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Published: April 8th 2011
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If you are incredibly scared of spiders, where on planet earth would you be least likely to go? INTO THE JUNGLE!!
The Amazon Jungle however is one of the world most bio-diverse areas, represents over half of the planets remaining rainforests and therefore is kinda hard to skip. The Amazon basin covers 7 million km2 (1.7 billion acres), and about half of Bolivia’s land mass, so we decided to head north into the jungle. Rurrenabaque is a rural town at the base of the Amazon and the access point for all adventures into the rainforest or pampas. To get there from La Paz we had the option of taking a bus that we had heard could take anywhere from 30 hours to THREE DAYS, or take a flight for 45 minutes…so of course we flew! It happened to be the smallest plane I had ever been on where you could feel every movement the plane made but luckily it was a pretty smooth flight.
On the plane we met an awesome Irish couple who happened to be booked onto the same tour as us, a three day, two night trip through the pampas. So we ‘bonded’ over some cocktails
in a pool, watching sunset over the town and then accidently ‘bonded’ well into the night. This decision was regretted the next morning when we began our tour with a three hour 4x4 jeep ride, which turned out to be more like three hours of slipping, sliding and screaming through muddy road, over pot holes and across creeks. Now we had heard rave reviews about a particular company so had decided to book the tour through them and being the Amazon, we had specifically asked for an English speaking guide so that we could learn about the animals and area. However when our Michael Jackson/Bruce Lee look-a-like guide met us at the boats, we realised that not much conversation was going to happen. His English vocabulary extended to “Hello, how are you?”, but that was about it. Luckily we had a great group on our boat with the two Irish, two New Zealanders and a Canadian, so we were bound to have a good time. By the third day, we had realised that the company had pretty much overbooked our tour and thrown in an amateur guide as a last minute quick fix. He got lost numerous times, forgot to
tell us we needed wellingtons for tracing through swamplands, listened to his I-pod whilst looking for wildlife and responded with “black bird” when we asked what kind of bird this big black one was! After hours of slodging through waist deep water searing for anacondas with no success, parana fishing with no success and being eaten alive by the most (and biggest) mosquitoes I have ever seen in my life, we were beginning to feel a bit disappointed. But on our last outing in the boat, we came across a pod of fresh water pink dolphins, dove in and swam with them for about an hour, playing with them as they showed off with jumps….amazing!
So after that most people on our tour had enough and flew back to La Paz, but Zack and I were determined to see the real Amazon Rainforest (no matter how many more mosquito bites it took) so we stayed and signed up for a two day trip into Madidi National Park, a national rainforest reserve. Our luck evened out as we scored the coolest guide ever, Luis, who was extremely passionate about the rainforest and had a fantastic sense of humour. After dinner
Luis suggested a night walk into the forest. Now I had managed to avoid the big hairy tarantulas in the pampas, but walking through trees at night….I think I was pushing my luck. But I manned up and went along. Despite being petrified as everywhere I shone my torch there was a spider (literally), it was such a cool experience as the noises were incredible. Insects, frogs, bats and everything in-between, all chatting loudly to each other. At one moment, we all turned our torches off and stood in the pitch black….freaky at the least! So at the end of our tour, we were so wrapped with our experience that we tipped Luis almost all the money we had left. And as there are no ATMS in Rurrenabaque this literally meant that next day when our plane was delayed because of a massive thunderstorm, we got back to La Paz with a mere 3 Bolivianos in our pocket (about 50 US cents). But hey, all you need are “the bare necessities…the simple bare necessities”.
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Bianca
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Who got this point in spot the cat?