In the Pampas we tried

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An early rise of 5am to head to the airport, checking in was surprisingly uneventful and there I was thinking everything was running far too smoothly for Bolivian standards. And then of course they didn't fail to disappoint, after an hour delay boarding we sat on the runway for 20 minutes before being told that there was something up with this plane so we all trudged back into the freezing cold airport, waited another 30 minutes and finally boarded an operational plane and took off. The plane leaving almost 2 hours late I was worrying that I would miss the tour completely for that day and with my trusty translator and travel buddy busy climbing a mountain I was busy freaking out about refunds and wasting a day in Rurrebenaque. All for nothing, I arrived at the airport to what at the time was welcome humidity and the driver was there waiting for me, this was the real start to my journey; 3 hours in the back of a 4x4 on the worst road I've ever seen, I don't even know if you could call it a road in places! Wooo we arrived and swapped the 4x4 for a boat and began our trip down the river Yacuma to the camp, which took a looooong time due to the amount of stopping we insisted on for various animal photos 😊 Arriving our camp looking like something out of a movie, cabins on high stilts, mosquito nets everywhere and of course hammocks. We chilled at the camp for a while and had a great dinner as a group, afterwards it was back out onto the boat for night time caimans and alligator spotting, just seeing their eyes reflected back in the head torches. Creepy! But oh my god, the stars! The stars were amazing. The next day was a rainy start, and after breakfast we adventured out for anaconda searching, this part is difficult to describe in a positive way. Traipsing through mud, long grasses and rivers for hours to see an anaconda, that never appeared certainly doesn't sound like fun but we actually had a great time! Filling borrowed willies with river water and just accepting that after that your feet can't get any wetter meant we just had fun getting muddy and eventually the sun came out. We returned to camp for lunch, next activity for the day was piranha fishing. For my friends who are into fishing you may argue that dangling a line with a hook, using beef as bait doesn't count as fishing but hey we caught plenty and had an awesome time doing it. Piranha for dinner that night! Our final day of the tour and the activity I had been most excited for swimming with dolphins, so we set off from the camp in search, having seen them on both previous days we were expectant. They didn't disappoint after only 30 minutes of looking we spotted our first pair and all jumped in only to have them disappear down river. Myself and another girl from the group persisted and swam after them, for a long time. So technically yes I swam in the same water as dolphins and at some points they were only a few metres away. Back to camp and after lunch it was time to make our return trip to Rurrenabaque. First things first, find a hostel which turned out to be harder than expected given how touristy Rurre is, but we bumped into some girls I'd met in La Paz and 5 of us from the tour and the 3 of them found basic hostel, with such great owners, they even gave us a lift to a restaurant for dinner due to the rain 😊 Touristy town=expensive restaurants, expensive for Bolivia anyway, but we were tired and hungry so the Luna Bar with entirely English menus it was. Pizza and cocktails went down well, and given that two of our group spoke fluent Spanish we even met some of the locals. Breakfast the next morning was to die for; proper sized pancakes, dulce de leche and a pile of fruit, and included in the price! By far the best breakfast I've had in South America. Then the part I had been dreading the beginning of an 18 hour bus journey, which actually turned out to not be too bad, amazing views from death road and luckily a reasonably smooth ride. Plus a quarter of the price of a flight, so I ended up feeling pretty guilty having treated myself to a flight there in the first place. Overall the pampas was an awesome experience, I had a great group of girls on the tour and I can't imagine trekking around a jungle for the same amount of time to be anywhere near as fun. So we tried to find an anaconda and we tried to swim with dolphins and we had a great time doing it.

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