Rurrenabaque

(May 19-22)

It was a bit confusing in the beginning, as we thought we would go to the jungle in Rurre(nabaque). We soon realized, however, that we had two major possibilities, once there: jungle or pampas. It seems that the jungle is a more authentic experience, beautiful landscapes, but not that much fauna. Animals indeed mostly hide from the sight of curios noisy tourists. The pampas instead promised to show much more animals. We decided to go for the second, on a eco-lodge based tour that lasted 3 days and 2 nights. It was indeed beautiful.  Besides the countless number of birds, monkeys and other animals we have seen, we were delighted by our native guide, Alexander, from Bala tour, who was able to spot easily perfectly camouflaged animals and could entertain us with tons of interesting stories. 

The most exciting thing, predictably, was however to swim with pink dolphins at sunset, in the same river where we have seen a couple of caimans and we later tried to fish piranhas. Yes, I know, it might look crazy to swim with these Hollywood-wants-you-to-believe-dangerous animals. And indeed it was scary in the beginning, and I never felt totally relaxed, although I suspect my girlfriend did. But the truth is that these animals are either not interested in your flesh or scared by you. On top of that, dolphins are territorial animals and they would not let caimans come into their territory. They instead let human in, they steal balls, touch you and, god knows why, they like to bite your feet: my girlfriend got a seemingly painful byte, but nothing serious, I mean no blood. 

Numbers: Rurre is not well connected to La Paz. You have three options:

1) Fly: 1 hour, 1300 bolivianos one way with Amazonas, small plane. Be aware that the flight gets canceled often, and they shift one turn all the passengers in the following flights. Therefore it is highly probable that you will hit by the consequences of a cancellation, even if it is not your flight that is canceled (as it happened for us). Plan accordingly.

2) Bus, 20 hours, I do not know the price, but certainly cheaper. After experiencing the Uyuni-La Paz bus, and having little time left, we decided to avoid this option.

3) Boat, days here I am not sure about the details.