Santa Rosa de Yacuma

After a quiet night on our make do camp spot, we set off on a grey humid morning to drive the remaining 100km to Santa Rosa. We hoped that the recent rain had not turned the dirt road into an impassable mud bath as we passed through a toll booth that marked the start. We were still trying to get our heads around Bolivian toll roads. Here, they are a wooden hut on one side of the road, with a piece of rope tied across to the nearest tree. Normally several bottles or pieces of cloth feature on the rope and then the person in the toll booth pulls it tight to block the way. My general policy on driving is if that no one makes me stop, I’m not going to. And so if I see the piece of rope on the floor, I’m happy to just drive over it. Quite often the booth itself is also away from the road, meaning you’d need to stop and get out to pay. We drove over the rope, saw it twitching around in the rear view mirror and reversed back up… I went to ask if we needed to pay, which apparently we did. I told her it wasn’t very clear with the rope on the floor if we had to stop and she explained that because motorbikes are free it’s too much effort to keep putting the rope up and down. So there we have it. A matter of pennies exchanged hands and we continued on. 

This was normally a wide dirt road, but the other side was rendered impassable to most traffic but huge churned muddy ruts. Therefore all traffic tried to fit in our lane, it was slightly chaotic but at least we didn’t have to brave the mud. I hoped that it wouldn’t spread to consume the entire road later. It was slow going and we expected that the drive would take the best part of three hours. While some sections were flat hard pack dirt, others were rough and rutted. It was clear they were doing some major work to this sections, but if previous traveller reviews were anything to go by, it had been like this for some time. In order for the work traffic to continue, there were large sections where the road was down to single lane again. This in itself would not normally be an issue, but the camber on the road was so extreme, as we tried to bypass a nearby bulldozer, that I was genuinely scared the van was going to tip over. 

In other sections, it wasn’t the mud that made the driving difficult. In complete contrast, the roads were bone dry. The dust from passing traffic meant that the road often completely disappeared in a huge cloud leaving the camper covered in dust and both us and the cats sneezing. While this was unpleasant, it was the large rocky sections that Ruby didn’t like. It was like driving on a pebbled beach. The road was made from large loose rocks that the previous traffic had dug into, forming two trenches for the wheels. You couldn’t really move out of these, as soon as you tried the wheels slid, but at the same time staying in them meant that the radiator underneath was now having a large amount of rocks and dirt shovelled into it from the raised central section. We slowly continued on with a watchful eye on the temperature gauge in case it became totally blocked. After what felt like longer than it probably was, we arrived in the tiny town of Santa Rosa and headed to the dock. 

We had read that if you go to this small dock on the river it is possible to hire a boat directly. It’s  the same place that all the tours go from, but by cutting out the middle man we could hopefully get ourselves not only a private tour but one for half the price. We pulled up outside the visitor centre and already someone was walking over to us. He introduced himself as Ivar, a name we recognised from previous reviews and within minutes we had arranged ourselves a 4 hour private tour for the following morning at the bargain price of £60. With that sorted, we headed back to Laguna Brava to camp for the night. 

Apparently swimming is not permitted here because of the risk of crocodiles and so with a little caution we let out the cats. There didn’t seem to be anything around and after a long, hot dusty drive we were all dying to get out of the van. Even the murky brown waters of the lake were starting to look appealing and we grabbed a few buckets of water to clean out the worst of the dust that we had accumulated on the drive. Since the garage in Ecuador our sliding door was missing a large part of its seal and so it enthusiastically sucked in dust through the bottom and chucked it all over the place as we drove while at the same time clogging up the door mechanism to a point where the sliding door no longer slid. After a lot of wiping and WD40, we were ready to settle down for the evening. 

Wallas exhaust looking pretty dirty and on the right is the dirt inside our radiator scoop

As per usual, we set up the van and turned on the cooker. Except that this time it refused to start and presented us with an error code that wasn't in the manual. This wasn't a good sign but there was little we could do out here in the middle of nowhere and so we made us of a huge concrete grill that had been built under the trees at the back. We cooked up some spiced fish and naan bread and still enjoyed a good meal. At least the Wallas hadn't given up on us when we most needed it back at higher elevation, down here we didn't need heating.

The next morning we left in a rush for our 8am tour in our typical fashion of never being quite getting up early enough. Still as the only passengers, we weren’t keeping anyone except Ivar waiting and he wasn’t in the least bit bothered. By Latin American standards, we were still too early and while the boat was prepared we made a hasty sandwich and paid the entrance fee for the park. By this time, our craft was ready and we were given some lifejackets before plonking ourselves down in the middle, with our captain at the back. I glanced down the river that we were about to head into and out of the corner of my eye a flash of pink in the river just a few metres of way was the first time I saw one of the dolphins. 

On the tour we hoped to see capybaras, monkeys, caiman, dolphins as well as a wide variety of birds and with ivar at the helm, we set off. Within a few hundred metres, we had already seen the caiman and hoatzins (a bird known locally here as serere). This tour was off to a good start. 

In fact, within about half an hour we had scene an incredible range of wildlife. The caiman were everywhere, they lined every bank in different shapes and sizes and swan in the river next to us. On occasion we saw them feeding, to my surprise, on the smallest member of their species. 

Next to the caiman, in a seemingly more peaceful existence, were families of capybaras. They lazed on the river banks in the sun, undeterred by the giant predators that slid through the water beneath them and trampled along the banks. 

In the trees above, serere’s sat in abundance. They weren’t the only birds here though by any stretch. We saw giant nesting Jabiru in the trees above us and a flash of blue in front as we followed a kingfisher down the river.

Before long too, we spotted the dolphins. Unlike they’re marine family, they didn’t jump out of the water much and with the river waters brown and murky you wouldn’t see them until they poked their heads out for a second right next to you before sliding back to the muddy depths. We saw them several times as we passed by, but only for a few seconds and never long enough to get a good photo. That one is just for the memory bank.

While I was happy with my birds, Lee was desparate for the monkeys. We meant to bring bananas with us and had totally forgotten, so we were armed with the remains of the brownie I had brought as a snack, which I hoped wouldn’t be damaging to monkeys. Ivar sat in the back chewing on coca leaves and starting to form a huge bolo (ball of coca leaves) in the side of his face like a hamster. Every now again he pointed out a new animal, shouting its name, followed by. 

“Photo! Photo!”

He clearly knew the trees where the monkeys would be and although we were the first tour out on the river, we were quickly getting caught up by the bigger parties behind and so our first monkey experience was rather taken over. Ivar was unfazed. He managed to persuade one of the other guides to part with some of his bananas and powered on ahead to the next monkey tree. Here we had them all to ourselves and they came in their droves. They climbed on us and onto the boat. They hung out of the branches just above our heads and grabbed at bits of banana, until all too quickly we had run out of food and they retreated back into the tree tops. 

We didn’t go much further down the river. We passed some of the tourist accomodation places on the banks as we went, for those who purchased a two day tour, before coming to a stop. Ivar waved his hand at the water ahead.

“All the same!” he declared, turning the boat around. 

We couldn’t complain, we had seen everything we came for and more and so on our return trip we sat back, and enjoyed the breeze, the sun and the occasional dolphin. In the back, Ivar enjoyed his coca. Any words he spoke now an incomprehensible mumble through the huge ball of leaves in his cheek. As we neared the docks once more, we saw the largest caiman yet. Ivar waved his hands about a bit and mumbled something about how many metres it was as we saw it grab a hold of a smaller unfortunate one and drag it under into a death roll that churned the waters around us and rocked the boat. For the first time I was glad that there were several metres and a lot of hard wood between it and us. On that grand finale, we arrived back at the dock. It had been an amazing experience and despite the long days of driving and bad roads, it was definitely worth it.