12/12/2010 - Rurrenabaque, Bolivia: Quality Time With The Griswalds

What's known as the touristy "Bolivian Death Road" is for pussies and grandmas. It's a beautiful road that has some ridiculous shear drops, and was once known as the most dangerous road in the world. But really it's not the case anymore because tourists are plucked from La Paz and driven to the top so they can mountain bike down. Now I'm not saying it's not extreme, it's definitely worthy of Bui's extremicle, but it's not even close to as extreme and dangerous as the road to Rurrenabaque. It was the most absurdly dangerous riding I've ever done. Period.

First off everybody drives on the wrong side of the road. Why? I have no clue, but after a few close calls and plenty of fist shakings I just accepted it. Next were all the crazy effing people. They're hauling ass all the time and just dodging obstacles while barely sticking to the road. Theyre all driving station wagons, so its like the latino Griswalds are coming to kill me. What made it worse was the actual condition of the road. It was a dusty, twisty, rut filled, one lane nightmare. Visibility was close to nothing when near anybody as the dust clouds were immense. My uncle died riding a motorcycle in too dusty of conditions. Needless to say I take that shit seriously. Lastly, I'm going down hill, so I'm on the big drop side of this one lane mess. So when cars come flying by, I've got to jump to the edge of what was usually another shear drop off. Scary shit, because randomly the road would crumble down the hillside, so if you were in a dust cloud hugging the edge of the road, you've got to hope that the road hasn't crumbled away in front of you. I was totally out of it. It was so fucking stressful, because during all of this I'm driving my Danish passenger, Teresa. There was simply no room for even the slightest error.

The touristy death road was fun, but after four hours of that crazy highway, I'm over it. We find a city midway to Rurrenabaque, and call it a night. I didn't think it was possible for the ride to get any worse, boy was I wrong. The next morning, it's just pissing down rain. Fuck. Teresa doesn't have rain pants, luckily I've got two rain jackets so at least a piece of us will be dry. I feel awful because I talked poor Teresa into coming, telling her about fun sunny rides on paved roads. While I take her on the two most ridiculous days of riding I've ever done. She's a trooper though, and even though she was obviously uncomfortable she didn't complain and was a stellar passenger.

The one positive about the rain, is that there's no blinding dust. But really that's the only plus about the days ride. Out of the frying pan and into they fire; if it wasn't rain, it was blinding fog. If it wasn't the Griswalds trying to kill us, it was the thick blood red mud that would pop up out of no where. I personally dropped my bike twice in the mud. Once doing a full 180 spitting up a huge rooster tail. Another time I hit a good strip of mud going about forty five and fishtailed all over the road for what seemed like two hundred yards. I thought for sure we were going down hard, but somehow I kept the bike upright. That was probably the worst of it, but after nine hours in the pouring rain we finally arrived in Rurrenabaque. Soaked to the bone, we couldn't have been more thankful for a hot shower. What a day!

The next day I'm ecstatic knowing I don't have to ride anytime soon. The whole point of coming to Rurre is to take an Amazon jungle tour, so with that booked for a grand total of forty bucks for three days. It might just be worth the drive. Then early the next morning we all stuff ourselves full of street food and head out. It's an awful three hour van ride on similar road conditions then a three hour ride up river to the jungle campsite.

Liam and I finally getting to ride a llama in La Paz.

The tour was awesome, food was good which was seriously unexpected since we paid next to nothing for the entire tour. Almost immediately on our boat ride the guide spots us a alligator. Then for the next three hours we're pointed out every living thing near the river. Tons of alligators, crocs, and caimans, as well as a couple different types of monkeys, pink river dolphins, turtles, capybaras ( giant rat / guinea pigs), and tons of different types of interesting birds. I was even stoked to see my first real wild toucan.

A nice capybara family.

The second day of the tour we went into the swamps to find an anaconda. We wern´t disappointed because not only did we find a ten foot snake to poke and annoy. We found a huge black caiman to fuck with. This gator was effing huge, it was at least fifteen feet head to tail. I walk up and take a picture coming pretty close. I thought that was it, but this other tour guide wasn't satisfied letting the gator sun bathe un molested, so this drunk ass grabs a stick and pokes the fucker. Eventually it gets annoyed and charges the guide, only for him to run away giggling. I'm totally dumbfounded. This guy is literally still drunk from the night before and he's fucking with a gator that could take his hand off without a second thought. Oh well, only going to be here once, so I get an escape route planned, and encourage this guy to poke him again. I'm standing right behind the guide telling him to poke it again and again. Same result. The croc lunges forward, faster and for a longer distance this time. I was the fucking flash, I was so out of there, if anybody's getting eaten, I'm throwing the drunk dude in first. Luckily everyone is fine, if not a little hyped on adrenaline. What a blast! Got to fuck with a giant gator and live to tell about it. Got some great pics, and BJ even got a pretty good video. Score!

This was one scary animal.

The rest of the day was spent lounging in the boat looking at pink river dolphins. They're fucking awesome. Dolphins in a muddy river. Are you kidding me? I didn't even know they existed. So cool. Even got to do some pirana fishing. What a cool tour, at a ridiculously awesome price. Too bad what happens in the jungle doesn't stay there. Some really serious shit went down, but that's for another entry. Stay tuned...