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Published: July 11th 2010
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This blog is a composite of our time in Rurrenabaque, which was split by a five-day excursion to the nearby Serere conservation area.
Part I We disembarked in Rurrenabaque (or Rurre as it is called) after our long bus ride from La Paz on the morning of Dec. 31st. I liked it instantaneously - as soon as I got out and smelled the air - and liked it the entire time I was there. Actually, there wasn't much to the place - it was a small, sleepy town in a lush humid rainforest set against the banks of the brown Beni River. There was not much to do there either. Still I felt a strong sense of nostalgia, although I wasn't sure why. Did it remind me of lowland Guatemala? Ometepe? or maybe even Fiji where I had lived for a short time ten years ago. Maybe I just enjoyed the warmth, the rich air, and the freedom to go barefoot after being in the Andes for 5 weeks.
We were met at the bus stop by the amiable owner of Residence Jislene, who convinced us to check out his place down the street. We wound up settling
there and it was good choice on our part. Residence Jislene was a small family-run affair where the concrete guest rooms are built in a ring around the family's home, similar to the place we stayed during our night in the Colca Canyon in Peru. The outside communal area, including the breakfast tables, where shared by guests and family alike. I think I would soon get tired of always having guests in my home space, but I guess they were used to it. The best part of Residence Jislene was the large covered concrete deck with about a dozen hammocks overlooking the Beni River. There was nothing we liked better than to laze around a whole afternoon in one of those hammocks.
After a short rest in our room, we ventured into town to book a tour. The big draw of the area is the Parque National Madidi, one of the most biodiverse protected areas on the planet. Access is controlled and generally must be arranged through a tour. There were two different types of tours in Madidi. The 'jungle' tours involved hiking through the bush, looking at the flora, getting bitten by insects, and on occasion (depending on
luck), seeing some animals. The 'pampas' tours involved boat ride through waterways in a grasslands area where many different animals could be seen coming to drink water. We had a list of different tour operators we wanted to check out, but we wanted to choose carefully. Thousands of tourists visit Madidi every day, resulting in a lot of environmental stress. Many of the tour groups do things that threaten and damage the health of the park and its wildlife - like handling anacondas and even hunt animals!
The first tour group operator we visited was Madidi travel - which Eva had seen advertised on a poster back in La Paz. We were invited in to have lemonade with its manager and founder, Rosa-Maria Ruiz. A naturalist who helped create Madidi National Park, Rosa-Maria was now developing a new private area exclusively for their use called Serere. We'll discuss this first meeting with Rosa-Maria a little more in our next blog, which will be about our trip to Serere. Suffice to say, we left without any interest in seeing any other tour operators. We made arrangements that afternoon to go to Serere in a couple of days after the
New Year's.
Small and remote as it is, Rurre is fortunate to have at least two very good restaurants (along with several medicore ones). That night we ate at Juliano's, an Italian restaurant. Its owner was a very cheery, english speaking man who used to own a celebrated restuarant in California. He settled in some years ago in Rurre and he's happy there, although not making near as much money as before. Eva had the pasta while I had a fillet of the fish - a rich, sweet, red variety from the nearby river. We turned in early as we were still tired from the bus ride.
The next day was New Year's Eve, 2009. We relaxed in the hammocks and the internet cafe through most of the day. That night we went looking for a party. There are lots of bars in the town. Some were very touristy; others were dives intended for the local crowd. Oddly, almost all the dive bars had karaoke, although it didn't seem so popular anywhere else we went in Bolivia. The bars were open, the music was playing and the lights were shining, but almost nobody was in them, even as
late as 9 pm. We had some ok pizza and headed back to our residencia where the other guests were hanging out on the deck. We hadn't met any of them before, but they invited us to join in. We drank wine and swapped travel stories as we waited for the new year. Pretty much everyone there were long time travelers - some them hadn't been home in over two years! Just before midnight, we stepped out onto street to watch a few neighboring private fireworks displays, though I don't think we saw much. Somebody passed fire sparklers through our group, and our host family, who been at home, came out and joined us. And so we rang in the New Year with our new friends, with hugs and lots of kissing on cheeks. Some kept the party going a little longer (I'm not sure if they went out), but Eva and I were done. We had stayed for the clock hands to line up at 12, but we had no energy reserves left, and retired to bed.
On New Year's Day we did the same thing a lot of people do - we lazed. The only difference was
that we weren't nursing hangovers, and we had wonderful hammocks next to a tropical river to do our lazing in. We finally learned the truth about the New Year's celebrations in Rurre through our few excursions through town. The party didn't START in Rurre until just before midnight. When did it end? Well, the dive bars were still full of people at 3 in the afternoon on New Year's day. Presumably, these people had been going strong since sometime the night before. Outside the bars were a few sad looking young men - drunk, stumbling, sleeping, and vomiting. Can't say we felt sorry to have missed it. We had things to take care of anyways, as this would be our last day in civilization for a while. Tomorrow our adventure in the Serere would begin.
Part II We returned from our five days in the Serere conservation area on Wednesday Jan. 6. We spent a couple of days lazing around and gearing up for the bus back. Cloud cover had put a stop to flights in the area, so even if we weren't cheapskates, flying out would not have been an option. We spent more time
in the hammocks, and enjoyed some good dinners. On Thursday we had more river fish at Casa de Campo, one of Rosa Maria's favorites. On Friday we returned to Juliano's. Eva had fish, while I had the best beef I had eaten since our trip began. On Saturday Jan, 9th, we boarded the bus for the long haul back to La Paz and the Andean mountains. For a description of that trip (and the bus ride to Rurre), see our previous blog about La Paz.
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