Rurrenabaque y los Amazonian Pampas, 16-18 de Noviembre.

La Paz serves as a quite popular base from which to explore the Bolivian Amazon jungle and pampas (wet lands). The closest jungle town is called Rurrenabaque with loads of wildlife spotting opportunities - and so we squeezed ourselves onto an Air Amazonas pencil plane pointed in that direction.

Air Amazonas, 45mins of plane logic over the 26 hour bus.

The flight was brilliant, with all 16 seats peering over the pilots shoulders as we quickly descended from the high Andean plateau to the steamy Amazon. We left La Paz at circa 20 degrees and 4000m and landed in a 100% humidity stricken 36deg at 200m above sea level! 
Our first experience of some real South American heat.



The 3 days of activities revolved around jumping in our trusty long river boat with 6 other tourists and guide, and cruising up and down stream from our accommodation base - exploring the different wildlife that frequents the area.

Capybara - the largest rodent in the world - 65-100kg!








Squirrel monkey and baby, it was cool to see these in the wild after volunteering with them.

Searching for Anacondas...unfortunately the torrential rain the night before kept the big gun snakes out of sight.



Obligatory goofy tourist hats and light coloured long-sleeve business shirts (from the OP shop) kept the mozzy's at bay.



Not an Anaconda, a snake nevertheless...

 

This is a shot Clare took from her hips of the alligator that kept guard of our boat.
A couple of loud hissing noises sharply halted us; a poke-gesture and 'Hyaaa' from our guide granted  access to our seats...



Alligator - the most common animal we saw in the pampas, loads of them at about 2.5m long. The much larger and aggressive Black Caiman's were the ones to watch out for at 6-7m long!

View from our base camp.

Siesta/beer 'o' clock/reading time.
The pylons show how high the water level rises to in the wet season proper (Jan/Feb).



Fish breath

This was the sunrise we caught by overloading a long boat with 14 people
 because our guide didn't wake up from his b'day boozing the night prior! 
The corner momentum proved more entertaining than the sunrise itself
- which we subsequently missed!

Post-fishing wing-drying.



Hard to appreciate a sense of scale here, but this bird has a 3m wingspan and a huge 2m wide nest perched high above the river.



Some kind of punk Sex Pistols bird.

We also saw several pink fresh water dolphins (extremely hard to photograph) which are as strange as the name suggests. On the final morning we were supposed to swim with them.....yeah right.....as we tied the boat up two alligators fought viciously into the water just 25-30m away!!

 

Another highlight was being woken by Black Howler Monkeys - an incredible barking sound which travels for up to 5km! We couldn't get a howl out of the monkeys we were volunteering with the week prior, so again this was unique.

On our fishing excursion, the Piranhas which frequent the area proved too cunning, with catfish the catch of the day.

Overall this trip was really good but unfortunately let down by our guide!
No anacondas, no piranhas but loads of animals which we had never seen. The flight in and the town of Rurrenabaque were as much a highlight as the pampas trip itself.