Rurrenabaque & Madidi National Park (The Jungle)

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Our flight left early from the military airport in La Paz for a town in the Amazon Basin. It was a fairly small (but not as rustic as I'd expected) propeller plane. We opted for the 40minute flight rather than 20 hour bus since we'd heard the journey was pretty rough. After the short flight it felt like we were in a different country. We went from the near freezing La Paz morning to tropical humidity in less than an hour. We found a nice hotel with hammocks and the like and then spent the day looking for a tour into the jungle for the next day. We went for a company which I'd already heard about and we decided on 3 nights 4 days in the jungle. The other option was a pampas tour which is the most popular type because you see more wildlife. It is in more of a grassland area and the tours are mainly spent watching wildlife from a boat. Whilst I'd have liked to have done both we could only afford one and we thought we should go for the proper jungle experience. The town of Rurrenabaque is fairly nice and probably relies a fair bit on tourism. There are a lot of tour companies, restaurants and bars but it's fairly small and quiet. We started our tour the next day with a 2 1/2 hour ride in a little motorboat up the river into the Madidi National Park to the lodge. We first went up the river Beni and then the Tuichi. The part where they meet is weird, it goes from slow and reflective water to fast moving and brown in a few metres. The river Tuichi became a bit famous for a book written by an Israeli called return from Tuichi about a group getting lost in the jungle in the 80's which I want to read now. This is partly the reason there seems to be a lot of Israeli tourists here nowadays. There are signs all around Rurrenabaque in Hebrew although apparently Bolivia is a popular destination for Israeli's after they do their military service...anyway. We stopped off at a community where they grow sugar cane and we picked some then used a huge wooden grinder to get the juice and drink it with lime. It tasted a lot better than the stuff we had in Nepal. We then carried on to the lodge, seeing a cayman (crocodile thing) by the river on the way. The lodge is basically a few huts but they did have (cold) showers and toilets and even electricity for a few hours at night. It was in a nice setting, in a clearing near the river surrounded by the jungle with hammocks hanging between the trees. We had lunch soon after arriving. The food was great the whole time. We had fish, chicken, meat, loads of fruit and veg, pancakes and empanadas (pasties) for breakfast and most importantly there was loads of it. We were in a group of five and had a guide called Luis who spoke more English than most guides in Bolivia. That afternoon we got the boat across the river and had a 3 hour walk through the jungle. Luis pointed out what the various plants and trees were used for and even made a water bottle carrier for me out of a vine, the height of jungle fashion. Walking around we didn't see too many animals but we found a tortoise which he then sat on to prove how strong its shell was. Some of the trees are 500 years old with huge roots coming out of the ground, there are trees that smell of garlic and 'walking trees' where their roots actually start spreading out above ground. The whole trip we also saw plenty of jaguar footprints but no jaguars. Apparently they only walk around at night and it's very rare to see them. I'm not sure how rare though as Luis told me he had seen six in his life (he's lived around there his whole life) whereas another guide (who was a bit older) had seen about 200. Anyway that night after dinner we went for a night walk where we saw loads of spiders, all of which were apparently poisonous but none deadly. We even had a tarantula on the roof of our hut that night and a bat flying around in our room. It was cool when all the lights were out, it was completely pitch black and the sounds of the jungle can be quite exciting. I'd already decided after the first day that I wanted to see the rainforest in other parts of the world. Despite the constant sweating and bastard bugs it's definitely my sort of place. The next day we set off on another 3 hour walk, this time to a camp where we would spend the night. The camp was a little shelter with a tarp sheet over the top. After some lunch we walked up to a mirador (viewpoint) where we could see for miles and we watched parrots fly around and sit right next to us in the trees. The viewpoint was high up with a sheer drop and there is a memorial to an Israeli guy who fell over the edge in 2007. After that we walked back down and went to the river bank where we collected our backpacks from the boat. We then did some fishing. Luis caught some sardines first which we then used as bait. Just using some wire and a hook (no rods) the five of us caught nothing but Luis managed to catch a whopper which we then had for lunch the next day. After sunset we headed back for dinner and a fairly early night. The fun started about 2am when it decided to piss it down and not stop. Water was making it's way in and Luis did a good job of constantly draining the tarp to stop it collapsing on us. It didn't stop until about 10 the next morning by which time we had headed back to the river and were waiting for the boat. We had woken up pretty damp and got more wet walking through the streams which had appeared overnight. It wasn't good news when a guy turned up with a note to say there was a problem and that the boat would be 2 hours late (although it's amusing that the only way to communicate is to send a bloke with a note on a 3 hour hike). After hanging around until 12 the boat eventually came to collect our backpacks. We instead travelled back to the lodge via a raft made of logs and vines. Since we were already wet it was pretty fun and some mild rapids made it more interesting. After lunch the rest of our group left as they'd only booked 2 nights. We spent the afternoon with a guy called Ignacio making jungle jewellery which basically involved sanding some nuts for fucking hours. The finished articles were pretty cool though and we needed a break from all the walking. That night we were the only ones staying at the lodge and so we had dinner with Ignacio and his wife who were really friendly. He told us a bit about his tribe, the Tacana, and we managed to understand most of it as he didn't speak a word of English. To be fair I don't think Spanish was even his first language. The next day we set off for our last walk, this time with Ignacio. He was not very interested in sticking to the trails, instead he cut through the jungle with his knife with ease while we slipped and stumbled behind him. It's amazing the things they can hear and spot which we would completely miss. We followed the sound of monkeys and found some swinging around in the trees in a couple of places which was good. A trip to the jungle isn't complete without seeing some monkeys. We also found a group of pigs which we had seen before but this time we managed to get a bit closer. They were pretty big and loud, more like wild boar and hang around in groups of about 50. We couldn't get too close though as one smell of us or noise and they all legged it away squealing. We eventually got back for lunch and then it was time to get the boat back to Rurrenabaque. It was weird seeing so many people, even after only 4 days. Our flight wasn't for another 3 days so we just relaxed in the warmth of Rurrenabaque before flying back to cold and headaches in the highlands. We went to a hotel swimming pool which felt like we were crashing a Bolivian family BBQ where they were playing bingo. Other than that we ate out at the same restaurant four times where by the end the waiter/owner was keen to arrange a meet up in London. After a quick night in La Paz we headed to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca.

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