AUTHOR: Nancy TITLE: Bolivia and Chalalan DATE: 3/24/2010 02:45:00 PM ----- BODY:

It's been a bit difficult getting in touch with us, so here's a brief explanation - Don has been in Fiji talking with people there about starting a factory. Gail has been in Australia trying to keep up with planning the next volunteer adventure. Gerry and Nancy were in Guatemala and Honduras talking to people there about a factory, and then Nancy (me) left for South America. So, after April 5th or so, we should all be back in Eugene and you should be able to reach us easily.

I hadn't planned on coming to Bolivia, but as I was here I looked around for what seemed the most interesting adventure that was a bit out of the ordinary. AND I FOUND IT! The options were to go to the salt flats and stay in a salt hotel, to go to Lake Titicaca and sail in a reed boat and visit the Island of the Sun, or to go to an ecotourism lodge on a tributary of the Amazon. So, I picked Chalalan Ecolodge, the first ecolodge in Bolivia, set up in the 1990s by the inhabitants of a remote Amazonian village to generate income for the community.

I flew to Rurrenabaque past enormous snow-covered peaks in a tiny Amazonas plane and was transferred to the Hotel Oriental with a mob of Asian-Aussies. Most of the travelers here have been on the road for between nine and sixteen months, and most are under thirty.

As we had flown from 14,000 ft and weather in the 60s, the heat and humidity were a challenge so we hung out in hammocks, dined on fresh fish.

In the morning we shouldered our packs, climbed into canoes, and rode for five and a half hours through the Madidi National Park. Along the way there were red and green macaws, families of the largest rodents in the world, egrets, Amazon geese, red howler monkeys, and enormous stands of palms, tropical foliate and pampas grass growing over forty feet high. And we were the only canoes there for ninety percent of the journey.

When we reached Chalalan our packs were transported by wheelbarrow while we walked the forty five minutes to our lodge. I wondered why it was so far from the river, but it was set on a beautiful lake and looked like a lovely summer camp. The buildings were all made of thatch, there were wild grapefruit trees in front of the dining room, and we were immediately treated to fresh lemonade and a lunch of a delicious black-eyed peas.

It was in the 90s with 90% humidity, so again we headed for the hammocks and a rest before our night hike. All of the guides, servers,and personnel at Chalalan are from the same indigenous village and all were multi-lingual, personable, and completely familiar with the wildlife. After all, their village is another three hours down-river and they all live there when they're not working.

Our adventure for the next two days was absolutely jam-packed. We hiked that evening and then again the following morning (4 hours!) and saw boas, yellow and blue macaws, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, cappucine monkeys, golden orb spiders, bats, tarantulas, 24-hour ants (yes, you die within 24 hours!), leaf-cutting ants, termites in enormous nests, hair-cutting bees (little black guys in a black hole in a tree), peccaries, frogs (I was the only one without one in my toilet!), and yes, we even swam in the lake where the caiman live. We paddled out in the canoe and saw kingfishers and watched the squirrel monkeys try to raid the nest of some prehistoric birds known as a huatsen. There were six screaming huatsen flapping their enormous wings and trying to scare both us and the monkeys away from their eggs.

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