Welcome to the jungle

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After the 20 hour bus journey which involved quiet a bit of time on the infamous death road we reached Rurrenabaque. Here Yvonne discovered her wallet and contact lenses missing out of her day bag. There was a lot of cash in the wallet and to make matters worse Rurre is a town with no ATM’s so it looked like the whole team would be stuck for cash as a result. Yvonne took out enough to live for a week and a flight back in case the bus was too bad. Then we remembered the stash of dollars in Garys bag so there was great relief all round.
After getting a terrible exchange rate for our dollars we booked with a tour group called Macchui Peuchi. They were recommended by Oded who we traveled with in Arequipa, it was a bit more expensive than others but we were assured that the guide spoke English so between this and the reference we decided quite unlike us that it was worth the extra cash. Tour booked and off we went to watch England play like sissys against Algeria with a pack of cocky English and a man in a pub who didn‘t have enough beer and kept having to run out the shop for more. Profitable evening for him. That evening we ate dinner by candle light. Power gone again!

The following morning we got up all excited, bought more bug spray and shorts for Gary. We waited outside the office where we were to be collected. About 45 minutes after collection time we were escorted down the road to another tour company. Dolphin. Here we got in a jeep with a German girl and Switz lad. They were really nice but mostly spoke German to each other. Our first day was mostly filled with getting to the hut in the jungle where we were staying. We got to see lots of wildlife on our way here. Caimens(big scary crocs) and big bears/rodents called capibara, millions of turtles too which was class. On this day we discovered that our guide didn’t have a word of English. The other 2 we’re fairly fluent at Spanish so Yvonne and Gary were left to talk to each other for most of the day. The second day we went hunting for Anacondas and swimming with Pink Dolphins. The former was futile and exhausting and the latter was brilliant. Defo the highlight of the tour, but then I do love swimming anywhere. We were swimming in the river where the caimens were sunbathing by the side. Quite scary when I think about it now but while I was there it was the nicest thing in the world. On the last day we got up early to watch sunrise which was an anticlimax. We’ve seen a lot of sunrises and sunsets at this stage so are well able to judge. We also had a go off fishing for piranas but as the guide managed to loose the bait this was also quite a waste of time. The trip back to rurre was in a very old jeep and quiet a bumpy ride. All in all it wasn’t as good as expected. Not at all sure it was worth losing a wallet for,,,

From here we got another long bus back to La Paz. This bus was less comfortable than the first one. Only 3 pee stops in 20 hours. There was people peeing out the windows and everything deadly serious. We were nearly tempted ourselves at some stages.

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Photos

lots of birdys
Hard to picture though

sunrise
Happens at 5am everywhere. no need to keep getting up for it tho