Our journey to Rurrenabaque was like somehting out of a Indiana Jones film! We turn up to the airport to be met with a 18 seater tiny aeroplane where you sit directly behind the captain and even I couldn´t stand up! The journey was pretty scary as the thing was tipping from side to side and didnt feel altogether safe, however it beat the alternative, an 18 hour bone shakingy bus across the mountains. The landing took place on a strip of dirt passing for a runway and the ¨airport¨ was one small building, we were greated by taxi drivers to which we agreed to go with, turns out to be guys on motorbikes. So we take off on these bikes and these guys are tearing through the town and we arrive (barely) in one piece at our hostel. The flight company gave us a free drink voucher which we redeemed immediatly following our journey and bumped into some people we met in spanish school in Buenos Aires, the bars here are really cool and tropical, what I imagine thailand to be like and its lovely and humid, which is a welcomed break from chilly La Paz!

Our tour started at 8, where we set out for a 3 hour jeep ride to the pampas, the journey was rough to say the least and extremely dusty, we stopped for lunch which was pretty good and carried on to the motorised canoes which take you to your lodgings. The journey was really beautiful and we saw lots of animals on the way, such as the pink dolphins and squirrel monkies and capabarras which are the worlds laregest rodents! During the journey however I developed a serious stomach cramp and couldnt physically move, so the 2 hour canoe ride was pretty agonising. We arrive in the camp which is build on stilts as its direclty over the river, which is pretty luckily as there were aligators under the camp, pretty scary I thought as there were at least 4 ramps down to the ground and Im sure they can walk up slopes! Anyway my stomach ache wasnt getting anyway better, so rory stayed with me while the rest of the group went cayman hunting in the dark, pretty gutted to have missed that, and went to bed.

Stomach ache cleared in the middle of the night, luckily! So we set out early to go anaconda hunting ( I know! Mental!) but the guide wa pretty chipper about the whole thing and informed us that they were no longer than 2 or 3 meters (great!) We leave the safety of our canoe and enter the flat, pampas grass land, the grass is about a meter and half tall and it was absolutly boiling, plus we had to cover head to toe as the mosquitoes are really bad in the grass lands. So we start crashing through the grass looking for anacaondas sunbathing, we were told you arent guarenteed to see one and to spread out and search, to be honest I was half arsed looking, not really wanting to find one, but of course with my luck I did after about 5 minutes! Just call me the snake hunter from now on!! Although to be honest I competly lost my bottle and run off screaming, luckily Rory was at hand to watch where it slithered off to! The guide was completly delighted with this, grabbed the thing by its tail and started showing it off to all the groups and passing it round for photos, of course I got all the glory for the find! We then spent some more time wondering around the pampas and headed back to the canoe and back the lodge for a slap up lunch. In the afternoon we went looking for dolphins to swim with, Rory was the first in and terriefied everyone else as everytime the dolphin touch him ( they are friendly and like the play) he screamed, a sort of blood curdling scream and he looked terriefied, plus the guide let the canoe float quite far away from him so he had to swim to get back- he tells me they were nipping at his feet and nudging his hands which was pretty scary as the water was so brown you couldnt see your foot if you dipped it in, I definaltly didnt get in- but after a while a few brave people got in but the dolphins had lost interest by this point and swam off, so Rory was the only one to get to swim with them. Talk about us being at one with nature!!
After we went to a ranch on the river, where all the boys played football against the guides from about 6 different groups and the girls just sat around chatting waiting for sunset, regret this entirely as I was wearing flip flops and black, thin trousers, when we got back to the camp my entire bottom, lower back, legs and ankles were covered with bites! Agony! Rory escaped with some bites on his hands!
The eveing was spent having dinner and early night as completly exhusted. Also there was no electricity after 9 and we have lost our torch so late night toilet trips proved tricky with just the ipod, we both seemed to cope reasonably well with the outdoor sort of living, except when we went to bed Rory had a frog in his, which had got under his mosquito net and was hopping around, proving to be too difficult to remove, Rory ended up sleeping in my bed, there was no extra charge for the frog!

The last day we went out on the canoe and drove for about an hour, we all thought the guide had lost his mind as he was crashing the canoe into bushes and aiming at low hanging branches, ( Rory summarised it was because they thrashed them at football the previous night). We arrived into a calm bit of the water and started fishing for piranahs, which is surprisingly relaxing, the little b*****s were just nipping at the raw meat on the hooks which was weird as you cant actually see them as the water is so murky. We changed location and was more successful, the guide caught about 5 fish including a dog fish, Rory was really unsuccessful and gave up in a bit of a hump, I caught one but it fell off the hook back into the water! The guide also caught sardines which he cut up and we used as more bait, a bit grissly but we ended up with a good haul of fish, which we took back to the camp and ate. Piranah is really tasty but not alot of meat on it, most of the group werent interested in eating it, so me and this guy finished it all off! Standard! We then took the motorised canoe back to solid ground and took the jeep home, which was a bit of a palarva, the jeep wasnt big enough so I had to squeeze on the front seat with another girl, not nice in these temperatures and there was no petrol so the driver decided to wing it to another town almost on empty, and it was espcially dusty! Anyway arrived in one piece and met poeple from the group later for dinner and drinks. The journey ended on a bit of a murder mystery, as ¨someone¨ stole Rorys towel from our room, which is a private double and had been locked!! Of course the finger was pointed at the cleaners, who denyed all knowledge of said article! We arrived back in La Paz, happy, dirty and towelless! All in all a great trip.