Following our epic jungle excursion, Sandro, Patrick, Natalie, Lindsey and myself and a driver left Rurre by van en route to the Pampas. I don’t think words can describe how good the air conditioning on the 3-4 hour car ride felt after the 4 day/3 night, nonstop schvitz-fest in the jungle. A welcome reprieve, but before we knew it, we were back in the heat and humidity, this time in the Pampas.

Unlike the dense jungle foliage, the pampas is a smattering of roughly three types of landscapes. You have your permanent rivers, your sporadic patches of above water year-round mini forests lining the permanent rivers, and your vast fields filled with waist-high plants and trees. The fields are hike-able in the dry season, but in the wet season are fully flooded so you would literally swim through or at least wade through pretty high water in the wet season. These plants and trees are highly evolved and adapted to thrive in long term flooding of agua dulce (sweet water) in the wet season and drought in the dry season.

March, when we went, is the wet season, and as a result, almost all of our exploration of the Pampas was by boat with refreshing wind in our faces, both along the permanent relatively wide rivers, and also through temporary, narrow waterways that only exist during the wet season.

To get to the lodge in the wet season, the van has to stop short where the dirt access road floods. At this point, we donned the galoshes our feet got to know quite intimately over the next few days and waded into a boat that carried us the remaining 10 minutes down the flooded road right into the river.

Mashaquique’s Las Tortugas lodge has a beautiful setting right on the river. Patrick and Natalie’s cabin was literally on stilts over the water, luckily for them with sound construction. The living conditions were quite similar to the jungle, with a few hours of solar power to charge camera batteries and the like, and we slept inside a mosquito net, but outside of our sheets. It was ideal Turkish Bath conditions, as far as heat and humidity ratios, went at all hours of every day. Being by the water, the mosquitos were extra friendly as well. We went through quite a lot of cortisone cream and bug spray, but it was a losting battle.

Once again, however, in spite of the heat and the itching, we had a an incredible three day stint. It was especially great having Patrick and Natalie along for the first 2 days (we stayed on one extra day). Patrick and I continued what is unquestionably hilarious bantering and spot-on wildlife impressions whilst Lindsey and Natalie continued their cringing and embarrassed sighs, refusing to recognize pure genius in front of their faces.

The three days were jam-packed with wildlife spotting, including swimming with pink river dolphins and seeing a whole slieu of different animials including capybaras, aka rodents of unusal size who are amphibious (they’re huge), piranha (we caught a small one fishing), a bunch of different monkeys including spider, howler and squirrel monkeys, so many different birds including, but definitely not limited to, egrets, herons, blue kingfisher, eagles and hoatzins, caiman, turtles, and a rare find of an anteater. The caiman, an alligator or crocodile-looking reptile that Wikipedia calls an “alligatorid crocodilian,” were especially cool to spot at night by shining flashlights across the water until we could see two bright orange eyes glowing back at us.

We even did one land, or more accurately, mud excursion, with Sandro on our last day in search of Anacondas. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts sloshing through the mud and fending off mosquitos, we weren’t able to find an any anaconda (apparently, they’re much easier to find in the dry season). I guess we’ll have to return!

In addition to the wildlife, the natural setting was pretty incredible in and of itself, with pretty flowers, vines, trees, and water reflections of the same surrounding us the whole excursion, which you’ll see in the photos.

One of my favorite moments of the Pampas was Lindsey dropping the lens cap for our camera into the river, lost for good. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t good for the camera and we had to improvise a rubber band and lens wipe cover temporary fix. But I knew after that I finally had the breathing room I needed to screw up something big time on my end, which I knew would inevitably come in handy. More on our adventures in finding a new lens cap in the upcoming La Paz post.

To see all of our pictures from the Pampas, click here.