Rurrenabaque Jungle walk
Trip Start
Jan 26, 2000
1
23
30
Trip End
Jun 14, 2000
Rurrenabaque,
Bolivia
Saturday, May 20, 2000
In Guanay we went directly to the docks to try and book a boat for the next day, things didn't look good, only tourists took the boat nowadays due to the cost and the next boat wasn't going for another 5 days. We didn't want to wait that long or to charter a boat ourselves would cost $200 and didn't want to take a 20 hour bus ride on unpaved road to Rurrenabaque.
The next day we spent relaxing in the square and by evening time 4 other gringos has arrived in town, we now had about 5 boat drivers offering to give us a lift. We took the cheapest, I was a bit concerned as the captain seemed a bit dodgy, but we got up early next morning and arrived at the docks and true to his word Vincente was there waiting next to his boat. In true Bolivian style it took us over an hour before we left port and to my surprise this 20m hollowed out tree shot off like something out of Miami Vice! I was expecting a nice leisurely float downstream, but the outboard motor on this thing really moved. It was still a relaxing ride with plenty of fab scenery and wildlife to keep us amused. We even stopped for a dip in the river although I'm not too sure if this was a wise move as this river probably contained most of the waste from the town on the high altiplano and lots of mercury from the gold mining operations in the area. No body parts have dropped off me yet, so it looks like I escaped.
We arrived in Rurrenabaque, we were now well into the amazon basin, a sleepy little riverside town, the first thing we did was book onto a jungle tour for the next day. We had decided to go with a small individual company who offered 'more of a jungle experience'. What this basically meant was we had to carry all our own food, shelter and we would hack through the jungle with machettes as oppose to walking along a well groomed path to a shelter which was purpose built somewhere in the middle of the jungle.
Next morning we met our guide, Billy, and we were away. By the time we'd stopped for lunch, stopped to talk to every other boat we encountered it we 3pm and we'd only just arrived at the point where our trek started, I was itching to get going. Our start point was at Billy's old disabandoned family house which he'd lived in until he was 16. There were plenty of sweet lemons, oranges and grapefruit trees left over from this period and we had a bit of a feast before we headed off into the bush. We basically spend the remaining 3 hours of that day hacking through the greenery with machettes until we arrived at a suitable place to camp. What stood out for me on this first day were some of the huge mahogany trees and some other trees who's roots started 2m above ground and came down to make a cone. Our guide had the habit of stopping every 10 minutes and making strange noises, we found out he wasn't crazy and what he was actually trying to do was imitate monkey noises and at one point he instructed us to dump our packs as we rushed off somewhere into the forest is search of some Cappuccino monkeys. Unfortunately we weren't quick enough and our mission failed.
The first day was really hot and humid, but after a couple of summers in Boston it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. We set up camp and I was a bit concerned when our guide pulled out a flashy mosquito tent leaving us with flimsy nets which were dotted with holes.
After dinner that night we went for a night walk hoping to see armadillos and other wildlife, unfortunately we didn't see too much as it was a full moon and our guide thought this would confuse the animals into thinking it was still daylight.
Later that night it started to rain, it was amazing to hear it arriving across the jungle. We could hear it falling on the jungle canopy from along way away and as it got closer it got louder and louder until it was almost seemed almost deafening at the point when it was upon us. Our guide hadn't set our camp up properly and in the end we had to do a rushed job to wrap our tarpaulin sheet around our mosquito nets. This didn't work so well as the tarp caught a lot of water by our feet and it also collected up above our heads and we would have to clear it out every 20 minutes. needless to say we got soaking wet and spend a good hour next morning drying our sleeping bags out over the fire using a washing line made from the vine of a nearby tree. Billy on the other hand that night had managed to stay totally dry, he had managed to arrange the tarp around him so all the water went in our direction! It was amazing to watch him the next morning build a fire from the wood close by which was all absolutely soaking wet. He also managed to construct us a proper camp in about 15 minutes by chopping down a 20ft tree to use as a support for the tarp and then using vines to string it out and make the perfect tent shape, god knows why he didn't do it the previous night.
Following breakfast we set off into the jungle, we walked for 4 hours along no particular trail and I was flabbergasted that we return by exactly the same route without getting lost in the slightest. We saw lots of different vegetation and received information on plants were used for medical purposes. Some of the trees I can remember include Balsa (Remember making models with this really light wood at school?), coffee, and three other trees which when we took a swipe at them with the machette they started oozing liquids. One was a poison used by the tribes which used to exist in the area to fight amongst themselves. Another was called the 'bulls blood tree' which started poring out a red liquid (sorry can't remember the correct name or what it was used for) and finally the 'milk tree', and what was really funny was the white liquid it expelled really did taste of milk. It could also be boiled down to make a glue.
We used vines at one point to make a tarzan swing over a stream and I managed to walk into a spiders web and had a very beautiful yet poisonous spider dangling just inches from my head.
One of our main aims of the day was to spot some monkeys and just as we were getting disillusioned and it was about time to return to camp we managed to spot a bunch of spider monkeys which ended up swinging through the trees just above our head. Billy also managed to spot a toucan that day, but by the time we'd clomped noisily through the undergrowth it had taken flight.
On the way home we picked some of the local fungi and together with the centre from a palm tree our guide made a fantastic salad.
Next morning we got up at 6 and did a 3.5 hour pre-breakfast walk in the hope of spotting some more wildlife, we didn't see too much and after breakfast and breaking camp we did a short walk back to the river where our boat was waiting for us. We stopped at our guides brothers house on the way back down stream and picked up some meat to do a spot of pirana fishing. We had a nice afternoon lounging on the river, but unfortunately no piranhas. I think with the hook size and the huge chunks of meat we were using we wouldn't have tempted any thing less that 10kg!
