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Getting Back
Returning to El Prado after our last day of collecting. We could at the sun without squinting from all the smoke in the air
That's not fog. It's eye-burning smoke from hundreds of thousands (millions?) of acres burning.
I felt like I was living in the filter end of a lit cigarette.
That night, the fires caught up with us. This hand-held extended exposure shot is of the treeline across the river from us.
Thank goodness the river acts as a fastastic fire break.
The next morning, it was time to go home but we woke up instead to this...and a crackling radio message: the government of Bolivia and the aviation authorities had indefinitely cancelled all domestic flights. No planes were allowed to take off. So how the hell were we going to get back to Santa Cruz?! Well, the only option was to take the canoe for 2 to 3 hours to Bella Vista. Then take a truck for an hour or so to Magdalena. And then pray that someone had a bus or truck to transport us to Trinidad or better, Santa Cruz. Fortunately, our host at the Hotel Internacional, Sylvia Speisseger, was a woman with contacts and she was able to round up a couple of pickup trucks for all of us and our gear. But...uh...Trinidad was at least 9 hours away! And Santa Cruz was another 9 or 10 hours from Trinidad. This was going to be interesting. Ay-ay-aye!
My last memory of my stay at El Prado.
This is what we faced for 9 hours. I was in the back seat of a little pick up truck in between a large Canadian and a giant bodybuilder from Montana - yeah, we attract all sorts. And our carryon luggage too. I wondered how these trucks survived more than a few trips on this road. This 'road' is only open for 6 months of the year. It is submerged the rest of the year. After about 3 hours of this, I began to question my sanity. It is hard to explain, but this was one of the most uncomfortable journeys I have ever taken. Worse than driving from Lagos to Port Harcourt in Nigeria and worse than the 'death march' in Peru where a group of us had to walk back a long way to our boat and I forgot to bring drinking water and subsequently overheated.
Part of the discomfort was the extremely dusty conditions. If we passed someone going the other direction, we were engulfed in fine dust for about 5 minutes. Of course, when we got behind another vehicle, we could see nothing for a long time.
It's better to be a duster than a dustee.
One of the few stops we made was to photograph this False Water Cobra. Jeff took this shot but we never managed to catch the animal. It is a rear-fanged snake but not much is known about it. It is not a cobra as its name implies, but the creature is capable of spreading its neck, much like a real cobra.
One of many grassfires that put us in the quandry.
Why did the Jabiru storks cross the street? To get away from being roasted. Note the turkey-sized Caracara in the lead.
Animals trying to get away from the fires occasionally got hit by trucks. An unidentified fox.
We finally arrived at Trinidad, an open-sewer town with not much in the way of comfort. We were completely coated with brownish red dirt - you couldnt tell one person apart from another. We were going to the bus station to catch an overnight bus to Santa Cruz and its international airport. Almost the instant our trucks shut their engines off, we were swarmed by about 10 local kids and a few adults offering to help carry our bags (for a fee of course.) I politely refused and began looking for my suitcase and cooler with my bags of fish. It was gone! One of the kids had already stolen it! That was quick. We looked everywhere for hours. In the suitcase were dirty clothes, a few bag of Citrus Pikes, a novel and my return ticket. Perfect!
I was upset about losing my fish. My ticket was an e-ticket, so that was not an issue. And I can always replace my novel and my clothes. After the over night bus ride to Santa Cruz, we found a hotel and washed the many layers of grime off our bodies. I particularly enjoyed the high-tech water heater - a live electric wire went into the shower head and heated the water if you adjusted the water flow just so. Jeff's curiosity, being the owner of an electrical contracting company, was not rewarded. He was shocked - literally and figuratively.
Off to the airline office we went to get me a new ticket. We should have known. They would not issue me a ticket. They said I had to file a complaint with the police dept., and bring back a file or report that verified the theft. "How long would that take?" we asked. "Three months." said the lady behind the counter. So I had to purchase a one-way my ticket to Miami for about $700. It's a good thing my wallet and credit cards were not stolen.
During the last couple of days of the trip, almost everything that could go wrong did. Still, I could not help laughing and smiling. Even as the mishaps were unfolding, I knew that I would look back and laugh at the experience.
It's hard to get me upset in South America. It's what I love.
All photos by J. Cardwell, S. Jack and V. Kutty
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