In to the jungle....or not

We headed off down death road once more but this time on the new improved one, its still classed as one of the most dangerous roads but its paved and has crash barriers in places so its not so bad. It took us 16 hours on mainly unpaved roads to get from La Paz @3,660m to Rurrenabaque @ 150m. I have to say the heat of the Amazon basin was a welcome treat. After 5 months in 25*C + and then 3 more in cold winter climates of 15*C or less it was great to put on shorts and flip flops again. The bus ride has a really bad reputation as being undoable but we have been on some pretty bad ones and couldnt afford 10 times the price to fly. In all honesty it wasnt that bad, I´ve doen bus rides that I would never do again but this wasnt that bad, we took the bus back too.

I read a cool book called "Lost in the Jungle" before I came traveling and since then I wanted to go out in to the jungle and do something extreme, something off the beaten track, not for tourists. I´ve done a few organised tours on this trip and the problem with them is they are all for tourists and hence safe, all the same and for me boring. I wanted to do something different, something adventurous.
I ran in to a few problems looking for this, the book I read was a true story and actually happened in the Rurrenabaque area so now it is very touristed and also a national park so its difficult to get the kind of trip I wanted. I also found out that I would need a group of 2 people minimium and we would have to go out for 7 days minimium neither of which I could do so the plans changed.

We ended up taking a 3 day tour of the Pampas, the Pampas in basically a protacted area of the upper amazon flood plains. We went out in small river boats for 3days staying at an up river lodge away from Rurrenabaque. In hindsight it was a better idea becasue I can do an amazon tour in a number of other countries that I´m going to so to exoerience this while we were here was definitly better.

The tour was cool we saw and petted Aligators and Anacondas. We got to swim with pink Dolphins, although I didn´t bother. We caught Pirnahas. Got to see one really special sun set and just missed one sun rise.

I´ve had a lot of this blog to catch up on today so thats all for the tour, some of the photos are cool....

We got the bus back after one night out in Rurrenabaque with our tour group on the piss.

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