The Amazon Basin!

Pink Dolphins.

That was all that was needed to convince me to go and visit the Bolivian part of the Amazon Basin.  I didn´t even know dolphins came in a pink variety.

I first needed to get to the low-lying town of Rurrenabaque.  I had a look on the map and found that it was about 300km from La Paz.  Three hours on the bus, I assumed - wrong!  This particular stretch of road is one of the most dangerous in the world.  Just before I arrived in South America I saw a news report detailing how, during particularly bad weather conditions, the driver of a bus had asked the passengers to get off while he negotiated a particularly tricky stretch of the road.  He miscalculated.  The bus slipped off the edge and landed on the rocks 600m below.  The journey takes 18 to 24 hours, 2 days there and back.

Annoyingly, I´m really pressed for time.  I´m rushing to Cuzco for the 26th March, as I´ve booked an Inca Trail trek, so my only option was to book a cheap internal flight.  Upon check-in I was given my handwritten boarding pass and a voucher for a free cocktail in Rurre.

I am a big fan of this policy but it probably doesn´t reflect well on the quality of Amazonas Airlines.  I found my gate and joined a group of around 15 people - the other passengers must be coming later, I thought.  After walking past several mid-sized planes, the realisation set in that I was with ALL the passengers...  The 16-seater plane was about as big as my first car, an F-reg Peugeot 205, and looked less sturdy.  On top of that, a thunderstorm had just whipped in from the mountains. Now, I´m not bothered about flying but I do tend to get travel-sick - to say that I was not looking forward to this flight would have been a grave understatement.

Anyway, we got on, sped down the runway and attempted to take off.  It took a while and was very bumpy.  I distracted myself by chuckling at the people who had paid extra for "Business Class" seats.  These seats, the two at the front, had approximately 5cm of extra legroom.  It was the difference between sitting in the back of a smart car and a mini.  They were less than impressed.

We climbed for what seemed like ages but still had to fly in between mountains because we had not yet cleared the peaks.  Then we hit a thunderstorm.  Turbulence is a completely different thing when you are in a 16-seater plane - if I hadn´t been wearing a seatbelt I would have bounced off the ceiling a number of times.  At one point my hand luggage, which was placed between my legs, defied the laws of gravity and flew past my face.  I actually thought I was going to die.

You can probably guess that I didn´t die and we touched down 45 minutes later at Rurre airport.  The "terminal" resembled a local village hall - I can´t decide which was funnier, this terminal or the Bolivian immigration checkpoint.

We arrived at 7:30am and hopped on a shuttle bus to the offices of the tour company.  I´d elected to visit the Pampas - fertile lowlands covering thousands of square kilometers, most of which is underwater for much of the year.  First up was a 3hr jeep ride to the River Yacuma, where we´d start our trip.  Nine people then hopped into a long-boat and our guide, Yasmani, fired the outboard motor.  It made lots of noise but refused to get into gear, despite several attempts and a swift kick.  Yasmani proceeded to take the whole thing apart with a penknife, throw a couple of pieces of metal into the water and then put it back together.  Surprisingly, this worked!

We sped down the river spotting turtles, huge exotic birds, monkeys, alligators and even caught a glimpse of a pink dolphin.

Looking across the flat plains, you´d think you were standing in the middle of a huge meadow.  However, virtually everything is growing through a meter or two of water.  We´d be chugging along a wide river one minute and then turn towards what looked like a grassy mound, only to pass through grass that was sticking out of the water.

At one point we pulled into a cove with a small tree.  There was lots of rustling and Yasmani explained that there was a family of small monkeys searching for food.  I was sitting at the front of the boat and he chucked over a couple of bits of banana and asked me of I could try to coax some of them out.  Approximately 1.5 seconds after holding up the piece of banana my arm was covered in small monkeys!  They are definitely not shy.

After a couple of hours we arrived at our accommodation, in a floating village!  The place demonstrated the pace of the entire region, there were two hammock gardens and people lazing around on small platforms in the trees.  All the buildings are made of local wood, all joined together by a network of planks.

There is also a resident alligator, called Pedro.  He´d lurk around near the kitchen waiting for scraps to be thrown into the water.  Unfortunately, it was necessary to pass the kitchen to get to the toilets.  During the day this wasn´t a problem...but in the night (when it was pitch black) doing the tightrope walk across the planked walkway was less fun.  Especially as you could always see his beady eyes sticking out of the water, watching your every move!

After a quick snack, we headed over to another village with a raised viewing point to watch the sunset.  Lazing in a hammock, sipping a cold beer and swapping stories with other backpackers, I considered building my own floating house!

That night we went out in the boat for some night alligator spotting!  I didn´t think we´d see anything but it was surprising how easy it was to spot flashing eyes everywhere as we chugged along.  Looking up at the stars and the orange fireflies buzzing along was a great end to the day.

The next day did not start well.  I woke with a jump as water splashed all over my face.  It wasn´t someone having a joke - the roof was leaking due to the fact that it had been lashing it down all night.  After breakfast it was still raining strong and our boat was more underwater than floating - much bailing was required.  Luckily I came prepared!

The activity for the morning was to look for anacondas.  It was a miserable morning.  We cruised over to a small island which was supposed to be the natural habitat for anacondas, cobras and the odd rattle snake.  I´m not sure why the tour company do it like this but about five groups turned up at the same time.  It was a scene that would have made David Attenborough cry - 50 people stomping round a tiny island, poking anything that moved.  I´m hardly a conservationist, but walking up to a potential snakes nest and kicking it apart to see if anything is inside is not my idea of seeing wildlife in their natural habitat.  Unsurprisingly, no one saw anything.  Added to that, the rain had brought out the mosquitoes.

The morning was capped off with a walk through some flooded plains (still in search of snakes).  This meant wading around in waist-deep muddy water while trying to protect your face from millions of mosquitoes.  I saw one spider.

Thankfully, the afternoon was as good as the morning was bad.  We got to swim with pink dolphins!!  We visited a few spots before we found an area with several dolphins.  They would bob up for air and then disappear in a flash under the water so we wondered how much we´d see of them.  When we came to a halt Yasmani filled a waterbottle a quarter of the way up and threw it into the water.  It bobbed away on the surface when suddenly five dolphins popped up and tried to grab it.  One of them took it in its mouth and dived under the surface, until it popped up a few meters away.  We all jumped in and continued playing this game.  Sometimes they´d swim under you and nibble at your feet or legs to see what you were doing.  They were so friendly and playful considering they are wild animals, it was truly remarkable.

It was still pouring it down when we made the long boat ride back but no one minded as we were all wet from swimming and had big smiles on our faces!

The next morning we were woken up at 6am by a strange roaring noise.  It sounded like the noise an angry dinosaur would make.  It turned out to be a family of large monkeys marking their territory!  It was unbeliveabley lucky - we were supposed to get up at 6am to watch the sunrise but Yasmani had forgot to set his alarm.  We would have missed it if it wasn´t for those monkeys!

We sped out to a nice part of the pampas to watch the sun come up.  It was so peaceful and you could hear all the animals going about their daily routine as the sun popped up on the horizon.

We spent the rest of the morning fishing for Piranhas.  It was much more difficult that I expected and no one except Yasmani caught anything.  Lucky we weren´t fishing for our lunch!

On the way back we saw a really big alligator floating along under the sunshine and a nest with eagle eggs in it.  We also saw an awesome hunting bird, my favourite of the trip, the tiger fisher.

After that we headed back to camp and packed up our stuff for the long trip back.  I said goodbye to Pedro and jumped into the boat.

Back at Rurre I redeemed drinks voucher and drank my free cocktail by the river with some of the others in before jumping on a plane back to La Paz (the return trip was much better than the one out there!).  Apart from the anaconda searching, it was a great trip!  I´m back in La Paz for a few days and will head to Lake Titicaca after.  Tomorrow I´ll be hurtling down 63km of the Worlds Most Dangerous Road on a mountain bike - can´t wait!

In the meantime, here are a few more pampas pics.