Rurrenabaque

We spent a week studying Spanish in Sucre at the Academia Latinamericana de Espanol.
Steve learnt how to name many different types of furniture and was given a small woollen llama by his teacher as a birthday present. I watched videos about Che Guevara and listened to my teacher talking about Bolivia´s problems, it has quite a few!

We then headed off to the Jungle in Rurrenabaque. The flight from La Paz was in a 12 seater plane, which felt a bit like being in a flying minibus, but we got some amazing views of the mountains and the jungle. The airport in Rurrenabaque consisted of a grass runway and a hut and the town felt very hot, humid and sleepy.

Our first stop was the Chalalan Lodge inside the Parque Nacional Madidi. In order to get there we had to take a boat for five hours upstream of Rurrenabaque. The further we got from Rurrenabaque the more pristine the forest started to look and we spotted our first Capybara on the river bank. Capybaras are the worlds largest rodent. They live on underwater plants and look like an oversized guinea pig.

Chalalan Lodge is about half an hours walk from the river bank, by the shores of a beautiful lake. It was set up by the charity Conservation International when the national park was created. The local community of San Jose de Uchupiamonas live in a protected area near the park where they have rights to hunt, fish and carry out traditional slash and burn agriculture. The idea of the lodge was to provide the local community with a sustainable way to supplement the income from their traditional lifestyle. It is now run by the local community who take it in turns to work in the lodge and by all accounts has been a big sucess.

Certainly all the staff were incredibly friendly and enthusiatic. After arriving we were given an absolutely delicious lunch and felt more like we had arrived in a luxury hotel than the middle of the jungle.

During our time at the lodge we were taken on walks into the jungle, one lasting five hours, and boat trips on the lake. As well as lots of amazing plants we saw capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys, macaws, hoatzins (a weird looking bird that looks a bit like a prehistoric chicken), bats, frogs, caimans (which are like black crocodiles) and a tarantula. Our closest encounter with the wildlife was when we went on a night walk and the frog we were staring at jumped on to Steve.

On our last night the staff organised a traditional party complete with chicha (a beer made from corn which in my opinion tastes a lot like off milk), coca leaves and a band. The most enthusiastic party goers were the staff themselves who continued long after all the tired tourists had gone to bed!

After our trip to Chalan we headed off on another trip to the Pampas of Yacuma. This is an area a few hours by truck from Rurremabaque which is mainly grass and swamp land. The same types of animal live in this area as do in the rainforest but because there are fewer trees they are easier to spot.

One of the reasons why the area is not rainforest is because it is grazed by cattle. For me one of the strangest things in the jeep on our way to and from the Pampas was seeing domesticated animals like cattle and horses along the road. Then spotting wild ones alongside them including an armadillo, a sloth and a pair of ostrichs.

Our lodge was alongside the river Yacuma. It was nice enough but this time there was no chance of mistaking it for a luxury hotel! The wet season had got underway and all the swamp land in the Pampas at this time makes it a perfect breeding ground for mosquitos. Despite wearing 50% deet insect repellent all over my body and wearing long trousers and a long sleeved shirt and putting 50% deet insect repellent all over my clothes and hair I still managed to get about 250 bites, as counted by Steve. Our guide explained to us that in the height of the wet season in January he has tourists that come for a three day trip and are begging to be taken back after two!

However the wild life that we saw made the trip definately worth it. It felt like we had been transported to a kind of animal Disney Land. In boat trips along the river we saw more Capybaras including a whole family with baby ones. We saw loads of Cayman, Bolivian Cocodrilos, Turtles and many types of birds.

The most friendly animals were the pink and grey dolphins that live in the river and seemed almost to be showing off around our boat and the Squirrel monkeys who came down to see if they could get anything to eat. With the shyer animals though, we did end up feeling a little like animal papparazzi. Our guide would often ram our boat into the shore causing whichever animal we were looking at to make a quick exit while we tried to photograph them.

We were taken to fish for piranhas. I thought that as I eat fish it would be hypocritial not to join in the fishing but felt rotten after catching a catfish and watching it slowly suffocate to death. In the end no one caught any piranhas but we caught five catfish which we ate for dinner. On the way back on the river in the dark there were so many fire flies that the whole sky seemed to be twinkling.

On our last morning we went to a road in the grass lands behind the river to look for an anaconda. Our guide joined forces with another guide, leading a group of Japanese tourists, to improve his chances of finding one. Eventually they found a baby anaconda, which was still impressively large. We were all looking at the anaconda when one of the Japanese tourists in a shocking example of ego (as opposed to eco) tourism decided to kick the anaconda sending it slithering off.

After our trip to the Pampas we flew back up to La Paz and then went on to Copacabana near Lake Titicaca. Unfortunately our 30 day Bolivian visa was nearly about to expire so after stopping briefly we got the bus on to Peru. At the moment we are in a town called Arequipa in the south of Peru where we plan to relax for a few days.