The Jungle

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The following was a 3 day tour of the Pampas (an area in the Amazon jungle of Bolivia) on a long boat searching for animals.

I spent the majority of my 3 days laughing at other people who spent their whole time trying to get the perfect picture of the animals, especially the dolphins. Those of you who have ever been dolphin watching will know that they are the hardest thing to take a picture of as timing is everything and you haven’t got a clue where they will come from. At the beginning of the tour I decided that I will enjoy the animals by site and that if I manage to get any photos that would be a bonus.

1) Within 2 hours of starting we saw an alligator out of the water. We were told before hand that this is unheard of.

2) Majority of the animals seen were monkeys, we saw at least 5 varieties and even had the joys of listening to some mate. When Howler monkeys mate they sound like King Kong and on our first nights lodgings what we though was a movie running through the speakers was in fact the monkeys mating........Honestly the loudest thing ever I promise you

3) We saw 2 Anaconda which is really hard to do at this time of year.

4) There was numerous varieties of birds, some uglier and bigger than others.

5) My fascination was with the stick insects which really looked like flying leaves, the detail in their wings you would never know the difference. (I guess that’s the idea of camouflage)

The highlight of the tour has to be the swimming with the pink dolphins in their natural habitat. Once we were in the water for a while they gradually got closer and closer and just crept up on you........it was almost scary.

The whole tour was great but unfortunately we ended up getting stuck in the little village where the tour starts called Rurrenabaque. The main reason for this being that we did not want to navigate the death road back on a bus so decided to buy a flight, however the airport was a little bigger than a sports field and when it rains the takeoff becomes water logged and all flights are cancelled......would you believe that the torrential rain started only a couple of hours before we were due to take off? Even once the rain stopped you then needed enough sun to dry the field........4 days later we managed to get out of there. Hallelujiah

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Photos

Rurrenabaque
How kind of the birds to pose

Rurrenabaque
Michele and I enjoying the ride

Rurrenabaque
I forget their name, A very big Guinnea Pig basically

Rurrenabaque
One of the many species of monkeys found

Rurrenabaque
Sunset over the Pampas

Rurrenabaque
Alligator spotting at night

Rurrenabaque
Not quite the titanic pose

Comments

[Chris Cooke]

Amazing!
Hey babe, the pictures are amazing and your looking really well. i can't believe you took the "death road" just so you didn't have to travel the extra 8k! your insane (But we knew that anyway!) Looking forward to your next adventure. Big Hugs from Me and T. Cookie.x.x.x.

[si]

ugly birds
you it doesnt matter where you go in the world ! it always looks like your in missing, when you say the varieties of the birds are uglier and bigger than others

[lisa Bx]

The jungle
I would have died with all those monkeys .... they make me feel sick ... I would rather have done death road on a unicycle i reckon!