Our next adventure... a tour of the Amazon Pampas! We said farewells to Devon, Sonya and Jon and headed off on a tinpot plane to Rurrenebaque. Rurre is a small town nestled conveniently close for Amazon jungle and pampas tours, and is home to what is quite possibly the world´s most rugged airport.
I should probably admit something here. La Paz airport is very, very small also, and we may have boarded the wrong plane. In my defence, you expect your plane to be the one directly beside your gate, no? Not the one a few hundred metres to the right.
Anyway, we were sent off the wrong plane and directed to the correct one, and just a mere 30 minutes in the air later we began our decent. Rurre's landing strip is basically a clearing in jungle like environs. You climb down on to a dirt track where a clutch of tourists wait to board the aircraft back to La Paz. There's a wee minivan that greets you, your luggage gets chucked on top and it bobs along another dirt track, swerving past cockrels, until you reach the town centre.
We'd played a wild card and decided to rock up and find somewhere to stay rather than relying on the few hostels advertised online, and really glad we did. Found a lovely sun-lit courtyard place with hammocks, cheap as chips and with the yummiest French bakery nearby.
We headed out on our pampas tour the next day, along with an American girl, Rachel, an English girl Emma and four guys who were individually nice enough and together were very ladish. Made me appreciate the lovely, curteous boys we've travelled with so far and how lovely our male friends at home are! Example: most boys do not steal cigarettes, bottles of rum and water at any given opportunity, and their humour tends to extend beyond 'tiiiiiitttssss!´
We stocked up on rum and cokes for the three hour canoe ride to our lodge, and as we were loading on our rucksacks, Jules spotted Steve and Nicole, who we'd met in Salta. Small gringo world!
Anyway, we played Pampas Pirates, sipping rum and cokes and spying all sorts of wildlife on our way to the lodge, from exotic birds to howler monkeys, dolphins to crocodiles. Our lodge itself had its own cayman, who sat and eyes us suspiciously as we played dumb tourists and took photos of him.
The tour included an anaconda hunt (slodging through marshland looking for a giant snake and batting off millions of mosquitos...not my idea of fun), watching the sun set over drinks, pirannah fishing (one guy caught a turtle, which the cayman then went for...cue panic all round) and swimming with dolphins. For me, the tour mostly consisted of fending off mosquitos (what sort of mossies bite through jeans and tropical strength deet I ask you?), but I admit the huge array of wildlife was spectacular.
On return to La Paz Emma and I did some splurging at the markets, before Jules and I headed off to Copacabana. More on that later!
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