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Published: March 24th 2006
We've been on the road now for about 3 months, more or less, and the whole time we've been up in the mountains (except for the Galapagos excursion, which was something of a holiday within a holiday). Many moons ago my good friend Pete had also travelled these parts, and the one recommendation that I remembered was that we should go to Rurrenabaque, or Rurre as it's more often called. Having spent so much time up in the clouds we were looking forward to getting down to jungle level, and seeing some of the teeming wildlife that we'd heard and read much about.
The journey there was, well, different. We'd biked down from La Paz to Coroico and from there caught a bus bound for Rurre. It was claimed that this bus had toilets and fully reclining seats, but none too surprisingly it had neither, and we didn't seem to have reserved seats either. Not easily put off, we sat at the back of the bus and marvelled at the narrowness of the road and sheer drops that awaited the unwary. If we'd biked down "The Most Dangerous Road in the World", what the hell was this?!? It made for
a more interesting journey though, although sadly we were on the wrong side of the bus to take photos so you'll have to take my word for it!
After a somewhat gruelling 15 hours we arrived at Rurre. Em seemed to have slept like a baby, but despite vallium assistance I was still unable to get more than a few minutes' sleep before being jolted into a reluctant consciousness by a larger-than-average pothole in the unmade road. Never mind, that was behind us, and we'd already decided that we were going to fly back to La Paz!
The town was lovely. Not much to do there, but it had a really chilled vibe, and was a nice place to stroll around. Unfortunately I could appreciate very little of this, as the tasy-looking sausage that I'd bought before boarding the bus apparently wasn't cooked quite as well as it could have been, and yes you guessed it, the traveller's plague had cursed me once more. Luckily we'd booked into the Hostal Beni (the only place in town with TVs) and we were able to connect our newly purchased DVD player and watch DVDs in bed until I felt able
Colourful centipede in the jungle
Apparently they glow in the dark, and despite the bright colours are harmlessto stray from the toilet for more than 10 mins. It took a couple of days to pass, but with the help of Cinthia's medicinal tea (she works in a local tour agency and was an absolute *star*) I was better in a couple of days and we were booked on a 4 day jungle tour.
There are two main types of tours offered from Rurre - jungle and pampas. We'd heard that the jungle was the place to see lots of interesting plant life, and a whole range of insects, but not much in the way of animals, as they can hide far too easily in the dense vegitation. The pampas on the other hand are a network of rivers and channels in between jungle-esque vegitation and swampy grasslands, from which it is possible to see a massive array of birds, reptiles, monkeys - you name it. We wanted to do both, but we decided to save the pampas until last, as it sounded more exciting.
The jungle was full-on. Really. Great fun, but very tiring, not least due to the extreme humidity (I didn't have any way to work out what the humidity was, but I
Em negotiates a log bridge
No small thing for someone with a relatively undeveloped sense of balance! don't reckon it could have been far off 100%) and the relentless insects. The plant life was incredible, we discovered all sorts of trees and bushes, some of which are toxic, others medicinal, others yet edible - can you believe there's a jungle garlic tree, which you can smell from 20m, and the bark of which you can use for cooking?? The insects though were unbelievable. One night we went deep into the jungle, to camp under nothing more than a mosquito net covered with some plastic sheeting to keep the rain off. There were so many mozzies that both Em and I ended up peppered with bites, as you went to sleep under the net you could hear a ceaseless chorus of tiny wings just outside, and you knew fine well that if your skin touched the mozzie net anywhere they'd bite straight through it and into you! Forget long trousers or shirts being any help either - they can bite through clothes just as easily as if you weren't wearing any. Whilst we had a great time trekking around the jungle, tracking wild pigs (pretty much the only animals that you get to see), and annoying jungle ants
First 4x4 failure
Note the wildly different direction the front wheels are pointing in. Not good. (boy are they aggressive!!), we were ready to leave by the time the fourth day came. Back to Rurre it was, and straight out again to the Pampas the following morning.
The trip to the Pampas was a different experience altogether. The journey there is long, around 7 hours, made all the longer by our jeep breaking down not once but twice, although it was interesting for me to see the "bush mechanics" that the driver used to fix the vehicle - using nothing more than a piece of old inner tube and some wire! Needless to say I was making notes, that type of repair is useful when you plan to do ridiculous long overland trips in your own 4x4! Anyhow eventually we got to the river, got on the boat, and were on our way to the camp.
The animals in the pampas are much, much more apparent. On the way to the camp we saw all three types of monkey that live in the area: squirrel, capuchino and howler monkeys. The squirrel and cappuchino monkeys we were able to feed with some bananas, which they jumped on the boat to eat. Soooo cute!! The cappuchino
Antonio Banderas looking menacing
People weren't queueing up to touch this one... monkey was less friendly, and although he came close enough to take the banana, he then started chucking bits of branch at us when we didn't give him any more! Very funny.
At the first camp we were introduced to Pedro, the resident alligator, and we even got a chance to touch him. Reptiles with big teeth always freak me out a bit, being completely devoid of any sense of compassion or reason - they're basically just meat-eating machines - but even I stuck my hand out and had a feel of his scaly nose. As it turns out he's quite friendly, although this couldn't be said of the resident alligator at camp #2, Antonio Banderas, who is a right nasty piece of work. Needless to say I didn't touch him, other than grabbing his tail once in a desperate attempt to prove I wasn't scared of him.....
Over the course of the three days in the pampas we saw all manner of creatures: black caiman (which apparently grow to 7m, are very aggresive and are the only creatures that can kill and eat an alligator), loads of birds (the names of which I can't remember), pink river
dolphins (who we swam with, or rather near, as they didn't really want to come and play!), and plenty of monkeys. We went out looking for the biggest snakes in the world, the anaconda, but weren't lucky and didn't find one, as it's apparently much more difficult in the wet season. This was all the more dissapointing, as the method of searching for anacondas in the wet season is to wade around in knee deep stinky swamp water in the hope you tread on one (or rather that you disturb one without making it mad!). We were quite lucky on the way home, as we saw both an anteater (not sure how big they usually are, but this one was HUGE!) and an anaconda crossing the road (without any more swamp wading involved), although we were unable to get decent pictures of either. We also had the chance to go pirhaña fishing, which was a bit odd having kept them as pets in the UK, but we had a go nonetheless. Em and I, being dab hands at the old fish-catching game, were the only two people from our group to catch anything. Whilst most other people there seemed content
to give their fish to the locals, I decided it would be better to keep hold of our catch and take them back to Rurre to have for dinner, and damned tasty they were too!
It took us a couple of days to escape Rurre's gravitational pull, as the airport amounts to little more than a field, and as such is easily waterlogged by end-of-season rains. We finally managed to get on a flight although had to be bussed to Reyes, a town about an hour away, which hadn't been rained on and therefore had a dry runway. The flight home was an adventure in itself - the plane was a 12-seater, meaning that Em and I got to sit right behind the pilots. The plane went up to about 20,000 feet, and not being pressurised, we got to experience the effects of altitude much more than we had done at even the highest points on the ground. More strange still, we took off from Reyes at about 300m above sea level, and climbed to 5000m, only to land at La Paz at 4400m! It has the highest airport in the world, which was very apparent as we approached
Jungle wasp builds it's clay nest
This little chap was to-ing and fro-ing whilst we sat in our hammocks, each time bringing a ball of clay and adding it to the nest. A few days later when we returned it was finished. - one minute we were up in the clouds, a long long way from the ground, the next minute the ground had climbed thousands of metres beneath us, and we were maybe 100m from it. A very unusual flight, and loads of fun.
La Paz was cold after the heat and humidity of Rurre, but we were glad to be back in a dry atmosphere. Armed with our new hammocks (we are planning to go camping in Patagonia after all) we set about buying all the bits and pieces that we needed for the next part of the trip; pots, pans, plates...... even a mini-cheese grater. Now that we'd got the jungle out of the way, more beautiful mountains and lakes awaited......
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Paul
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Fair play to Em i would have been down on my arse crossing that "bridge" no question! I can see why this takes so long it is absolutely amazing!