Seeing that I was in South America, it was time to head to the Amazon.. the jungle, and not the River. The staring point for trips to the Amazon Basin in Bolivia is Rurrenbaque (Rurre) you have two ways to get there.. and awful and painstaking 16hr+ bus ride, or a flight for less than an hour.. so being lazy, I took the flight! As soon as landing in Rurre, I was off to start a 3 day Pampas Trip (basically being taken around by motorized canoe along the river) and a 2 day Jungle trip (mainly walking around the jungle). In the office, I was joined by the rest of my group, luckily enough for me 4 girls – much to the envy of all the other groups! To get the canoe, involved a rather dull 3 hour drive, but it least it gives you an opportunity to know the people you're spending the next few days with.
We set of on our canoe, along the River Beni with the aim of trying to see as much wildlife as you can, I'll let the pictures do the talking here. Late afternoon, we get to our campsite (mosquito 2), not much to write home about.. very basic, but it was our base for the next 2 nights. The first evening, we set off to look for alligators – apparently easier by night as its too hot for them to surface during the day.. we had a some luck, we managed to see 2 little ones, but impossible to take pics off so you'll have to take my word for it. The following morning, we set off anaconda searching – kitted out in rather fetching Wellington boots, we were off the swamp. You get in to this mud pit, thigh deep in mud, the place swarming in mossies, and your off looking for an anaconda.. not much fun I can tell you, especially as the chances of finding one are slim to none.. spent a couple of hours of getting bitten alive, before we headed back to campsite to dry off. That afternoon we all went Piranha fishing, which was quite good fun even though I didn't catch anything.. these piranha's are clever little fish's, tug on the bait and off before you can reel them in. The guide managed to catch 3, the cook 2 and one of the girls caught 2 as well. Later the afternoon was a nice treat.. the amazon has a pub - The Sunset Bar (where you may have guessed, I took the sunset pics from).. nothing like a cold beer, chilling out and getting eaten alive by mossies.. but somehow the cold beer sothes the pain, the worst part was leaving the bar... but wasn´t too long before we asked our guide to take as back the bar to get some takeaway´s.. the first time I´ve done a beer run on a river, in a canoe! The final day of the Pampas trip was swimming with pink dolphins, thats right pink fresh water dolphins... I being a wimp, and scared of deep water didnt actually get in and so was in charge of taking pics for the group.. which due to my lack of enthusiasm for it was none. That was more or less the end of the trip, and so heading back to Rurre where the following morning we would start the 2 day jungle trip. However, being back in Rurre, where most of the people are passing Gringo´s makes for a good social night. Was a good night for me, for some reason I ended up knowing most of the people in the Mosquito Bar.. people who I had met 2 months previously, or only talked to for 2 minutes on some bus journey...as a result i was know as "The Mayor of the Gringo Trail", not sure if thats a good thing or not... but made for a good evening!
I wont go in to too much detail on the 2 day jungle trip, as its the same sort of trip as the Pampas, but your walking around as oppose to beingh shauffered around... the only noteable thing was we had an absaloute aweful guide.. but made for good amusement as we just took the piss out of him for 2 days.
