Rurre, the jungle in Bolivia

Sometime (I really hope) in the next few days, I will be heading off tourist style for the jungle. Needless to say, I love travelling but sort of despise touristing, and booking this attraction isn´t as time efficient as I had hoped, so I´m first headed for the Peru border and lake titicaca to renew my Bolivian visa. That is the plan for today, at least, to visit the seat of Incan civilization while waiting for the medieval times equivalent of an airline (amaszonas) to figure out if they are flying to their most popular destination this week. As I write this post right now, the entire airline is on lunch. I can´t make this stuff up. I´m writing from the cyber cafe next door.

I´ve had enough troubles so far just trying to get a flight out of La Paz to Rurre, and fellow traveller William from England wrote me a hilarious email about his experience there a few months back. Do read on...

Alright mate,

Me and my girlfriend found your site the other day and were very amused at your Potosi story. I spent 5 weeks in bolivia with a couple of friends about a month ago and felt compelled to write to you and to warn you  about Rurrenbaque as you may have another Potosi flashback in true bolivian style....

Firstly, if you are flying with Amazonas, dont make our mistake of trying to reconfirm our return flight the day before. Amazonas are the most hopeless, rude and disorganized bunch of fools that i have met. All you need to rememeber is this... reconfirm your return flight to La Paz, as soon as you land in Rurrenbaque, and save your self the grief that me and about 30 other backpackers suffered at the hands of the evil Amazonas people. They started telling us we couldnt leave for another 5 days and maybe we could charter our own flight at a huge price even though we had paid for our return flight....Also dont deal with the woman with the glasses. She is the worst and was apparently got thrown out of the US and is very bitter about the fact ,aiming her anger at innocent toursits in a power hungry ariline employee  kind of way.

The next thing is DO NOT BOOK ANY TRIPS WITH INDIGNEOUS TOURS. They are appalling. We did two trips with them, one into the Amazon for one night, and one into the Pamapas for one night.

To be fair the amazon trip was ok and our guide was a cool guy who knew his shit. They did however manage to not cook some chicken properly and gave my mate salmonella , he then couldnt go on the Pamapas trip due to sickness and had to really fight to get his money back for the pamapas tour.

Me and my other friend went on the pampas tour for one night ( 2 days ). They kindly 'forgot' to tell us that 8 hours each day of our 2 day trip would be spent travelling which was kind of boring. Our 'guide' , Hyinni ( or something ) firslty hired the worst jeep driver in the rurrenbaque who amazed us by watching 3 jeeps get stuck in a large mud pool on the road, and then drove directly into it himself. We were then told to wade knee deep into the mud to help him push it out. They also used the spare room in the jeep as a taxi service and picked up a few villagers along the way, cackling as they lined there own pockets without asking us.

When we eventually got to the boat, after lunching on what only can be described as egg fried dog sick, we were happy to get to the wetlands and see some sun set wildlife. Hyinni kindly told us that we would have to look out for animals as he was too busy driving the boat ( ?!). Strange as a all the other guides seemed to manage to do this apparently complex multi tasking. We stumbled upon a load of other boats, up river, looking at the fabled pink dolphins and were told by Hynni that this was our oppertunity to 'swim with dolphins'. We had been travelling all day and were completely unprepared for this all being fully dressed ( mud covered by this point ) as the cook snoozed lazily on top of our bags. It was unforgettabl...y shit. At another point Hynni mumbled under his breathe, without actually pointing anywhere, " Dolphins". "Donde ?" i asked , to be sneered at by a very bored Hynni.

We also saw a huge Caiman alligator on a passing bank. Instead of reversing and taking another look, Hyinni went one further, and gave us the full experience by driving the boat directly into the now angry gator. They seemed to be very territorial creatures and after warning us to keep back, he tried to boared our boat with his jaws open. This was actually fairly scary for us and i'd imagine the gator was quite upset. 

The sleeping hut on the river was basic but they all are. We were however privalged and rewarded to see a rare authentic jungle sight ....The cook getting shagged by the hostal guy as the mosquito net shimmered in the breeze. By this point Hynni hated us and could hardly talk to us, all the other guide were cool eg Joaquim who we fortunately got the next day instead of Hyinni. Hynni's tour was not yet over and he took us for an evening boat cruise of 'alligator spotting'. This involved taking us up river, getting bitten alive , through the clothes, by vicious mosquitos and watching Hynni poke at sleeping alligators with the boat oar.

Luckily we were put with another group the next day for our return journey as we had a shorter tour but did happen to meet the rest of our group a few days later in Rurre who told us that Hyinni had taken them 'anaconda hunting' ( these are very rare sightings ) which involved plodding through the pamapas mud for three hours getting eaten alive by mosquitos.

Well there you have it. To be honest it was an unforgettable experience and i`m glad i did it but it was definately a 'bolivian' standard of tourism and wasnt quite the romantic picture i had imagined. Also we are from England and any animal that isn't a garden earthworm scares us.

Anyway enjoy and good luck !

Will

Comments

[FeeliaDielo]

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