'Welcome to the Jungle!' blared the speakers in the Moskkito Bar, shortly after I arrived in the sleepy, remote town of Rurrenabaque.
I'd wandered into a La Paz tour agency a couple of days before and booked return flights with TAM, Bolivia's military airline. It saved me a few quid on the alternative airline, Amazonas, but with added risk.
The risk was that TAM only fly three times a week, while Amazonas fly three or four times a day. The La Paz-Rurre route is prone to bad weather - and therefore flight cancellations - so I had my fingers crossed for Monday morning.
I got a taxi up to El Alto, a city above La Paz where the airports are, and we were waved in by the army men on the front gate.
This was about as far removed from Heathrow as you could get. One little shop inside the terminal selling biscuits and coffee, about 20 passengers for the only flight of the day, and a deathly quiet outside the front of the terminal.
I was checked in by an senior army officer in full uniform and, despite the sign saying that no flammable liquids, aerosols or blades were allowed, I walked straight onto the plane with my nail scissors and deodorant in my bag.
There was no security check whatsoever. Perhaps Al Qaeda have better things to do than blow up a tourist plane carrying 20 people to the jungle in Bolivia.
The plane had been given a lick of paint on the outside, to make you feel you were on a 'normal' airline - but inside it was clearly an aircraft previously used by the military.
There were hooks and other clasps on the ceiling where you can imagine parachutes or other war equipment had been hung, the seats were battered and old, and the inner lining of my window had peeled back from its proper place. Not something you really want to see before taking to the air.
But the flight turned out to be fine. Even fun. It was bloody cold (the plane was probably built before A/C existed) but the views were great as we pulled away from the sandy expanse of La Paz and zoomed across the Andes towards the Amazon basin:
We touched down in Rurre about an hour later. It was a landing strip with a tiny shack/terminal and we were bundled into transit vans for the short ride into town.
It was incredibly hot (as mentioned in a previous post), and even walking down the street brought me out in the sweats. Nice.
It was also a picturesque little place - just a few roads criss-crossing each other with the usual gringo-friendly combination of snack bars, internet cafes and shops selling massive bottles of Head & Shoulders.
After checking into the recommended Hotel Orientel (tellingly with mosquito wire all over every window in my room), I went and booked myself on a tour for the following day, and then met up with Ben - who I'd first met in La Paz - and a guy called Aidan from Ireland.
We had a drink in the aforementioned Moskkito Bar - Guns n Roses and AC/DC on tap - before having a burger, and then bed.
In the morning I went to my tour agency to meet my fellow tourists and our guide. When you travel alone and go on tours it's always a heart-in-mouth time when you come face-to-face with the people you will be spending your next few days with.
You could be stuck with four Russians having a mid-life crisis, or a group of 10 Australian gap yearers who drink beer for breakfast.
So far I've been pretty lucky, and this time too. It turned out to be just me and four friends from the north of England - Jess, Alice (aka Hef), another Alice (aka Hodge) and Sophie.
Our guide, complete with knife holstered to his belt, was Alex. Otherwise known as Mosquito. The six of us, plus driver, got into the Toyota people carrier and headed off towards the Bolivian pampas.
The first 3 hours were spent bumping around on a gravel track, dust blowing in through the windows, heat blasting down from the sun. Not the most pleasant start to a tour I've had.
But we got through it and arrived at the boat mooring station, where Alex went and got our vessel:
Seeing other groups of 8-10 people all cramped up on their boats, it made me glad to have just the five of us.
Speeding through the pampas wetlands towards our lodge we saw some beautiful scenery, every now and then stopping to snap monkeys and birds in the trees:
After an hour or two we came to a wide-open bit of water where we stopped the boat, stripped off and dived in:
You know that first shower you take after attending a sweaty music festival, or the first dip in the swimming pool after a delayed flight to your holiday destination? This was just like that. A-mazing.
You couldn't see more than 2-3 inches into the murky brown water, and there must be all manner of creatures under the surface, but at that point in time - after the sweatiest morning in weeks - it was perfect.
Getting back onto the boat I saw that my white boxers - which I'd jumped into the river in - were still caked in orange dust from the car journey and my finger and toenails had turned the same colour. Probably not the most riveting detail you've ever been told, but a detail nonetheless.
A short hop in the boat brought us to our lodge. It was perched up on stilts above the walkway and was the midpoint between another camp (where Ben was staying) and the sunset bar (the social hub of all the lodges in the area).
We've just come to the end of the rainy season, and the river was high - only a few inches from the boardwalk of our camp at certain parts.
After a good dinner prepared by our friendly cook, Carmen, we went and saw the sunset from the top of the sunset bar. With a much-needed Paceña in hand, we watched the day end in what would be the first of several incredible colourful scenes out in the pampas:
Just after 7pm, sweating like pigs, we were paid a visit by millions of little bastards. Otherwise known as mosquitos.
I had been warned that the heat, humidity and mozzies were pretty full-on, but I hadn't realised just how ferocious a combination of the three could be.
Even smothering yourself in DEET repellent didn't deter them. They came at us en masse, interuppting a pleasant drink and turning us into a bunch of happy slappers as we attempted - in vain - to swat them away.
Here's a picture of them buzzing around the light in the sunset bar:
Makes me itch just to look at it.
So we didn't hang around, obviously. We went back to camp and sat on the table there, and got bitten some more. Later on Alex took us out on the boat to try and spot some alligators and caymans.
All groups doing the 3-day pampas tour have similar itineraries, but the tour guide decides when and where you do each activity. Unfortunately that night the crocs (as I kept calling them, incorrectly) were obviously in hiding as our torches didn't manage to reflect off their eyes.
But actually we didn't need to get on a boat to see alligators and caymans. There were some living in the water below our lodges. Each day you saw them swimming around just feet from your feet, sometimes surfacing their 6-7ft long bodies:
On the final morning, coming back from a boat trip to watch the sunrise, Sophie and Jess - who were walking a few feet ahead of me - turned round the corner between our room and the kitchen and had a big alligator's head craning out of the water next to the boardwalk, teeth glistening.
You probably heard the screams back in England.
He then slinked back into the water and came to rest under the door to our room:
Alex assured us that no tourists had ever been attacked by these animals while doing the pampas tour. Not sure if I believe him.
Day two was a busy day. After breakfast we got back in the boat and took another fun drive through the rivers and reeds to a spot on the edge of thick jungle. We were going anaconda hunting.
If you've ever seen the film Anaconda you'll have some pre-conceived ideas about these snakes, the heaviest in the world.
They can grow up to 20ft long (and there are unsubstantiated reports of even longer ones) and thicker than my waist. Not something you probably want to find curled up in your bed.
We were joined by a few other tour groups on this little expedition and set off into the dank swamp of the jungle. We'd been given wellies to wear and you immediately saw why. We were soon up to our knees in mosquito-riddled muddy water, fighting our way over tangled branches and through itchy cobwebs.
As my American friend Ann said during a trek in Colombia, I was sweating like a whore in church.
It's rare to find an anaconda on these pampas tours. Almost something of an urban jungle myth apparently. We'd spoken to a few people, both back in Rurre and on the tour, who said it was a decent little outing but don't expect to actually find anything.
And then, about 30 minutes into the treacherous slog, we heard a yell from up ahead. One of the guides behind me bolted past, and we followed. A minute later and we arrived to see the guide triumphantly holding an anaconda in his arms:
Paranoid to the last, my initial thought was 'Ok, where are his brothers and sisters?' Standing there in muddy water up to my knees and a 6ft snake next to me, I was only thinking of my ankles - and them being clasped by an anaconda No.2.
But once that thought subsided, we went about getting up close and personal to this beast of the jungle. I've never before seen a snake in the wild, let alone touch one. So god knows what came over me when I agreed to this:
It felt like lots of slimey soft hands were creepily stroking my neck and ears.
*Shivers at the thought*
The guide held his head, but with mouth open so you could 'enjoy' the experience of being inches away from a snake's face, while his thick body attempted to asphyxiate you.
And I actually paid to go on this tour.
But, seriously, it was an experience I won't forget in a hurry. Probably made even more memorable because none of us actually expected to see one of these fabled anacondas, let alone have one wrapped around your neck.
After a few seconds of it on me, he (or she? I didn't feel like checking) started to tighten his grip and it actually got a bit worrying for a couple of seconds as I felt my windpipe being crushed.
Luckily the guide - who found our terrified reactions absolutely hilarious - finally saw sense and peeled him off me.
Earlier on in the expedition I had lost my group of Alex and the girls as I blindly followed the bloke in front of me - more concerned with staying on my feet than following a particular path.
When I got back to the boat, it turned out that I'd had a stroke of luck. Alex and the girls had a) not seen an anaconda b) dropped one camera into the water (Hodge) and c) fallen into the water (Sophie). I felt for them - and was glad I had wandered off with Ben et al.
I was on a high after my snake encounter, which helped during the afternoon's outing: piranha fishing.
Why helped? Because I was royally shit at piranha fishing. We took another tour on the boat to a secluded spot far from camp and Alex gave us the fishing 'rods' that he'd made that morning:
We then spent the next hour casting our lines and trying to perfect the technique of feeling a bite, and then quickly pulling the hook back above the water - hopefully with a piranha on the end of it.
Straight away Alex proved his experience by hauling in the first fish of the day. Then Hef caught one:
Then Soph caught one, then Jess. Then they caught more, and more. All the while, Hodge and I caught bugger all. Possibly one of the most frustrating hours I've spent since watching Everton in the late '90s.
So, after enduring muchas ribbing from Alex for being the man who cannot fish (while most of the girls could), we set off back to base - piranhas ready to be cooked:
That night, after our piranhas/chicken/rice/salad combo, and another drink at the sunset bar, we were invited on an unscheduled outing on the boat by Alex and another tour guide, Cappuchino.
Cappunchino bought a bottle of rum and we set off. I really enjoyed travelling by night - whizzing along through the black water with only the stars and the moon above. We got to a clearing, moored the boat and had a couple of drinks.
We probably would have stayed longer but the mosquito attack was phenomenal. It was a constant bombardment of the little critters on your ankles, temples, knees, back, neck and elsewhere. PAIN.
And the beds at camp weren't much better, lying there in the tropical humidity as mosquitos buzzed around your ears and all over your body. I counted between 50-60 bites on my body, but others had much worse.
So after a second interrupted night's sleep, and a mild hangover, we were all a bit groggy as Alex waked us at 5.30am to go and see the sunrise.
I'm glad we hauled our stung arses out of bed though, as we were treated to another phenomenal colour show just up the river:
Stick that in your National Geographic and smoke it.
As well as being a great tour guide, an expert mechanic (who kept having to fix our dodgy boat motor) and a friendly bloke, Alex was a dab hand at jewellery-making too.
On the second day he surprised us all by sitting down with a bag of small coconuts - each no bigger than a golf ball. After asking us which finger we'd like a ring for, he got out his saw and sandpaper and proceeded to turn these coconuts into rings that wouldn't look out of place in the John Lewis jewellery dept.
This is him at work:
And then my finished product, complete with engraving of a panther and some leaves:
Clever guy, and only 24 years old.
Our final little outing of a cracking three day tour was to try and swim with the elusive pink dolphins. We had already spotted quite a few out and about on our boating trips, and I had spent some of the previous afternoon watching a couple of them frolicking in the water below the sunset bar:
The problem with the dolphin outing was that every other tour group in the vicinity had the same idea. If I had 10 boats, petrol seeping into the water, zooming around me I would probably head somewhere else. And that's what the dolphins did.
No-one got close enough to get bodily contact with the pink 'uns but we saw a few on the edge of the lake where we swam. It was a fun, if ultimately unsuccessful hour.
On the way back we passed another lodge, and it had a rope swing. Is there a better way to end a hot three days than swinging off a tree into the water?
Here's a sequence of me doing just that:
Tarzan, eat your heart out.
After a final lunch we bolted it back to Rurrenabaque via the same boat/car combo. We got sunburnt on the former, but enjoyed some heavenly air-con inside the latter.
We arrived back in Rurre to find that the girls' flight back to La Paz for that night had been cancelled. The other blow was that we'd hit Semana Santa (Holy Week) and most of the bars said they weren't selling alcohol.
Ben and I had a good dinner with an Australian/German couple we'd met on the trip, and then I bumped into the same group of gap yearers who I'd previously met in Huacachina and La Paz. We MUST stop meeting like this.
It turned into a good night. The Moskkito bar had signs everywhere saying no alcohol but that was for the benefit of the police who kept sticking their heads round the corner.
No beer was sold, or Coke as a mixer (as apparently it was too obviously a mixer?) but we had some cocktails and listened to yet more AC/DC:
I'd wandered into a La Paz tour agency a couple of days before and booked return flights with TAM, Bolivia's military airline. It saved me a few quid on the alternative airline, Amazonas, but with added risk.
The risk was that TAM only fly three times a week, while Amazonas fly three or four times a day. The La Paz-Rurre route is prone to bad weather - and therefore flight cancellations - so I had my fingers crossed for Monday morning.
I got a taxi up to El Alto, a city above La Paz where the airports are, and we were waved in by the army men on the front gate.
This was about as far removed from Heathrow as you could get. One little shop inside the terminal selling biscuits and coffee, about 20 passengers for the only flight of the day, and a deathly quiet outside the front of the terminal.
I was checked in by an senior army officer in full uniform and, despite the sign saying that no flammable liquids, aerosols or blades were allowed, I walked straight onto the plane with my nail scissors and deodorant in my bag.
There was no security check whatsoever. Perhaps Al Qaeda have better things to do than blow up a tourist plane carrying 20 people to the jungle in Bolivia.
The plane had been given a lick of paint on the outside, to make you feel you were on a 'normal' airline - but inside it was clearly an aircraft previously used by the military.
There were hooks and other clasps on the ceiling where you can imagine parachutes or other war equipment had been hung, the seats were battered and old, and the inner lining of my window had peeled back from its proper place. Not something you really want to see before taking to the air.
But the flight turned out to be fine. Even fun. It was bloody cold (the plane was probably built before A/C existed) but the views were great as we pulled away from the sandy expanse of La Paz and zoomed across the Andes towards the Amazon basin:
We touched down in Rurre about an hour later. It was a landing strip with a tiny shack/terminal and we were bundled into transit vans for the short ride into town.
It was incredibly hot (as mentioned in a previous post), and even walking down the street brought me out in the sweats. Nice.
It was also a picturesque little place - just a few roads criss-crossing each other with the usual gringo-friendly combination of snack bars, internet cafes and shops selling massive bottles of Head & Shoulders.
After checking into the recommended Hotel Orientel (tellingly with mosquito wire all over every window in my room), I went and booked myself on a tour for the following day, and then met up with Ben - who I'd first met in La Paz - and a guy called Aidan from Ireland.
We had a drink in the aforementioned Moskkito Bar - Guns n Roses and AC/DC on tap - before having a burger, and then bed.
In the morning I went to my tour agency to meet my fellow tourists and our guide. When you travel alone and go on tours it's always a heart-in-mouth time when you come face-to-face with the people you will be spending your next few days with.
You could be stuck with four Russians having a mid-life crisis, or a group of 10 Australian gap yearers who drink beer for breakfast.
So far I've been pretty lucky, and this time too. It turned out to be just me and four friends from the north of England - Jess, Alice (aka Hef), another Alice (aka Hodge) and Sophie.
Our guide, complete with knife holstered to his belt, was Alex. Otherwise known as Mosquito. The six of us, plus driver, got into the Toyota people carrier and headed off towards the Bolivian pampas.
The first 3 hours were spent bumping around on a gravel track, dust blowing in through the windows, heat blasting down from the sun. Not the most pleasant start to a tour I've had.
But we got through it and arrived at the boat mooring station, where Alex went and got our vessel:
Seeing other groups of 8-10 people all cramped up on their boats, it made me glad to have just the five of us.
Speeding through the pampas wetlands towards our lodge we saw some beautiful scenery, every now and then stopping to snap monkeys and birds in the trees:
 |
| Hodge and the the others do their best Japanese tourist impressions |
You know that first shower you take after attending a sweaty music festival, or the first dip in the swimming pool after a delayed flight to your holiday destination? This was just like that. A-mazing.
You couldn't see more than 2-3 inches into the murky brown water, and there must be all manner of creatures under the surface, but at that point in time - after the sweatiest morning in weeks - it was perfect.
Getting back onto the boat I saw that my white boxers - which I'd jumped into the river in - were still caked in orange dust from the car journey and my finger and toenails had turned the same colour. Probably not the most riveting detail you've ever been told, but a detail nonetheless.
A short hop in the boat brought us to our lodge. It was perched up on stilts above the walkway and was the midpoint between another camp (where Ben was staying) and the sunset bar (the social hub of all the lodges in the area).
We've just come to the end of the rainy season, and the river was high - only a few inches from the boardwalk of our camp at certain parts.
After a good dinner prepared by our friendly cook, Carmen, we went and saw the sunset from the top of the sunset bar. With a much-needed Paceña in hand, we watched the day end in what would be the first of several incredible colourful scenes out in the pampas:
Just after 7pm, sweating like pigs, we were paid a visit by millions of little bastards. Otherwise known as mosquitos.
I had been warned that the heat, humidity and mozzies were pretty full-on, but I hadn't realised just how ferocious a combination of the three could be.
Even smothering yourself in DEET repellent didn't deter them. They came at us en masse, interuppting a pleasant drink and turning us into a bunch of happy slappers as we attempted - in vain - to swat them away.
Here's a picture of them buzzing around the light in the sunset bar:
Makes me itch just to look at it.
So we didn't hang around, obviously. We went back to camp and sat on the table there, and got bitten some more. Later on Alex took us out on the boat to try and spot some alligators and caymans.
All groups doing the 3-day pampas tour have similar itineraries, but the tour guide decides when and where you do each activity. Unfortunately that night the crocs (as I kept calling them, incorrectly) were obviously in hiding as our torches didn't manage to reflect off their eyes.
But actually we didn't need to get on a boat to see alligators and caymans. There were some living in the water below our lodges. Each day you saw them swimming around just feet from your feet, sometimes surfacing their 6-7ft long bodies:
On the final morning, coming back from a boat trip to watch the sunrise, Sophie and Jess - who were walking a few feet ahead of me - turned round the corner between our room and the kitchen and had a big alligator's head craning out of the water next to the boardwalk, teeth glistening.
You probably heard the screams back in England.
He then slinked back into the water and came to rest under the door to our room:
Alex assured us that no tourists had ever been attacked by these animals while doing the pampas tour. Not sure if I believe him.
Day two was a busy day. After breakfast we got back in the boat and took another fun drive through the rivers and reeds to a spot on the edge of thick jungle. We were going anaconda hunting.
If you've ever seen the film Anaconda you'll have some pre-conceived ideas about these snakes, the heaviest in the world.
They can grow up to 20ft long (and there are unsubstantiated reports of even longer ones) and thicker than my waist. Not something you probably want to find curled up in your bed.
We were joined by a few other tour groups on this little expedition and set off into the dank swamp of the jungle. We'd been given wellies to wear and you immediately saw why. We were soon up to our knees in mosquito-riddled muddy water, fighting our way over tangled branches and through itchy cobwebs.
As my American friend Ann said during a trek in Colombia, I was sweating like a whore in church.
It's rare to find an anaconda on these pampas tours. Almost something of an urban jungle myth apparently. We'd spoken to a few people, both back in Rurre and on the tour, who said it was a decent little outing but don't expect to actually find anything.
And then, about 30 minutes into the treacherous slog, we heard a yell from up ahead. One of the guides behind me bolted past, and we followed. A minute later and we arrived to see the guide triumphantly holding an anaconda in his arms:
Paranoid to the last, my initial thought was 'Ok, where are his brothers and sisters?' Standing there in muddy water up to my knees and a 6ft snake next to me, I was only thinking of my ankles - and them being clasped by an anaconda No.2.
But once that thought subsided, we went about getting up close and personal to this beast of the jungle. I've never before seen a snake in the wild, let alone touch one. So god knows what came over me when I agreed to this:
It felt like lots of slimey soft hands were creepily stroking my neck and ears.
*Shivers at the thought*
The guide held his head, but with mouth open so you could 'enjoy' the experience of being inches away from a snake's face, while his thick body attempted to asphyxiate you.
And I actually paid to go on this tour.
But, seriously, it was an experience I won't forget in a hurry. Probably made even more memorable because none of us actually expected to see one of these fabled anacondas, let alone have one wrapped around your neck.
After a few seconds of it on me, he (or she? I didn't feel like checking) started to tighten his grip and it actually got a bit worrying for a couple of seconds as I felt my windpipe being crushed.
Luckily the guide - who found our terrified reactions absolutely hilarious - finally saw sense and peeled him off me.
Earlier on in the expedition I had lost my group of Alex and the girls as I blindly followed the bloke in front of me - more concerned with staying on my feet than following a particular path.
When I got back to the boat, it turned out that I'd had a stroke of luck. Alex and the girls had a) not seen an anaconda b) dropped one camera into the water (Hodge) and c) fallen into the water (Sophie). I felt for them - and was glad I had wandered off with Ben et al.
I was on a high after my snake encounter, which helped during the afternoon's outing: piranha fishing.
Why helped? Because I was royally shit at piranha fishing. We took another tour on the boat to a secluded spot far from camp and Alex gave us the fishing 'rods' that he'd made that morning:
We then spent the next hour casting our lines and trying to perfect the technique of feeling a bite, and then quickly pulling the hook back above the water - hopefully with a piranha on the end of it.
Straight away Alex proved his experience by hauling in the first fish of the day. Then Hef caught one:
Then Soph caught one, then Jess. Then they caught more, and more. All the while, Hodge and I caught bugger all. Possibly one of the most frustrating hours I've spent since watching Everton in the late '90s.
So, after enduring muchas ribbing from Alex for being the man who cannot fish (while most of the girls could), we set off back to base - piranhas ready to be cooked:
That night, after our piranhas/chicken/rice/salad combo, and another drink at the sunset bar, we were invited on an unscheduled outing on the boat by Alex and another tour guide, Cappuchino.
Cappunchino bought a bottle of rum and we set off. I really enjoyed travelling by night - whizzing along through the black water with only the stars and the moon above. We got to a clearing, moored the boat and had a couple of drinks.
We probably would have stayed longer but the mosquito attack was phenomenal. It was a constant bombardment of the little critters on your ankles, temples, knees, back, neck and elsewhere. PAIN.
And the beds at camp weren't much better, lying there in the tropical humidity as mosquitos buzzed around your ears and all over your body. I counted between 50-60 bites on my body, but others had much worse.
So after a second interrupted night's sleep, and a mild hangover, we were all a bit groggy as Alex waked us at 5.30am to go and see the sunrise.
I'm glad we hauled our stung arses out of bed though, as we were treated to another phenomenal colour show just up the river:
Stick that in your National Geographic and smoke it.
As well as being a great tour guide, an expert mechanic (who kept having to fix our dodgy boat motor) and a friendly bloke, Alex was a dab hand at jewellery-making too.
On the second day he surprised us all by sitting down with a bag of small coconuts - each no bigger than a golf ball. After asking us which finger we'd like a ring for, he got out his saw and sandpaper and proceeded to turn these coconuts into rings that wouldn't look out of place in the John Lewis jewellery dept.
This is him at work:
And then my finished product, complete with engraving of a panther and some leaves:
Clever guy, and only 24 years old.
Our final little outing of a cracking three day tour was to try and swim with the elusive pink dolphins. We had already spotted quite a few out and about on our boating trips, and I had spent some of the previous afternoon watching a couple of them frolicking in the water below the sunset bar:
The problem with the dolphin outing was that every other tour group in the vicinity had the same idea. If I had 10 boats, petrol seeping into the water, zooming around me I would probably head somewhere else. And that's what the dolphins did.
No-one got close enough to get bodily contact with the pink 'uns but we saw a few on the edge of the lake where we swam. It was a fun, if ultimately unsuccessful hour.
On the way back we passed another lodge, and it had a rope swing. Is there a better way to end a hot three days than swinging off a tree into the water?
Here's a sequence of me doing just that:
Tarzan, eat your heart out.
After a final lunch we bolted it back to Rurrenabaque via the same boat/car combo. We got sunburnt on the former, but enjoyed some heavenly air-con inside the latter.
We arrived back in Rurre to find that the girls' flight back to La Paz for that night had been cancelled. The other blow was that we'd hit Semana Santa (Holy Week) and most of the bars said they weren't selling alcohol.
Ben and I had a good dinner with an Australian/German couple we'd met on the trip, and then I bumped into the same group of gap yearers who I'd previously met in Huacachina and La Paz. We MUST stop meeting like this.
It turned into a good night. The Moskkito bar had signs everywhere saying no alcohol but that was for the benefit of the police who kept sticking their heads round the corner.
No beer was sold, or Coke as a mixer (as apparently it was too obviously a mixer?) but we had some cocktails and listened to yet more AC/DC:
After much pleading, the bar owners finally turfed us out in the early morning:
As is often the case with small airports and Bolivian organisation, the following morning's departure from Rurre was a haphazard affair.
After checking in in town, we were told to quickly get on a minibus - which we did. We then waited in the steaming heat while the bods in charge did something or other. We eventually headed to the airport, picking up various locals on the way.
At the airport terminal hut we were ordered out of the bus and into the building, where we first paid a tax of 7 bolivianos to a man behind a white box. After that we were told to walk across the floor and pay another tax of 7 bolivianos to a woman behind another white box.
I hope they treated themselves to a nice meal with it.
We were then ordered back on the bus, before we were driven the grand total of FIVE METRES to the side of the terminal. The plane then landed, people got out, confusion reigned, and we got on:
The plane was brilliant.
It was pretty old and had various bits hanging off the upholstery, but it had a James-Bond-villain-style 1970s interior with just one seat on either side of the aisle:
You could see right through to the cockpit, which on landing was particularly fun. And the views back over the Andes were pretty special too:
So how would I summarise three days in the Amazon basin of Bolivia?
The good: swimming in rivers that you can't see into; meeting good people; splashing around on boats; meeting a snake, and lots more.
The bad: mosquitos attacks turning into some sort of sick joke; ditto with the heat.
The ugly: these uncatchable critters:
And here are some more pics from a memorable three days:
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| Sunset across the wetlands |
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| Bumping into James and Sarah. Again! |
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| Parrot in Rurrenabaque |
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| Grasshopper on a sock, on our boat |
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| Gone fishing |
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| The Famous Five, plus guides |
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| Bolivian pampas: beautiful |