Arriving in Rurrenabaque felt like I was in a comedy movie with a plane that lands at a tin shed in the middle of the jungle. We had taken a military flight (zero security), flown over snow capped mountains, jungle and rivers. The funny thing about starting a flight from 4000m is that it doesn’t take you long to reach cruising altitude…and everything seems so close!
(Rurrenabaque airport)
(Flying in)
Rurrenabaque reminds me of Asia – motorbikes, heat, people milling about on the street talking and selling food. The town is tiny and the only real claim to fame is that it is the gateway to the jungle and the pampas (jungle wetlands). We were headed to the pampas due to the amount of wildlife we would see. We meet our group and set off shrouded in a clout of DEET.
(Fog covered mountains)
(The dusty ride out there)
(High security…)
On the two hour trip down the river to the lodge we got to see a huge number of animals and birds. The scenery was spectacular and our guide was always willing to stop so we could take photos while other groups whizzed past. This soon stopped when we saw the huge storm clouds on the horizon and was promptly forced to wrap everything up and put on rain jackets. We were soaked to the skin.
Our next couple of days consisted of nighttime alligator spotting (unsuccessful), anaconda hunting (also unsuccessful, but if I’m honest, I was kinda happy about that!) and swimming with pink dolphins (I just watched – wasn’t sure how I felt about swimming/interfering with animals in the wild). The reason for all this was that we were in wet season – too much water and too many hiding places.
(Ready to go anaconda hunting)
(Our resident alligator)
(Swimming with the dolphins – they are extremely hard to catch on camera!)
This sounds all very exotic but often involved swatting 1 million mozzies and trekking through almost knee high water in gumboots. Very glamourous. But it was worth it. All the blood sweat and mosquito bites. We saw capybara, vultures, alligators, turtles, howler monkeys (remember those dinosaur sounding creatures from Guatemala?) and sloths. Very cool.
(Bailing out our boat after a night of rain)
(Home sweet home)
(Mozzie nets that protected me at night while being serenaded by German lullabies and a generator until I fell asleep)
(Our favourite room – The Hammock Room!)
(A sloth just hanging out)
(Trudging throught the wet)
The capybara’s get their own photo section…
One of the highlights has to be piranha fishing. We had tried whilst in the pampas, but with no luck. Our guide stopped us on the way home at a little stream beside the road where we promptly tossed our lines in. Not 5 mins later the first piranha was caught getting all of us excited. We ended up catching quite a few. Even though they were only little I was impressed.
(Attempting to fish at our first location…unsuccessful)
(Location two)
(Success! Look at those teeth!)
(Then Jana caught Simona…hilarious!)
When it came time to fly home, we found out along the backpacker grapevine that the flight had been cancelled. Sure enough a visit to the airline office confirmed it. After much running around we switched airlines to a commercial airline that deemed it ‘unsafe’ to take things like sunscreen and toothpaste in carry on luggage…crazy.
