How to Take a Crappy Bolivian Pampas Trip

This post is the first in a series detailing our recent trip to Bolivia. While I hate to start the series with a negative post, I needed to “get it off my chest.” We had both positive and negative experiences in Bolivia, so stay tuned cause of course I also plan to highlight the positive experiences we had on the Pampas tour and elsewhere in the country.

While we were crammed in the back of a minivan with 11 other people on the miserable bumpy three hour drive back to Rurrenabaque from the Pampas, Roberto and I discussed all the mistakes we’d made when planning our Pampas tour in Bolivia. We realized we would have trouble blogging any sound advice since our tour turned out pretty crappy. As we lamented and laughed about all the things we’d done wrong we knew we’d be better off sharing how NOT to do a Pampas tour. So, this post was born.

1. Book the tour from La Paz

This one is really important. To ensure a crappy experience in the Bolivian Pampas, or most places for that matter, you need to put as many middle-men between yourself and the actual tour operator as possible. In booking through a travel agent in La Paz, you pay that agency to book you through an intermediary in Rurrenabaque. Then that company books the tour with some other agency. We honestly don’t even know the name of the tour company that took us on the Pampas trip, but it was certainly several steps away from the original company we booked with. Booking this way ensures two things to make your Pampas trip crappy: it will cost more (who do you think is paying all those different agencies!) and you will have no accountability since the people who took your money are very far removed from the people providing your service.

We didn’t really have much of a choice with this decision. In order to secure our flights for the next day and get a reservation made in advance on a Sunday afternoon, we needed to book with a travel agent in La Paz. In our defense, it was really cold and rainy in La Paz and we wanted to visit a warmer area for a few days. We got pretty bent on getting to the Pampas no matter what.

2. Go during the summer

Don’t let the chilly weather at the higher altitudes fool you. It’s hot as heck in the Amazon basin in the Bolivian summer. But the heat really isn’t a big deal. Going to the Pampas in the summer makes your trip suck because it’s the rainy season. And it will rain. A lot. Everything will be muddy, you won’t want to take your camera out and soak it in the torrential downpour, and things like flights and roads and electricity will become quite unpredictable due to the volatile weather. To add further insult, all those animals you came to see will be busy doing their thing far far away from the river you’re on since the entire area is flooded and water is plentiful throughout the Pampas.

But the real reason to go during the summer to ensure the worst experience? MOSQUITOES. So many mosquitoes. They are everywhere. They’ll be a constant reminder, literally in your face the entire trip, of how stupid it was to go to the Pampas during rainy season. And you’ll be reminded for days afterwards and weeks to come as you Google the various mosquito-borne tropical diseases that could be brewing in your system. And, FYI, they bite through denim.

I had to wear this the whole time, in the heat and humidity, to try to avoid mosquito bites.

I may as well have worn my shorts. I got hundreds of bites.

3. Arrange a tight time constraint

See Number 1. It’s best to leave as little time as possible to tour the Pampas if you want a poor experience. For us, we decided and started making arrangements Sunday to leave Monday, and had to be in Santa Cruz on Thursday. That left four days total for a three day, two night tour, flying to Rurrenabaque, and flying to Santa Cruz to fly out Thursday night. This way, when your 8 am flight is canceled Monday morning, you will be put on a later flight and taken on only a one night tour. Ideally, you will spend more total time waiting around for your tour guide than actually enjoying the pampas. Also, let yourself get talked in to not taking a cash discount for the cancellation from the travel agency, but rather one night in a crappy hotel to make up for missing an entire day of touring (which would have included meals, lodging and guide).

I’d say if one had more time, the best thing to do is get yourself to Rurrenabaque (I would still fly; it’s a bumpy, muddy 18 hour bus trip from La Paz) and book a tour once you get there. Rurre isn’t that bad of a town to spend a night or two, and you can easily want in to all the offices of the tour companies to negotiate a trip to the Pampas or jungle.

A silver lining to our shortened tour? Just one night of the mosquito massacre!

4. Believe what the guides promise you

You’ll be told you’ll get to swim with pink dolphins and fish for piranhas during your shortened tour but miss the anaconda hunt. Be surprised when neither activity occurs despite the guide telling you it will happen just the night before. Feel especially thrilled when the guide eats a leisurely breakfast at 8 am and lunch at 10 am instead of taking you on these activities. Having high (any?) expectations will indeed make your trip more crappy.

For the most part we were pretty disappointed with the use of our time. We were picked up at our hotel almost 40 minutes late, only to wait around more at a place where all the guides and tourists convened. The driver and lady in the front seat never introduced themselves to us as we sat there for nearly an hour and they chatted and BS’d with several of the guides (including the one who turned out to be ours) without acknowledging us or explaining anything. When we got to Santa Rosa, where we started the canoe ride, the lady got out with us and it was only then that we learned she was our cook and spending the trip with us. We proceeded to wait there by the river, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, for 2.5 hours for our tour guide and group to arrive. The rest of our tour was similarly inefficient, including another hour-plus wait at the “port” on the way back which made us wonder why we’d rushed so much that morning and missed out on the promised activities just to wait there. It was miserable wasting so much of our precious time together in Bolivia waiting around for our inefficient tour operator.

5. Keep crappy company

This one can be tough to control. But one of the best ways to ensure a bad trip to the Pampas is to be stuck in a bad tour group. There are many options for this but it’s likely up to chance since you don’t have much control over who’s in your group. For us, our group consisted of two nice British guys, another couple, and three Israeli girls. Now I’m sure most Israelis are lovely people, but these girls were difficult to put up with. They were complete princesses, screaming and freaking out at any bug, noise or piece of dirt. They were loud when we were listening for animals during the nighttime boat ride, and constantly smoked in the boat blowing smoke back on us (of course they got to sit in the front of the boat) and throwing their butts in the river. They made us wait while they got ready before we could eat our meals or leave on the (few) excursions. Strangely the guide spoke Hebrew – apparently this is common in Bolivia? – and they often had conversations amongst themselves while we understood nothing. But what irked us the most was they had no interest in socializing with any of us and kept to themselves, so we felt very awkward sharing the tour and meals with them. Things just would have been nicer if we could have enjoyed our fellow tourists more.

For good measure

Switch your seats around on the tiny TAM (Bolivian military airline, not Brazilian airline) plane across the aisle from a little ~3 year old boy on the way to Rurrenabaque. The flight will become incredibly turbulent as you fly over the Andes, making the boy throw up all over the place and causing a very unpleasant experience before you even get to the Pampas!

In closing

I know things could have been much worse. We didn’t get hurt or suffer some huge loss of money. I may or may not have malaria. However, this tour was pretty bad. While we expected basic (crappy) accommodations and didn’t expect much in the way of guides, we were generally disappointed and probably wouldn’t do this tour again even though we did see some amazing things. I do realize we hardly paid anything for the tour and the guides and cooks are surely not well compensated, and I almost feel bad about the whole thing. I’m sure their environmental impact is poor as well. Worth the cost or not, the entire tour was extremely lacking in customer service, even for Bolivia.

Likewise my advice to other travelers considering a Pampas tour would be, don’t do what we did, set your expectations low, and consider paying more for a luxury tour to another area of Bolivian Amazonia with more reputable tour operations.

If you liked this post please consider subscribing to our RSS feed to get free updates.