Into the wild

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Finally it was my turn to suffer with Bolivia belly. After a couple of nights hugging the toilet and moaning loudly to anyone who would listen, I decided to try and shake off my sickness by getting out of the city. Still with wobbly legs and a churning gut, I dragged myself out of bed in the middle of the night, and went with Tom, Claudia, Jules and Jane to La Paz airport. We squeezed into a tiny 19-seater aircraft and flew to Rurrenabaque, the closest village to the Amazon jungle. The flight was blissful - as we glided through the Andes, our little plane flew at the same height as the snow-capped mountain peaks, and we were lucky enough to watch the sun rise during our flight. The colours in the sky were that beautiful that even the pilot was taking pictures out of the window with his camera phone.

We touched down in the pampus on a runway made of grass and inhaled lungfuls of fresh air for the first time in weeks. We had descended 4000 metres in altitude and immediately we found it easier to breathe, the pounding in our skulls had been lifted.

A four hour jeep ride down bumpy unmade roads took us to the bank of the river Beni, an Amazonian tributary. A painted sign for Coca-cola greeted us at the end of the journey. Bloody miles from anywhere and the Coke reps have got out there before you and shat allover the landscape.

We met our guide and clambered into our canoe, doing our best to keep the mosquitoes and sand flies at bay. The next three hours were spent floating down the river to the eco-lodge. Travelling through the jungle was incredible and we spotted monkeys, sloths, alligators and prehistoric-looking birds along the way. That night we paid a late night visit to the river. The jungle´s mesmerizing sunset turned the sky a burnt orange, and a light fog sneaked through the lush trees on either side of the river. Once darkness had fallen, the undergrowth became alive, and we heard croaks, barks, buzzes and howls from the forest, as a host of twinkling fireflies acted as our guide in the darkness.

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Photos

Swimming with dolphins
too quick to catch on camera

The River Beni
This is one of the River Amazon´s tributaries