Rustic Rurrenabaque
Trip Start
Feb 20, 2008
1
36
62
Trip End
Aug 20, 2008
Rurrenabaque,
Bolivia
Sunday, April 20, 2008
It was quite the experience, taking a tiny single aisle 30-seater propeller plane. It got even more freezing cold as we ascended slowly in the unpressurized cabin (owwww my ears!!) and rose over the commanding Andes mountains. It was surreal to be just above the clouds, with craggy black mountain peaks poking through.
All too soon, we started our rapid descend, as I watched the fuzzy carpet of green beneath us. Trees, thousands and thousands of trees, formed a dense green mass beneath us. Welcome to the Amazon Basin.
As the plane dipped dangerously low, I started to panic: why are we hitting the ground when there's no RUNWAY??????
Answer: The grass IS the runway. Woah.
Quite the ride, quite a lot of fun.
We're booked for a 4day trip into the rainforest with Madidi Travel, the only true eco-friendly operator in this town. We spent 2hrs chatting with one of its founders, the amazing Rosa Maria Ruiz, who led the National Geographic expedition into the same forest in 2000. It made the cover story, she won one of NatGeo's Top 100 photos, and won a National Wildlife Federation international award for conservation. It costs us significantly more, but at least we know where exactly our money is going.
[For those planning to see the rainforest from Rurrenabaque, please choose wisely. It seems like none of the other tour operators are genuinely ecofriendly, and are causing much irrepairable damage to the fragile ecosystem of the area]
It's gonna be a freakin' scary experience, sleeping in the Amazon. The lodge out there has no walls, only screens (i.e. green mesh) as covers. "The vegetation will be your privacy," Rosa Maria had told us!
Watch this space. I really hope I have nice stories and lots of wildlife pictures to share.
Also, I want to thank friends (esp WYao, Ms Koh JJ!) who have taken effort to leave comments on this blog. It's comforting to get some kind words from friends, esp when I'm so far away from home and have had a rough couple of weeks.
Enjoy all the pictures and the updated posts. I'll be back, hopefully not too badly ravaged by mozzies, in 5 days.
Cheers,
Felicia.
P/S: The state of my health seems to be quite stable. No more expulsion of fluids, although I am still ultra careful about what I eat/drink.
