Chile Con Carne!

I can actually confirm that getting to Rurrenbaque was the worst night of my life. The bus made me ill. Well it probably wasn´t the bus but I blame the bus..unfortunately after the terrible bus journey I did become ill with a fever and a stomach illness and was bed ridden for 3 days...RUBBISH!! That damn bus. I decided we were definitely flying back to La Paz..never again would I travel on that road.

Anyway, after 3 days of bed and being looked after very well by Chris I finally made it out of the room and we booked a 3 day tour into the amazon jungle..the reason we were here!! Very exciting! The most exciting part however was booking the flight back to La Paz for when the trip was finished!! YES!! We definitely weren´t getting back on that bus (I had a lot of persuading `Mr Budget`Chris on this one-luckily I won!).

The 3 day trip was absolutely fantastic- we were taken by boat into the jungle and we stayed in wooden huts right by the river. After our trip to the Brazilian Pantanal Chris and I thought we`d seen some quite big alligators, however I have never seen anything as big as the gators on the river bed as we entered the amazon basin. They were HUGE!! Very scary looking indeed!! And an unlikely friend of the giant alligators were hundreds of turtles! They were chilling out right next to the crocs, it was great to see so many, they seem to enjoy sitting right on top of each other even though there was plenty of room on the bank! A very funny sight! We also spotted lots of Cabybara´s, the worlds largest rodents...they are so cute though!! The first boat ride in was made complete when we encountered a massive group of capuchin monkeys in the trees! There were so many of them..they are so cute!! The day ended watching sunset over the pampas with a beer- perfect.

The next day started very early with a trip out to watch sunrise over the pampas... unfortunately it was cloudy and a complete waste of time!! The rest of day was a success though!! After yummy pancakes for breakfast we fitted ourselves with wellington boots(?!) and set out in the boat again. Our guide then explained to us that this morning we would be walking through marshes and wetland searching for anacondas and cobras. OH MY GOD. This seemed to worry me far more than anyone else, and I was actually quite glad of the giant wellys I had on my feet, praying perhaps they would protect me from these potentially life threatening snakes we were looking for! It was a tough 2 hour struggle over the pampas swamps in the sweltering heat when finally our guide found a cobra. Everyone was really quite excited about this development...but I ran a mile. To be fair I was quite happy that we had at least found something as the hike was really hard (especially as I hadn´t really eaten anything for about 5 days due to my illness..my energy levels were LOW) but I was absolutely terrified at this huge snake our guide was playing with in his hands!! Unfortunately (?) we found no anacondas but we were blessed (?) to see another 3 cobras on the way back! So quite a successful morning! Sort of.

The afternoon activity was much more to my liking...swimming with dolphins!! And not just your standard dolphins...pink amazonian dolphins!! We`d seen a group of these on our boat trip the day before and couldn´t believe it..they are actually pink! And its crazy that they live in this murky jungle river. They have very different noses to normal dolphins too..very odd looking...but very cute!! So we played with them in the water... (with huge alligators looking on from the river banks!) they were actually much more interested in an empty water bottle than us but they got pretty close which was cool. We had a really good group of people of our trip which made it so much fun- an English girl, a German girl, a Dutch couple and a Canadian couple. We had a great evening attempting to play as many drinking games as we could remember after far too many beers!

The next morning I was pretty excited about..pirahna fishing! Again! I thought I could show my new friends my expert skills in catching pirahnas! Hehe!! And Chris was quite happy to have another go..as he did so badly the first time!! So off we went fishing again, and the unthinkable happened...Chris caught the first fish!! Hehehe! Now it wasn´t a pirahna..but it was big and edible! Then, true to form, I caught a big fat pirahna! Success again! I do love fishing.
The boat ride back back was full of monkeys, cabybara´s, huge aligators, amazing birds, pink dolphins and more, and we were quite sad to be leaving the jungle after such a good 3 days! We met some great people and saw so many animals!!


We got back to Rurrenbaque that evening and flew back to La Paz the following day. The plane to La Paz was so exciting...it was the smallest plane I`d ever been in, the runway was actually just a random field and the views over the jungle and then the Andes were fantastic..and I was so happy we were not getting back on that bus!