the last day of our three day pampas trip brought with it the activity i’d been most looking forward to: swimming with wild pink dolphins!
in order to swim with what we wanted to swim with (the dolphins) we had to hop into the water in which we’d spent the past two days spotting caiman crocodiles and fishing for piranhas! the trick is to develop a rapid and severe case of amnesia and just not think about it!
luckily, the pay off was so much fun! the water is really dark and murky so we couldn’t see them at all unless the came to the surface, and likewise, they couldn’t see us underwater, so they ended up just bumping into our feet and legs. it’s really quite scary to just tread water and wait for something to hit you… and hope it’s the dolphin you think it is!
once they found us underwater, they were very playful and would just swim around our legs and “nibble” our toes. we’d all been told about this beforehand and knew what to expect, which for michael made it all the worse since he is really weird about his toes and does not like them touched at all! so, for that reason, he didn’t last too long in the water.
i, however, was obsessed with the idea of having my foot inside a wild dolphins mouth and really don’t know why. when it actually happened, turns out “nibbling” is a very, very close cousin to “biting”! the last, and final dolphin that decided to make friends was a little too rough for me. i was yelling in pain, “owwww! oowww! oww!” and our guides, instead of giving me any advice about how to get away from the too friendly dolphin who was not taking my hints of kicking him (gently) in the head to go away, were cracking up and mimicking me!
i swam to safety and climbed aboard the canoe with a bleeding toe as a battle wound. it took a really long time to heal for just a little bite, and i kept a band-aid on it for a couple weeks. i kept having this vision of someone asking what happened to my toe, and i’d respond, “dolphin bite”. it was really funny in my head… but no one ever asked.
pink!
these were not bottle nose dolphins! look at that mouth!
michael (yes, under all that hair/beard is michael!), trying to keep his toes out of harm’s way
the younger ones are more gray, less pink
(this is me and bec, the female half of the australian duo we traveled with for a bit, and she is, infact, very beautiful. it’s really a sin to even post this unflattering picture of her, but i feel no one would believe how close we were to these wild dolphins without the proof!)
the biter
after our dolphin outing, we went back to camp to pack up and then made the long trip back (by boat then by jeep) to rurrenabaque. since our whole three day trip had been pushed back a day due to weather delaying our flight out of la paz by hours and hours, we were really unsure of when we’d be flying out of rurrenabaque. once we got back into town we walked to the airline office to ask if there was a chance to get on that evening’s flight.
well, turns out, we were already booked on that flight (unbeknownst to us) and needed to get on the shuttle to take us to the airport (a.k.a. grassy field) right that second! this was definitely a problem since our bags were all across town (granted, “across town” in rurrenabaque only means about 5 blocks away) stored at a hostel . i asked the man behind the counter if we could have 10 minutes to go grab our stuff and we’d be right back… he said, “no, cinco minutos.”
at this point we were still traveling with our australian friends bec and adam, so bec and i yelled for michael and adam to RUN and we’d make sure they didn’t leave without us. the boys didn’t waste a second’s time and took off running down the street. after they left, i looked down and realized adam had even run right out of his flip flops and taken off barefoot.
bec and i waited nervously to see if they would make it back in time. everyone else’s bags were loaded up to the top of the van and all the passengers were inside. bec climbed aboard and i waited next to the van looking down the street when i saw a bolivian on a motorbike (the main mode of transportation there) pull up and two big arms appear behind him pumping the air in victory. it was adam. a second later, here comes michael, a bag on each arm, straddling a skinny local on a puttering bike and looking very victorious. whew!
we made it back to la paz, bolivia that night without any further mishaps and checked back into the hostel we’d stayed in before (cruz de los andes) this time with bec and adam just a floor above us. we’d be meeting them at breakfast the next morning to discuss biking the death road and whether i’d man-up or chicken out.
