Puerto Siles

We arrived in the small town of Puerto Siles hoping to continue along a road through the amazon, to the eastern part of the Beni state, however much to our dismay all roads in the area remained washed out from the wet season.Fortunately, as the Spanish name states, Puerto Siles is a port, a small river port that rests on the very large 'Rio Mamoré'. We immediately began making inquiries about boats, only to be told by the commander of the naval base that we should take a swim in the river to clean up and speak to him about it later. Hot, sweaty and dirty, we took his adviceAnother problem we discovered shortly thereafter was that there was no accommodation in Puerto Siles. This had us rather worried as for this trip all of our camping gear was left behind. Thankfully we met Damien and after a little bartering, he agreed to let us stay at his house for 50 Bolivianos each, about $8. His house was interesting to say the least, he had certainly accumulated a lot of stuff over the years.Damion was a keen hunter and had his rifle hanging on the wall. At one point he sent us off on a mission to buy him some bullets when we told him we were heading to San Joaquin for supplies. He would hunt at night time and the last time we saw him we shared our goodbyes and then he rode off into the darkness on his bicycle with the rifle slung over his shoulder. To this day I can't decide whether it was either a very funny or a very sad moment.Next to the port was the naval base run by Commandante Sanchez, a real asshole. Not only did he lie to us causing us to miss the first boat and wait 2 more days, he forced us to pay a bribe of $10 each for a silly paper which he had just invented the need for, unfortunately we couldn't argue as he wouldn't let us board the boat without it. His final act of treachery was to ask for a sip of my rum and coke on the Friday evening when we departed, only to walk off when I wasn't watching and never return with it.We would relax during the day, either resting in our hammocks or swimming in the river. At night we would go to bed very early to escape the millions of mosquitoes. Repellent has little to no effect and they can even get you through your clothes.Like the problem with accommodation, there were no restaurants either. Therefore in order to feed ourselves we would visit an indigenous family whom lived up the river and they would prepare our food. Much to our surprise, they even served us some Piranhas from the river!After three days doing nothing around Puerto Siles, a boat finally came