Into the Belly of Bolivia (cont.)

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Into the Belly of Bolivia (cont.)

When we awoke and crawled from our tents on the third morning, addled from Mario's version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and fuzzy from the singani, we found ourselves in a grassy field in Santa Cruz del Valle Ameno. Our trip's co-leader, Greg Findley, owner of Mukuni Wilderness Whitewater Expeditions and a veteran Zambezi guide, was whipping up some scrambled eggs and sausage with fellow Montanan Chuch Champe, who'd come along to cook and captain the paddle boat. Surrounding us were the administration of buildings from the Madidi National Park, and standing in front of them was what seemed like half the town. These people had evidently come out to have a look at the scraggly, bleary-eyed foreigners emerging from their multicolored cocoons.

As we amused our audience by trying to organize gear, our Tuichi expert, Pancho Novak, a former army ranger and mahogany logger, arrived with the porters and a string of small horses that would portage our boats and gear the 15 miles to the river. According to Sergio, Pancho knew the Tuichi like no other man in Madidi, having ridden logs down the river to the market in Rurrenabaque. Renegade mahogany cutting was discontinued with the park's creation in 1995, and Novak, like most of the curious onlookers in Santa Cruz, was hoping tourists like us were going to create a new job market by making the Madidi one of the most visited parks in South America.

It certainly has the credentials. Its 4.7 million acres (Yellowstone, by contrast, has 2.2 million acres) include Andean ranges, montane cloudforests, savanna, dry tropical forests, and lowland rainforests. The park is also one of the most biodiverse regions on earth, providing habitat to more than 1,000 species of birds, 44 percent of all New World mammals, and 38 percent of all Neotropical amphibians. We figured if we got a glimpse of just ten percent of what was out there, it'd be more than most of us had seen in years of trekking around North America.

We were an odd-looking safari: trekkers with oversize daypacks, kayak- and raft-laden horses, and porters lugging or balancing everything from paddles to pots and pans. By mid-morning, we were stretched into a line all the way across the 200-yard field. Entering the forest was a bit like a jungle version of Through the Looking Glass; one minute we were walking in sunlight and order, the next minute we'd entered a green tunnel full of unidentifiable sounds and shadows.

As the thick mud of the trail threatened to suck our sports sandals off with every step, Tim explained that we were in the Yungas, the region of humid montane slopes (aka cloudforests) of the eastern side of the Andes between 2,000 and 10,000 feet. We pulled wild coffee beans off bushes and crushed them in our hands for their fragrance, orchids that would have cost $20 from a Park Avenue florist littered the trail, and all around us giant stands of bamboo and ferns reached up to where bromeliads hung from tree branches, their broad pink leaves like obscene, drooping tongues. Escaping the dense cover along the ridgetops, we spotted Andean condors floating above the valley. The intense heat and humidity made the going slow for both pack-laden humans and horses. But at least we were spared the constant drizzle that is usually a feature of cloudforests.

"Last year on my second Tuichi expedition, the rain was so intense the porters almost mutinied," Sergio recounted when we collapsed to have lunch in a small meadow. "It was right here, in fact. The porters were going to drop all the equipment and head back to Santa Cruz. The Pancho got up and gave them a speech like was a Bolivian General Patton. They all stayed."

That night we camped on an exposed ridge above the forest canopy, where we spent hours hitting off a rum bottle and counting falling stars. Our resulting slothfulness the next morning will have its consequences: While we slept soundly, the porters filled the water jugs from the stream below camp but neglected to inform anyone of this "favor." Before the mix-up was discovered, five people had filled their canteens and drunk the unfiltered water. The unlucky parties were identifiable during that day's long, hot march through Madidi's Inter-Andean dry forest by their sudden dashes off the trail

It was on a small ridge in this habitat of grasslands, scattered trees, and cacti that Tim spotted a pair of rare harpy eagles, the true kings of Amazonia. Sanding nearly three and a half feet tall with claws like a grizzly's, they snatch monkeys right out of trees.

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