Travel to Bolivia, Beni Department, Rurrenabaque.

A very dry day in La Paz doing no more than looking around the city and booking a bus to Rurrenabaque later we were on that bus, the one that would take us into the heart of the Amazon Rainforest. We had heard many stories about the bus ride from the capital into the jungle being a nightmare but we were both, surprisingly, looking forward to it.

It was due to set off at 11.30am and we didn't leave until 2pm, it took the guys ages to load all the goods onto the top and underneath of the bus. Its a good sign of things to come! The bus itself was no more than a public one with semi reclining seats and costing £8 for a 24 hour ride, safe to say we were sceptical now. we set off into the mountains before descending down a section of what is known all over the world as 'The Death Road'. The ascent over the mountains was slow and the decent even slower, the death road much more easy going than it had ever been in the past. The narrow gravel roads and near vertical drops had been replaced by Tarmac and guard rails, making you feel much safer than we would have before. We had a solid 2 hours of going down this kind of road but then it all changed as we took a turning towards Rurrenabaque.

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Travel to Bolivia, Beni Department, Rurrenabaque.

Following a crazy day at the Oruro Carneval (will blog about this later – great day) I decided that I couldn't pass up the opportunity of taking a short flight from La Paz to Rurrenabaque to spend a few days in the Bolivian Amazon. Its easy to get to, much cheaper to see in Bolivia than Brazil and also unlike Peru and Brazil its malaria free (just as well given the number of mosquito bites I received).

Departing late from El Alto airport in La Paz we jumped in the small propeller-driven Amaszonas plane for the 40 minute trip to the small airstrip in the jungle outside Rurrenabaque. The 3 day Pampas excursion didn't get off to the smoothest start, arriving at the airport our driver for the 3 hour transfer to the Pampas hadn't turned up. This meant having to go to the office in town and argue with the tour operators about why it wasn't possible to just wait an entire day for the driver to come back! Fortunately there was a Spanish guy with me who was suitably angry and fluent in Spanish that eventually they arranged alternate transport for the long 'road' to Santa
Croc closeupRosa. I say 'road' in the loosest sense – this was a wide, muddy trail riddled with large rocks, potholes, flood waters, animals.....to be honest I think even World Rally Cars would struggle down it! Half way through the back breaking, bum numbing journey the 4x4 we were in lost its exhaust on a particularly large pothole making us the most popular car on the road as we travelled through the various villages with shotgun like noises firing out of the back of the car.

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