Welcome to the jungle (aka: A-mazing Amazon)

Chilling in a hammock in a semi- stilted hut on a steamy jungle morning I am jolted from my kindle by the rustling of trees, and look outside to see a family of tiny squirrel monkeys swinging through the trees just outside our hut. Amidst the unearthly sounds of the howler monkeys, I can hear them squabbling, and look out to the river beside them, hoping to catch a glimpse of another river dolphin. I love the Amazon!

Squirrel Monkeys outside our hut!

One thing that I was very excited about before coming to South America was to visit the Amazon rainforest. There's a children's book by Iva Ibbotson called 'Journey to the River Sea' which I always loved, and I always said to myself that I would go there one day. I also have an obsession with dolphins and as a little girl always wanted to see the pink river dolphins, one of the rarest dolphins in the world and certainly the strangest! Whilst most people think of Brazil for the Amazon, the Amazon basin extends to many other South American countries, and due to Brazil's expense and the continued deforestation, Bolivia is an excellent alternative! And tours abound from La Paz, where you can book to go to Rurrenbaque, in the middle of the Bolivian Amazon, and take a boat through the Amazon delta seeing loads of wildlife, and even swim with the river dolphins!

We shopped round alot of different operators trying to find one that was friendly to our budgets, but also friendly to the environment. We read a few horror stories on the internet about terrible guides and operators that chased and handled the animals and were pretty destructive, but luckily everything is alot better regulated now and most of the agencies follow the proper guidelines. To get to Rurrenbaque we had the choice of a 21 hour local bus (complete with rigid seats and infrequent toilet stops) or a 45 minute flight.... needless to say we chose the latter despite being a bit more expensive! Taking off in a rickety little plane (where you could see out the front window) and landing in a tiny little airport in the middle of the rainforest was pretty mental, but very cool! :D

Airport!

We then set off on a nauseatingly bumpy trip in a 4x4 to reach the river, where we were transferred into small motorised canoes. Almost immediately we began to see wildlife, with crocodiles and alligators lining the river banks, families of capybaras (giant semi- aquatic rodents), squirrel monkeys scrambling around the trees, and so many birds (egrets, herons, parrots, eagles, kingfishers, and lots of other ones I can't remember the name of!) Also along the way we saw a few river dolphins which was SO COOL!

Family of Capybaras

One of many crocodiles!

Incredible birds

After 3 hours of going down the river we arrived to our lodge which was a really cute set of wooden structures on stilts. We expected to be in a dorm room with the other 4 guys in our group, but luckily me and PK ended up with a room to ourselves, complete with an en-suite! So we were very happy. For some reason, for our meals we had to go to another lodge, which actually turned out to be quite cool as we traveled by night down the river we could see the alligator eyes shining back at us from the torchlight, very creepy!

Our lodge

The food was really nice as well actually, with special vegetarian for me! And in the evenings our guide, who was really funny and spoke excellent english, helped us build a campfire and we stayed up around it chatting until late about all the animals in the area and what it was like to grow up in the Amazon.

The next morning we went searching for annacondas, which turned out to be just a long trek through grasslands with not a snake in sight! That's the luck of nature watching I guess. Luckily the afternoon was alot better when we set off to go swimming with the pink river dolphins! After about 20 minutes I spotted some (after years of practice, my dolphin spotting abilities are well-honed by now...) and we stripped into our swimwear. Lots of people eyed the brown river water with suspicion but my thoughts were firmly on swimming with the dolphins so I ended up in the water about 10 minutes before everyone else. Which was excellent! As when it was just me in the water a couple of the dolphins swam really close and seemed quite curious, but when the other people from the boat started to splash in and move towards us they got a bit scared and began to disappear. It was a little unsettling to be swimming in the water with a huge crocodile about 2m away from us on the bank, but they luckily didn't seem too interested in us!

Swimming the pink river dolphins!

That evening we went to watch the sunset from a beautiful place, and joined up with a few of the other tour groups for some games of football and vollyball. Unluckily, the mosquitoes also decided they wanted to play, but some bug spray managed to see most of them off!

Our final morning was spent piranha fishing, which I decided just to watch (and occasionally laugh as the clever fish had seemed to perfect the art of nibbling off the bait without being caught!) But a few did get caught, along with a couple of catfish! It was a little disconcerting seeing how many piranhas were around seeing as we'd been swimming around in the very same spot the afternoon before.....

Piranhas have SHARP teeth!

Catfish!

After that, we piled back into the boats to head back to Rurrenaque (and then the terrible 4x4!) where we managed to find a cheap hotel to have a well deserved shower. The next afternoon we got our flight back to La Paz, witnessing on the way the most incredible rain storm, which whilst cool to watch managed to majorly delay our flight. Which, as we had a bus to catch, was not ideal! Luckily we got to the bus station on time and were on our bus to Sucre, which was a whole other adventure in itself.......