Bolivia or Bust!

This is the second entry we´ve written in a very short time. So, if you haven´t already, be sure to check out our entry on our time at Pica Flor Research Center!

After leaving Pica Flor on November 17th, we headed for Bolivia. What we didn´t anticipate was just how challenging the trip would be... We knew that it wasn´t the usual tourist trek and therefore not the easiest or surest way to go, but we knew that we would eventually (hopefully, more like it) get to Bolivia with a enough stick-to-it-iveness, patience and determination.

Along the way we went by boat, then by car, then by motorcycle and finally by bus. First, in Puerto Maldonado, we crossed a river by boat, which took longer than planned because the motor kept cutting out and we kept drifting further down stream. Once on the other side, we crammed into a collective car and headed north, parallel to the Bolivian Border. From a small town, we hopped on the back on mototaxis and headed toward the Bolivian border. We had previously gathered that it was a quick jaunt to the Bolivian border, but after an hour and a half of riding through the jungle on narrow, muddy trails we finally arrived at the border. There was no fanfare. In fact, I hadn´t even realized that we had crossed into Bolivia except that Sarah said she saw a sign indicating we were. There was no formal (or informal) border control in this border town. This small community, called Soberania, consisted of just a few ´homes´ and a modest school. There were no tourist services i.e. a place to sleep.

Sarah and I had planned to continue on in hopes of reaching our final destination (Cobija, where there was a formal border control office) that same day. However, in planning our trip to cross the border, we had misjudged how long the entire trip would take and didn´t leave Puerto Maldonado until about noon. That was a mistake. From this small, border town, we would´ve needed to go a ways further to get to a major road which would then take us to Cobija. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived across the border, there were no more transports to Cobija. So we had either the choice of staying in this small town (with no services, no tent, no hammocks, and no sleeping bags) or traveling onward by motorcycle to the major road leading to Cobija in hopes of catching something. Also, the people from Soberania said that there was a town there similar to theirs. We decided to take our chances so we rode off at high speed down a jungle road, only slightly better than the one we had just been on. We arrived at a small community called Espiritu that consisted of just a small store surrounded by a few ramshackle dwellings. After talking to people there about wanting to continue on to Cobija, we realized that indeed there was little or no hope of getting transport to Cobija until morning, as we were told in the previous town. We had made it a bit further, but now were in a village with even less sleeping accomodations than the former. In other words, there wasn´t even a table to sleep on. Even though it wasn´t in the thick of the jungle (because people had cut down much of it), there still were plenty of mosquitos. We weren´t inclined to sleep on the ground so we found a small wooden ledge attached to the community store, applied a whole lot of insect repellent, and laid down for the night using our not-so-soft backpacks as pillows. Needless to say, we did not sleep much that night, but we both agreed the stars were very nice to look at.

The next morning, after waiting a couple of hours for a ride, we caught a cheap but rather luxurious bus to Cobija where we did immigration entry paperwork.

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We actually had a small immigration problem. In Peru, we technically exited the country (for immigration purposes, we got the exit stamp) in Puerto Maldonado before we went to Pica Flor. Our guidebook said that this was the right thing to do because we thought we were going to go directly to Bolivia from Pica Flor via boat (even though we weren't going directly to Bolivia). We even talked with the Peruvian officals about it.

After thinking about how to get to Bolivia from Peru, we had a change of heart (due to many factors) and decided to go by road. Anyway, our exit stamps from Peru were dated Nov 9th, but we arrived at Bolivia's immigration (this one is incidentally is maybe 5 feet from the Brazillian border) November 18th. According to our passports, for about 10 days, we were legally not in any country. We had to pay a small "fine" (quite frankly, others might call it a bribe) to legally be allowed in Bolivia. We really didn't have a choice unless we wanted to head back to Peru (a 2 day trip). It all worked out in the end, but next time we know to get a permission slip from the exiting country if such an issue should arise again.

Cobija is a fairly urban area, but in remote location. We knew we wanted to head for Rurrenabaque, but transportation options are limited between Cobija and Rurrenabaque. As a result, we needed to go through Riberalta, a supposedly 12-hour bus ride that took 16 hours. That bus ride was very different from others we´ve taken. The bus was fairly comfortable and we´d been on extremely bumpy roads before, but this bus got stuck in the mud twice, its battery died a couple times, and we needed to get out of the bus at least 5 times for river crossings by ferry. We arrived in Riberalta with no reservation at midnight and had to do a fair amount of door knocking (and hotel-owner-waking) before finally finding a place at 2 a.m. to sleep for the night.

Like I just wrote, we didn´t plan to stay in Riberalta, but that´s what ended up happening. Turns out that we arrived during the week of the the department of Beni´s anniversary (note: a department is a state). Lots of people were traveling and the transportation options were not all that plentiful to begin with! So we rested in Riberalta a day before catching a bus to Rurre (as Rurrenabaque is often called). This bus ride didn´t involve any ferries, getting stuck or the like, but it was 2 hours late in leaving and a total of 4 hours late in arriving. Now we think we´ve been doing pretty well with these long bumpy bus rides... but towards the end of that one, we were ready to be done!