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Santa Cruz, which we got to near the end of January turned out to be quite a nice town, even though it was very new and therefore had few intersting buildings. It was nice to finally get down in the heat where it was always warm, even at night and airconditipning and celling fans becane as important in the hostel rooms as the hot showers had previously been. In Santa cruz we mainly saw the nice town square, where it was very visible that it was one of the richest and best organized cities in Bolivia due to its surrounding successfull acriculture and cattle rancing region and its proximity to the ricer Brazil and Argentina. We also had an interesting introduction to how the Bolivians party when we visited a local party area near the river, which felt a bit lika a Bolivian version of Bakken in compenhagen, however we only went there in the afternoon as we were told by several people that it was not safe for foreighners in the evening. One of the other fun highlights of our Santa Cruz visit was the tame tucan which lived in the qourtyard of our hostel and which was really cute, especially when it pecked ons toes when one tried to put ones feet up in the comfy hammocks haning around the area.
From Santa Cruz we then took a night bus up to Trinidad to visit the bolivian jungle. There we went to Chuchini, a small family owned jungle lodge about 13 km north of the town, which we had been recomended by one of Rebeccas Nepenthes contacts. There we spent three really grat days doing walks n the jungle and boattrips on the lakes and rivers. It was the rainy season, so we had some rain and the forest was flooded 3 m over the dry season water level so it was difficult to see fish which were scattered all through the forest. Indeed one of the days wa actually sailed by boat on what in the dry season was the car road to the lodge. However, we still saw 3 monkey species, including night monkeys and brown howler monkeys. Actually the monkeys were so common there that they frequently sat in the mangoo tree outside the main house and ate and threw down mangoes. We also saw many pink river dolphins, which was one of the animals I found most amazing and one night we went out with the boat where they caught a river Caiman (crokodile) to show us. We also saw a large number of different birds including many species of herons, eagles and hawks and some rare Oacin, which is a rare and extreemely ancient species of turkey like bird which lived close to the lodge. In the mean time we were quite busy getting eaten by hordes of mosquitoes even though we were constantly applying mosquito repellant. At the place of the lodge they also had a number of animals from the closed down trinidad zoo in rehabilitation for later release into the wild and there we could also see a jungle cat, a coati, a jaguar, a rhea and both macaws and tucans.
The setting there was so peacefull, far removed from the noise of civilization and we were the only guests staying at the lodge at that time so it almost felt more like we were visiting family or friends than being on a tourist trip. We were shown around by the son of the owers and the wife would cook fantastic food which we ate with the family while talking about the nature and history of th place. In the evening we qould also cool off with a refreshing swim in th river and two of the nights they also got out the motor boat so that we could go water skiing between the pink dolphins, caimans and phiranas on one of the tributaries of the amazon river. It was really a phantastic place and we really enjoyed that. We stayed there for 4 days before returning to Santa Cruz for a few hours stop before we headed out in the wilderness of eastern Bolivia.
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