The 3 day pampas tour was great but with one exception. I was thrown in a group with only isrealies; in all my years of travel with all the tours I have done with all the groups of people I have met, this 3 day tour was where I felt the most left out, for the majority of the time it was me and 20 other isrealies.
Their English speaking ability is on par with most Germans but still with as much as I wanted to socialize It was limited to a short amount of time until they reverted back to hebrew.
Also not the politest of people and you will find difficulty in hearing a thank you when doing a favor - its not in their culture as one of them described to me but when someone does you a favor, for example lighting the wooden path with a flashlight with drop offs either side to where alligators dwelled you should really expect a thanks.
Ok, about the tour, 3 days 2 nights, we spent a lot of the time on the small river boat with our guide Bisma - he wasn't the most informative of guides but he did know the area incredibly well, navigating his way through the rivers and flooded areas with many alleyways and turnoffs. There were no signs nor maps to the area but we always made to place that we needed to be as listed on our itinerary, often having to protect our faces from the twigs and branches that would hit us as we coasted there.
For the most part the food we were served was great, tasty and plentiful, and eating in a group with only kosher eating isrealies meant that I could get more food.
Did you know that one of the rules of eating kosher is no milk with meat? The waiting time is different between these two too - 1 hour wait from drinking milk before eating meat and between 3 to 6 hours for the other way around.
I suppose I'm learning something when hanging around with these guys.
Our accommodation for the two nights were pretty decent supplying us with a mosquito net and resident caymans and alligators surrounding the area around the accommodations with narrow platforms without handrails to balance on to keep us entertained.
Pepé the name of the alligator was fed very well always hanging around infront of the kitchen waiting for the scrap meat that was sent his way.
One of the highlights of the trip was swimming with the pink dolphins these playful creatures would nibble on your feet when playing with you. Sometimes they draw blood but I suppose I was lucky - i'm talking about the isrealies too ;)
I got many great shots of the animals we did see with monkeys, birds and a couple of snakes. But the main Pampas area where we had to trench though waist deep swamp for about a kilometer to a small island to see anacondas was disappointing, only finding a small snake, an owl in a tree and a spider.
I took advantage of every opportunity I had to meet others on other tours to get away from the hebrew speaking isrealies just so I could enjoy some commonalities with people who speak the same language or could and would speak english.
My observations on this trip were not about the animals within the Pampas but rather the animals that participated in the tour with me.
As i write this entry I am wearing a pair of 150$ noise canceling headphones and even they cannot drown out the noise the isrealies are making behind me in the truck back to Rummenbaque. They are like annoying drunk children.
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