Alena;
So i’m writing this way after it happened so this might not be exactly accurate. It is now May and I’m just getting round to a wee update!
Anyway, after Huani Potosi we headed back to La Paz and decided our next trip would be much calmer! We decided to go on a jungle tour to the Amazon basin which promised to involve watching wildlife and floating down the river. So we get on our rickety bus to travel overnight to get to the starting point of rurrenabaque. On the bus we meet Jules and Grant, two fantastic aussies who will be our travel companions for the next month! The bus ride is a real trip along a crazy curved cliff side road and all along the way you can see places where cars and buses have gone over the side. Inexplicable we seem to be driving on the wrong side of the road and everytime we overtake we see our lives flash before our eyes. At one point we reverse nearly off the road. On the plus side the scenery and wildlife are amazing.
We arrive in Rurrenabaque and it turns out we are all on the same tour, along with two Australian guys and one Australian girl. We leave for the jungle and quickly realise that the mosquitos here are no joke! I am absolutely destroyed within the first day and my arms and legs end up huge and swollen. We spend our days floating down the river getting eaten alive but seeing some really amazing animals. It is also a really good laugh hanging out with the others in our tour, especially Jules and Grant. They are not a couple, just traveling together and we have loads in common. By the end of the trip we’ve decided to head up north together.
The weather is really not good during the trip which we should have anticipated with it being the wet season and all but it defintely puts a dampner on things as we can’t do the things that we had planned. We went swimming with pink dolphins but they tried to run away and then we went fishing for piranhas. Obviously I didn’t fish but instead sat in the boat and got destroyed by mozzies- seriously got back to the hut and Pablo nearly passed out when he saw my legs- really scary stuff. I’d put up a photo but I don’t think that it’s fair to those with sensitive stomachs!
Anyway, apart from that, we had fun saw some amazing animals and had a good laugh. However, after all the suffering and the crap weather we made a group decison to head up north and get to the beach. First though we wanted to see Machu Pichu…….
