Bolivian Pampas, part two: Life on a river, the first day

We had arrived at the Yacuma river. This was to be the roadway on which our travelling would take place in the next two days.

Several long canoes were waiting to be loaded: all the different tour operators started out from here to reach their lodges about two and a half hours upriver. Our boat, the 'Dolphin II', was equipped with four metal folding chairs bolted to the side of the canoe, and once our luggage and the supplies had been stowed Victor, our guide, started the engine and nosed the boat out into the current.

It is rainy season now, and the river, only about a meter high during dry season, according to Victor, has already risen seven or eight metres and has turned into a massive waterway with many arms. It was hard to imagine that we were manoeuvring between tree tops, even harder to imagine what this river might look like when it is low. Victor warned us that our olfactory senses might be insulted: rotting vegetation has turned the water dark brown and murky, and the strong scent of decay filled our nostrils. We soon got used to it, however, especially since our other senses were immediately fully engaged as well.

We hadn't even really gained speed yet when Victor pointed to a spot in the middle of the river that seemed to be churning with some movement. A moment later a greyish-pink back appeared briefly, followed by another one: the pink river dolphins unique to the Amazon basin. They are the only freshwater dolphins in the world, and we would encounter them time and again in the next couple of days.

Cormorants

Slowly we made our way upriver, stopping from time to time when Victor wanted to show us something along the way: the long, intricately woven basket-like nests of fly catchers, black vultures surveying their surroundings from high up in a tree, a whole family of black cormorants sitting side by side on a branch, different herons, white egrets, a Solitary eagle, cara-caras (a type of falcon) ... River turtles were sunning themselves on logs in the water, almost always two together, the one in the back resting its neck on the shell of the front one. Victor brought the boat alongside them and turned off the engine, but by the time we had aimed our cameras they had usually slipped into the water.

River turtles

Around four in the afternoon we passed the first of the lodges strung out along the shoreline, far enough apart that they were out of sight of each other. Soon Victor swung around and parked our canoe at the dock of the 'Dolphin Tour' lodge. We had arrived at our temporary home.

Victor introduced us to Señora Irma, the cook, who soon appeared with a plate of cookies and a jar of juice, and showed us around. Wooden walkways, like the lodge and Irma's house on stilts, connected the different buildings. The river spilled over into the bush behind the lodge, the water level much lower there, but high enough for Pepe, the three-and-a-half metre long black caiman who lives under the porch behind the kitchen. Only the upper half of his head and the spiked tail were visible above the surface of the water. His eyes were closed, and his head looked like a relief carved from stone. We were warned not to get too close, however, and not to feed him. While he lives in close proximity to the lodge he is not tamed and has chosen this spot himself, free to leave when he feels like it. 

Two kinds of caimans live in the river, the bigger black caiman that can reach up to nine metres in length when fully grown, and the smaller white or spectacle caiman, named for its bulging eyes. We saw a few of them close to the lodge as well, though none as permanently installed as Pepe seemed to be. The shape of the eyes and the lack of spikes on head and tail in the white caiman make it quite easy to distinguish the two. 

The walkway continued through the swampy area past Irma's house and ended at the 'mirador', a two-story building with a screened-in lower part and a viewing area on top. From here, we had an unimpeded view of the wide expanse of pampas stretching green and lush into the distance. 'All that's missing are the elephants', said André, and indeed it resembles the African savanna. Here, all we saw were birds, and the occasional sleek back of a dolphin in the river. We watched as the sun slowly slipped lower and finally sank behind the horizon shortly before six, the wide sky aglow in gold and bronze. Still it was very warm, and mosquitoes were becoming a bother with increasing darkness.

Victor, who had left us to our own devices for the last part of the afternoon, picked us up after nightfall for a boat ride in the dark: we were going to look for 'caiman eyes' with our flashlights.

The water gurgled softly under the keel, and the sky was a sea of light. This darkness, unspoiled by human attempt to ban it with artificial light, was an incredible backdrop for the fine line of the first sliver of moon just past new, surrounded by a carpet of stars. The cruce del sur – the southern cross – pointed the way south, and two faint white clouds hung low in the sky: the Magellanic clouds, galaxies of the southern hemisphere. I remembered my excitement when I first saw them in Argentina during our first visit to South America.

Our flashlights caught the reflection of a caiman's eye here and there, but to me it was the night itself that will make this evening excursion memorable, the feeling of magic when Victor turned off the engine and we glided silently on the quiet waters in this tropical night, billions of insects filling the immense space with their song, as incredible as the dome of light spanned above.

The generator that had been running since about seven, providing light and also the opportunity to charge any batteries we might need, was turned off at nine, and the lodge was plunged in the semi-darkness of a tropical night. We arranged our mosquito nets and did what people without electricity have done for eons: we went to sleep, filled with the impressions of this long day.