Jungle Massive! Our Bolivian Amazon Adventure

It´s safe to say that neither Tom or I are particularly outdoorsy kind of people.  Tom is born and bred inner city, a through and through urbanite, who, on visiting my hometown of Shepperton for the first time remarked: "Wow! You really are from the sticks, aren´t you?".  For those that don´t know, Shepperton is about 5 five miles from Heathrow airport and within the M25.  As for me, despite growing up in ´the sticks´ and having no objection to roughing it a bit, well, I´m not a huge fan of animals or insects, or the dark for that matter.  So we can´t say we were overly excited about our trip into the Amazon Rainforest.  But you can´t spend four months travelling South America and not visit the Amazon, can you? Plus, I am a firm believer that you should do things in your life that scare and challenge you and the thought of spending a night in the jungle certainly scares the bejaysus out of me.

So off the back of a rainy, hungover day in La Paz we half-heartedly booked a flight to the Amazon town of Rurrenabaque.  The flight itself was both amazing and terryifying: a tiny 19-passenger propeller plane that bounced around in the air for 40 minutes while we bit our fingernails until they bled and thought about how much we loved our families.  But then, as we made our descent we saw it for the first time - the Bolivian Amazon in all its glory.  It was a truly breathtaking sight, and for a minute we were no longer afriad, just totally in awe of what was below us and feeling incredibly lucky to witness it.  And then we zoomed into land on a tiny dirt strip with a big bump and our thoughts once again turned to our imminent deaths.

We stepped from the plane and the humidity hit us like a punch in the face, especially having come from La Paz, nearly 4km above sea level where the air is so thin you can never quite get enough oxygen no matter how deeply you inhale.  "Welcome to the jungle!" the groundsman called as my hair immediately tripled in volume and we started sweating profusely.

After a shower we headed into Rurrenabaque to book a tour into the jungle proper. There are so many different tour operators it can be a daunting experience, particularly as there are few regulations in Bolivia so stories of dodgy tours are plentiful.  The most popular Amazon tour is to the pampas - not really the jungle but with a promise of wildlife galore (animals can hide too well in the jungle).  Immediately upon reading the itinerary for this tour I knew it wasn´t for me: "Day two, go searching for anacondas." Say what?!?  Also I´d read reviews that the pampas tours are a bit like package holidays, with so many operators offering exactly the same experience, you´re ferried out in big groups, with all the different tour operator lodges in a big line along the river, and that they can be very intrusive to the animals - how else can you ´guarantee´ sightings of specific animals?  Also not to get all preachy but the Amazon has its problems and tourism isn´t necessarily a good thing for our most precious rainforest.  So we decided after a load of research to spent the night at Serere Reserve in the Madidi National Park which is a protected conservation area and centre for eco-tourism.  The idea is tourists visit the reserve to experience being in the jungle, trek the surrounding forests, take boats out on the lakes and observe the wildlife they are lucky enough to see, all the while leaving the smallest ´footprint´ they can.  And in the meantime staff and volunteers are involved in conservation programmes and work with local indiginous communities.  There is running water at the reserve but no electricity, so at night it´s just candles and head torches.  It´s by no means roughing it - our private cabin was big with a double bed and bathroom, but instead of walls it just had mesh, so you could see out into the jungle at all times and at night it felt like sleeping out in the open!  The thought of this frightened me immensly before we left but was actually incredible, especially waking up in the morning to both the sound and the sight of the jungle at once.

Not being outdoorsy as I´ve already mentioned, we didn´t exactly have the right equipment or clobber for the trip - no hiking boots, no waterproof trousers. I´d lost my waterproof jacket somewhere on a tour of the Salt Flats and replaced it with a dodgy looking replica in La Paz.  And Tom´s sole preparation for this trip in terms of wardrobe was to swap is staple white plimsoles for black ones. You know, so the dirt doesn´t ruin them.  But it turned out it didn´t matter - Serere had wellies and it didn´t rain anyways so I could do the whole thing in my Converse.

It took three hours down the river Beni to reach the reserve, and as soon as we got there the mosqitoes and various other flying bugs swamped us as we trekked the 30 minutes to camp.  So much for the DEET.  It was then that we discovered we were the only tourists staying at the reserve, which we had mxed feelings about.  On one hand, how lucky to have the entire place to ourselves, including a private guide, and to choose exactly what we wanted to do! On the other hand, we have been travelling together now for two and a half months so were quite looking forward to meeting and talking to new people. 

After freshening up we headed straight out onto a lake full of crocodiles and piranhas to go fishing.  And I´m proud to announce I caught a piranha, a sardine and another rather exotic looking fish the name of which I forget.  Tom caught a coulple of piranhas, then had a dry spell in which he became pretty bored pretty quickly of fishing and kept mumbling about missing photo opportunities of the sunset. But then he only went and caught a huge catfish, the biggest catch of the day including by our guide so all was right with the world again.  I must admit I was quite squemish and guilty about watching our guide kill the fish, but I am a meat eater after all, and we ate these fish for our dinner so this is all ok in my book.

Dinner was by candlelight in the main lodge, and as we were alone (the staff ate separately on the other side of the lodge) it was a romantic way to mark exactly one year since Tom proposed to me in New York.  After dinner we chilled in the hammocks listening to the sound of the jungle by night before heading back to our cabin, about half a kilometre away.  All fine until the guide said, "you know your way back to the cabin, right?" "Of course!" we said as I shat my pants. And so, Tom and set off alone into the jungle with nothing but a head torch.  Now, half a kilometre isn´t very far, but in the pitch black jungle with shrieking and rustling and god knows what else all around, it was just like being in the Blair Witch Project.  But I managed to stop myself freaking out by repeating "I´m the king of the jungle!" in my head over and over until we made it back to the cabin. 

Now it gets dark in the jungle pretty early and there´s not a lot to do after dark in a camp with no electricity. Listening to the sounds from the jungle is great for a bit, but then, well it gets a bit repetitive.  So we popped on a two hour podcast of Damien Lazarus´ RA Exchange interview and listened to it in the dark as we drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, the wonderful feeling we had as we awoke to the beauty of the amazon all around us was cut short when we discovered to our horror that we had no running water. I know it´s the jungle but we paid good money for this! After a lovely big breakfast we went out trekking with our guide.  Unfortunately we didn´t see many animals other than monkeys, birds and some pig trails, but that was ok by me, it´s enough to know I´m in close proximity.  It was still a great trek as our guide told us about the various plants and trees and how they were used by the local people for medicine and survival. At one point he stopped to show us the Devil´s Tree, so called because of the ants that climb it.  He picked one up and asked me to hold out my arm to show me something.  Intrigued, I obeyed. Obviously it bit me, which the guide found hillarious, and even more so when he couldn´t get the thing off so it bit me three more times.  Bang went his tip.

Afterwards we went crocodile hunting in another lake.  Unfortunately we only saw one fleetingly but to be honest I think we were relieved - we´ve both seen Swamp People.  The guide started making croc noises to entice them, and Tom joined in.  "You remind me of Bear Grylls," I said.  "Who?" He says.  "Bear Grylls! You know, from the Discovery Channel?" To which he looked at me deadpan and replied "I don´t watch the Discovery Channel."  More of a HISTORY man...

And that was it! After lunch we headed back down the river to the ´Big Smoke´ Rurrenabaque.  We´d decided to only do one night for two reasons - one, because I was afraid I wouldn´t cope with more, and two, because going to an eco-lodge is much more expensive than the run of the mill pampas tours.  But definitely worth it.  We were feeling very proud of ourselves on the boat (whilst listening to another RA Exchange podcast, this time on Ben Watt) when all of a sudden a HUGE FISH hit the side of the boat and landed right behind where we were sitting. Of course we stood up and screamed like girls, to the absolute delight of the driver and local people he had picked up along the way.