Virtual Railfan Tour of Bolivia - San Jose to Robore and Corumba

 

The fer de lance, a very venomous snake.
The last part of our journey takes us into the Amazon forest. You have to be very careful here. I always wore strong boots, long pants, shirts with sleeves and a pair of leather gloves whenever I was outside the track car. I must confess I didn't take this picture although I unknowingly walked past it about two feet away.  The bite of the fer de lance will kill a man within 15 minutes.  It is not especially aggressive but it is at the top of the food chain and is not afraid of anything so it will not get out of your way - you have to keep out of its way. A brother of  a member of the crew died from a fer de lance bite.
I wore leather gloves to protect against spiders. 
 Some tarantulas are equally as dangerous. I was told "This is a 15 minute spider.  You get bitten and you have 15 minutes to say goodbye to your friends".  But spiders will try to get out of your way and many of the larger ones only come out at night.  It was fun at night watching them caught in the beam of a flashlight hurrying back to their holes

San Jose

We had arrived at the crew change point of San Jose de Chiquitos and were making for Robore.

There are a number of large bridges shared with the highway

We had to take our turn

Soon we could see Chochis in the distance



The Cerro de Chochis is a wonderful geological structure and I was glad that we took a break for a short walk around.

Puerto Pailas - a wayside station

Surprisingly we came across some track maintenance machines, recent acquisitions


Robore in the sun

The railway had brought in a few diesels from the Chilean section of the Arica - La Paz railway which had been non-operational for some time. Seen here on a double headed freight setting out for Santa Cruz.

Robore had a number of discarded steam locomotives, rusting quickly in this hot, wet climate.

Robore is subject to frequent tropical downpours

Our track car was almost marooned

The hotel at Robore was rustic. It was set in a small plantation.  All through the night I kept hearing a series of thumps. Upon investigation next morning the noise I heard was from ripe mangoes falling to the ground.  Turns out there is no market for them so they give them to the pigs. I was broken-hearted as I love mangoes.

Puerto Quijarro
On my last trip we had intended to go on to Pierto Quijarro which is the border with Brazil at Corumba but the social unrest in Bolivia was getting worse and we decided to make it back to Santa Cruz and fly to La Paz

It was such a pity that I was unable to stay at the hotel in Puerto Quijarro and eat piranha soup followed by deep fried alligator














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