Sightless Seeing

* this entry from 4/9 *
Serere Sanctuary, Bolivia


Salmonella Warning to Salar de Uyuni Travellers
An arrival to Rurre. The town is green, jungle green. Low clouds over a backdrop of lush mountains. Motorbikes take us from the bus to the Madidi Travel office. Sick for the past week in Bolivia, Rosa Maria takes me to the local doctor while Papa shops for an extra set of clothes.

*

A little boy with a deep fleshy lesion on his arm, pink tissue laid bare. A poster hangs on the wall a few inches from my nose, warns of the flesh eating bacteria carried by mosquitoes. A jar of exposed cotton sits on the table. A lady approaches, syringe in hand, her nailpolish chipped. I don't want to be here. Blood is drawn and taken to a small laboratory which will determine whether the culprit is salmonella.

An hour later, with Salmonella-positive test results, I'm given a 5day antibiotic treatment.

The source, as hypothesized by Rosa Maria, lies somewhere along the Salar de Uyuni route. Apparently, there is a high incidence of travellers who’ve come off this tour and have been unknowingly infected with Salmonella.



Welcome to Serere Sanctuary, Madidi National Park
A three hour motorboat ride down the Beni River -- where beneath its brown waters are caiman and piranhas -- leads to the Serere Sanctuary, a private protected sector of the Madidi National Park.



A conversation with Rosa Maria and it’s learned that before this land had been acquired it was also used for environmentally-damaging Tourism. Examples: Some tourists would request to go hunting or eat exotic animals and the tour operators would comply -- skinning jaguars, catching caimans frightening them so much that they bit off their own tails. After the land was acquired it took five years to excavate 20 tons of trash.

“The only thing that’s dangerous is human stupidity,” she says.



Sightless Seeing, Serere
Groans like the rumblings of a hungry tummy mark the chorus of howler monkeys. Water pours gently off the moving oars of the canoe. Quick splashes and rippling circles that grow wide before fading away. Reeds twitching, the buzz of insects like humming electricity. An orchestra of new instruments – rattles, shakes, croaks, caws and hoots. With eyes fixed, I eagerly search for visibility of “the musicians”. Though, it’s clear whose eyes are on whom.

Schools of bats sweep over the lake’s surface at dusk, their faces almost human-like. Silhouettes of dragonflies against the smoky rose clouds left by the descended sun. They swirl in the sky, weaving invisible patterns.


dragonflies somewhere in there


dense jungle foilage spills onto the water



It’s easy to seal eyelids and drift in this canoe; the melody of the Jungle, its transmissions hopefully sent.




... at the moment, Cafeteria El Balcon
it's dark outside. Someone just skyped me -- username: SexPenisHardCockSperm.

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