So having booked our flights in La Paz to Rurrenabaque (which is incredibly hard to pronounce in Spanish as a word beginning in R is rolled as it a double R, so it was more like Rrrrrrurrrrrrenabaque, which was made even more difficult by the fact that I couldn't roll my R's) we finally jumped on the plane in the early hours of the morning. We had booked with Bolivia's military airline which offered commercial flights and ended up at a gated airport which was pretty much deserted apart from a few backpackers headed the same way as us.
Being quite a small plane with propellers, it was quite a rickety ride but we got there safely to see the most pathetic "airport" ever at Rurrenabaque.
That building below is all there was to it! Jump off the plane, walk across he mud and get whisked off in a minibus to the town itself. Having already prebooked our trips into the jungle, we were whisked straight off to the tour offices and paid our money, then dropped off at our hotel.
It wasn't the best conditions for the jungle, we were hoping for a bit of nice weather but this is what we were met with.
Not letting the crappy weather get us down, we got a nights sleep and then set off on our adventure the following day, with pretty much the same crappy conditions. In the knowledge that black caiman (crocs) and piranhas were in these waters, we weren't overly impressed that we were about a foot off the waters surface in these tiny boats being whizzed off to our ecolodge.
But with the rain beating down, our minds were more focussed on staying dry, thanks to the handy ponchos we were given by the tour guides.
And at least we weren't these people who we passed on our way, who were literally on a raft an inch off the surface, a much more appealing treat for any interested crocs. They would have been out there for ages as well, being rowed along, it took us 2 hours on the boat with an engine to get to our lodge.
But we got there in the end and were shown to our beautiful little shack for the next 2 nights in the middle of nowhere.
After settling in briefly we were introduced to our trek guide, and straight away set off on our first jungle trek. It was hard to contain our excitement, but it was somewhat dulled by the first "exciting" thing, a tree with red bits sticking out. To be fair it was quite interesting.
Thats doesn't float your boat.....what about this tree that had evolved spikes all over it to prevent animals from climbing up there. Not sure why it wouldn't want animals up there but there we go.
With our tour guide telling us to be super quiet he had supposedly heard something. He kept telling us there was a noise again but we couldn't hear it. Turns out he had heard the sound of a group of wild boar in the distance which took us about another 10 minutes before we could hear them when we got a bit closer. After being told there were no guarantees of seeing any wildlife whatsoever, we were super lucky to see this group of pigs crossing our path about 15 feet away as we hid behind a tree. They must have smelt us though as they squealed a bit then all bolted off, with the little piglets at the back trying to keep up with their tiny legs.
Pigs all gone, our guide chopped his way through some more foliage with his big ass knife and explained about some more trees.
However, he felt the need to relieve himself after we crossed a small river and left his things behind. I couldn't resist the temptation to have a little pose with it. Only later did I realise I massively resembled a pirate. Looks like this picture was taken in Somalia.
With the sound of him returning I quickly returned the knife and off we set leaving the path as the guide had heard more things and we went and found some elusive monkeys which again was quite a rare occurrence. Not only did we see these guys, but we saw 2 more breeds of monkey altogether with the guide not believing how lucky we'd been to see all this.
We also got to see a pretty colourful little beetle chap.
We also came across a massive clay pit thingy where loads of animals would roll around in and actually eat the mud to counter some of the poisonous fruits they would eat in the jungle with the salt content eradicating the danger.
Hiking back we grabbed some vegetarian food and we thought they had mistaken us as veggies as you had to tick a box back in the tour office, but we ate it anyway and hoped for some meat the following day.
But anyway, it was time for a night trek so we donned our head torches and set off into the forest, staying close to our guide as there were animals which could easily kill you out here and that's especially uncool seeing as the hospital is 2 hours away down a river back in Rurrenabaque.
But off we set in search of animals, mainly frogs which the guide said were out in full this time of night. But frogs we did not find, but we did see this little cricket fella with super long antenna thingies.
But the best thing we saw was this spider. We had seen other spiders but on webs and these spiders are not dangerous to humans as they catch flies in their webs hence no need for venom. However its the spiders that sit on leaves that don't make webs that you want to watch out for, as they could take a human down with one bite.....a bit like this beast. It might not seem too beastly but considering the leaf its on was about a foot in width, this spider was literally the size of a clenched fist. With the zoom on my camera not picking it up, I (probably quite foolishly given its venom) got in a close as I could and took this picture without zoom. Worked out alright so happy days.
Not seeing any frogs but happy with what we had saw we retreated back to our shack and got under our mosquito nights for some sleep.
Waking up the next morning to the sound of heavier rain we weren't gonna let that stop us and jumped on our little boat and went up river a bit to a rocky area. At one point it was that shallow that we got stuck out in the middle but it was only a foot deep or so, so our guides had to jump out and move the boat. Not something I'd do given the croc presence around here. We hadn't seen one but I don't know if that was a good or a bad thing. Are there none here or are they right under us and we just can't see them?!
Forgetting about that for a minute we saw some capybaras which are native to South America and look like massive rats but a bit cuter. They are actually the largest rodents in the world and you can save yourself some money by seeing them in zoos over here, as we had already done before coming out here so they weren't that impressive to us.
What was though was seeing a little family of the little chaps.
We also came across some jaguar tracks, as well as tapir, ocelot and other animal tracks which was pretty cool to see. Didn't really fancy coming across a jaguar as they would potentially maul us. Good job our guides had those big ass knifes on them.
But we hadn't come to this rocky area to look at tracks or capybaras, we were here to fish....but not for your average trout....we were here for piranhas! Cutting out a path a bit deeper into the jungle, and not knowing if we were wondering into a jaguars layer, the guides finally found us a secluded little pond area. Being given the most basic of fishing apparatus in a hook and line, we put a bit of meat on the end and threw it in not really expecting to catch much. However it took all of about 30 seconds for something to munch on our bate, and you had to pull the line out super fast to hook the fish otherwise it would spit it out. And after a few missed fish we both started pulling out some piranhas.
Of course me and Jen had to make a competition of it with me ending up winning with 4 fish to Jen's 3. In all fairness though she did catch the biggest one, but we all know its about quantity.
So what do you do with some piranhas? Put them back? Keep them as pets? Use them for bate? No silly, you fry them up and eat them!
They were pretty tasty, not the best fish I'd ever had, and not that much meat on them but definately worth the experience.
Back to the ecolodge we went and with some time to kill we were either offered another walk or some handycraft making, and with the rain kicking in, we chose the handycrafts. Some of you may have seen the little poncy black ring I've been wearing since I got back but that's because it's way cool, me and Jen both have one.
And where did it come from? This handycraft making experience in the Bolivian jungle which is why the ring is in fact cool. It started out life as a baby coconut believe it or not.
Anf following 2 hours of scoring the middle out with a knife and then sanding it down, followed by sanding the outside down with three different levels of sandpaper, we could finally die them with black coconut ash resulting in the black ring that I sport today.
Male accessorises are cool, who knew!
With more fish on the menu, this time being their local delicacy of cat fish, we chowed down and really enjoyed it, it was a super tasty fish and cooked their traditional way of in banana leaves.
With not much to do when the light went down we retired back to our room and played a few games of cards by head torch light and then called it a night.
The next day we got up for our final lunch here and heard some noises coming from round the corner. We were amazed to see a baby tapir chowing down on some cast away rotten bananas, literally in the camp itself. It wasn't scared of me at all, and this was no pet, it was a wild tapir who the guides say was part of a family of tapirs who lived not far away and sometimes they would come in a steal food. Was cool to see as we hadn't seen a tapir but we didn't get the sense it was wild much, it did kinda seem like a pet.
With that unexpected little treat at the end we packed up our stuff and jumped back on the boat for 2 hours back to Rurrenabaque for the night and went off to book our second trip into a different area of the jungle known as the pampas.
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