May 10, 2006
Day 224
NKM Adventure Day 1
We decided to have breakfast at the same vegetarian restaurant we ate supper at last night. They had a lot of whole grain pastas and cereals, so we started stocking up for our upcoming adventure in Noel Kempff Mercado National Park.
The next town we had to get to on our way to the park was called San Ignacio, and we were told that buses left for there at 6:00 PM. I did some work on the Internet, we made a few more preparations, including gathering all the information I could from a tour operator, and headed for the bus station at about 5:00.
The area around the bus station was really chaotic. The terminal was still closed, as it was when we arrived three days ago, because the government wants to tax more but the bus companies won't pay. Since nobody had official-looking offices to buy tickets from, it was hard to tell who was who and where they were selling tickets to. We walked up and down the line of ticket sellers but couldn't find a bus going to San Ignacio. We finally found the only company going there, but the 6:00 bus was sold out and we would have to wait until 8:00. No worries, though, because the ride is nine hours and I'd rather arrive at 5:00 AM than 3:00 AM anyway.
We drank a soda at a restaurant and watched the hordes of people walk past us to kill some time. We were transported in the back of a pickup truck to a yard with two buses and much less chaos. About half an hour later, we started down the long, bumpy gravel road on our way to San Ignacio.
