Rurrenabaque - The Amazon Jungle

Rurrenabaque was definitely an interesting experience. I learned a lot about the area and the people I am traveling with.

We flew into Rurrenabaque from La Paz on a plane that sat about 10 people and that you could look through the windsheild of the cockpit. We landed on a dirt runway and the pilots both pulled back on the throttle to reverse the engines when we landed. Tehy moved pretty quickly and it looked like it took a lot of effort. We also managed to skid side to side a little bit on the landing.

Then we took a bus into town. This bus had a busted up windshield and it was the only way into town. The airline ran the bus as well.

When we got into town, our group visited a bunch of different tour operators to find the best one for us. I had e-mailed a couple of them before but none replied. Prices ranged from $19/day to $50/day. The $50/day option was more of an eco tour. The others were pretty much rough and tough jungle adventure where you boat up the river and hike around. Most of these involved 5 hour hikes with our packs. After visiting the places we sat down in a restuarant and pretty much debated our options. We had a clear split in our group. KF and I wanted more of the rough and tumble type of trip and AA and VC wanted the eco tour. We decided on two operators, Fluvial ($20/day) and Majapa ($50/day). I told the rest of the group to visit Fluvial and see if they were comfortable with the operator. I was totally fine with either one but preferred the cheaper one. After waiting about 2 hours, they came back with the decision to go on Butterfly tours. This threw me for a loop but it all worked out.

Our first day on the tour involved a stop at a ranch. This ranch had all kinds of animals, pigs, dogs, chickens, horses, and cows. Mainly it was a cattle ranch. Hernand, the ranch hand took us on a walking tour where we say coca trees that they use to make chocalate. The fruit was pretty good. We also saw ant trails that were slowly but surely dismantling trees. On the walk back to camp, I got bit by a smaller ant on my ankle. That sucked. We went for a horseback ride in the afternoon. VF almost fell off his horse when a big truck went by us. That night we hung out at the ranch and went to bed early. I taught everyone how to play Rummy, a card game. Sleeping on the ranch was crazy because there were all kinds of animals running around at night making all kinds of noise. I didn´t sleep too well.

The next day, Javier, our guide, joined us and we hiked about 2 hours up into the jungle. On the way, Javier pointed out plants that could cure just about anything. We even found something to put on my ant bite. We were about 15 mintues away from our camp site and then it started to rain. It came down hard and continued to come down for the rest of the night. Not much happened that night. More card playing. We also had spam for dinner. Lee, you would have loved it. We also decided to try ot head back early to get out of the ran. Plus another ant bit my other ankle on the hike up there. That sucked even more. For some reason, the plant stuff that they put on my previous ant bit was not as abundant as they had promised. They couldn´t seem to find it anymore.

The next day it cleared up a bit and we hiked up to see 3 waterfalls and did some swimming. The water falls were cool but not too awe-inspiring. We decided to return to town that night. On the hike back, Javier found Jaguar paw prints in the mud. We suspect that perhaps the cook might have mde those imprints on the way back just to make us feel like we got our money´s worth. She was always about a good 10 minutes ahead of us on the trail.

Sleeping in the hotel in Rurrenabaque was rough because the rooster started crowing at about 3 am. They´re clocks were way off.

The next day we went on a boat ride down the river. It was pretty cool to see the jungle from the river and see how the locals lived on it but we didn´t see any animals.

Rurrenabaque was a fun town. It´s amazing how many Israelis are there. Most are right out of the army and according to the locals they like to party out in the jungle. They didn´t seem to crazy in town but they certainly loved the tour operator named Ananconda. Just about every Israeli has a t-shirt from them.

I can´t seem to connect to my hard-drive on this computer so I will try to upload some photos later.