The Amazon Basin, Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

Going to the Amazon Basin did not help my dislike for creepy-crawly things. Nonetheless, I´m really glad we went.

There are two options for getting from La Paz to Rurrenabaque (“Rurre” for short), the tourist hot spot of the Bolivian jungle: a 18-hour to 3-day bus, depending on how many times rivers wash out the road, or a 45-minute flight. We booked the flight. The plane held about 15 people and the interior was, at most, 4 feet high…like a miniature self-propelled rocket packed full of people.  The flight was a bit dicey, but we landed safely on the only paved stretch of road in Rurre and taxied along grass and brush to the “airport,” an open-air run-down building five minutes from town.

Rurre is home to roughly 14,000 people and is situated along the large Beni River, one of probably thousands of tributaries to the mighty Amazon. Our hostel was a little oasis with a beautiful, tropical courtyard with hammocks and a tree bursting with starfruit. The temperature was perfect, not too hot or humid, and (amazingly) mosquitoes were few and far between. We happily slept the day away.

Michael and I booked a tour of the jungle. Our tour started with a 3-hour boat ride up the Beni river, one of our highlights. Unfortunately, our group consisted of Michael, me, and 8 extremely chatty Israeli guys, so in addition to the squacking of jungle birds, roars of wild boars, screaming monkeys, and buzzing insects, our experience of the jungle also unexpectedly included incessant Hebrew.  Side note: Israelis have taken over Bolivia, at least the tourism culture. All the menus and signs are in Spanish and Hebrew (although I´m told the Hebrew signs are frequently upside down), and the tour guides often know more Hebrew than French, English, etc.

We spent three days exploring the jungle on foot, faithfully following our guide who prides himself on never getting lost. I was lost within seconds of leaving camp. It pretty much all looked the same to me: big leaves, tall trees, tons of vines of all different shapes and styles, and then a bunch of the more unusual things of nature. These included poisonous trees that leak a highly-toxic milky substance; trees with 2 to 4-inch spikes on them; “24-hour ants,” named because one bite from these gigantic insects will cause severe bodily pain for 24 hours; millions of leaf-cutter ants working their way up the trunks of large trees with leaves many times their size on their backs; “fire ants,” used as an old torture device, that live inside a tree and, responding to the smell of human flesh, can kill a person within 2 hours; huge caterpillars and centipedes of seemingly unnatural colors; monstrous-sounding pigs; and brilliant butterflies. On a night walk, Michael ate some termites which he reports have a slightly minty flavor.

It rained the entire first night and most of the next morning, which was possibly one of the most entrancing and peaceful sounds I´ve experienced. Unfortunately, we wallowed through mud the rest of the time until we were so caked in it we no longer cared. It just added to the adventure after a while.

After we escaped from the jungle, we spent one more day in Rurre lounging in our hotel-paradise. We decided to go for a hike late in the afternoon to a lookout and butterfly pond, but took a wrong turn somewhere and found ourselves hiking up a river, alongside various waterfalls, to the city´s water supply.

While we missed the butterfly pond, we took advantage of having the warm swimming pools to ourselves anyway, ending our trip on a high note.