Sweaty and steamy; hot and humid; languid and laidback. That is what Rurrenabaque is. It is also a charming little town with slashes of old spansih colonialism still evident here and there. The here and there generally being the large church hall on the main plaza. Rurre is laid back; so much so that the full name is only really used by those new to town and who haven't yet worked out that getting into a sweat about anything (literally in this place) is just not ...

You either love it. Or you hate it. To many, the Amazon and all it holds, is called the Emerald Forest. A treasure trove of wonders untold; of lost cities (think of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) of lost civilisations (who constructed the pyramids of Madre Dios?); undiscovered fauna and flora with applications for miracle drugs and cures for all and for others it represents wealth and riches untold. Isn't the Emerald Forest such a charming ex...

If you have limited time, and not inclined to do anything extreme like mountain-biking, mountain climbing or trekking for days at a time, and want to see something of the wild parts of Bolivia, then you have a choice of spending some time in the jungle or heading out to the pampas (the pampas being the flat, humid, wet, swamp like plains of north eastern Bolivia). In the jungle you are less likely to see all the big animals, whereas in the pampas you are likely t...

We had four days to kill before heading off to the jungle and La Paz was not where we wanted to be for that time! Nor were the salts flats at Uyuni anymore appealing; especially as it would take 13 hours to get there on some pretty awful roads! Coroico sounded like a far better option as it was only 3hrs away and it was where the jungle tour would be heading through anyway. Would they be able to pick us on the way through? Yes. Perfect! See you in Coroico in fou...

Not the name to a new movie starring the Bolivian Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, but the state that Ing and I felt upon arriving in the world's highest city. This morning we had left Santiago, landed at Iquique on Chile's north desert coast and then flew into La Paz at 4000m 45 minutes later! Talk about a shock to the system. Just picking up the bags was a real effort! No wonder the aircraft was practically empty. Maybe the others knew something that we didn't? But the...