Testimonials about San Miguel del Bala, Bolivia. Visitors: Family of Paul og Marja Suijker

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San Miguel del Bala, Bolivia.

Community Eco-Lodge & Eco-Tourism

Rain forest hikes in and around the Madidi National Park.

Comfortable lodging in cabins with electricity and private bathroom.

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Visitors July 2005: The Suijker family, a group of eight visitors from the Netherlands

“We enjoyed San Miguel del Bala very much”. The visit to the Madidi National Park : “Brilliant trip”.

Paul Suijker writes with such empathy and excitement about their experiences in Bolivia, that you see it all for you.

Colourful first-hand impressions spiced up with peculiar anecdotes and useful background information.

The Suijker family travelled in Bolivia from 3^rd to 31^st of July, 2005. Their travel blog “Suijker in Bolivia” in Dutch can be read at http://suijkerinbolivia.blogspot.com For five days they visited San Miguel del Bala. The following text is translated from Dutch into English by Anna Sellebjerg Møller, Copenhagen, Denmark. The translation and photos are published on our site with permission from the author Paul Suijker, Delft, The Netherlands.

Suijker has 32 photos from San Miguel del Bala and Rurrenabaque in a photo album with captions in English: Album page 1. Album page 2.

See thumbnail photos at the bottom of this page. It is a ’Flickr’ album ”Rurrenabaque”, created by PablitoAz.

Sunday, 24^th of July 2005

Rurrenabaque

Sunday afternoon in two taxis to the airport of La Paz. The old taxis were not able to climb to the Altiplano in the ”normal” way; those roads are too steep. Furthermore the centre of La Paz was closed off because of festivity marking the beginning of the new academic year. Via a creative detour and finally the (toll) highway upwards we nevertheless arrived on time at the airport. The airplane was a Fairchild propeller-driven aircraft with two engines. There was room for 19 passengers in the slim cigar. You couldn’t stand up straight. Beautiful view of the Cordillera Real (Illimani). There was quite a lot of turbulence above the mountains, however (the children screamed like in a roller coaster). After almost an hour the plane landed in the airport of Rurrenabaque. Not the tropical heat that we had expected, but cloudy skies and a chilly temperature. The airport was sort of a football canteen on the edge of the grass field. Here Juan Carlos from San Miguel del Bala was waiting for us. A minibus brought us to the Beni River where a boat was ready for us. At a high speed (40 hp outboard motor) it brought us to the lodges (small holiday cottages) in the rainforest. Birds flew alongside us on their way to their sleeping places at the lagoon.

We arrived in the twilight to the village of San Miguel del Bala, where an eco-tourism complex had been established just six months before. We were the 80^th visitor. The complex consisted of a reception area and a kitchen/restaurant (below, on the river bank) and seven three-person huts on top of a slope about 100 m above the river. Quite a climb every time. Every hut is situated in the middle of the rainforest. From the hut you can’t see the other huts. Lotte, Hilde, and Anne-Sara took the first hut, Paul and Marja the second, Bertha, Hans and Jan-Manuel the third. Every hut was built using materials found in the immediate surroundings. Tropical hardwood for the uprights, interlacing reed for the walls and palm leaves for the roof. Only the mosquito nets for the windows were imported. After having dumped our luggage, we could immediately sit down for dinner. First-class three course menu with local dishes, sparsely lit by a light bulb driven by a generator. Got acquainted with our hosts and guides Juan Carlos and Felsy. After dinner we found the way back up the hill with our torches. The walking path to the huts is marked by ropes, after a French tourist got lost on her way uphill a couple of weeks earlier (definitely not unthinkable in the dark!).

Monday, 25^th of July 2005

Got up early. Fantastic view of the Beni River and the gorge that the river has carved through the Bala mountains (cuesta). At the end this water runs into the Amazon. Delicious breakfast in the restaurant. Strange that they can serve a better breakfast here in the jungle than in most French hotels. Spoke more with Juan-Carlos and Felsy. They are both inhabitants of the San Miguel del Bala village, who, with help from an NGO-organization, have been retrained to become guides. In all, the complex is run by some of the 46 families who live in the village; about 20 people for the kitchen and 18 guides who take turns servicing the tourists. On the first day we take a walk in the vicinity of the village with Felsy and Juan Carlos. We are told about the trees, lianas, and plants that grow in the surroundings.

Which sorts of tree provided the wood for the lodges in which we slept. Which plants have curative qualities. Felsy digs a bird spider out of a rotting tree trunk. In the afternoon we visit the village and get a good impression of how such a village works. One of the fellow villagers of the guides demonstrates a sugar cane press. The canes are fed one by one into the press, which is driven by hand. The flavour is delicious, especially with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. At the end of the village, which is situated like on a string along the river, we are picked up by Fernando, our skipper, who brings us back to the lodge. Another fine meal, among other things fish prepared in three different ways (fried, boiled, steamed in palm leaves). Fresh fruit juice, rice, picante (hot sauce), tea, Nescafe. Fruit for desert. We decide to stay another couple of days.

Tuesday, 26^th of July 2005

Bertha stays behind in the lodge to study. We take a long hike through the rainforest, which ends in a long, narrow canyon of about a meter wide and five or six metres high. After a few minutes we lose our orientation completely. Some months earlier a scientist got lost here despite his advanced equipment (GPS etc.). He was lost for three days. Finally he was found by a search party involving all villagers only 500 metres from the river. The man was completely exhausted and was covered with insect bites. He found his way at night using the light of his camera’s flash. In the canyon we find humming-birds’ nests containing their small eggs.

About two meters above the water level the tarantula nests are; recognizable by the crevices closed by spider webs. In the canyon there are also bats and meat-eating spiders with a diameter of 30 cm. Very nice. As Lotte stands face to face with such a spider, even she can’t repress a shriek. At the end of the canyon the Beni River and of course Fernando with his boat. An evening of folklore with music and stories told by people from the village. Felsy turns out to be a good flutist and a good storyteller. Every element is narrated in three different ways. This slows the progress of the story, but what can you expect in an area without TV and radio?

Wednesday, 27^th of July 2005

We are woken by a terrible scream from the children. A bird spider has intruded into the girls’ hut. Paul picks up the beast between two slippers and takes it to the woods. After that we blocked the chink of the door with a towel. Delicious breakfast with plantain bananas with salt and picante, and quickly to the boat for a three-hour cruise of the Beni and Tuichi rivers deep into the Madidi National Park. The boat is made of a hollowed tree trunk of mara (mahogany) with a superstructure of cedro (spruce?). The river is quite wild and in some places tree trunks lie just below the surface. Juan Carlos sits on the foredeck and reads the water and gives instructions to Fernando. The river is different here every year, so the life of the skipper is not boring in any case. Sometimes they have to make a choice between several routes; then the river forks into two or more segments. Mostly they make the right choice. Once - at the place where we turn into the Tuichi River - we have to get out of the boat. It is too shallow here. The guides jump into the water and push the boat across the obstacle. After a while we pass another tributary, the ??? River. We sail on a little further and land at a small sandy beach. In the sand we see tracks of a tapir, a capihuara (the world’s largest rodent), and a jaguar. Further on, there are tracks of a rough and tumble between the jaguar and the capihuara. Between the tall reed the animal path begins that the guides have marked out at a place where there are many animals to see. We continue for another hundred metres and then stop to wait for the animals, silent as the grave. Beautiful moments when you can let the sounds of the rainforest get through to you. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any animals; I think that we, a group of ten people, made too much noise anyway. We did see many tracks. Meanwhile, Fernando had caught a big fish. Jan-Manuel was allowed to try too, and immediately he caught his first fish: a large butterfish, which lay moving in the bottom of the boat for a while. The children wanted to swim; in hindsight not a good idea, because they were eaten by insects. Especially the legs were sacrificed. But the water was great for a swim. The guides anxiously kept an eye on the surface. The crocodiles that live here are normally only seen at night, but you never know. Late in the afternoon we visited a rock wall with parrots’ nests. From our hiding place in the jungle we had a fantastic view of the ara couples that returned home after a day’s work. Magnificent colours. In the light of the setting sun we returned downstream to San Miguel del Bala. Brilliant trip. In the evening we were surprised by a field vole in the toilet in the lodge. The mouse had fallen into the lavatory pan, but couldn’t climb out. What to do? Flush it or save it? The animal would not let us pick it up. Then we just put a stick into the pan so that the animal could climb out on its own. He sat quietly on the stick while we carried him outside.

Thursday, 28^th of July 2005

Awoke by the noises around the hut. Early in the morning the rainforest is full of honk, chirp, bell, chatter, twitter and other sounds. Delightful to wake up to. For a moment it sounds like it is raining, but it is the small branches, nuts and leaves that fall on the roof of the lodge. All around you there is heavy consumption going on. Down the long stairs with the luggage to the breakfast hall, for the last breakfast in the rainforest. Filled in a second questionnaire. Do we see our comments on the organisation site? www.sernap.gov.bo/sanmiguel/smlodge.htm [Later changed to www.sanmigueldelbala.com]

Said goodbye to the guides and took the boat back to Rurrenabaque. A lovely sleepy tropical village. Dropped our luggage at the office of the organization so that we could spend a few hours in Rurre. Took the small ferry to the other side of the river to San Buenaventura; visited the office of the organization that manages the Madidi Park. Bought t-shirts, of course. Jeeps depart from San B. to small villages deeper in the jungle. In a tree there is a blackboard with names.

As soon as there are six names on the board, the jeep leaves. Ate in the afternoon in Rurre. Lotte’s lower legs are quite swollen because of the numerous bites from the marinhui during swimming. The waiter in the ice cream shop ensures us that this is a normal allergic reaction and advices Lotte to put her legs in a washtub with warm saltwater. For the time being, we stick to ice cubes. Confirmed the flight at the AmasZonas office. The grupo de ocho (group of eight) was known already. In a minibus to the airport. After a while, the Fairchild landed on the grass track again. Because the pilot parked the airplane a little too far from the generator, the ground crew had to push the plane back a few metres. Crawled into the airplane again, where a number of dubious characters had already taken a seat. A fat German with an even fatter bodyguard. This did give me some strange associations. A smooth flight back to La Paz. Wonderful coolness at the arrival (Rurre was quite hot after all), the light tingling in the head because of the altitude (4100 m) and pleasantly no insects around you.

Source: http://suijkerinbolivia.blogspot.com (in Dutch).

In e-mails Paul Suijker has added:

We enjoyed San Miguel del Bala very much. [..] The people from the San Miguel del Bala village are very friendly. [..] We decided to stay some extra days because we liked the place very much.