#59 The Worst Day Ever - Trinidad to San Ignacio

Arriving in Santa Cruz we finally found a bed to sleep in. One so comfortable we hardly left it, spending most of our time in the city watching television. Even our hostel's pool couldn't drag us away from the comfort of a mattress. Four days turned into five after a night on some heavy cocktails. Admittedly only two of them, but we have become such lightweights it was enough to get us to karaoke! Clearly it was time to move on.

The only memorable event on the road to Trinidad was spotting conspicuously dressed Amish-looking types in overalls, straw hats, and driving horse-drawn carts (not that this is particularly unusual in these parts). I know there are Mennonite communities (religious groups of German and Canadian descent) in Northern Paraguay which was not far from Santa Cruz, so can only assume they are from nearby. While we were intrigued you can't exactly stop someone who looks a bit different and strike up a conversation with, so 'you're Amish, right?'

After Trinidad we were expecting to take a couple of boats across rivers no bridges crossed and then a long dry dirt road to our next destination. The boats were basic wooden barges barely large enough to hold the bike but we saw other larger ones loaded with trucks and buses which gave us confidence they were sturdy enough to hold the bike's weight. By the second crossing we were old hats. Then, rather than a dry dirt road that was to follow, unexpectedly, there was a third and then a fourth boat ride.

A family of capybaras crossing the road.

The road we were on was a dirt path crossing through the wetlands. We had heard two of things about it: the side of the road is like a zoo of tropical animals and that provided it didn't rain it was pretty easy to traverse. Neither proved to be particularly accurate. We did see a number of birds, including one that looked like a pelican which when standing would reach Reece's waist and its name gives away the size of its beak. The only mammal we spotted was the capybara, the largest rodent in the world, unless of course you count the cows and stray dogs which were in abundance.

As for the road, it hadn't rained, in fact it was stifling hot. We had experienced worse heat in Paraguay and Northern Argentina but never combined with this level of humidity. On either side were high piles of wet mud, but thankfully two stone-dry car tracks to follow. So far so good. However, not 10 kilometres down, and despite everyone's assurances to the contrary that the road really wasn't that bad, here we were looking at 100 metres of mud and pond ahead of us and no way forward. We were the second to pull up behind an open-air public transport truck. The only shade available in which to wait out the digger trying to clear out the road was underneath this truck. There we sat for over two hours as the digger, running out of excess dirt to fill the puddles, started digging up the road itself.

Wetlands on the side of the road.

It was about that time when Reece started following a man muttering something about a motorbike. Turns out he had one of these little wooden boats to transport us through the swampy marsh on the side of the road. Just as we were headed off I noticed one of our bags still sitting on the side of the road - it was just one of those days. He dropped us off a couple of kilometres further down with the assurances the road only improved from here. Not so. It was getting muddier and the bike started sliding, not aided by four wheels and with the weight of two people and their livelihoods sliding at any wet spot on the road. Progress slowed dramatically and thoughts just turned to getting through, however long it took. Ten kilometres down the road and it turned to gunk again. Nevermind, there was another boat to the rescue, and though the price seemed to escalate with every passage it wasn't like we had too many options.

Then the inevitable happened. We hit a passage of about even worse mud with no boat in site. The first sign of difficulty was a ute blocking the path, its back wheels going nowhere despite the assistance of a handful of men. We managed to get past but then it was about 30 metres of sloppy mud. We got off the bike and tried to push it, two meters in the bike slipped and fell, as did we unable to stand in the mud. We were not even able to pick it up as any pressure would make us and the bike slide. It took three men just to get it back to the start (two meters back). By now Reece was pouring with sweat and said it was an impossible passage for us, and started talking about turning back. I calculated it would be a three day round trip just to get us back to Cochocabamba which was about the same time I began heaping on the compliments about Reece's driving skills.

After two further falls we needed a change of tactic. We unloaded all the gear and it was decided Reece would ride the bike while I ran from side to side to prevent a further topple, not an easy proposition in sticky mud with no grip underneath.We got through a 30 metre passage in just over an hour.

All up it had been a 7 hour day to traverse an estimated 70 kilometres. We arrived at a hotel exhausted, dehydrated, hungry and with only one thing on our mind, a shower, only to be told we were told too muddy to enter the room. We would first be required to have our clothes and boots washed down, while remaining in them, by the proprieter's maid - I'm not sure who was more humilated. It was not quite the shower we had hoped for. An appropriate ending to our worst day on the road - up untill then at least.