The Jungle Post

This weekend, my roommate Ina and I took a trip to Villa Tunari, a small town in the Chapare region of the Bolivian rainforest.  The bus trip was only 4 hours long, but it felt like we traveled to a different world.  Even though Cochabamba is close to the equator, it's so high up in the mountains that the air is dry and it's usually pretty cool.  Villa Tunari, though, is almost at sea level, which allows jungle plants, animals, heat, and mosquitos to flourish there.

Like this, but with a National Geographic camera, instead
of my iPod through a bus window

The drive there was beautiful - we passed gorgeous mountains that were completely covered with deep green forests, waterfalls cascading down between rocks and vines, and clusters of little houses on stilts.  In middle school, one of my art assignments was to paint a landscape from National Geographic.  I chose a picture of two lush, tree-covered mountains with clouds rolling down their tops.  I can't remember where that picture was taken, but on the path to Villa Tunari, we passed what I swear was an identical landscape.

Just a few yards away from our room...

Ina and I stayed in "The Bridge Jungle Hotel," which consisted of a few little buildings (some guest cabins, a reception area, a hammock room) and a tiny pool surrounded by acres of nature: jungle, a river with swimming holes, a zipline path, and more jungle.  It was about a mile away from the only big-ish road in the town, so it was peaceful and quiet.  Well, maybe peaceful and quiet isn't the right description - it was actually quite noisy with the sounds of the nature surrounding it.  It was like someone was playing a "rainforest relaxation" meditation CD at high volume - all day and night, we could hear birds, monkeys, giant grasshoppers, and weird animals we didn't recognize at all.  One made a noise almost exactly like a rock dropping into a puddle of water.  Another sounded a little like a chainsaw.

The highlight of our trip was Parque Machi - a wildlife refugee that helps animals like monkeys, bears, turtles, and pumas that have been hurt, mistreated, or kept as pets get healthy and (hopefully) become re-incorporated into the wild.  The tamer animals (ie the monkeys) are left free to roam around a large section of the park, and visitors can walk through a trail in the middle of it.  

At first, Ina and I were a little disappointed.  For most of the 45 minute (all uphill) hike between the trees and vines in the muggy jungle heat, we only saw a few monkeys - and they were all so far away we could barely make them out through the trees.  Then we reached the top of the path: a little gazebo outlooking the river and town below.  It was full of monkeys hamming it up for a small audience of park visitors.  Smaller teenage monkeys swung from vines and held people's hands.  A tiny baby monkey took turns gazing curiously at the people taking pictures of it and hiding behind its mom.  Super laid-back older monkeys lay sleepily on the benches, opening their eyes - but not seeming to mind - when people would pet them or take pictures with them.  

He also looked a lot like Gollum

It was so cool.  I'd never seen monkeys that close before - they're awesome!  Watching them swing from vine to vine up close was amazing.  We got to see how they gripped with their tails, and how they helped each other reach even greater heights by pulling each other up.  The monkeys were also a lot fluffier than I'd imagined.  It wasn't quite like petting a cat, but their fur was much softer than I would have guessed.  At the same time, they looked so much more like humans than I'd thought.  The baby one had a face just like a hairy little old man.  

After we'd seen our fill of monkeys (and gotten more than enough mosquito bites), we headed back to explore the area around our hotel.  We hiked one of the little trails down to the river.  There, in one of the little swimming holes, we went for a swim, surrounded by a colorful cliff on one side and the dense forest on the other.  Afterrwards, we tried to sunbathe and read on the sandy shore for awhile, but the excessive amounts of ants foiled that plan.  Instead, we spent the rest of the afternoon listening to the jungle noises and swinging on hammocks above the hotel's restaurant.

Now does anyone want to come visit me?

The experience was amazing.  Chapare is on the very edge of the rainforest, making it the perfect beginner's trip into the jungle - one where there is still electricity and the bugs aren't that bad.  I mean, they were terrible, but not worse than camping by a lake during a Minnesota summer, and no where close to as bad as a certain ACE graduation retreat in Wisconsin last year...Still, Chapare is legitimately the jungle, and it was awesome to see it - filled with all kinds of strange and beautiful birds, amazing animals I'll probably never see again outside of a zoo, beautifully colored flowers and trees, and a sense of adventure and discovery.