3 Days In Rurrenabaque Jungle
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Technically this title is slightly wrong. We actually spent 3 days in the Rurrenabaque pampas which was more focused on animals vs the jungle tour which was focused more on the plants and culture. But I thought 3 days in the jungle sounded more impressive.
We got on the bus at about 7pm in La Paz and set out for our 14 hour overnight bus to Rurre. We were warned by a couple of my mates, as well as many reviews, that the bus ride is a rough time. And it absolutely was! The whole night we were bumping all over the place, and a few times I woke up suddenly thinking we were going off the edge of the cliff. The bus also broke down a couple of times in the early mornings. I knew this because I woke up to us stopped with the engine off and heard the driver on the tools outside. At some point in the night we collected a couple locals who sat in the isle next to Lucas with a kitten that kept meowing too. Don’t ask… . Anyway, we made it to Rurrenabaque (Rurre) safely but with not much rest.
We had a couple nights in Rurre to recoup and regain some energy before we headed off on our pampas tour. Rurre was a really nice amazon town to hang out in with delicious food spots and our hostel had hammocks and a pool, perfect for the hot weather.
We left Rurre at 10am to start our pampas tour. We had one other guy with us, Ads who was from Toronto. He was great, we had lots of laughs together over our 3 days! Our guide was the funniest person ever, in a slightly crazy animal lover way. His name was Jaky and he had been a guide for 21 years. He certainly had the animal whisperer skills. He had some very funny phrases like “camera ready now please”, “one minute please”, “touch the tail!” (of Pepe the Caiman), “vegetarian, eats only fruit”. I could list more but that will do haha.
On day 1 of the tour we drove to where we got on the boat for the start of the pampas tour. This was about a 3 hour drive, with a lunch stop in between, and a few stops on the side of the road to spot some capybaras, alligators, sloths, condors and other birds.
There was a toucan and a macaw living at the spot where we stopped for lunch. Quite sad because they obviously had had their wings clipped. But it was also really cool being able to see these two exotic birds up close.
We spent the rest of the day on the boat meandering up the river towards our accomodation. The boat trip was about 3 or so hours as we stopped often to view the animals. The most memorable part of this day was the monkeys coming onto our boat looking for food. They were soooo cute. One of them reached out and gripped my finger with its little hand.
We got to our accommodation about 6pm that night. The accommodation was one of the highlights for me. It was many seperate buildings built on top of the water right next to the river all connected by boardwalks. There was a hammock and games room with a deck to outside. A kitchen and dining room. And many seperate cabins. Lucas and I got our own room which was a nice surprise, we thought it was going to be dorm beds.
I haven’t shown it in this photo but you will see in following photos that there are alligators and caimans just lurking right next to our accommodation, right underneath us sometimes. This was 100% the highlight of the trip and the novelty never wore off. Just walking to dinner or to bed and you can say goodnight to the crocs! I was thinking you wouldn’t want to get drunk and have to stumble back to your bed at night with death traps like them waiting in the water.
P.S. if you are wondering why Lucas is wearing a dress shirt, it’s because we all got given light long sleeved shirts to wear for the tour and his happened to be a formal looking one haha.
Once we dropped our stuff off we got back in the boat for sunset on the water and aligator and caiman spotting in the dark with our head torches. Their eyes glow yellow/orange with light shone on them so they were easy to spot. After that we went back to the accommodation for dinner, shower, and bed.
We got up at 5am the next day to watch the sunrise in the boat, though unfortunately it was a bit cloudy so we didn’t actually get one. Instead we went searching for more animals which we found.
We then headed back to the accom for breakfast before heading back out for anaconda hunting. Since it was wet season there was barely any chance at all of actually finding one. Instead we went to a families home on the river who let us look around their place for snakes, tarantulas, etc. We found 3 baby anaconda snakes, one other red snake which I can’t remember the name of (apparently very poisonous), lots of mice, but no tarantulas unfortunately.
Our guide insisted that Lucas touched the tail of the 5 m long caiman, called Pepe, that lives at the accommodation. Apparently a caiman this size eats 80kg worth of food a day, which suspiciously is about Lucas’s weight…
What the photo doesn’t show is our guide holding a piece of chicken behind me which Pepe is fixated on, meaning apparently he wasn’t going to try eat Lucas. Which in fairness he didn’t, thank god.
After lunch and some downtime (e.g. napping in the hammocks) we set out piranha fishing. We tried for about 1-2 hours but unfortunately we were all unsuccessful except for Jaky who managed to get 6! I almost got 2 on the boat but that was as close as we all got. It was still a lot of fun! On the way home it started pouring with rain. It was quite peaceful really because it was so warm and we had rain ponchos anyway.
Once back at the accom we showered and had dinner. The 6 piranhas that Jaky caught were fried and served with dinner. We just ate the whole fish other than the heads and it was actually pretty nice. Still quite a strong fishy taste for freshwater I thought, but actually really yum. The bones, etc. kind of softened enough when fried to not notice them. Was definitely a first time eating piranhas.
Day 3 we had a sleep in and breakfast before we headed out to swim in the river with the pink dolphins. Apparently if there are enough dolphins around then it means the piranhas won’t bite (or they’re scared off). I think apparently during the day the crocs don’t really hunt either. Anyway, we got to this spot and there were like 2 pink dolphins swimming around which we were a bit skeptical at first, it didn’t seem like enough! We said to Jaky we’ll only get in if he does, so he stops the boat and next thing we know he’s jumping in the water fully clothed and still in his socks hahaha. Was hilarious. That was our queue after that and it was really nice. The water was so so warm. Obviously couldn’t see anything in the water so still slightly spooky. What a great experience.
We went up river a bit and found more dolphins including a baby dolphin. We also saw 2 small toucans and 2 macaws that morning.
We went back to the accommodation after that and packed up our stuff and had some lunch before heading back along the river towards Rurre. We got back to Rurre around 4pm that afternoon.
What a trip! We saw so many animals and had the best time with our guide and with Ads. A travel highlight for sure!
We had a full day the next day where we relaxed by the pool, and hiked up to Mirador La Cruz for a viewpoint of the town. We had a flight back to La Paz the next morning at 9am, which was 100x better than the bus and worth the extra money. In fact, the road was closed that day due to a slip that had taken out the road. I imagine there won’t be any busses travelling that road for a while now.
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