We'd been advised to fly there by almost everyone we spoke to, as the town of Rurrenabaque is really far from La Paz by bus. Sadly we did not take this advice, and organised a private people carrier to take the six of us doing the tour together, thinking this would be fine. 'It take 12 hours to get there, don't worry' the company assured us. 'We pick you up at 2pm, get there by 2am, you go sleep and wake up for tour at 8am - perfect.'
It did sound perfect. Unfortunately it was not. We called them when they didn't show up by 2.30 and were eventually picked up an hour later. Apparently they lost the piece of paper with our hostel's address on so had no way of finding us. The journey was along a road as dangerous as Death Road, and since it gets dark at 6.30pm, we did nearly the whole thing at night. It was awful.
The road was only just wide enough for one car at points, but it's the main thoroughfare between La Paz and the jungle, where a lot of produce and food comes from, so huge great trucks are driving along in both directions, which causes ridiculous traffic jams, and a lot of reckless driving when people try to overtake these slow vehicles. We were honestly afraid for our lives. After about 6 hours we came across a huge queue of stationary traffic and it turned out there had been a landslide onto the road. We waited there for 20 minutes while people tried to clear a way, and when our driver came back from helping (we weren't allowed out of the car), he told us a man had just been killed by a falling rock. We were stunned - if our car had been 200 metres forward, it could have been one of us. And yet our driver was so casual about it that we could tell this was an all too regular occurrence for the Bolivians who drive this route multiple times a week, which was a pretty shocking and sad realisation for us.
We eventually reached Rurre at 6.30am, 4.5 hours after we expected - it had taken us nearly 16 hours to travel 400km (250 miles).
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| No room at the inn |
Our tour started at 8.30am so there was no time for bed. We showered at the hostel we were meant to stay at, had some breakfast, and set out for the jungle. It started with a 3 hour boat ride up rover to our camp, which was in the middle of the 'selva' (jungle in Spanish). We had lunch and were assigned cabins, then set off for a three hour trek through the jungle with our guide. He had been raised in a small community in the selva, so knew the enormous jungle like the back of his hand - we on the other hand, would have got lost 5 minutes after leaving camp. He showed us different plants and trees that had medicinal uses - this one cures kidney pains, that one helps ease arthritis... It was really interesting seeing how much the jungle is used by people like him and his family, they literally live off it, relying off it entirely for food, water, and their health. We saw a couple of toucans and parrots too, but we were making too much noise to see any animals.
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| Our jungle cabin |
That night our guide did a ritual to pachamama (mother earth) to pray for good weather and a happy tour for us visiting his home. It involved us sitting around him in a semi-circle, with him in the middle facing out, in front of a hole in the ground with an animal skull in. He lit three cigarettes and placed them standing up in the ground around the skull, where they slowly burned down. The ritual involved A LOT of cigarettes in fact, with him chain smoking and blowing smoke into the hole while chanting to pachamama. He threw rice in the hole, then passed it round the circle and we all had to throw a bit of rice in too. Then the same happened with salt. Then I was asked to take the skull away, and put it behind our circle. He then lit another cigarette, put it in his mouth backwards and beckoned to us one by one to kneel in front of him. He blessed us, and blew smoke over our heads from inside his mouth from the back-to-front cigarette - I was amazed he didn't burn his tongue. It was really cool to watch though, and afterwards we all sat under the stars in contemplation.
The next day we went on a longer hike in the morning, and saw a herd of wild pigs - they were so smelly. They've been known to attack humans, kill and eat them, so we had to stay really quiet and still. There were about 30 or 40 of them, the biggest ones being about the same size as a Labrador. After that we returned to camp, had lunch then went piranha fishing in the river. It was not a success for any of us, plus it was really hot so we went swimming in the river instead! Much nicer. (These piranhas don't eat people FYI). Our guide caught one, which josh was instructed to hold but he somehow managed to let go of it in a fast flowing bit of the river, so one of the boys jumped in fully clothes to catch it. We didn't trust josh with holding important things after that!
That night the others went on a nighttime jungle hike but I opted out - i'd been warned that pretty much the only thing you're guaranteed to see is enormous spiders, which is not my cup of tea, to say the least! They came back after about an hour and had apparently seen one of the most deadly spiders in the world - one bite and 15 minutes later, you're dead. Was not at all sorry to have missed it!
Our third and final day was spent making jungle jewellery - I sanded a ring out of a sawn off part of a small coconut-type thing, which you then polish in a combination of mud and ash to get shiny.
We headed back downstream to Rurre that afternoon, dirty exhausted and probably very smelly after many wonderful hours of crashing through the dense, humid, sweaty rainforest. A shower was very necessary for all of us!
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| Jungle camp |
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