Dinner was very good, in fact the food overall was good I thought, and then we were all heading out on the lake to look for caimans. Yep they said it was safe to swim during the day, but not to swim at night. the way you spot caymans is to hold your torch at eye level and pan around, their eyes glow back at you. The girl in the boat in front of me, Lisa one of the Australians, said she couldn't see anything. I gave her my torch, told her how to look....... gosh ... she said and threw the torch back at me. The whole lake was alive with eyes. They were all babies, but they were still there. We were looking for the big one, a 4m to 5 m beast. One of the guides stood up in the canoe and started making baby distress calls. Splash, we had found the big one. The eyes were huge, but it didn't do anything but watch us. Me being so brave, blacked out at this point, we just drifted in close to the caiman. I wasn't exactly in my comfort zone. I am here writing this so everything worked out fine.
That was it for day 1, we headed to camp and to bed. The facilities here are incredible, when you consider how remote you are. It was easy to forget that you are in the animals home and not your own. The cayman had certainly brought this fact home to me.
11th. A heavy trek was waiting for Jo and I after breakfast. We were to cross the lake and then take a trail that crossed two small rivers, before heading back to the lodge. We hadn't walked more than 50m before we were soaked through with sweat. The reason for crossing the rivers was that this was where the black howler monkeys lived. Apparently you don't get to see them very often. We could here them in the distance and managed to get in front of them. Only because of the guide were we able to sit under the trees and watch the whole group pass over us as the fed. They did spot us and change course, but we were no threat and the one that stayed behind to keep an eye on us didn't seem too bothered about us and then raced off to catch the group. On the way back Sergio ask if we wanted to try Piranha fishing.
Piranha fishing.
We said sure ... where.... He said here, in the river we just crossed. The river we just crossed... oh my god. We didn't end up catching any, so I think this was a good thing, and we hot footed it back to camp for lunch and a siesta.
We had another canoe ride in the afternoon, and saw more birds and monkeys. This was much to our liking, we had deck chairs set up in the canoe and were paddled leisurely around the lake, in the shade.
We had a night walk after dinner, back down to where the large caiman lives. It was out in the water, but it was much better seeing it from the land than the water. Jo freaked out at the taranchula nest, so I didn't get to see them. That was ok because there is another nest in camp that you can see, the hairy little buggers, well they're not that little. We had a party, thanking us for coming, much drinking and dancing and went to bed about midnight.
Not a bad way to travel, we certainly did it tough in the jungle.
12th. The boat rip back only take 2.5 hours but we did get to see some cappiburras on the way. We had a 1pm flight back to La Paz. We had the option of a 5pm one but I thought it would be best to get out of there while we could. Lisa and Andrea were supposed to come back last night, they are staying at the same hostel as us and were on the5 pm flight, they didn't turn up?
If I could do it again I would spend a bit more time at the lodge, say another day or two. We weren't told we could stay longer by the tour group booking us and had already booked flights, and I would spend a day in Rurrenabarque, there are more things to do than we had time. 1 full week should be enough.
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