Rurranabaque - the jungle leaflet

After a hair-raising flight from Sucre in a really old-school plane where you entered through its bum rather than the side, and a mad dash around La Paz for 3 hours to do a bit of shopping and posting, we took an even more hair-raising flight to Rurranabaque, a town north of La Paz perched between the jungle and the lowland grasslands. I say hair-raising as it was a tiny plane with only one person either side of the aisle and no door to the cockpit so we could see everything the captain and his co-pilot were doing: even El got a tiny bit scared when we touched down on the grass runway...gulp.

We found a nice hotel though and were delighted at the change in temperature: going back to sandals and shorts weather was wonderful! Next day we headed into the jungle for a 1-day trip. The boat ride was fabulous through pretty lush trees, the odd one covered with bright red or bright yellow flowers. It was a long 3-hour trip but as we had the boat to ourselves we didn't mind.

We got to the jungle and went on a short (1-hour) trip into the jungle. Sadly our guide spoke no English and we could hear all the birds announce our arrival with their unusual calls so we were not surprised that all we saw were a few freaky spiders, a couple of birds and a termite nest. Oh and a nest of wasps which we made a hasty exit from!



It was a nice walk but a somewhat dumbed down walk as the path was extremely well-worn and we really didn't go too far. Nevertheless it was the jungle so that was cool. After a swift lunch with some others who'd been there for 2 days, we headed back to town in the boat. On the way back we stopped for a short walk to a nearby cliff filled with large holes where a number of parrot species live - namely the famous red and green ones you imagine when you think of the jungle. OK they were a way away from the viewing platform but it was pretty special to see these incredible birds screeching above us and flying around in their natural environment. El feels strongly that birds should not be caged so we really enjoyed seeing them - a real highlight.



Back to town for cocktails and readying for our 3-day tour into the Pampas Grasslands.