05.12. - 07.12.10

3 day Dschungle Trek in Rurrenabaque

After my mountainbiking tour on "The World´s Most Dangerous Road" in Bolivia I decided to join the German girl Doro to fly to the North of La Paz and book a 3 day Dschungle Tour through the Madidi National Park. Unfortunately I got diarrhorea (in German: Durchfall) -as everyone else here in Bolivia- just the day before we had booked our tour for the 03.12.10. So I had to cancel my flight and Doro went by herself.

On Sunday 05.12.10, two day later I finally took the 6.15am flight with the airline "amaszonas" to "Rurrenabaque". The flight took 45 Minutes and we were only 7 people (5 Bolivian people and 2 tourists) on the tiny 20 seater plane. As we got of the plane we were hit by the humidity and already quite strong sun at 7am. A little shuttle bus was waiting for us and drove us to the "Rurrenabaque airport" which was just a tiny house along the airstrip.

We picked up our little backpacks (the big one I left in the hostal in La Paz) and continued on to the towncentre where I said "Good Bye" to Alfi from Wales who was on my flight.

At the tour operator company they told me that my trip was cancelled regarding an upcoming
"strike of all transportation" around "Rurre" ….BUT they could offer me to go with a different tour company which would leave soon.

An hour later I jumped on a jeep of the company "Dolphin"with three ohter girls from Belgium, two girls from Australia and one guy from Switzerland. We traveled for three hours on gravel road to Santa Rosa which is located next to the river "Yucama".

Half way through we picked up our cook "Glaries". The three hour trip was quite exhausting as no one of us was used to the heat and humidity yet....and everytime when we passed a truck we thought we would die from the dust as we couldn´t wind up the windows.

At around 2.30pm we arrived in Santa Rosa where we had lunch and got to know each other a bit more. Just outside of Santa Rosa we me our guide "Marcielo"at the river "Yucamo" where he was preparing our "wooden boats" for the 3 hour trip to our camp.

Before we got on the boat we sprayed tonnes of mosquito repellent on us and bought ice cold water for the long journey.

During the nice, realaxing but hot boat trip "Marcielo" (our tour giude) stopped the boat a few times to point out all different kind of birds (e.g. herons, tucans etc), crocodiles, monkeys, sloths (Faultier), capibara (Wasserschwein) and snakes to us.

At around 5.30pm we arrived at our base camp. The camp was just a wooden house with a big dorm, a kitchen and a dining room. Thank God…all the beds were covered with mosquito nets!!!

Before dinner we went to the near by Dschungle bar where we were all very much looking forward to a ice cold beer and afterwards we watched the sunset from the balcony of the bar.

After dinner I went straight to bed as I was very exhausted from the long day and the heat!

The next day we had to get up at 4.45pm as Marcielo wanted to take us to a nice spot to watch the beautiful sunrise. It was absolutely amazing how alive the Dschungle was….especially the howling of the monkeys was incredible loud. Unfortunatelynot only the birds and the monkeys were awake….but also the mosquitos!!!

When we came back from our little excursion we had a wonderful and delicious breakfast followed by a nap in the hammock.

During the next two days we went on several excursions. On Monday we all went on a three hour trek through the Dschungle were we ended up at a lagoon with hundreds of crocodiles in it. Marcielo told us that only the "black kayman" is dangerous and exactly that crocodile came out of the water to chase us for a bit. It was obviously protecting her eggs!

After lunch we always had a three hours "siesta" as it was just tooooo hot to even move from the dining room to the hammocks!

On Monday 06.12.10, we went further up the "Yucamo" river where we saw pink and grey dolphins. It was very weird to believe that dolphins were living in the "brown warm" Yucamo river….but we saw a few and even jumped in the water to see if they wanted to play with us. But Marcielo told us that at this time of the year when the water is very low there are only a few dolphins and unfortunately very inactive. Even though the water was warm it felt very nice to swim for a while until everyone else was talking about crododiles and I quickly went back into the boat!

On Tuesday, 07.12.10 we went fishing for "Pirannas" and we couldn`t believe it but we caught a few and Glary´s prepared them later for lunch. Even though they were tiny they tasted quite nice.

After lunch we went back to Santa Rosa by boat where a Jeep was waiting for us. During the 3 hour trip back to "Rurrenabaque" Marcielo told us that the "transportation strike" is still going on.....and he was right, just befor the town they were loads of trucks and cars blocking the road. Our driver tryed a different road through the bush but the same it was blocked. So we went back to the blockade and had to walk twenty minutes to a different blockade.

Behind the blockade there were 7 motorcyclist with their motorbikes waiting for us. So we jumped on the back of their bikes and raced back to our hostals in Rurrenabaque. Wow….that was so nice! First of all because it was much more refreshing than in the Jeep and secondly we didn´t have to walk back all the way to Rurre!

I was supposed to fly out on Wednesday, 08.12.10 but the "transportation strike" was still going on and no flights or buses could leave "Rurrenabaque"!!! So I got stuck in Rurrenabaque until futher notice…….which you will find out in my next blog spot!!!!!