Alto Tuichi: More Pictures

wolf spider with egg sack ; Abundant on Rio Tuichi

Sandro pulling Ramiro up Serrania 1 using our £2 rope

Me looking desperate and bedragged by the Mal Paso San Pedro rapids

Lost in Taquarilla thickets at the top of Serrania 2: Julian making GPS plot.

Route Map

Here's a map of our route. Canoe Focus, the magazine of the British Canoe Union are going to publish an article about the trip. There was a map of the expedition route on google maps earlier on in this blog, but on Julian's advice I deleted it- as the area we intended to go into would have been prohibited because of the possibility of uncontacted Toromonas Indians living there.

More than before, I am convinced that there are still Toromonas at the headwaters of the Colorado and Enatahua. If any places are hard to get to, those are. In 5 days of trying we made only half the distance- a measly 10km. And there was still another 2800 metre Serrania to cross. The steepness of the terrain, the gorges, and the almost inpenetrable taquarilla bamboo and elecho 'bracken' on the high ridges make this such a difficult area to access- which is all the better for any Toromonas who might be living there.

Did we come across them? Not sure??? At various times when we were camped in the quebradas (ravines) going up and down the second Serrania, we heard screams/ shouts across the ridges above us. Were these just bird/ animal calls? Probably. But our guides didn't think so. Whatever the cries were, they certainly spooked Sandro and Darwin.

Expedition Pictures

The Rio Tuichi at the point where we reached it after our failed attempt to cross the serranias

Bagre catfish - I tripped over a nightline that the guide, Sandro, had set up, pulled in the line... and this is what I got... which was just as well as we were on the point of running out of food.

The tapir that swam up to us at the Mal Paso San Pedro

Charged by Peccaries

Agua Polo stream. This is straight from diary as it happened.

A herd of 500 or so white-lipped peccary. We sat on the riverside shingle while they passed not 6m away. We could see legs, glimpses of snouts and hear low, rhythmic grunting- almost inaudible, and the sound of marching hooves and breaking vegetation. We followed...

Fear- makes you want to go back to your monkey origins and climb a tree. Its the only way you could get away if thye all charged.

(In sight- 10 to 20) These peccaries are much blacker and, according to Sandro, a fiercer variety than the ones we saw near Chalalan.
...sounds like even more are coming our way... tusks clacking... low grunting... a sweaty smell... many more coming.
Theyve scented us. A few ran. Others behind bushes stand their ground. A big porker is lookig at me clacking his tusks (lifts his head, slams it down, his tusks CLACK).There is a partly fallen tree which stands at a diagonal to the ground, 10 metres to my right. This is our escape route.
Loud grunting, clacking. I think Sandro has moved around to outflank them- I can hear the ting of his machete...
more grunting, branches breaking, really bad smell... Julian just dropped his vieo.. and ran up the tree. I follow. Suddenly there are peccaries running past...

The food runs out.

Once we had arrived at the Agua Cabyvara stream where we had camped 11 years before, we knew the river would be fairly safe from here on. Now it was just a question of how long it wold take to get to the jungle town of Rurrenabaque on the River Beni, from where we could get a bus back to La Paz. There was also the problem of our dwindling rations. The original idea had been to get to the Rio Enateahua and send the porters back while Julin, Sandro and I would carry on by boat. But, after our failed attempt to cross the high serranias, when we got back to the Tuichi there was nowhere where we could have sent Darwin and Ramiro back from. So they stayed with us. And they ate. Sandro seemed to give little consideration to conserving food and it was often a case of eating up anything as soon as it came out of the food sack, rather than letting it get scoffed by the porters. By the time we had passed the Mal Paso San Pedro we were down to one days rice and all the remaining sugar was soaking. We put in a long day on the raft to get down to the Tacana village of San Jose de Uchupiamonas, which we nearly missed entirely. I remembered the village was inland from the river but not exactly where the trail to get there started. San Jose was marked on our map and we had our GPS but it still gave us no idea where to stop. We saw ( were swept past) some people by the river just before sunset, we rounded a meander and came to a river beach with cows. Sandro reckoned there had to be a trail back to the vilage somewhere near so with Darwin and me in tow, he set off into the dusk upa jungle trail. We got back around 2 hours later with part of a venado (small deer) half a paca (big rat) two plantains, dry biscuits and stacks of oranges and grapefruits. That was all there was to sell us. We really wanted rice, yucca or some other staple. Sandro promised we would make the meat last 3 days, which meant of course that it was eaten in one. Next stop; the tourist lodge at Chalalan- to be some rice.
It took a day and a half. The river slowed down and, bored senseless in the heat, we hit a rock at a minor rapid, popped all but one of the inflatables, and sank. We got ashore, made a camp and stated drying ut everything- again. There were still two hours of light left so I persuaded Darwin to swim aross the river me to a huge pile of driftwood where we would be sure to find some balsa logs to build a new raft. Sandro was against this (as it wasnt his idea) but we went anyway (I nearly got washed away by the current- which seriously scared me) and found what we needed as well as some really huge jaguar tracks (we were pretty sure that it was making some of the noises we could hear too). Sandro was eventually shamed into swimming across and by nightfall we had enough lightweight logs to make a good raft. The people at Chalalan werent particularly friendly but they sold us some rice, oil... and CAKE!- and two days later gave us a lift downriver a few bends on their lancha (dugout canoe with big outboard at the back). Thye also took a messge to Leo Janco in Rurrenabaque saying that we were fine and cold he send us a sack of food whenever the boat came back upriver.

Back from the Jungle- Part 2

(Brought to you from Hostal Austria. La Paz)

Julian and I had no idea whether the Mal Pao San Pedro was one rapid or a series of rapids. We did know that the Mal Paso was notoriously danerous. It was was where in 1985? Israeli traveller Yossi Ghinsberg had jumped from his raft, become separated from his group (2 of the 4 never came back) and spent 30 days lost in the jungle- which is described in his book, Back from Tuichi. As the rapids on the Tuich became worse- and the inflatable dinghies started getting more punctures, we decided to walk the riverside where our map showedsteep contours either sie and narrows. On the first set of narrows this wasnt really necessary so we entered the second canyon part without breaking up the raft, deflating and carrying it.

The first couple of rapids were thrilling but soon the white water was continuous. We went down a steep slope of water staight into a stopper (wave) which lifted the front high, the rough edges of the poles (which were just narrow tree trunks) but have dug into the inflatables, because suddenly two popped and we were sinkng. I tried to sit up from where I had slid back but couldnt. The string from my compass had tied itself around another cord. The raft whirled around a bit, but luckily we hit clear water, I disentangled myself and we got to the side. At that point, Julian and I opted to walk the large rocks at the riverside whilst our guides manhandled the boat around. I was quite shaken up. It was difficult traversing the rocks. We slipped and fell a few times- and we saw a tapir- it swam to within 4 metres of us and started getting out of the water until it must have heard my camera clicking.

Shortly after that Sandro decided that the rapids were too hard even for manhandling. We deflated everything, packed up and started carrying, which we found so hard. Julian and I thought his choice of route was lousy. Our guide would lead us vertically up, only to bring us straight down again so that we were edging the cliffs that hung over the river. We ended up using the rope- again. There were other machete cuts and in places we thought we could have kept the height we had gained and gone over the cliffs rather than up, down and traversing; but I think Sandros pride was at stake. By late afternoon he gave up. We headed back to he riverside boulders and hastily made camp before dark opposite a twin pair of water spounts that cascaded over the rocks opposite.

We woke up next morning to heavy rain. The river was rising. It had gone brown with silt. I was keen on getting going as soon as possible but Sandro favoured waiting so we waited all morning while the river rose a bit and we all got cold nd miserable. I felt ill. Sandro said it was my nerves. Quite possibly, but the waiting which seemed just veacuse Sandro didnt like getting wet really got to me. Finally, by about One, I told him how annoyed I was and we got some action. We built the raft up, launched straiht into a rapid and- got through easily. In fact that turned out t be the last of the rough ones. We knew we still had to pass the Puerto del Sol, which I had been told was a waterfall or another canyon. It never materialised and we rafted throuh into lovely virgin forest where we saw toucans and capped herons- possibly the presence of more herons and kingfishers here indicated that the river was slower and easier to fish in.

(Time up on computer. NEXT. Being charged by peccaries)

Back from the jungle Part 1

The Serranias we crossed were twice the height of the one we crossed to get to the Madidi 11 years ago. They were covered in a dry montane forest with lots of thin bamboo that needed machete cutting the whole way (LOTS of marimonos- spider monkeys - though) and in places there was a type of wiry bracken which was really hard to push through- the ground was spongy like mattress and we´d often sink up to ur thighs in ´compost´- which is the bets way I can describe it. BUT, there was often no water, so we had to descend to make camp and when we did descend we would end up in ravines with cliffs everywhere. We would clamber up near vertical slopes avoiding the rock faces only to find more of the same beyond the next ridge. We had to usethe rope I bought in La Paz for about $4 lots of times. We had about 35Kg each and the porters had more (though they sure ate their way through their loads quickly- with no thought for conserving food for later). By day 4 it was clear that though we could continue to the Enatahua River, it would take at least another week and then we would start to run out of time and food. I think Sandro our guide wanted to carry on but we reined him in, going for the safe(r) option of getting out by the river Tuichi. We got there in the second week and at first it was great fun with small rapids, fantastic scenery and lots of wildlife. We knew there was a dangerous set of rapids, the ´Mal Paso San Pedro´, so as the raft was taking a hammering, Julian and I opted to walk around rapids, though as some of the way was in canyons, this was by no means easy. At one pass a tapir swam right up to us... and just an hour earlier one had just about gone right under the raft. Soon after we decided to deflate the dinghies and hike around the rapids but we kept getting boxed by cliffs. We came down to the river and inflated them again. It rained and we had to wait half a day until the level had gone down a bit. As luck had it, we had got past the worst bit and we were soon out, reaching the point on the river where we had started the Madidi trip 11 years before- that´s where I caught an enormous Bagre catfish (actually, I tripped over a night line) we had left out and just pulled it in to see why it had gone tight). From there onwards everything was much safer but we wished we had the canoe as we were limited to travelling at the speed of the current.

This is brought to you from the river port of Rurrenabaque- out of the open door I have a view of the rainforest-covered ´Susi´ridge.

.. more next time about how we actually got out of the Mal Paso and how were were charged by a herd of peccaries.